CLAUDE.
Of the party that had come in the Sicilian's boat four were men and
one a young woman. She was pretty; so pretty, and of such restful
sweetness of countenance, that the homespun garb, the brand-new
creaking gaiters, and a hat that I dare not describe were nothing
against her. Her large, soft, dark eyes, more sweetly but not less
plainly than the attire, confessed her a denizen of the woods.
Not so the man who seemed to be her husband. His dress was rustic
enough; and yet you would have seen at once that it was not the
outward circumstance, but an inward singularity, that had made him and
must always keep him a stranger to the ordinary ways of men. There was
an emotional exaltation in his face as he hastily led his companions
with military directness to the ticket window. Two others of the men
were evidently father and son, the son barely twenty years of age, the
parent certainly not twice as old; and the last of the group was a
strong, sluggish man of years somewhat near, but under, fifty.
They bought but one ticket; but, as one may say, they all bought it,
the youngest extricating its price with difficulty from the knotted
corner of his red handkerchief, and the long, thin hand of the leader
making the purchase, while the eyes of the others followed every
movement with unconscious absorption.
The same unemotional attentiveness was in their forms as their slow
feet drifted here and there always after the one leader, their eyes on
his demonstrative hands, and their ears drinking in his discourse. He
showed them the rails of the track, how smooth they were, how they
rested on their cross-ties, and how they were spiked in place always
the same width apart. They crowded close about him at the
telegraph-window while he interpreted with unconscious originality the
wonders of electricity. Their eyes rose slowly from the window up and
out along the ascending wires to where they mounted the poles and
eastward and westward leaped away sinking and rising from insulator to
insulator. One of the party pointed at these green dots of glass and
murmured a question, and the leader's wife laid her small hand softly
upon his arm to check the energy of his utterance as he said, audibly
to all on the platform, and with a strong French accent:
"They?--are there lest the heat of the telegraph fluid inflame the
post-es!" He laid his own hand tenderly upon his wife's in response to
its warning pressure, yet turned to the sugar-planter and asked:
"Sir, pardon; do I not explain truly?"
The planter, with restrained smile, was about to reply, when some one
called, "There she comes!" and every eye was turned to the east.
"Truly!" exclaimed the inquirer, in a voice made rich with emotion.
"Truly, she comes! She comes! The iron horse, though they call him
'she'!" He turned to the planter--"Ah! sir, why say they thus many or
thus many horse-power, when truly"--his finger-tip pattered upon his
temple--"truly it is mind-power!"
The planter, smiling decorously, turned away, and the speaker looked
again down the long vacant track to where the small dark focus of
every one's attention was growing on the sight. He spoke again, in
lower voice but with larger emotion.
"Mind-power! thought-power! knowledge-power! learning and thinking
power!" He caught his wife's arm. "See! see, Sidonie, my dear! See her
enhancing in magnitude so fastly approaching!" As he spoke a puff of
white vapor lifted from the object and spread out against the blue,
the sunbeams turned it to silver and pearl, and a moment later came
the far-away, long, wild scream of the locomotive.
"Retire!" exclaimed the husband, drawing back all his gazing
companions at once. "Retire! retire! the whisttel is to signify
warning to retire from too close the edge of the galérie! There! rest
at this point. 'Tis far enough. Now, each and all resolve to stand and
shrink not whilst that iron mare, eating coal, drinking hot water, and
spitting fire, shall seem, but falsely, threatening to come on the
platform. Ah! Claude!" he cried to the youngest of the group, "now
shall you behold what I have told you--that vast am-azement of
civilize-ation anni-_high_-lating space and also time at the tune of
twenty miles the hour!" He wheeled upon the planter--"Sir, do I
exaggerate?"
"Forty miles," replied the planter; "sometimes fifty."
"Friends,--confirmated! more than twicefold confirmated. Forty,
sometimes fifty! Thou heardest it, Maximian Roussel! Not from me, but
from the gentleman himself! Forty, sometimes fifty! Such the march,
the forward march of civilize-ation!"
His words were cut short by the unearthly neigh of the engine. Sidonie
smote herself backward against her husband.
"Nay, Sidonie, fear thou nothing! Remember, dear Sidonie, thy promise
of self-control! Stand boldly still, St. Pierre; both father and son,
stand." The speaker was unheard. Hissing, clanging, thundering, and
shaking the earth, the engine and train loomed up to the platform and
stopped.
"Come!" cried Bonaventure Deschamps; "lose no moment, dear friends.
Tide and time--even less the railroad--wait for nobody. Claude,
remember; give your ticket of passage to none save the conductor only.
'Tis print' in letter' of gold on front his cap--'Conductor'--Stop! he
is here.--Sir, this young man, inexperienced, is taking passage for"--
"Shoot him aboard," replied a uniformed man, and walked on without a
pause. Claude moved toward the train. Bonaventure seized him by both
arms and gazed on him.
"Claude St. Pierre! Claude, my boy, pride of Grande Pointe, second
only with Sidonie, farewell!"
Tears leaped into the eyes of both. Bonaventure snatched Claude to his
arms and kissed him. It was less than nothing to him that every eye on
and off the train was on them. He relaxed his grasp. "Sidonie! tell
him farewell!--ah! nay! shake not hands only! Kiss her, Claude! Kiss
him, my own Sidonie, kiss him farewell!"
It was done. Claude blushed red, and Sidonie stepped back, wiping her
eyes. Maximian moved into the void, and smiling gave his hand to the
young adventurer.
"Adjieu, Claude." He waved a hand awkwardly. "Teck care you'seff," and
dropped the hand audibly against his thigh.
Claude's eye sought his father. St. Pierre pressed forward, laid his
right hand upon his son's shoulder, and gazed into his face. His voice
was low and husky. He smiled.
"Claude,"--tears rose in his eyes, but he swallowed them
down,--"Claude,--my baby,"--and the flood came. The engine-bell rang.
The conductor gave the warning word, the youth leaped upon his
father's neck. St. Pierre thrust him off, caught his two cheeks
between fluttering palms and kissed him violently; the train moved,
the young man leaped aboard, the blue uniforms disappeared, save one
on the rear platform, the bell ceased, the gliding mass shrunk and
dwindled away, the rails clicked more and more softly, the tearful
group drew closer together as they gazed after the now-unheard train.
It melted to a point and disappeared, the stillness of forest and
prairie fell again upon the place, the soaring sun shone down, and
Claude St. Pierre was gone to seek his fortune.