A STRONG TEAM.
I would not wish to offend the self-regard of Vermilionville.
But--what a place in which to seek enlargement of life! I know worth
and greatness have sometimes, not to say ofttimes, emerged from much
worse spots; from little lazy villages, noisy only on Sunday, with
grimier court-houses, deeper dust and mud, their trade more entirely
in the hands of rat-faced Isaacs and Jacobs, with more frequent huge
and solitary swine slowly scavenging about in abysmal self-occupation,
fewer vine-clad cottages, raggeder negroes, and more decay.
Vermilionville is not the worst, at all. I have seen large, and
enlarging, lives there.
Hither came the two St. Pierres. "No," Claude said; "they would not
go to the Beausoleil house." Privately he would make himself believe
he had not returned to any thing named Beausoleil, but only and simply
to Vermilionville. On a corner opposite the public square there was
another "hotel;" and it was no great matter to them if it was mostly
pine-boards, pale wall-paper, and transferable whitewash. But, not to
be outdone by its rival round the corner, it had, besides, a piano, of
a quality you may guess, and a landlady's daughter who seven times a
day played and sang "I want to be somebody's darling," and had no want
beyond. The travellers turned thence, found a third house full,
conjectured the same of the only remaining one, and took their way,
after all, towards Zoséphine's. It was quite right, now, to go there,
thought Claude, since destiny led; and so he let it lead both his own
steps and the thrumping boots of this dear figure in Campeachy hat and
soft untrimmed beard, that followed ever at his side.
And then, after all!--looking into those quiet black eyes of
Zoséphine's,--to hear that Marguerite was not there! Gone! Gone to the
great city, the place "too big to live in." Gone there for knowledge,
training, cultivation, larger life, and finer uses! Gone to study an
art,--an art! Risen beyond him "like a diamond in the sky." And he
fool enough to come rambling back, blue-shirted and brown-handed,
expecting to find her still a tavern maid! So, farewell fantasy! 'Twas
better so; much better. Now life was simplified. Oh, yes; and St.
Pierre made matters better still by saying to Zoséphine:
"I dinn' know you got one lill gal. Claude never tell me 'bout dat. I
spec' dat why he dawn't want 'come yeh. He dawn't like gal; he run
f'om 'em like dog from yalla-jacket. He dawn't like none of 'm. What
he like, dass his daddy. He jus' married to his daddy." The father
dropped his hand, smilingly, upon his son's shoulder with a weight
that would have crushed it in had it been ordinary cast-iron.
Claude took the hand and held it, while Zoséphine smiled and secretly
thanked God her child was away. In her letters to Marguerite she made
no haste to mention the young man's re-appearance, and presently a
small thing occurred that made it well that she had left it untold.
With Claude and his father some days passed unemployed. Yet both felt
them to be heavy with significance. The weight and pressure of new
and, to them, large conditions, were putting their inmost quality to
proof. Claude saw, now, what he could not see before; why his friend
the engineer had cast him loose without a word of advice as to where
he should go or what he should do. It was because by asking no advice
he had really proposed to be his own master. And now, could he do it?
Dare he try it?
The first step he took was taken, I suppose, instinctively rather than
intelligently; certainly it was perilous: he retreated into himself.
St. Pierre found work afield, for of this sort there was plenty; the
husbandmen's year, and the herders' too, were just gathering good
momentum. But Claude now stood looking on empty-handed where other men
were busy with agricultural utensils or machines; or now kept his
room, whittling out a toy miniature of some apparatus, which when made
was not like the one he had seen, at last. A great distress began to
fill the father's mind. There had been a time when he could be idle
and whittle, but that time was gone by; that was at Grande Pointe; and
now for his son--for Claude--to become a lounger in tavern
quarters--Claude had not announced himself to Vermilionville as a
surveyor, or as any thing--Claude to be a hater of honest labor--was
this what Bonaventure called civilize-ation? Better, surely better, go
back to the old pastoral life. How yearningly it was calling them to
its fragrant bosom! And almost every thing was answering the call. The
town was tricking out its neglected decay with great trailing robes of
roses. The spade and hoe were busy in front flower-beds and rear
kitchen-gardens. Lanes were green, skies blue, roads good. In the _bas
fonds_ the oaks of many kinds and the tupelo-gums were hiding all
their gray in shimmering green; in these coverts and in the reedy
marshes, all the feathered flocks not gone away north were broken into
nesting pairs; in the fields, crops were springing almost at the
sower's heels; on the prairie pastures, once so vast, now being
narrowed so rapidly by the people's thrift, the flocks and herds ate
eagerly of the bright new grass, and foals, calves, and lambs stood
and staggered on their first legs, while in the door-yards housewives,
hens, and mother-geese warned away the puppies and children from downy
broods under the shade of the China-trees. But Claude? Even his books
lay unstudied, and his instruments gathered dust, while he pottered
over two or three little wooden things that a boy could not play with
without breaking. At last St. Pierre could bear it no longer.
"Well, Claude, dass ten days han'-runnin' now, we ain't do not'in' but
whittlin'."
Claude slowly pushed his model from him, looked, as one in a dream,
into his father's face, and suddenly and for the first time saw what
that father had suffered for a fortnight. But into his own face there
came no distress; only, for a moment, a look of tender protestation,
and then strong hope and confidence.
"Yass," he said, rising, "dass true. But we dawn't got whittle no
mo'." He pointed to the model, then threw his strong arms akimbo and
asked, "You know what is dat?"
"Naw," replied the father, "I dunno. I t'ink 'taint no real mash-in'
[machine] 'cause I dawn't never see nuttin' like dat at Belle Alliance
plant-ation, neider at Belmont; and I know, me, if anybody got one
mash-in', any place, for do any t'in' mo' betteh or mo' quicker,
Mistoo Walleece an' M'sieu Le Bourgeois dey boun' to 'ave 'im. Can't
hitch nuttin' to dat t'ing you got dare; she too small for a rat. What
she is, Claude?"
A yet stronger hope and courage lighted Claude's face. He laid one
hand upon the table before him and the other upon the shoulder of his
sitting companion:
"Papa, if you want to go wid me to de city, we make one big enough for
two mule'. Dass a mash-in'--a new mash-in'--my mash-in'--my
invention!"
"Invench? What dat is--invench?"
Some one knocked on the door. Claude lifted the model, moved on
tiptoe, and placed it softly under the bed. As he rose and turned
again with reddened face, a card was slipped under the door. He took
it and read, in a pencil scrawl,--
"State Superintendent of Public Education,"--
looked at his father with a broad grin, and opened the door.
Mr. Tarbox had come at the right moment. There was a good hour and a
half of the afternoon still left, and he and Claude took a walk
together. Beyond a stile and a frail bridge that spanned a gully at
one end of the town, a noble avenue of oaks leads toward Vermilion
River. On one side of this avenue the town has since begun to spread,
but at that time there were only wide fields on the right hand and on
the left. At the farther end a turn almost at right angles to the left
takes you through a great gate and across the railway, then along a
ruined hedge of roses, and presently into the oak-grove of the old
ex-governor's homestead. This was their walk.
By the time they reached the stile, Claude had learned that his friend
was at the head of his line, and yet had determined to abandon that
line for another
"Far up the height--
Excelsior!"
Also that his friend had liked him, had watched him, would need him,
and was willing then and there to assure him a modest salary, whose
amount he specified, simply to do whatever he might call upon him to
do in his (Claude's) "line."
They were walking slowly, and now and then slower still. As they
entered the avenue of oaks, Claude declined the offer. Then they went
very slowly indeed. Claude learned that Mr. Tarbox, by some chance not
explained, had been in company with his friend the engineer; that the
engineer had said, "Tarbox, you're a born contractor," and that Claude
and he would make a "strong team;" that Mr. Tarbox's favorite study
was human nature; that he knew talent when he saw it; had studied
Claude; had fully expected him to decline to be his employee, and
liked him the better for so doing.
"That was just a kind of test vote; see?"
Then Mr. Tarbox offered Claude a partnership; not an equal one, but
withal a fair interest.
"We've got to commence small and branch out gradually; see?" And
Claude saw.
"Now, you wonder why I don't go in alone. Well, I'll tell you; and
when I tell you, I'll astonish you. I lack education! Now, Claude, I'm
taking you into my confidence. You've done nothing but go to school
and study for about six years. I had a different kind of father from
yours; I never got one solid year's schooling, all told, in my life.
I've picked up cords of information, but an ounce of education's worth
a ton of information. Don't you believe that? eh? it is so! I say it,
and I'm the author of the A. of U. I. I like to call it that, because
it brings you and I so near together; see?" The speaker smiled, was
still, and resumed:
"That's why I need you. And I'm just as sure you need me. I need not
only the education you have now, but what you're getting every day.
When you see me you see a man who is always looking awa-a-ay ahead. I
see what you're going to be, and I'm making this offer to the Claude
St. Pierre of the future."
Mr. Tarbox waited for a reply. The avenue had been passed, the railway
crossed, and the hedge skirted. They loitered slowly into the
governor's grove, under whose canopy the beams of the late afternoon
sun were striking and glancing. But all their light seemed hardly as
much as that which danced in the blue eyes of Mr. Tarbox while Claude
slowly said:
"I dunno if we can fix dat. I was glad to see you comin'. I reckon you
jus' right kind of man I want. I jus' make a new invention. I t'ink 'f
you find dat's good, dat be cawntrac' enough for right smart while.
And beside', I t'ink I invent some mo' b'fo' long."
But Mr. Tarbox was not rash. He only asked quiet and careful questions
for some time. The long sunset was sending its last rays across the
grove-dotted land, and the birds in every tree were filling the air
with their sunset song-burst, when the two friends re-entered the
avenue of oaks. They had agreed to join their fortunes. Now their talk
drifted upon other subjects.
"I came back to Vermilionville purposely to see you," said Mr. Tarbox.
"But I'll tell you privately, you wasn't the only cause of my coming."
Claude looked at him suddenly. Was this another haunted man? Were
there two men haunted, and only one fantasy? He felt ill at ease. Mr.
Tarbox saw, but seemed not to understand. He thought it best to speak
plainly.
"I'm courting her, Claude; and I think I'm going to get her."
Claude stopped short, with jaws set and a bad look in his eye.
"Git who?"
But Mr. Tarbox was calm--even complacent. He pushed his silk hat from
his forehead, and said:
... "'One made up
Of loveliness alone;
A woman, of her gentle sex
The seeming paragon.'
I refer to the Rose of Vermilionville, the Pearl of the Parish, the
loveliest love and fairest fair that ever wore the shining name of
Beausoleil. She's got to change it to Tarbox, Claude. Before yon sun
has run its course again, I'm going to ask her for the second time.
I've just begun asking, Claude; I'm going to keep it up till she says
yes."
"She's not yondah!" snarled Claude, with the frown and growl of a
mastiff. "She's gone to de city."
Mr. Tarbox gazed a moment in blank amazement. Then he slowly lifted
his hat from his head, expanded his eyes, drew a long slow groan,
turned slowly half around, let the inhalation go in a long keen
whistle, and cried:
"Oh! taste! taste! Who's got the taste? What do you take me for? Who
_are_ you talking about? That little monkey? Why, man alive, it's the
mother I'm after. Ha, ha, ha!"
If Claude said any thing in reply, I cannot imagine what it was. Mr.
Tarbox had a right to his opinion and taste, if taste it could be
called, and Claude was helpless to resent it, even in words; but for
hours afterward he execrated his offender's stupidity, little guessing
that Mr. Tarbox, in a neighboring chamber, alone and in his
night-robe, was bending, smiting his thigh in silent merriment, and
whispering to himself:
"He thinks I'm an ass! He thinks I'm an ass! He can't see that I was
simply investigating him!"