WHICH IS VERY SHORT, BECAUSE, IN SOME WAYS, IT IS RATHER SAD.
Have you ever looked for something you cared for very much and failed
to find it? A dolly, for instance, forgotten at play in the garden,
swept up with the dead leaves, and never seen after. Or, still worse, a
dear little kitten of an adventurous turn of mind, that went out in the
woods for a walk by himself and never came home again, though you ran
down the church-lane and up to the top of the pasture, crying, 'Puss,
puss, puss!' till you were quite hoarse, and cross, and tired, and
nurse said you must come in because it was past bed-time and the dew
was rising, and a number of other things which were perfectly true, but
which didn't throw any light on the whereabouts of the kitten. How did
you feel? Why, just the most miserable little boy or girl in all the
world, to be sure.
Or supposing, on the other hand, that you found dolly at last, after
all; but with all the red washed off her lips and cheeks, and the mould
mixed up with her yellow hair, and her smart frock wet and torn, and
one of her waxen legs squashed flat where the wheel of the gardener's
barrow had gone over it. Or that the keeper brought back poor kitty
some three or four days later, stiff and cold, and said:--'Bin
poaching, bin caught in a gin; thought little missy 'ud like to know
the end of 'er.' Well, did that make matters much better? I don't think
so myself, and at one time of my life I had a good deal of experience
in these things, so I have the right to speak. For it is a poor
pleasure at best to play that dolly is sick of a fever, when you see
that she does not get a bit better, even though you dose her ten times
a day with an elaborate preparation of slate-pencil scrapings. And as
to begging a candle-box of the housemaid for a coffin, and having a
grand funeral in the shrubbery for the kitten, that is terrible work
indeed, and makes your eyes so red with crying that you are quite
ashamed to go down to dessert in the evening.
Now, if you and I have felt so very unhappy over our dolls and kittens
when we lost them--and found them again, maybe, but always a good deal
the worse for the losing--how do you think Master Lepage felt as he
went out that dark, stormy, snowy night, with the charcoal-burner and
Gustavus, into the forest? He was very silent as he tramped through
the snow, while the wind roared in the pines above him, and blew about
the flame of his torch, making it twist and twirl, and flicker and
glimmer, sometimes casting a red glare far over the white ground and
the great, grey tree-stems and John Paqualin's crooked, uncouth form
flitting on just ahead of him; and sometimes dying down till all the
scene was wrapped in darkness. He was very silent, I say, and not a bit
like vivacious, loquacious Master Lepage who used to sit and hold forth
in the wine-shop, and thump the table and make the glasses ring; but
more like Sergeant Lepage, who, with his teeth set and his face fierce
and white, had marched up under fire of the enemies' guns in battle
long ago in Italy or Africa. Lepage marched under fire now, and the
battlefield was his own heart. And oh! dear me, how many of his most
cherished ideas and beliefs the shot from those guns knocked over--his
pride, his self-importance, his trust in his own intellect and insight
and acuteness, his politics, his philosophy; nothing, in short, nothing
was left standing, except a sense of remorse for his past folly and his
love for his wife and his children.
'If they have been merely delayed by the storm, we shall meet them on
the road here. If they are lost, they will have begun wandering on
the first stretch of moorland,' said John Paqualin. 'See, the snow
is ceasing, the stars begin to show in heaven. Eh! the frost, how it
bites!'
And so it did. As the snow stopped, the night grew colder and colder,
for all the ice-fairies came tripping out far and wide over hill and
valley, and built transparent piers and bridges across the streams
and pools, and hung icicles from the rocks and from the overhanging
eaves of the houses, and froze the breath on Lepage's long moustache,
and made the earth like iron beneath his feet. Yet he and his two
companions still marched on through the forest. They could go but
slowly, for in the open spaces the snow had drifted deep, and where the
forest paths crossed each other it required all the charcoal-burner's
knowledge and skill to tell which was the right one. Now and again they
would halt for a minute or two and call aloud, and then listen hoping
for an answer; but it was close upon midnight, and they had walked more
than half the way to Nullepart before they came upon any trace of those
they so earnestly searched for.
Here, as I have already told you, the path crosses a wide stretch of
rolling moorland, covered with heather and stunted bushes, thorns and
brambles and whortle-berry and juniper; while in places crop out large
limestone blocks and boulders, some standing together and looking like
the ruins of a giant's castle, others but just peeping above the
rough soil and encrusted with stone-crop, and ferns and many kinds of
mosses--a lovely play-place on a summer day, when the butterflies sport
over the heath, and the dragon-flies over the pools in the marshes, but
bleak and desolate enough on a December night, with the harsh north
wind and the snowstorm. On the edge of this moorland, before leaving
the shelter of the pines, Paqualin stopped.
'Shout,' he said, turning to the others, 'shout your loudest. The frost
has caught me by the throat, and squeezed my crooked windpipe till I
am as hoarse as a raven. But you are strong men. Shout, Lepage, for
love of your wife. And you, good ass, there, for love of Eliza your
sweetheart; she'll pay you in thistles, prickles and all, if you find
her.'
So they shouted, and this time there was an answer--a boy's voice half
choked with crying. And with a pale, haggard face, and in his eyes a
look of terror, from among the snow-laden pine-trees, came Antony.
'You alone!' cried Lepage. 'I trusted her to you; where are your mother
and brothers?'
'She sent us on to try to get help. Paul is here just behind me. We
lost ourselves, and wandered. She could get no further, and little
Peter is dead asleep, under the big rocks, there to the right, out on
the moor. Eliza does nothing but cry, and won't move.'
The boy was utterly faint and disheartened. He threw himself down on
the snow, and covered his face with his hands.
'I did my best, father,' he said, 'indeed, indeed I did; but I couldn't
find the way. It was dark, and there was nothing to guide us, and I got
bewildered with the cold. We were too late in starting, I know--that
was my fault. But I did my best afterwards. Oh! father, I did try to
take care of them. I couldn't help it. Say you forgive me.'
Paqualin did not wait to hear more. 'The big rocks out to the right,'
he repeated.
[Illustration: FOUND. _Page 138._]
His limbs were stiff with the sharp cold, which had penetrated his
threadbare clothes, and his feet were numb with the snow that had
worked its way in through the worn, cracked leather of his wretched
boots. Oh, yes! I am afraid he was a very funny figure indeed; and that
all the little boys in Nullepart would have hooted louder than ever if
they could have seen him, as with his long grasshopper legs, wild red
hair, and tattered cloak streaming out behind him, he shambled along,
slipping and staggering, in the half darkness over that long half-mile
of heath, and stone, and prickly bushes, and sly, deceitful snow-drifts
that stretched between the edge of the forest and the rocks.
'Here is help,' he shrieked in his shrill voice. 'It is I--I, John
Paqualin. Here is help.'
As he passed round in front into the shelter of the tall, grey rocks,
Susan Lepage rose up from the foot of them with a great cry.
She flung her arms about him, and rested her fair head on his shoulder.
'Ah! God has sent you,' she sobbed. 'I called upon Him in the
bitterness of my anguish, and He has heard me. Save us, John Paqualin;
in mercy save me and my children.'
The charcoal-burner's torch slipped from his grasp, and fell hissing
upon the ground.
'The dog gets something more than his bone for once,' he said between
his teeth.
For a minute or so, in that mysterious, ghostly radiance of dancing
star-light and white snow, he stood holding the weeping woman in his
arms.
'God sent me, though, did He?' he murmured at last. 'Then I must do His
good pleasure, not my own.'
Paqualin spoke low, and quite softly, notwithstanding that queer crack
in his voice.
'Look up, and take courage; there is better comfort than mine at hand.
Your two boys are safely cared for already, and your husband is coming.
The trouble is over. For you, at least, the morning begins to break.'
Then, as he heard the crunch of hurried footsteps coming over the snow
behind him, he turned and cried:--
'Here, take your wife, Lepage!'
Paqualin moved aside.
'For the man,' he said, half aloud--'well--what he's a right to. Get
back to your kennel, you hound.'
Now Eliza was sitting with her back against one of the rocks in the
burrow, where the snow was lightest, and little Peter, closely wrapped
in his mother's shawl, lay stupefied with sleep, with his head in her
lap. As Paqualin turned round, she moaned out:--
'No, no, don't come near me. I am dreadfully ill--probably I shall
never recover. I think I shall die. But I won't give way, I won't
listen to you. To the last I am true to Gustavus. Ah! my poor heart,
how it beats. Yes, I should like to have bidden a last farewell to
Gustavus.'
'Don't fret,' answered the charcoal-burner. 'Thy mooncalf is on the
road. He'll be here in plenty of time to say a good deal besides
good-bye to you, unless I am very much mistaken.'
Eliza gave a prodigious sigh.
'He will be too late, I know it, I know it. Ah! how will he live
without me, poor, faithful, broken-hearted Gustavus?'
Whether it was his mother's cry that roused him, or the sudden lights
and the voices, I do not know; but little Peter half awoke from the
heavy torpor of sleep into which the cold and fatigue had plunged him.
'I will not hush, Eliza. I love John Paqualin. Yes, I love him,' he
murmured.