"Oh!" says I laughing. "Bless the man! Why yes to be sure!"
"May it not be a former lodger?" says the gentleman. "Some lodger that
you pardoned some rrwent? You have pardoned lodgers some rrwent?"
"Hem! It has happened sir" says I, "but I assure you I can call to mind
no gentleman of that description that this is at all likely to be."
In short my dear, we could make nothing of it, and the gentleman noted
down what I said and went away. But he left me the paper of which he had
two with him, and when the Major came in I says to the Major as I put it
in his hand "Major here's Old Moore's Almanac with the hieroglyphic
complete, for your opinion."
It took the Major a little longer to read than I should have thought,
judging from the copious flow with which he seemed to be gifted when
attacking the organ-men, but at last he got through it, and stood a
gazing at me in amazement.
"Major" I says "you're paralysed."
"Madam" says the Major, "Jemmy Jackman is doubled up."
Now it did so happen that the Major had been out to get a little
information about railroads and steamboats, as our boy was coming home
for his Midsummer holidays next day and we were going to take him
somewhere for a treat and a change. So while the Major stood a gazing it
came into my head to say to him "Major I wish you'd go and look at some
of your books and maps, and see whereabouts this same town of Sens is in
France."
The Major he roused himself and he went into the Parlours and he poked
about a little, and he came back to me and he says, "Sens my dearest
madam is seventy-odd miles south of Paris."
With what I may truly call a desperate effort "Major," I says "we'll go
there with our blessed boy."
If ever the Major was beside himself it was at the thoughts of that
journey. All day long he was like the wild man of the woods after
meeting with an advertisement in the papers telling him something to his
advantage, and early next morning hours before Jemmy could possibly come
home he was outside in the street ready to call out to him that we was
all a going to France. Young Rosycheeks you may believe was as wild as
the Major, and they did carry on to that degree that I says "If you two
children ain't more orderly I'll pack you both off to bed." And then
they fell to cleaning up the Major's telescope to see France with, and
went out and bought a leather bag with a snap to hang round Jemmy, and
him to carry the money like a little Fortunatus with his purse.
If I hadn't passed my word and raised their hopes, I doubt if I could
have gone through with the undertaking but it was too late to go back
now. So on the second day after Midsummer Day we went off by the morning
mail. And when we came to the sea which I had never seen but once in my
life and that when my poor Lirriper was courting me, the freshness of it
and the deepness and the airiness and to think that it had been rolling
ever since and that it was always a rolling and so few of us minding,
made me feel quite serious. But I felt happy too and so did Jemmy and
the Major and not much motion on the whole, though me with a swimming in
the head and a sinking but able to take notice that the foreign insides
appear to be constructed hollower than the English, leading to much more
tremenjous noises when bad sailors.
But my dear the blueness and the lightness and the coloured look of
everything and the very sentry-boxes striped and the shining rattling
drums and the little soldiers with their waists and tidy gaiters, when we
got across to the Continent--it made me feel as if I don't know what--as
if the atmosphere had been lifted off me. And as to lunch why bless you
if I kept a man-cook and two kitchen-maids I couldn't got it done for
twice the money, and no injured young woman a glaring at you and grudging
you and acknowledging your patronage by wishing that your food might
choke you, but so civil and so hot and attentive and every way
comfortable except Jemmy pouring wine down his throat by tumblers-full
and me expecting to see him drop under the table.
And the way in which Jemmy spoke his French was a real charm. It was
often wanted of him, for whenever anybody spoke a syllable to me I says
"Non-comprenny, you're very kind, but it's no use--Now Jemmy!" and then
Jemmy he fires away at 'em lovely, the only thing wanting in Jemmy's
French being as it appeared to me that he hardly ever understood a word
of what they said to him which made it scarcely of the use it might have
been though in other respects a perfect Native, and regarding the Major's
fluency I should have been of the opinion judging French by English that
there might have been a greater choice of words in the language though
still I must admit that if I hadn't known him when he asked a military
gentleman in a gray cloak what o'clock it was I should have took him for
a Frenchman born.
Before going on to look after my Legacy we were to make one regular day
in Paris, and I leave you to judge my dear what a day _that_ was with
Jemmy and the Major and the telescope and me and the prowling young man
at the inn door (but very civil too) that went along with us to show the
sights. All along the railway to Paris Jemmy and the Major had been
frightening me to death by stooping down on the platforms at stations to
inspect the engines underneath their mechanical stomachs, and by creeping
in and out I don't know where all, to find improvements for the United
Grand Junction Parlour, but when we got out into the brilliant streets on
a bright morning they gave up all their London improvements as a bad job
and gave their minds to Paris. Says the prowling young man to me "Will I
speak Inglis No?" So I says "If you can young man I shall take it as a
favour," but after half-an-hour of it when I fully believed the man had
gone mad and me too I says "Be so good as fall back on your French sir,"
knowing that then I shouldn't have the agonies of trying to understand
him, which was a happy release. Not that I lost much more than the rest
either, for I generally noticed that when he had described something very
long indeed and I says to Jemmy "What does he say Jemmy?" Jemmy says
looking with vengeance in his eye "He is so jolly indistinct!" and that
when he had described it longer all over again and I says to Jemmy "Well
Jemmy what's it all about?" Jemmy says "He says the building was repaired
in seventeen hundred and four, Gran."
Wherever that prowling young man formed his prowling habits I cannot be
expected to know, but the way in which he went round the corner while we
had our breakfasts and was there again when we swallowed the last crumb
was most marvellous, and just the same at dinner and at night, prowling
equally at the theatre and the inn gateway and the shop doors when we
bought a trifle or two and everywhere else but troubled with a tendency
to spit. And of Paris I can tell you no more my dear than that it's town
and country both in one, and carved stone and long streets of high houses
and gardens and fountains and statues and trees and gold, and immensely
big soldiers and immensely little soldiers and the pleasantest nurses
with the whitest caps a playing at skipping-rope with the bunchiest
babies in the flattest caps, and clean table-cloths spread everywhere for
dinner and people sitting out of doors smoking and sipping all day long
and little plays being acted in the open air for little people and every
shop a complete and elegant room, and everybody seeming to play at
everything in this world. And as to the sparkling lights my dear after
dark, glittering high up and low down and on before and on behind and all
round, and the crowd of theatres and the crowd of people and the crowd of
all sorts, it's pure enchantment. And pretty well the only thing that
grated on me was that whether you pay your fare at the railway or whether
you change your money at a money-dealer's or whether you take your ticket
at the theatre, the lady or gentleman is caged up (I suppose by
government) behind the strongest iron bars having more of a Zoological
appearance than a free country.
Well to be sure when I did after all get my precious bones to bed that
night, and my Young Rogue came in to kiss me and asks "What do you think
of this lovely lovely Paris, Gran?" I says "Jemmy I feel as if it was
beautiful fireworks being let off in my head." And very cool and
refreshing the pleasant country was next day when we went on to look
after my Legacy, and rested me much and did me a deal of good.
So at length and at last my dear we come to Sens, a pretty little town
with a great two-towered cathedral and the rooks flying in and out of the
loopholes and another tower atop of one of the towers like a sort of a
stone pulpit. In which pulpit with the birds skimming below him if
you'll believe me, I saw a speck while I was resting at the inn before
dinner which they made signs to me was Jemmy and which really was. I had
been a fancying as I sat in the balcony of the hotel that an Angel might
light there and call down to the people to be good, but I little thought
what Jemmy all unknown to himself was a calling down from that high place
to some one in the town.
The pleasantest-situated inn my dear! Right under the two towers, with
their shadows a changing upon it all day like a kind of a sundial, and
country people driving in and out of the courtyard in carts and hooded
cabriolets and such like, and a market outside in front of the cathedral,
and all so quaint and like a picter. The Major and me agreed that
whatever came of my Legacy this was the place to stay in for our holiday,
and we also agreed that our dear boy had best not be checked in his joy
that night by the sight of the Englishman if he was still alive, but that
we would go together and alone. For you are to understand that the Major
not feeling himself quite equal in his wind to the height to which Jemmy
had climbed, had come back to me and left him with the Guide.
So after dinner when Jemmy had set off to see the river, the Major went
down to the Mairie, and presently came back with a military character in
a sword and spurs and a cocked hat and a yellow shoulder-belt and long
tags about him that he must have found inconvenient. And the Major says
"The Englishman still lies in the same state dearest madam. This
gentleman will conduct us to his lodging." Upon which the military
character pulled off his cocked hat to me, and I took notice that he had
shaved his forehead in imitation of Napoleon Bonaparte but not like.
We wont out at the courtyard gate and past the great doors of the
cathedral and down a narrow High Street where the people were sitting
chatting at their shop doors and the children were at play. The military
character went in front and he stopped at a pork-shop with a little
statue of a pig sitting up, in the window, and a private door that a
donkey was looking out of.
When the donkey saw the military character he came slipping out on the
pavement to turn round and then clattered along the passage into a back
yard. So the coast being clear, the Major and me were conducted up the
common stair and into the front room on the second, a bare room with a
red tiled floor and the outside lattice blinds pulled close to darken it.
As the military character opened the blinds I saw the tower where I had
seen Jemmy, darkening as the sun got low, and I turned to the bed by the
wall and saw the Englishman.
It was some kind of brain fever he had had, and his hair was all gone,
and some wetted folded linen lay upon his head. I looked at him very
attentive as he lay there all wasted away with his eyes closed, and I
says to the Major--
"_I_ never saw this face before."
The Major looked at him very attentive too, and he says "I never saw this
face before."
When the Major explained our words to the military character, that
gentleman shrugged his shoulders and showed the Major the card on which
it was written about the Legacy for me. It had been written with a weak
and trembling hand in bed, and I knew no more of the writing than of the
face. Neither did the Major.
Though lying there alone, the poor creetur was as well taken care of as
could be hoped, and would have been quite unconscious of any one's
sitting by him then. I got the Major to say that we were not going away
at present and that I would come back to-morrow and watch a bit by the
bedside. But I got him to add--and I shook my head hard to make it
stronger--"We agree that we never saw this face before."
Our boy was greatly surprised when we told him sitting out in the balcony
in the starlight, and he ran over some of those stories of former
Lodgers, of the Major's putting down, and asked wasn't it possible that
it might be this lodger or that lodger. It was not possible, and we went
to bed.
In the morning just at breakfast-time the military character came
jingling round, and said that the doctor thought from the signs he saw
there might be some rally before the end. So I says to the Major and
Jemmy, "You two boys go and enjoy yourselves, and I'll take my Prayer
Book and go sit by the bed." So I went, and I sat there some hours,
reading a prayer for him poor soul now and then, and it was quite on in
the day when he moved his hand.
He had been so still, that the moment he moved I knew of it, and I pulled
off my spectacles and laid down my book and rose and looked at him. From
moving one hand he began to move both, and then his action was the action
of a person groping in the dark. Long after his eyes had opened, there
was a film over them and he still felt for his way out into light. But
by slow degrees his sight cleared and his hands stopped. He saw the
ceiling, he saw the wall, he saw me. As his sight cleared, mine cleared
too, and when at last we looked in one another's faces, I started back,
and I cries passionately:
"O you wicked wicked man! Your sin has found you out!"
For I knew him, the moment life looked out of his eyes, to be Mr. Edson,
Jemmy's father who had so cruelly deserted Jemmy's young unmarried mother
who had died in my arms, poor tender creetur, and left Jemmy to me.
"You cruel wicked man! You bad black traitor!"
With the little strength he had, he made an attempt to turn over on his
wretched face to hide it. His arm dropped out of the bed and his head
with it, and there he lay before me crushed in body and in mind. Surely
the miserablest sight under the summer sun!
"O blessed Heaven," I says a crying, "teach me what to say to this broken
mortal! I am a poor sinful creetur, and the Judgment is not mine."
As I lifted my eyes up to the clear bright sky, I saw the high tower
where Jemmy had stood above the birds, seeing that very window; and the
last look of that poor pretty young mother when her soul brightened and
got free, seemed to shine down from it.
"O man, man, man!" I says, and I went on my knees beside the bed; "if
your heart is rent asunder and you are truly penitent for what you did,
Our Saviour will have mercy on you yet!"
As I leaned my face against the bed, his feeble hand could just move
itself enough to touch me. I hope the touch was penitent. It tried to
hold my dress and keep hold, but the fingers were too weak to close.