FATHER AND SON.
Such strange things storms do,--here purifying the air, yonder
treading down rich harvests, now replenishing the streams, and now
strewing shores with wrecks; here a blessing, there a calamity. See
what this one had done for Marguerite! Well, what? She could not
lament; she dared not rejoice. Oh! if she were Claude and Claude were
she, how quickly--
She wondered how many miles a day she could learn to walk if she
should start out into the world on foot to find somebody, as she had
heard that Bonaventure had once done to find her mother's lover. There
are no Bonaventures now, she thinks, in these decayed times.
"Mamma,"--her speech was French,--"why do we never see Bonaventure?
How far is it to Grande Pointe?"
"Ah! my child, a hundred miles; even more."
"And to my uncle Rosamond's,--Rosamond Robichaux, on Bayou
Terrebonne?"
"Fully as far, and almost the same journey."
There was but one thing to be done,--crush Claude out of her heart.
The storm had left no wounds on Grande Pointe. Every roof was safe,
even the old tobacco-shed where Bonaventure had kept school before the
schoolhouse was built. The sheltering curtains of deep forest had
broken the onset of the wind, and the little cotton, corn, and tobacco
fields, already harvested, were merely made a little more tattered and
brown. The November air was pure, sunny, and mild, and thrilled every
now and then with the note of some lingering bird. A green and bosky
confusion still hid house from house and masked from itself the all
but motionless human life of the sleepy woods village. Only an
adventitious China-tree here and there had been stripped of its golden
foliage, and kept but its ripened berries with the red birds darting
and fluttering around them like so many hiccoughing Comanches about a
dramseller's tent. And here, if one must tell a thing so painful, our
old friend the mocking-bird, neglecting his faithful wife and letting
his home go to decay, kept dropping in, all hours of the day, tasting
the berries' rank pulp, stimulating, stimulating, drowning care, you
know,--"Lost so many children, and the rest gone off in ungrateful
forgetfulness of their old hard-working father; yes;" and ready to
sing or fight, just as any other creature happened not to wish; and
going home in the evening scolding and swaggering, and getting to bed
barely able to hang on to the roost. It would have been bad enough,
even for a man; but for a bird--and a mocking-bird!
But the storm wrought a great change in one small house not in Grande
Pointe, yet of it. Until the storm, ever since the day St. Pierre had
returned from the little railway-station where Claude had taken the
cars, he had seemed as patiently resigned to the new loneliness of
Bayou des Acadiens as his thatched hut, which day by day sat so silent
between the edges of the dark forest and the darker stream, looking
out beyond the farther bank, and far over the green waste of rushes
with its swarms of blackbirds sweeping capriciously now this way and
now that, and the phantom cloud-shadows passing slowly across from one
far line of cypress wood to another. But since that night when the
hut's solitary occupant could not sleep for the winds and for thought
of Claude, there was a great difference inside. And this did not
diminish; it grew. It is hard for a man to be both father and mother,
and at the same time be childless. The bonds of this condition began
slowly to tighten around St. Pierre's heart and then to cut into it.
And so, the same day on which Claude in Vermilionville left the
Beausoleils' tavern, the cabin on Bayou des Acadiens, ever in his
mind's eye, was empty, and in Grande Pointe his father stood on the
one low step at the closed door of Bonaventure's little frame
schoolhouse.
He had been there a full minute and had not knocked. Every movement,
to-day, came only after an inward struggle. Many associations crowded
his mind on this doorstep. Six years before, almost on this spot, a
mere brier-patch then, he and Maximian Roussel had risen from the
grassy earth and given the first two welcoming hand-grasps to the
schoolmaster. And now, as one result, Claude, who did not know his
letters then, was rising--nay, had risen--to greatness! Claude, whom
once he would have been glad to make a good fisherman and swamper, or
at the utmost a sugar-boiler, was now a greater, in rank at least,
than the very schoolmaster. Truly "knowledge is power"--alas! yes; for
it had stolen away that same Claude. The College Point priest's
warning had come true: it was "good-by to Grande Pointe!"--Nay, nay,
it must not be! Is that the kind of power education is? Power to tear
children from their parents? Power to expose their young heads to
midnight storms? Power to make them eager to go, and willing to stay
away, from their paternal homes? Then indeed the priest had said only
too truly, that these public schools teach every thing except morals
and religion! From the depth of St. Pierre's heart there quickly came
a denial of the charge; and on the moment, like a chanted response,
there fell upon his listening ear a monotonous intonation from within
the door. A reading-class had begun its exercise. He knew the words by
heart, so often had Claude and he read them together. He followed the
last stanza silently with his own lips.
"Remember, child, remember
That you love, with all your might,
The God who watches o'er us
And gives us each delight,
Who guards us ever in the day,
And saves as in the night."
Tears filled the swamper's eyes. He moved as if to leave the place.
But again he paused, with one foot half lowered to the ground. His
jaws set, a frown came between his eyes; he drew back the foot, turned
again to the door, and gave a loud, peremptory knock.
Bonaventure came to the door. Anxiety quickly overspread his face as
he saw the gloom on St. Pierre's. He stood on the outer edge of the
sill, and drew the door after him.
"I got good news," said St. Pierre, with no softening of countenance.
"Good news?"
"Yass.--I goin' make Claude come home."
Bonaventure could only look at him in amazement. St. Pierre looked
away and continued:
"'S no use. Can't stand it no longer." He turned suddenly upon the
schoolmaster. "Why you di'n' tell me ed'cation goin' teck my boy 'way
from me?" In Bonaventure a look of distressful self-justification
quickly changed to one of anxious compassion.
"Wait!" he said. He went back into the schoolroom, leaving St. Pierre
in the open door, and said:
"Dear chil'run, I perceive generally the aspects of fatigue. You have
been good scholars. I pronounce a half-hollyday till to-morrow
morning. Come, each and every one, with lessons complete."
The children dispersed peaceably, jostling one another to shake the
schoolmaster's hand as they passed him. When they were gone he put on
his coarse straw hat, and the two men walked slowly, conversing as
they went, down the green road that years before had first brought the
educator to Grande Pointe.
"Dear friend," said the schoolmaster, "shall education be to blame for
this separation? Is not also non-education responsible? Is it not by
the non-education of Grande Pointe that there is nothing fit here for
Claude's staying?"
"You stay!"
"I? I stay? Ah! sir, I stay, yes! Because like Claude, leaving my home
and seeking by wandering to find the true place of my utility, a voice
spake that I come at Grande Pointe. Behole me! as far from my
childhood home as Claude from his. Friend,--ah! friend, what shall
I,--shall Claude,--shall any man do with education! Keep it? Like a
miser his gol'? What shall the ship do when she is load'? Dear
friend,"--they halted where another road started away through the
underbrush at an abrupt angle on their right,--"where leads this
narrow road? To Belle Alliance plantation only, or not also to the
whole worl'? So is education! That road here once fetch me at Grande
Pointe; the same road fetch Claude away. Education came whispering,
'Claude St. Pierre, come! I have constitute' you citizen of the worl'.
Come, come, forgetting self!' Oh, dear friend, education is not for
self alone! Nay, even self is not for self!"
"Well, den,"--the deep-voiced woodman stood with one boot on a low
stump, fiercely trimming a branch that he had struck from the parent
stem with one blow of his big, keen clasp-knife,--"self not for
self,--for what he gone off and lef' me in de swamp?"
"Ah, sir!" replied Bonaventure, "what do I unceasingly tell those dear
school-chil'run? 'May we not make the most of self, yet not for
self?'" He laid his hand upon St. Pierre's shoulder. "And who sent
Claude hence if not his unselfish father?"
"I was big fool," said St. Pierre, whittling on.
"Nay, wise! Discovering the great rule of civilize-ation. Every man
not for self, but for every other!"
The swamper disclaimed the generous imputation with a shake of the
head.
"Naw, I dunno nut'n' 'bout dat. I look out for me and my boy, me.--And
beside,"--he abruptly threw away the staff he had trimmed, shut his
knife with a snap, and thrust it into his pocket,--"I dawn't see
ed'cation make no diff'ence. You say ed'cation--priest say
religion--me, I dawn't see neider one make no diff'ence. I see every
man look out for hisself and his li'l' crowd. Not you, but"--He waved
his hand bitterly toward the world at large.
"Ah, sir!" cried Bonaventure, "'tis not something what you can see all
the time, like the horns on a cow! And yet, sir,--and yet!"--he lifted
himself upon tiptoe and ran his fingers through his thin hair--"the
education that make' no difference is but a dead body! and the
religion that make' no difference is a ghost! Behole! behole two
thing' in the worl', where all is giving and getting, two thing',
con_tra_ry, yet resem'ling! 'Tis the left han'--alas, alas!--giving
only to get; and the right, blessed of God, getting only to give! How
much resem'ling, yet how con_tra_ry! The one--han' of all strife; the
other--of all peace. And oh! dear friend, there are those who call the
one civilize-ation, and the other religion. Civilize-ation? Religion?
They are one! They are body and soul! I care not what religion the
priest teach you; in God's religion is comprise' the total _mécanique_
of civilize-ation. We are all in it; you, me, Claude, Sidonie; all in
it! Each and every at his task, however high, however low, working not
to get, but to give, and not to give only to his own li'l' crowd, but
to all, to all!" The speaker ceased, for his hearer was nodding his
head with sceptical impatience.
"Yass," said the woodman, "yass; but look, Bonaventure. Di'n' you said
one time, 'Knowledge is power'?"
"Yes, truly; and it is."
"But what use knowledge be power if goin' give ev't'in' away?"
Bonaventure drew back a step or two, suddenly jerked his hat from his
head, and came forward again with arms stretched wide and the hat
dangling from his hand. "Because--because God will not let it sta-a-ay
given away! 'Give--it shall be give' to you.' Every thing given out
into God's worl' come back to us roun' God's worl'! Resem'ling the
stirring of water in a bucket."
But St. Pierre frowned. "Yass,--wat' in bucket,--yass. Den no man
dawn't keep nut'n'. Dawn't own nut'n' he got."
"Ah! sir, there is a better owning than to _own_. 'Tis giving, dear
friend; 'tis giving. To get? To have? That is not to own. The giver,
not the getter; the giver! he is the true owner. Live thou not to get,
but to give." Bonaventure's voice trembled; his eyes were full of
tears.
The swamper stood up with his own eyes full, but his voice was firm.
"Bonaventure, I don't got much. I got dat li'l' shanty on Bayou des
Acadiens, and li'l' plunder inside--few kittle', and pan',--cast-net,
fish-line', two, t'ree gun', and--my wife' grave, yond' in graveyard.
But I got Claude,--my boy, my son. You t'ink God want me give my son
to whole worl'?"
The schoolmaster took the woodsman's brown wrist tenderly into both
his hands, and said, scarce above a whisper, "He gave His, first. He
started it. Who can refuse, He starting it? And thou wilt not refuse."
The voice rose--"I see, I see the victory! Well art thou nominated
'St. Pierre!' for on that rock of giving"--
"Naw, sir! Stop!" The swamper dashed the moisture from his eyes and
summoned a look of stubborn resolve. "Mo' better you call me St.
Pierre because I'm a fisherman what cuss when I git mad. Look! You
dawn't want me git Claude back in Gran' Point'. You want me to give,
give. Well, all right! I goin' _quit_ Gran' Point' and give myself,
me, to Claude. I kin read, I kin write, I t'ink kin do better 'long
wid Claude dan livin' all 'lone wid snake' and alligator. I t'ink dass
mo' better for everybody; and anyhow, I dawn't care; I dawn't give my
son to nobody; I give myself to Claude."
Bonaventure and his friend gazed into each other's wet eyes for a
moment. Then the schoolmaster turned, lifted his eyes and one arm
toward the west, and exclaimed:
"Ah, Claude! thou receivest the noblest gift in Gran' Point'!"