AN ox-team was lumbering along the road towards us. The huge oxen
lurched from side to side, half-asleep, making nothing of their load of
meal-sacks piled high in air; their driver walked beside, half-asleep,
too. He was a giant in height (six foot six, Melody, in his stockings! I
have measured him myself), and his white clothes made him look something
monstrous indeed. Yvon stared and gaped, as this vision came slowly
towards him.
"What--what is it?" he asked. "Is it a monster?"
"Oh, no!" I said. "It's only Ham Belfort. How are you, Ham?"
"Smart!" said Ham. "How be you? Hoish, Star! haw! Stand still there,
will ye?"
The oxen came to a halt willingly enough, and man and beasts stood
regarding us with calm, friendly eyes. Ham and his oxen looked so much
alike, Melody (the oxen were white, I ought to have said), that I
sometimes thought, if we dressed one of the beasts up and did away with
his horns, people would hardly know which was which.
"Taking a load over to Cato?"
Cato was the nearest town, my dear. It was there that the weekly boat
touched, which was our one link with the world of cities and railways.
Ham nodded; he was not given to unnecessary speech.
"Is your wife better? I heard she was poorly."
"No, she ain't! I expect she'll turn up her toes now most any day."
This seemed awkward. I muttered some expressions of regret, and was
about to move on, when my companion, who had been gazing speechless and
motionless at the figure before him, caught my arm.
"Present me!" he whispered. "Holy Blue! this is my cousin, my own blood!
Present me, Jacques!"
Now, I had never had occasion to make a formal introduction in my life,
Melody. I had not yet begun to act as master of ceremonies at balls,
only as fiddler and call-man; and it is the living truth that the only
form of words I could bring to mind at the moment was, "Gents, balance
to partners!" I almost said it aloud; but, fortunately, my wits came
back, and I stammered out, sorely embarrassed:
"Ham, this is--a gentleman--who--who is staying with Father
L'Homme-Dieu."
"That so? Pleased to meet you!" and Ham held out a hand like a shoulder
of mutton, and engulfed the marquis's slender fingers.
"I am delighted to make the acquaintance of Mr. Belfort," said Ste.
Valerie, with winning grace. "I please myself to think that we are
related by blood. My mother was a Bellefort of Blanque; it is the French
form of your name, Mr. Belfort."
"I want to know!" said Ham. "_Darned_ pleased to meet you!" He laboured
for a moment, casting a glance of appeal at the oxen, who showed no
disposition to assist him; then added, "You're slim-appearin' for a
Belfort; they run consid'able large in these parts."
"Truly, yes!" cried the marquis, laughing delightedly. "You desire to
show the world that there are still giants. What pleasure, what rapture,
to go through the crowd of small persons, as myself, as D'Arthenay here,
and exhibit the person of Samson, of Goliath!"
Ham eyed him gravely. "Meanin' shows?" he asked, after a pause of
reflection. "No, we've never shew none, as I know of. We've been asked,
father 'n' I, to allow guessin' on our weight at fairs and sech, but we
jedged it warn't jest what we cared about doin'. Sim'lar with shows!"
This speech was rather beyond Ste. Valerie, and seeing him look puzzled,
I struck in, "Mr. Ste. Valerie wants to see the old graves in the old
burying-ground, Ham. I told him there were plenty of Belforts there, and
spelling the name as he does, with two l's and an e in the middle."
"I want to know if he spells it that way!" said Ham, politely. "We
jedged they didn't know much spellin', in them times along back, but I
presume there's different idees. Does your folks run slim as a rule?"
"Very slim, my cousin!" said Yvon. "Of my generation, there is none so
great as myself."
"I _want_ to know!" said Ham; and the grave compassion in his voice was
almost too much for my composure. He seemed to fear that the subject
might be a painful one, and changed it with a visible effort.
"Well, there's plenty in the old berr'in-ground spelt both ways. Likely
it don't matter to 'em now."
He pondered again, evidently composing a speech; again he demanded help
of the oxen, and went so far as to examine an ear of the nigh ox with
anxious attention.
"'Pears as if what Belforts is above the sod ought to see something of
ye!" he said at last. "My woman is sick, and liable to turn--I should
say, liable to pass away most any time; but if she should get better,
or--anything--I should be pleased to have ye come and stop a spell with
us at the grist-mill. Any of your folks in the grist business?"
"Grisst?" Ste. Valerie looked helplessly at me. I explained briefly the
nature of a grist-mill, and said truly that Ham's mill was one of the
pleasantest places in the neighbourhood. Yvon was enchanted. He would
come with the most lively pleasure, he assured Ham, so soon as Madame
Belfort's health should be sufficiently rehabilitated. I remember,
Melody, the pride with which he rolled out that long word, and the
delight with which he looked at me, to see if I noticed it.
"Meantime," he added, "I shall haste at the earliest moment to do myself
the honour to call, to make inquiries for the health of madame, to
present my respectful homages to monsieur your father. He will permit me
to embrace him as a son?"
Fortunately Ham only heard the first part of this sentence; he responded
heartily, begging the marquis to call at any hour. Then, being at the
end of his talk, he shook hands once more with ponderous good will, and
passed on, he and the oxen rolling along with equal steps.
Ste. Valerie was silent until Ham was out of earshot; then he broke out.
"Holy Blue! what a prodigy! You suffer this to burst upon me, Jacques,
without notice, without preparation. My nerves are permanently
shattered. You tell me, a man; I behold a tower, a mountain, Atlas
crowned with clouds! Thousand thunders! what bulk! what sinews! and of
my race! Amazing effect of--what? Climate? occupation? In France, this
race shrinks, diminishes; a rapier, keen if you will, but slender like a
thread; here, it swells, expands, towers aloft,--a club of Hercules. And
with my father, who could sit in my pocket, and my grandfather, who
could sit in his! Figure to yourself, Jacques, that I am called _le
grand Yvon!_" He was silent for a moment, then broke out again. "But the
mind. D'Arthenay! the brain; how is it with that? Thought,--a lightning
flash! is it not lost, wandering through a head large like that of an
ox?"
I cannot remember in what words I answered him, Melody. I know I was
troubled how to make it clear to him, and he so different from the
other. I seemed to stand midway between the two, and to understand both.
Half of me seemed to spring up in joy at the voice of the young
foreigner; his lightness, his quickness, the very way he moved his
hands, seemed a part of my own nature that I had not learned to use, and
now saw reflected in another. I am not sure if I make myself clear, my
child; it was a singular feeling. But when I would spring forward with
him, and toss my head and wave my hands as he did,--as my mother Marie
did,--there was something held me back; it was the other nature in me,
slow and silent, and--no! not cold, but loath to show its warmth, if I
may put it so. My father in me kept me silent many a time when I might
have spoken foolishness. And it was this half, my father's half, that
loved Ham Belfort, and saw the solid sweetness of nature that made that
huge body a temple of good will, so to speak. He had the kind of
goodness that gives peace and rest to those who lean against it. His
mill was one of the places--but we shall come to that by and by!
Walking on as we talked, we soon came to the village, and I begged my
new friend to come in and see my father and my home. We entered. My
father was standing by the fire, facing the door, with one hand on the
tall mantel-shelf. He was in one of his waking dreams, and I was struck
deeply, Melody, by the beauty, and, if I may use the word about a plain
man, the majesty of his looks. My companion was struck, too, for he
stopped short, and murmured something under his breath; I heard the word
"Noblesse," and thought it not amiss. My father's eyes (they were
extraordinarily bright and blue) were wide open, and looked through us
and beyond us, yet saw nothing, or nothing that other eyes could see;
the tender look was in them that meant the thought of my mother. But
Abby came quietly round from the corner where she sat sewing, and laid
her hand on his arm, and spoke clearly, yet not sharply, telling him to
look and see, Jakey had brought a gentleman to see him. Then the vision
passed, and my father looked and saw us, and came forward with a
stately, beautiful way that he could use, and bade the stranger welcome.
Ste. Valerie bowed low, as he might to a prince. Hearing that he was a
Frenchman, my father seemed pleased. "My dear wife was a Frenchwoman!"
he said. "She was a musician, sir; I wish you could have heard her
play."
"He was himself also of French descent," Ste. Valerie reminded him, with
another bow; and told of the ruined tower, and the old friendship
between the two houses. But my father cared nothing for descent.
"Long ago, sir!" he said. "Long ago! I have nothing to do with the dead
of two hundred years back. I am a plain farmer; my son has learned the
trade of shoemaking, though he also has some skill with the fiddle, I am
told. Nothing compared to his mother, but still some skill."
Ste. Valerie looked from one of us to the other. "A farmer,--a
shoemaker!" he said, slowly. "Strange country, this! And while your
_vieille noblesse_ make shoes and till the soil, who are these,
monsieur, who live in some of the palaces that I have seen in your
cities? In many, truly, persons of real nobility also, gentlemen,
whether hunting of race or of Nature's own. But these others? I have
seen them; large persons, both male and female, red as beef, their
grossness illuminated with diamonds of royalty, their dwelling a
magazine from the Rue de la Paix. These things are shocking to a
European, M. D'Arthenay!" My father looked at him with something like
reproof in his quiet gaze.
"I have never been in cities," he said. "I consider that a farmer's life
may be used as well as another for the glory of God."
Then, with a wave of his hand, he seemed to put all this away from him,
and with a livelier air asked the stranger to take supper with us. Abby
had been laying the cloth quietly while we were talking, and my father
would have asked her to sit down with us, but she slipped away while his
face was turned in the other direction, and though he looked once or
twice, he soon forgot. Poor Abby! I had seen her looking at him as he
talked, and was struck by her intent expression, as if she would not
lose a word he might say. It seemed natural, though, that he should be
her first thought; he had always been, since my mother died.
So presently we three sat about the little table, that was gay with
flowers and pretty dishes. I saw Ste. Valerie's wondering glances; was
it thus, he seemed to ask, that a farmer lived, who had no woman to care
for him? My father saw, too, and was pleased as I had rarely seen him.
He did not smile, but his face seemed to fill with light.
"My wife, sir," he said, "loved to see things bright and adorned. I
try--my son and I try--to keep the table as she would like it. I
formerly thought these matters sinful, but I have been brought to a
clearer vision,--through affliction." (Strange human nature, Melody, my
child! he was moved to say these words to a stranger, which he could not
have said to me, his son!) "She had the French taste and lightness, my
wife Mary. I should have been proud to have you see her, sir; the Lord
was mindful of His own, and took her away from a world of sin and
suffering."
The light died out; his eyes wandered for a moment, and then set, in a
way I knew; and I began to talk fast of the first thing that came into
my mind.