NEAR the outskirts of Viger, to the west, far away from the Blanche,
but having a country outlook of their own, and a glimpse of a shadowy
range of hills, stood two houses which would have attracted attention by
their contrast, if for no other reason. One was a low cottage,
surrounded by a garden, and covered with roses, which formed jalousies
for the encircling veranda. The garden was laid out with the care and
completeness that told of a master hand. The cottage itself had the air
of having been secured from the inroads of time as thoroughly as paint
and a nail in the right place at the right time could effect that end.
The other was a large gaunt-looking house, narrow and high, with many
windows, some of which were boarded up, as if there was no further use
for the chambers into which they had once admitted light. Standing on a
rough piece of ground it seemed given over to the rudeness of decay. It
appeared to have been the intention of its builder to veneer it with
brick; but it stood there a wooden shell, discolored by the weather,
disjointed by the frost, and with the wind fluttering the rags of
tar-paper which had been intended as a protection against the cold, but
which now hung in patches and ribbons. But despite this dilapidation it
had a sort of martial air about it, and seemed to watch over its
embowered companion, warding off tempests and gradually falling to
pieces on guard, like a faithful soldier who suffers at his post. In the
road, just between the two, stood a beautiful Lombardy poplar. Its
shadow fell upon the little cottage in the morning, and travelled across
the garden, and in the evening touched the corner of the tall house, and
faded out with the sun, only to float there again in the moonlight, or
to commence the journey next morning with the dawn. This shadow seemed,
with its constant movement, to figure the connection that existed
between the two houses.
The garden of the cottage was a marvel; there the finest roses in the
parish grew, roses which people came miles to see, and parterres of
old-fashioned flowers, the seed of which came from France, and which in
consequence seemed to blow with a rarer color and more delicate perfume.
This garden was a striking contrast to the stony ground about the
neighboring house, where only the commonest weeds grew unregarded; but
its master had been born a gardener, just as another man is born a
musician or a poet. There was a superstition in the village that all he
had to do was to put anything, even a dry stick, into the ground, and it
would grow. He was the village schoolmaster, and Madame Laroque would
remark spitefully enough that if Monsieur Paul Farlotte had been as
successful in planting knowledge in the heads of his scholars as he was
in planting roses in his garden Viger would have been celebrated the
world over. But he was born a gardener, not a teacher; and he made the
best of the fate which compelled him to depend for his living on
something he disliked. He looked almost as dry as one of his own
hyacinth bulbs; but like it he had life at his heart. He was a very
small man, and frail, and looked older than he was. It was strange, but
you rarely seemed to see his face; for he was bent with weeding and
digging, and it seemed an effort for him to raise his head and look at
you with the full glance of his eye. But when he did, you saw the eye
was honest and full of light. He was not careful of his personal
appearance, clinging to his old garments with a fondness which often
laid him open to ridicule, which he was willing to bear for the sake of
the comfort of an old pair of shoes, or a hat which had accommodated
itself to the irregularities of his head. On the street he wore a
curious skirt-coat that seemed to be made of some indestructible
material, for he had worn it for years, and might be buried in it. It
received an extra brush for Sundays and holidays, and always looked as
good as new. He made a quaint picture, as he came down the road from the
school. He had a hesitating walk, and constantly stopped and looked
behind him; for he always fancied he heard a voice calling him by his
name. He would be working in his flower-beds when he would hear it over
his shoulder, “Paul;” or when he went to draw water from his well,
“Paul;” or when he was reading by his fire, some one calling him softly,
“Paul, Paul;” or in the dead of night, when nothing moved in his cottage
he would hear it out of the dark, “Paul.” So it came to be a sort of
companionship for him, this haunting voice; and sometimes one could have
seen him in his garden stretch out his hand and smile, as if he were
welcoming an invisible guest. Sometimes the guest was not invisible, but
took body and shape, and was a real presence; and often Paul was greeted
with visions of things that had been, or that would be, and saw figures
where, for other eyes, hung only the impalpable air.
He had one other passion besides his garden, and that was Montaigne. He
delved in one in the summer, in the other in the winter. With his feet
on his stove he would become so absorbed with his author that he would
burn his slippers and come to himself disturbed by the smell of the
singed leather. He had only one great ambition, that was to return to
France to see his mother before she died; and he had for years been
trying to save enough money to take the journey. People who did not know
him called him stingy, and said the saving for his journey was only a
pretext to cover his miserly habits. It was strange, he had been saving
for years, and yet he had not saved enough. Whenever anyone would ask
him, “Well, Monsieur Farlotte, when do you go to France?” he would
answer, “Next year—next year.” So when he announced one spring that he
was actually going, and when people saw that he was not making his
garden with his accustomed care, it became the talk of the village:
“Monsieur Farlotte is going to France;” “Monsieur Farlotte has saved
enough money, true, true, he is going to France.”
His proposed visit gave no one so much pleasure as it gave his neighbors
in the gaunt, unkempt house which seemed to watch over his own; and no
one would have imagined what a joy it was to Marie St. Denis, the tall
girl who was mother to her orphan brothers and sisters, to hear Monsieur
Farlotte say, “When I am in France;” for she knew what none of the
villagers knew, that, if it had not been for her and her troubles,
Monsieur Farlotte would have seen France many years before. How often
she would recall the time when her father, who was in the employ of the
great match factory near Viger, used to drive about collecting the
little paper match-boxes which were made by hundreds of women in the
village and the country around; how he had conceived the idea of making
a machine in which a strip of paper would go in at one end, and the
completed match-boxes would fall out at the other; how he had given up
his situation and devoted his whole time and energy to the invention of
this machine; how he had failed time and again, but continued with a
perseverance which at last became a frantic passion; and how, to keep
the family together, her mother, herself, and the children joined that
army of workers which was making the match-boxes by hand. She would
think of what would have happened to them then if Monsieur Farlotte had
not been there with his help, or what would have happened when her
mother died, worn out, and her father, overcome with disappointment,
gave up his life and his task together, in despair. But whenever she
would try to speak of these things Monsieur Farlotte would prevent her
with a gesture, “Well, but what would you have me do,—besides, I will
go some day,—now who knows, next year, perhaps.” So here was the “next
year,” which she had so longed to see, and Monsieur Farlotte was giving
her a daily lecture on how to treat the tulips after they had done
flowering, preluding everything he had to say with, “When I am in
France,” for his heart was already there.
He had two places to visit, one was his old home, the other was the
birthplace of his beloved Montaigne. He had often described to Marie the
little cottage where he was born, with the vine arbors and the long
garden walks, the lilac-bushes, with their cool dark-green leaves, the
white eaves where the swallows nested, and the poplar, sentinel over
all. “You see,” he would say, “I have tried to make this little place
like it; and my memory may have played me a trick, but I often fancy
myself at home. That poplar and this long walk and the vines on the
arbor,—sometimes when I see the tulips by the border I fancy it is all
in France.”
Marie was going over his scant wardrobe, mending with her skilful
fingers, putting a stitch in the trusty old coat, and securing its
buttons. She was anxious that Monsieur Farlotte should get a new suit
before he went on his journey; but he would not hear to it. “Not a bit
of it,” he would say, “if I made my appearance in a new suit, they would
think I had been making money; and when they would find out that I had
not enough to buy cabbage for the soup there would be a disappointment.”
She could not get him to write that he was coming. “No, no,” he would
say, “if I do that they will expect me.” “Well, and why not,—why not?”
“Well, they would think about it,—in ten days Paul comes home, then in
five days Paul comes home, and then when I came they would set the dogs
on me. No, I will just walk in,—so,—and when they are staring at my
old coat I will just sit down in a corner, and my old mother will
commence to cry. Oh, I have it all arranged.”
So Marie let him have his own way; but she was fixed on having her way
in some things. To save Monsieur Farlotte the heavier work, and allow
him to keep his strength for the journey, she would make her brother Guy
do the spading in the garden, much to his disgust, and that of Monsieur
Farlotte, who would stand by and interfere, taking the spade into his
own hands with infinite satisfaction. “See,” he would say, “go deeper
and turn it over so.” And when Guy would dig in his own clumsy way, he
would go off in despair, with the words, “God help us, nothing will grow
there.”
When Monsieur Farlotte insisted on taking his clothes in an old box
covered with rawhide, with his initials in brass tacks on the cover,
Marie would not consent to it, and made Guy carry off the box without
his knowledge and hide it. She had a good tin trunk which had belonged
to her mother, which she knew where to find in the attic, and which
would contain everything Monsieur Farlotte had to carry. Poor Marie
never went into this attic without a shudder, for occupying most of the
space was her father’s work bench, and that complicated wheel, the model
of his invention, which he had tried so hard to perfect, and which stood
there like a monument of his failure. She had made Guy promise never to
move it, fearing lest he might be tempted to finish what his father had
begun,—a fear that was almost an apprehension, so like him was he
growing. He was tall and large-boned, with a dark restless eye, set
under an overhanging forehead. He had long arms, out of proportion to
his height, and he hung his head when he walked. His likeness to his
father made him seem a man before his time. He felt himself a man; for
he had a good position in the match factory, and was like a father to
his little brothers and sisters.
Although the model had always had a strange fascination for him, the lad
had kept his promise to his sister, and had never touched the mechanism
which had literally taken his father’s life. Often when he went into the
attic he would stand and gaze at the model and wonder why it had not
succeeded, and recall his father bending over his work, with his compass
and pencil. But he had a dread of it too, and sometimes would hurry
away, afraid lest its fascination would conquer him.
Monsieur Farlotte was to leave as soon as his school closed, but weeks
before that he had everything ready, and could enjoy his roses in peace.
After school hours he would walk in his garden, to and fro, to and fro,
with his hands behind his back, and his eyes upon the ground,
meditating; and once in a while he would pause and smile, or look over
his shoulder when the haunting voice would call his name. His scholars
had commenced to view him with additional interest, now that he was
going to take such a prodigious journey; and two or three of them could
always be seen peering through the palings, watching him as he walked up
and down the path; and Marie would watch him too, and wonder what he
would say when he found that his trunk had disappeared. He missed it
fully a month before he could expect to start; but he had resolved to
pack that very evening.
“But there is plenty of time,” remonstrated Marie.
“That’s always the way,” he answered. “Would you expect me to leave
everything until the last moment?”
“But, Monsieur Farlotte, in ten minutes everything goes into the trunk.”
“So, and in the same ten minutes something is left out of the trunk, and
I am in France, and my shoes are in Viger, that will be the end of it.”
So, to pacify him, she had to ask Guy to bring down the trunk from the
attic. It was not yet dark there; the sunset threw a great color into
the room, touching all the familiar objects with transfiguring light,
and giving the shadows a rich depth. Guy saw the model glowing like some
magic golden wheel, the metal points upon it gleaming like jewels in the
light. As he passed he touched it, and with a musical click something
dropped from it. He picked it up: it was one of the little paper
match-boxes, but the defect that he remembered to have heard talked of
was there. He held it in his hand and examined it; then he pulled it
apart and spread it out. “Ah,” he said to himself, “the fault was in the
cutting.” Then he turned the wheel, and one by one the imperfect boxes
dropped out, until the strip of paper was exhausted. “But why,”—the
question rose in his mind,—“why could not that little difficulty be
overcome?”
He took the trunk down to Marie, who at last persuaded Monsieur Farlotte
to let her pack his clothes in it. He did so with a protestation, “Well,
I know how it will be with a fine box like that, some fellow will whip
it off when I am looking the other way, and that will be the end of it.”
As soon as he could do so without attracting Marie’s attention Guy
returned to the attic with a lamp. When Marie had finished packing
Monsieur Farlotte’s wardrobe, she went home to put her children to bed;
but when she saw that light in the attic window she nearly fainted from
apprehension. When she pushed open the door of that room which she had
entered so often with the scant meals she used to bring her father, she
saw Guy bending over the model, examining every part of it. “Guy,” she
said, trying to command her voice, “you have broken your promise.” He
looked up quickly. “Marie, I am going to find it out—I can understand
it—there is just one thing, if I can get that we will make a fortune
out of it.”
“Guy, don’t delude yourself; those were father’s words, and day after
day I brought him his meals here, when he was too busy even to come
downstairs; but nothing came of it, and while he was trying to make a
machine for the boxes, we were making them with our fingers. O Guy,” she
cried, with her voice rising into a sob, “remember those days, remember
what Monsieur Farlotte did for us, and what he would have to do again if
you lost your place!”
“That’s all nonsense, Marie. Two weeks will do it, and after that I
could send Monsieur Farlotte home with a pocket full of gold.”
“Guy, you are making a terrible mistake. That wheel was our curse, and
it will follow us if you don’t leave it alone. And think of Monsieur
Farlotte; if he finds out what you are working at he will not go to
France—I know him; he will believe it his duty to stay here and help
us, as he did when father was alive. Guy, Guy, listen to me!”
But Guy was bending over the model, absorbed in its labyrinths. In vain
did Marie argue with him, try to persuade him, and threaten him; she
attempted to lock the attic door and keep him out, but he twisted the
lock off, and after that the door was always open. Then she resolved to
break the wheel into a thousand pieces; but when she went upstairs, when
Guy was away, she could not strike it with the axe she held. It seemed
like a human thing that cried out with a hundred tongues against the
murder she would do; and she could only sink down sobbing, and pray.
Then failing everything else she simulated an interest in the thing, and
tried to lead Guy to work at it moderately, and not to give up his whole
time to it.
But he seemed to take up his father’s passion where he had laid it down.
Marie could do nothing with him; and the younger children, at first
hanging around the attic door, as if he were their father come back
again, gradually ventured into the room, and whispered together as they
watched their rapt and unobservant brother working at his task. Marie’s
one thought was to devise a means of keeping the fact from Monsieur
Farlotte; and she told him blankly that Guy had been sent away on
business, and would not be back for six weeks. She hoped that by that
time Monsieur Farlotte would be safely started on his journey. But night
after night he saw a light in the attic window. In the past years it had
been constant there, and he could only connect it with one cause. But he
could get no answer from Marie when he asked her the reason; and the
next night the distracted girl draped the window so that no ray of light
could find its way out into the night. But Monsieur Farlotte was not
satisfied; and a few evenings afterwards, as it was growing dusk, he
went quietly into the house, and upstairs into the attic. There he saw
Guy stretched along the work bench, his head in his hands, using the
last light to ponder over a sketch he was making, and beside him,
figured very clearly in the thick gold air of the sunset, the form of
his father, bending over him, with the old eager, haggard look in his
eyes. Monsieur Farlotte watched the two figures for a moment as they
glowed in their rich atmosphere; then the apparition turned his head
slowly, and warned him away with a motion of his hand.
All night long Monsieur Farlotte walked in his garden, patient and
undisturbed, fixing his duty so that nothing could root it out. He found
the comfort that comes to those who give up some exceeding deep desire
of the heart, and when next morning the market-gardener from St.
Valérie, driving by as the matin bell was clanging from St. Joseph’s,
and seeing the old teacher as if he were taking an early look at his
growing roses, asked him, “Well, Monsieur Farlotte, when do you go to
France?” he was able to answer cheerfully, “Next year—next year.”
Marie could not unfix his determination. “No,” he said, “they do not
expect me. No one will be disappointed. I am too old to travel. I might
be lost in the sea. Until Guy makes his invention we must not be apart.”
At first the villagers thought that he was only joking, and that they
would some morning wake up and find him gone; but when the holidays
came, and when enough time had elapsed for him to make his journey twice
over they began to think he was in earnest. When they knew that Guy St.
Denis was chained to his father’s invention, and when they saw that
Marie and the children had commenced to make match-boxes again, they
shook their heads. Some of them at least seemed to understand why
Monsieur Farlotte had not gone to France.
But he never repined. He took up his garden again, was as contented as
ever, and comforted himself with the wisdom of Montaigne. The people
dropped the old question, “When are you going to France?” Only his
companion voice called him more loudly, and more often he saw figures in
the air that no one else could see.
Early one morning, as he was working in his garden around a growing
pear-tree, he fell into a sort of stupor, and sinking down quietly on
his knees he leaned against the slender stem for support. He saw a
garden much like his own, flooded with the clear sunlight, in the shade
of an arbor an old woman in a white cap was leaning back in a wheeled
chair, her eyes were closed, she seemed asleep. A young woman was seated
beside her holding her hand. Suddenly the old woman smiled, a childish
smile, as if she were well pleased. “Paul,” she murmured, “Paul, Paul.”
A moment later her companion started up with a cry; but she did not
move, she was silent and tranquil. Then the young woman fell on her
knees and wept, hiding her face. But the aged face was inexpressibly
calm in the shadow, with the smile lingering upon it, fixed by the
deeper sleep into which she had fallen.
Gradually the vision faded away, and Paul Farlotte found himself leaning
against his pear-tree, which was almost too young as yet to support his
weight. The bell was ringing from St. Joseph’s, and had shaken the
swallows from their nests in the steeple into the clear air. He heard
their cries as they flew into his garden, and he heard the voices of his
neighbor children as they played around the house.
Later in the day he told Marie that his mother had died that morning,
and she wondered how he knew.