MORNING TALK
Doctor Desprez always rose early. Before the smoke arose, before the
first cart rattled over the bridge to the day’s labour in the fields,
he was to be found wandering in his garden. Now he would pick a bunch
of grapes; now he would eat a big pear under the trellice; now he would
draw all sorts of fancies on the path with the end of his cane; now he
would go down and watch the river running endlessly past the timber
landing-place at which he moored his boat. There was no time, he used
to say, for making theories like the early morning. “I rise earlier
than any one else in the village,” he once boasted. “It is a fair
consequence that I know more and wish to do less with my knowledge.”
The Doctor was a connoisseur of sunrises, and loved a good theatrical
effect to usher in the day. He had a theory of dew, by which he could
predict the weather. Indeed, most things served him to that end: the
sound of the bells from all the neighbouring villages, the smell of the
forest, the visits and the behaviour of both birds and fishes, the look
of the plants in his garden, the disposition of cloud, the colour of
the light, and last, although not least, the arsenal of meteorological
instruments in a louvre-boarded hutch upon the lawn. Ever since he had
settled at Gretz, he had been growing more and more into the local
meteorologist, the unpaid champion of the local climate. He thought at
first there was no place so healthful in the arrondissement. By the end
of the second year, he protested there was none so wholesome in the
whole department. And for some time before he met Jean-Marie he had
been prepared to challenge all France and the better part of Europe for
a rival to his chosen spot.
“Doctor,” he would say—“doctor is a foul word. It should not be used to
ladies. It implies disease. I remark it, as a flaw in our civilisation,
that we have not the proper horror of disease. Now I, for my part, have
washed my hands of it; I have renounced my laureation; I am no doctor;
I am only a worshipper of the true goddess Hygieia. Ah, believe me, it
is she who has the cestus! And here, in this exiguous hamlet, has she
placed her shrine: here she dwells and lavishes her gifts; here I walk
with her in the early morning, and she shows me how strong she has made
the peasants, how fruitful she has made the fields, how the trees grow
up tall and comely under her eyes, and the fishes in the river become
clean and agile at her presence.—Rheumatism!” he would cry, on some
malapert interruption, “O, yes, I believe we do have a little
rheumatism. That could hardly be avoided, you know, on a river. And of
course the place stands a little low; and the meadows are marshy,
there’s no doubt. But, my dear sir, look at Bourron! Bourron stands
high. Bourron is close to the forest; plenty of ozone there, you would
say. Well, compared with Gretz, Bourron is a perfect shambles.”
The morning after he had been summoned to the dying mountebank, the
Doctor visited the wharf at the tail of his garden, and had a long look
at the running water. This he called prayer; but whether his adorations
were addressed to the goddess Hygieia or some more orthodox deity,
never plainly appeared. For he had uttered doubtful oracles, sometimes
declaring that a river was the type of bodily health, sometimes
extolling it as the great moral preacher, continually preaching peace,
continuity, and diligence to man’s tormented spirits. After he had
watched a mile or so of the clear water running by before his eyes,
seen a fish or two come to the surface with a gleam of silver, and
sufficiently admired the long shadows of the trees falling half across
the river from the opposite bank, with patches of moving sunlight in
between, he strolled once more up the garden and through his house into
the street, feeling cool and renovated.
The sound of his feet upon the causeway began the business of the day;
for the village was still sound asleep. The church tower looked very
airy in the sunlight; a few birds that turned about it, seemed to swim
in an atmosphere of more than usual rarity; and the Doctor, walking in
long transparent shadows, filled his lungs amply, and proclaimed
himself well contented with the morning.
On one of the posts before Tentaillon’s carriage entry he espied a
little dark figure perched in a meditative attitude, and immediately
recognised Jean-Marie.
“Aha!” he said, stopping before him humorously, with a hand on either
knee. “So we rise early in the morning, do we? It appears to me that we
have all the vices of a philosopher.”
The boy got to his feet and made a grave salutation.
“And how is our patient?” asked Desprez.
It appeared the patient was about the same.
“And why do you rise early in the morning?” he pursued.
Jean-Marie, after a long silence, professed that he hardly knew.
“You hardly know?” repeated Desprez. “We hardly know anything, my man,
until we try to learn. Interrogate your consciousness. Come, push me
this inquiry home. Do you like it?”
“Yes,” said the boy slowly; “yes, I like it.”
“And why do you like it?” continued the Doctor. “(We are now pursuing
the Socratic method.) Why do you like it?”
“It is quiet,” answered Jean-Marie; “and I have nothing to do; and then
I feel as if I were good.”
Doctor Desprez took a seat on the post at the opposite side. He was
beginning to take an interest in the talk, for the boy plainly thought
before he spoke, and tried to answer truly. “It appears you have a
taste for feeling good,” said the Doctor. “Now, there you puzzle me
extremely; for I thought you said you were a thief; and the two are
incompatible.”
“Is it very bad to steal?” asked Jean-Marie.
“Such is the general opinion, little boy,” replied the Doctor.
“No; but I mean as I stole,” explained the other. “For I had no choice.
I think it is surely right to have bread; it must be right to have
bread, there comes so plain a want of it. And then they beat me cruelly
if I returned with nothing,” he added. “I was not ignorant of right and
wrong; for before that I had been well taught by a priest, who was very
kind to me.” (The Doctor made a horrible grimace at the word “priest.”)
“But it seemed to me, when one had nothing to eat and was beaten, it
was a different affair. I would not have stolen for tartlets, I
believe; but any one would steal for baker’s bread.”
“And so I suppose,” said the Doctor, with a rising sneer, “you prayed
God to forgive you, and explained the case to Him at length.”
“Why, sir?” asked Jean-Marie. “I do not see.”
“Your priest would see, however,” retorted Desprez.
“Would he?” asked the boy, troubled for the first time. “I should have
thought God would have known.”
“Eh?” snarled the Doctor.
“I should have thought God would have understood me,” replied the
other. “You do not, I see; but then it was God that made me think so,
was it not?”
“Little boy, little boy,” said Dr. Desprez, “I told you already you had
the vices of philosophy; if you display the virtues also, I must go. I
am a student of the blessed laws of health, an observer of plain and
temperate nature in her common walks; and I cannot preserve my
equanimity in presence of a monster. Do you understand?”
“No, sir,” said the boy.
“I will make my meaning clear to you,” replied the doctor. “Look there
at the sky—behind the belfry first, where it is so light, and then up
and up, turning your chin back, right to the top of the dome, where it
is already as blue as at noon. Is not that a beautiful colour? Does it
not please the heart? We have seen it all our lives, until it has grown
in with our familiar thoughts. Now,” changing his tone, “suppose that
sky to become suddenly of a live and fiery amber, like the colour of
clear coals, and growing scarlet towards the top—I do not say it would
be any the less beautiful; but would you like it as well?”
“I suppose not,” answered Jean-Marie.
“Neither do I like you,” returned the Doctor, roughly. “I hate all odd
people, and you are the most curious little boy in all the world.”
Jean-Marie seemed to ponder for a while, and then he raised his head
again and looked over at the Doctor with an air of candid inquiry. “But
are not you a very curious gentleman?” he asked.
The Doctor threw away his stick, bounded on the boy, clasped him to his
bosom, and kissed him on both cheeks. “Admirable, admirable imp!” he
cried. “What a morning, what an hour for a theorist of forty-two! No,”
he continued, apostrophising heaven, “I did not know such boys existed;
I was ignorant they made them so; I had doubted of my race; and now! It
is like,” he added, picking up his stick, “like a lovers’ meeting. I
have bruised my favourite staff in that moment of enthusiasm. The
injury, however, is not grave.” He caught the boy looking at him in
obvious wonder, embarrassment, and alarm. “Hullo!” said he, “why do you
look at me like that? Egad, I believe the boy despises me. Do you
despise me, boy?”
“O, no,” replied Jean-Marie, seriously; “only I do not understand.”
“You must excuse me, sir,” returned the Doctor, with gravity; “I am
still so young. O, hang him!” he added to himself. And he took his seat
again and observed the boy sardonically. “He has spoiled the quiet of
my morning,” thought he. “I shall be nervous all day, and have a
febricule when I digest. Let me compose myself.” And so he dismissed
his pre-occupations by an effort of the will which he had long
practised, and let his soul roam abroad in the contemplation of the
morning. He inhaled the air, tasting it critically as a connoisseur
tastes a vintage, and prolonging the expiration with hygienic gusto. He
counted the little flecks of cloud along the sky. He followed the
movements of the birds round the church tower—making long sweeps,
hanging poised, or turning airy somersaults in fancy, and beating the
wind with imaginary pinions. And in this way he regained peace of mind
and animal composure, conscious of his limbs, conscious of the sight of
his eyes, conscious that the air had a cool taste, like a fruit, at the
top of his throat; and at last, in complete abstraction, he began to
sing. The Doctor had but one air—, “Malbrouck s’en va-t-en guerre;”
even with that he was on terms of mere politeness; and his musical
exploits were always reserved for moments when he was alone and
entirely happy.
He was recalled to earth rudely by a pained expression on the boy’s
face. “What do you think of my singing?” he inquired, stopping in the
middle of a note; and then, after he had waited some little while and
received no answer, “What do you think of my singing?” he repeated,
imperiously.
“I do not like it,” faltered Jean-Marie.
“Oh, come!” cried the Doctor. “Possibly you are a performer yourself?”
“I sing better than that,” replied the boy.
The Doctor eyed him for some seconds in stupefaction. He was aware that
he was angry, and blushed for himself in consequence, which made him
angrier. “If this is how you address your master!” he said at last,
with a shrug and a flourish of his arms.
“I do not speak to him at all,” returned the boy. “I do not like him.”
“Then you like me?” snapped Doctor Desprez, with unusual eagerness.
“I do not know,” answered Jean-Marie.
The Doctor rose. “I shall wish you a good morning,” he said. “You are
too much for me. Perhaps you have blood in your veins, perhaps
celestial ichor, or perhaps you circulate nothing more gross than
respirable air; but of one thing I am inexpugnably assured:—that you
are no human being. No, boy”—shaking his stick at him—“you are not a
human being. Write, write it in your memory—‘I am not a human being—I
have no pretension to be a human being—I am a dive, a dream, an angel,
an acrostic, an illusion—what you please, but not a human being.’ And
so accept my humble salutations and farewell!”
And with that the Doctor made off along the street in some emotion, and
the boy stood, mentally gaping, where he left him.