"My country! 'tis of thee,
Sweet land of liberty,
Of thee I sing!"
Here the singer's voice broke down, and I peered curiously around my
corner of the wall. He was pacing to and fro on the river-bank--a
weary-faced lad with pale cheeks and drooping shoulders. Beyond him a
fat French footman lay asleep on the grass, one hand loosely clutching a
novel. An elderly goat, grazing nearer and nearer the man, kept a wary
eye on the book, and finally seizing it, devoured it leaf by leaf. At
this the weary-faced boy did not smile, and then I knew there was
something the matter with him.
Partly because I wished to console him, partly because I was lonely, I
continued the song in notes rather more cheerful than his own:
"Land where my fathers died,
Land of the pilgrims' pride,
From every mountainside
Let freedom ring!"
The boy stood stock-still, only moving his head slightly after the
manner of a bird listening to a pleasant strain. When I finished he came
toward me, cap in hand.
"Mademoiselle, you are an American?"
"No, my boy. I am a Canadian."
"That's next best," he said, politely.
"It's better," I rejoined, smiling.
"Nothing is better than being an American."
"You are patriotic," I observed.
"If your ancestors fought with Indians, and English and rebels, and if
you expect to die for your country, you ought to be patriotic."
I surveyed him curiously. He was too grave and joyless for a boy in a
normal condition. "In youth one does not usually speak of dying," I
said.
His face flushed. "Ah, mademoiselle, I am homesick! I have not seen
America for a year."
"Indeed? Such a patriotic boy should stay at home."
"My mother wished me to finish my education abroad."
"A woman should educate her children in the country in which they are to
live," I said, irritably.
"I guess you're most old enough to be my mother, aren't you?" he
replied, gently, and with such tenderness of rebuke that I smiled
irrepressibly. He had delicately intimated that if I were his mother I
would not care to have him discuss me with a stranger.
"I've got to learn foreign languages," he said, doggedly. "We've been
here one year; we must stay one more and then go to Italy, then to
Germany. I'm thankful the English haven't a different language. If they
had, I'd have to go learn it."
"And after you leave Germany?"
"After Germany--home!"
He was not a particularly handsome lad, but he had beautiful eyes, and
at the word home they took on such a strange brilliance that I gathered
up my parasol and books in wondering silence.
"I suppose," he said, soberly, "that you will not be at the Protestant
church on Sunday?"
"Probably I shall."
"I don't see many people from America," he went on, turning his head so
far away that I could hardly hear what he said. "There isn't anybody
here who cares to talk about it. My mother, of course, is too busy," he
added, with dignity.
"_Au revoir_, then," I said, with a smile.
He stood looking quietly after me, and when I got far up the river-bank
I turned around. He was adjusting a slight difference between the
footman and the goat; then, followed by the man, he disappeared up one
of the quaint old streets leading into the heart of the city.
Close beside me a little old peasant woman, gathering sticks, uncurled
her stooping figure. "_Bon jour, mademoiselle!_ You have been talking to
the American boy."
"_Oui, madame._"
"It is very sad," she continued, in the excellent French spoken by the
peasants of the Loiret department. "He comes by the river and declaims.
He speaks of Linkum and Wash'ton. I watch from my cottage, for my
daughter Mathilde is housemaid at Madame Greyshield's, and I hear her
talk. _Monsieur le colonel_ Greyshield is a grand officer in America;
but his wife, she is proud. She brings her children to France to study.
She leaves the poor man lonely. This boy is most heartbroke. Mathilde
says he talks of his dear country in his sleep, then he rises early to
study the foreign languages, so he can more quickly go to his home. But
he is sick, his hand trembles. Mathilde thinks he is going to die. I
say, 'Mathilde, talk to madame,' but she is afraid, for madame has a
will as strong as this stout stick. It will never break. It must be
burnt. Perhaps mademoiselle will talk."
"I will, if I get a chance."
The old woman turned her brown, leathery face toward the blue waters of
the Loire. "Mademoiselle, do many French go to America for the accent?"
"No; they have too much sense!"
"It is droll," she went on, "how the families come here. The gentlemen
wander to and fro, the ladies occupy themselves with their _toilettes_.
Then they travel to other countries. They are like the leaves on that
current. They wander they know not whither. I am only a peasant, yet I
can think, and is not one language good enough to ask for bread and
soup?" And muttering and shaking her head, she went on gathering her
sticks.
[Illustration]
On Sunday I looked for my American boy. There he was, sitting beside a
handsomely dressed woman, who looked as if she might indeed have a will
like a stout stick. After the service he endeavoured to draw her toward
me, but she did not respond until she saw me speaking to a lady of
Huguenot descent, to whom I had had a letter of introduction. Then she
approached, and we all went down the street together.
When we reached the boulevard leading to my hotel, the boy asked his
mother's permission to escort me home. She hesitated, and then said,
"Yes; but do not bore her to death with your patriotic rigmaroles."
The boy, whose name was Gerald, gave her a peculiar glance, and did not
open his lips until we had walked a block. Then he asked, deliberately,
"Have you ever thought much of that idea of Abraham Lincoln's that no
man is good enough to govern another man without the other man's
consent?"
"Yes, a good deal; yet one must obey."
"Yes, one must obey," he said, quietly. "But sometimes it is puzzling,
especially when a fellow is growing up."
"How old are you?"
"Fourteen."
"Not older?"
"No; I am from California," and he drew himself up. "The boys and girls
there are large, you know. I have lost twenty pounds since we came here.
You have never been in California, I suppose?"
[Illustration: "'I AM FROM CALIFORNIA.'"]
"Yes. I like California."
"You do?" He flashed one swift glance at me, then dropped his eyes.
I politely averted my own, but not before I saw two tear-drops splash on
the hot, gray pavement.
"If I could see," he said, presently, "if I could see one of those brown
hills, just one,--this flat country makes me tired."
"Can you imagine," I said, "that I have been as homesick in California
as you are in France?"
"No! no!" he replied, breathlessly. "No, I could not imagine that."
"That I sailed into San Francisco Bay with a heartache because those
brown hills you speak of so lovingly were not my native hills?"
"But you are grown up; you do not need to leave your country."
"Our duty sometimes takes us to foreign lands. You will be a better
soldier some day for having had a time of trial and endurance."
"I know it," he said, under his breath. "But sometimes I think I must
break loose, especially at night, when the bugles blow."
I knew what he meant. At eight o'clock every evening, from the various
barracks in Orléans, the sweet, piercing notes of bugle answering bugle
could be heard; and the strain was the one played by the American bugles
in the school that I guessed he had attended.
"You think of the boys drawn up in line on the drill-ground, and the
echo behind the hill."
"Do you know Almoda?" he exclaimed, with a face as white as a sheet.
"I do."
This was too much for him. We had paused at the hotel entrance, and he
intended, I knew, to take a polite leave of me; but I had done a
dangerous thing in conjuring up the old familiar scenes, and mumbling
something in his throat, and giving one tug to his hat, he ran as nimbly
down the street as if he were a lean coyote from the hills of his native
State.
Four weeks later I asked myself why I was lingering in Orléans. I had
seen all the souvenirs of Joan of Arc; I had talked with the peasants
and shopkeepers till I was tired; I agreed thoroughly with my guide-book
that Orléans is a city sadly lacking in animation; and yet I stayed on;
I stayed on because I was engaged in a bit of character study, I told my
note-book; stayed on because my presence afforded some consolation to a
struggling, unhappy boy, I told my conscience.
The boy was dying of homesickness. He did not enter into the life of the
sleepy French city. "This is a good enough country," he said, wearily,
"but it isn't mine. I want America, and it seems to me all these priests
and soldiers and citizens are acting. I can't think they were born
speaking French."
However, it was only at rare intervals that he complained. Away in
America he had a father who had set the high standard of duty before
him,--a father who would not encourage him to flag.
On the Fourth of July, Mrs. Greyshield was giving a reception--not on
account of the day, for she had not a spark of patriotism, but because
she was shortly to leave Orléans for the seashore. Gerald was also
giving a reception, his a smaller one, prepared for in the face of
almost insurmountable difficulties, for he received no encouragement
from his mother in his patriotic schemes.
His only pleasure in life was in endeavouring to make his little brother
and sister as patriotic as himself, and with ill-concealed dismay he
confided to me the fear that they were forgetting their native land.
About the middle of the afternoon I joined him and the children in a
small, gaily decorated arbour at the foot of the garden. Shortly after I
arrived, Mrs. Greyshield, accompanied by a number of her guests, swept
down upon us. The French officers and their wives and a number of
English residents surrounded the arbour.
"Ah, the delicious cakes! But they are not _babas_ and _savarins_ and
_tartelettes_! They must be American! What do you call this kind?
Doughnuts! How peculiar! How effective the arrangement of the bunting,
and how many flags--but all of his own country!"
Mrs. Greyshield listened carelessly to the comments. "Oh, yes, he is
hopelessly provincial. I shall never teach him to be cosmopolitan. What
do you think of such narrowness, princess?" and in veiled admiration she
addressed her most distinguished guest, who was also her friend and
countrywoman.
As Mrs. Greyshield spoke, the American princess, who was the possessor
of an exceedingly bitter smile, touched one of the flags with caressing
fingers. "It is a long time since I have seen one. Your boy has several.
I should like to have one for a cushion, if he will permit."
The boy's nostrils dilated. "For a cushion!" he exclaimed.
His tone was almost disrespectful, and his mother gave him a warning
glance, and said, hastily, "Certainly, princess. Gerald, choose your
prettiest flag."
"Not for a cushion!" he said, firmly. "The flag should be up, never
down!"
The gay group gazed with concealed interest at mother and son.
Mrs. Greyshield seized a flag and offered it to her guest.
"Thank you--not from you," said the princess, putting up her lorgnette.
"Only from the boy."
[Illustration: "'YOU, TOO, LOVE YOUR COUNTRY!'"]
He would not give her one. His mother was in a repressed rage, and the
boy kept his eyes bent on the ground in suffering silence.
The titled lady put an end to the painful scene. "I have changed my
mind," she said, coolly. "I have too many cushions now."
The boy turned swiftly to her, and, lifting the white hand hanging by
her side, gently touched it with his lips.
"_Madame la Princesse_, you, too, love your country!"
His exclamation was so enthusiastic, so heartfelt, there was in it such
a world of commiseration for the titled lady before him, that there
immediately flashed before each one present the unhappy life of the poor
princess in exile. The boy had started a wave of sympathy flowing from
one to another of the group, and in some confusion they all moved away.
Gerald wiped the perspiration from his forehead, and went on with the
programme of patriotic selections that the impatient children were
obliged to go through before they could have the cakes and fireworks.
After the fizzing and bursting noises were over, I said, regretfully,
"Gerald, I must go to Paris to-morrow."
"I have been expecting this," he said, with dogged resignation. "When
you are gone, Miss Canada, I shall have no one to talk to me about
America."
I had grown to love the boy for his high qualities of mind and soul, and
my voice faltered as I murmured, "Do not give up,--fight the good
fight."
"Of faith," he added, gravely, "looking forward to what is to come."
It seemed to me that an old man stood pressing my hand--an old man with
life's experience behind him. My heart ached for the lad, and I hurried
into the house.
"Good-bye," I said, coldly, to my hostess.
"Good-bye, a pleasant journey," she responded, with equal coldness.
"If you do not take that boy of yours home, you will lose him," I
murmured.
I thought my voice was low, but it was not low enough to escape the ears
of the princess, who was standing beside her.
Mrs. Greyshield turned away, and the princess's lips moved almost
imperceptibly in the words, "What is the use?"
"The boy is dying by inches!" I said, indignantly.
"Better dead than like those--" she said, with her bitter smile, nodding
toward the chattering cosmopolitan crowd beyond us.