NOT BLUE EYES, NOR YELLOW HAIR.
When the St. Pierres found themselves really left with only each
other's faces to look into, and the unbounded world around them, it
was the father who first spoke:
"Well, Claude, where you t'ink 'better go?"
There had been a long, silent struggle in both men's minds. And now
Claude heard with joy this question asked in English. To ask it in
their old Acadian tongue would have meant retreat; this meant advance.
And yet he knew his father yearned for Bayou des Acadiens. Nay, not
his father; only one large part of his father's nature; the old,
French, home-loving part.
What should Claude answer? Grande Pointe? Even for St. Pierre alone
that was impossible. "Can a man enter a second time into his mother's
womb?" No; the thatched cabin stood there,--stands there now; but, be
he happy or unhappy, no power can ever make St. Pierre small enough
again to go back into that shell. Let it stand, the lair of one of
whom you may have heard, who has retreated straight backward from
Grande Pointe and from advancing enlightenment and order,--the village
drunkard, Chat-oué.
Claude's trouble, then, was not that his father's happiness beckoned
in one direction and his in another; but that his father's was linked
on behind his. Could the father endure the atmosphere demanded by the
son's widening power? Could the second nature of lifetime habits bear
the change? Of his higher spirit there was no doubt. Neither father
nor son had any conception of happiness separate from noble
aggrandizement. Nay, that is scant justice; far more than they knew,
or than St. Pierre, at least, would have acknowledged, they had caught
the spirit of Bonaventure, to call it by no higher name, and saw that
the best life for self is to live the best possible for others. "For
all others," Bonaventure would have insisted; but "for Claude," St.
Pierre would have amended. They could not return to Grande Pointe.
Where, then, should they go? Claude stood with his arms akimbo, looked
into his father's face, tried to hide his perplexity under a smile,
and then glanced at their little pile of effects. There lay their
fire-arms, the same as ever; but the bundles in Madras handkerchiefs
had given place to travelling-bags, and instead of pots and pans here
were books and instruments. What reply did these things make? New
Orleans? The great city? Even Claude shrank from that thought.
No, it was the name of quite a different place they spoke; a name that
Claude's lips dared not speak, because, for lo! these months and
months his heart had spoken it,--spoken it at first in so soft a
whisper that for a long time he had not known it was his heart he
heard. When something within uttered and re-uttered the place's name,
he would silently explain to himself: "It is because I am from home.
It is this unfixed camp-life, this life without my father, without
Bonaventure, that does it. This is not love, of course; I know that:
for, in the first place, I was in love once, when I was fourteen, and
it was not at all like this; and in the second place, it would be
hopeless presumption in me, muddy-booted vagabond that I am; and in
the third place, a burnt child dreads fire. And so it cannot be love.
When papa and I are once more together, this unaccountable longing
will cease."
But, instead of ceasing, it had grown. The name of the place was still
the only word the heart would venture; but it meant always one pair of
eyes, one young face, one form, one voice. Still it was not love--oh,
no! Now and then the hospitality of some plantation-house near the
camp was offered to the engineers; and sometimes, just to prove that
this thing was not love, he would accept such an invitation, and even
meet a pretty maiden or two, and ask them for music and song--for
which he had well-nigh a passion--and talk enough to answer their
questions and conjectures about a surveyor's life, etc.; but when he
got back to camp, matters within his breast were rather worse than
better.
He had then tried staying in camp, but without benefit,--nothing
cured, every thing aggravated. And yet he knew so perfectly well that
he was not in love, that just to realize the knowledge, one evening,
when his father was a day's march ahead, and he was having a pleasant
chat with the "chief," no one else nigh, and they were dawdling away
its closing hour with pipes, metaphysics, psychology, and like
trifles, which Claude, of course, knew all about,--Claude told him of
this singular and amusing case of haunting fantasy in his own
experience. His hearer had shown even more amusement than he, and had
gone on smiling every now and then afterward, with a significance that
at length drove Claude to bed disgusted with him and still more with
himself. There had been one offsetting comfort; an unintentional
implication had somehow slipped in between his words, that the
haunting fantasy had blue eyes and yellow hair.
"All right," the angry youth had muttered, tossing on his iron couch,
"let him think so!" And then he had tossed again, and said below his
breath, "It is not love: it is not. But I must never answer its call;
if I do, love is what it will be. My father, my father! would that I
could give my whole heart to thee as thou givest all to me!"
God has written on every side of our nature,--on the mind, on the
soul, yes, and in our very flesh,--the interdict forbidding love to
have any one direction only, under penalty of being forever dwarfed.
This Claude vaguely felt; but lacking the clear thought, he could
only cry, "Oh, is it, _is it_, selfishness for one's heart just to be
hungry and thirsty?"
And now here sat his father, on all their worldly goods, his rifle
between his knees, waiting for his son's choice, and ready to make it
his own. And here stood the son, free of foot to follow that voice
which was calling to-day louder than ever before, but feeling assured
that to follow it meant love without hope for him, and for this dear
father the pain of yielding up the larger share of his son's
heart,--as if love were subject to arithmetic!--yielding it to one
who, thought Claude, cared less for both of them than for one tress of
her black hair, one lash of her dark eyes. While he still pondered,
the father spoke.
"Claude, I tell you!" his face lighted up with courage and ambition.
"We better go--Mervilionville!"
Claude's heart leaped, but he kept his countenance. "Vermilionville?
No, papa; you will not like Vermilionville."
"Yaas! I will like him. 'Tis good place! Bonaventure come from yondah.
When I was leav' Gran' Point', Bonaventure, he cry, you know, like I
tole you. He tell Sidonie he bringin' ed'cation at Gran' Point' to
make Gran' Point' more better, but now ed'cation drive bes' men 'way
from Gran' Point'. And den he say, 'St. Pierre, may bee you go
Mervilionville; dat make me glad,' he say: 'dat way,' he say, 'what I
rob Peter I pay John.' Where we go if dawn't go Mervilionville? St.
Martinville, Opelousas, New Iberia? Too many Creole yondah for me.
Can't go to city; city too big to live in. Why you dawn't like
Mervilionville? You write me letter, when you was yondah, you like him
fus' class!"
Claude let silence speak consent. He stooped, and began to load
himself with their joint property. He had had, in his life, several
sorts of trouble of mind; but only just now at twenty was he making
the acquaintance of his conscience. Vermilionville was the call that
had been sounding within him all these months, and Marguerite was the
haunting fantasy.