_Three leagues, then, the road ran, and turned into a puzzle.
It joined with another and a larger road at right angles. David
stood, uncertain, for a while, and then sat himself to rest upon
its side._
Whither these roads led he knew not. Either way there seemed to lie
a great world full of chance and peril. And then, sitting there, his
eye fell upon a bright star, one that he and Yvonne had named for
theirs. That set him thinking of Yvonne, and he wondered if he had
not been too hasty. Why should he leave her and his home because a
few hot words had come between them? Was love so brittle a thing
that jealousy, the very proof of it, could break it? Mornings always
brought a cure for the little heartaches of evening. There was yet
time for him to return home without any one in the sweetly sleeping
village of Vernoy being the wiser. His heart was Yvonne's; there
where he had lived always he could write his poems and find his
happiness.
David rose, and shook off his unrest and the wild mood that had
tempted him. He set his face steadfastly back along the road he had
come. By the time he had retravelled the road to Vernoy, his desire
to rove was gone. He passed the sheepfold, and the sheep scurried,
with a drumming flutter, at his late footsteps, warming his heart by
the homely sound. He crept without noise into his little room and
lay there, thankful that his feet had escaped the distress of new
roads that night.
How well he knew woman's heart! The next evening Yvonne was at the
well in the road where the young congregated in order that the
_curé_ might have business. The corner of her eye was engaged in a
search for David, albeit her set mouth seemed unrelenting. He saw
the look; braved the mouth, drew from it a recantation and, later,
a kiss as they walked homeward together.
Three months afterwards they were married. David's father was shrewd
and prosperous. He gave them a wedding that was heard of three
leagues away. Both the young people were favourites in the village.
There was a procession in the streets, a dance on the green; they
had the marionettes and a tumbler out from Dreux to delight the
guests.
Then a year, and David's father died. The sheep and the cottage
descended to him. He already had the seemliest wife in the village.
Yvonne's milk pails and her brass kettles were bright--_ouf!_ they
blinded you in the sun when you passed that way. But you must keep
your eyes upon her yard, for her flower beds were so neat and gay
they restored to you your sight. And you might hear her sing, aye,
as far as the double chestnut tree above Père Gruneau's blacksmith
forge.
But a day came when David drew out paper from a long-shut drawer,
and began to bite the end of a pencil. Spring had come again and
touched his heart. Poet he must have been, for now Yvonne was
well-nigh forgotten. This fine new loveliness of earth held him
with its witchery and grace. The perfume from her woods and meadows
stirred him strangely. Daily had he gone forth with his flock, and
brought it safe at night. But now he stretched himself under the
hedge and pieced words together on his bits of paper. The sheep
strayed, and the wolves, perceiving that difficult poems make easy
mutton, ventured from the woods and stole his lambs.
David's stock of poems grew larger and his flock smaller. Yvonne's
nose and temper waxed sharp and her talk blunt. Her pans and kettles
grew dull, but her eyes had caught their flash. She pointed out to
the poet that his neglect was reducing the flock and bringing woe
upon the household. David hired a boy to guard the sheep, locked
himself in the little room at the top of the cottage, and wrote more
poems. The boy, being a poet by nature, but not furnished with an
outlet in the way of writing, spent his time in slumber. The wolves
lost no time in discovering that poetry and sleep are practically
the same; so the flock steadily grew smaller. Yvonne's ill temper
increased at an equal rate. Sometimes she would stand in the yard
and rail at David through his high window. Then you could hear her
as far as the double chestnut tree above Père Gruneau's blacksmith
forge.
M. Papineau, the kind, wise, meddling old notary, saw this, as
he saw everything at which his nose pointed. He went to David,
fortified himself with a great pinch of snuff, and said:
"Friend Mignot, I affixed the seal upon the marriage certificate of
your father. It would distress me to be obliged to attest a paper
signifying the bankruptcy of his son. But that is what you are
coming to. I speak as an old friend. Now, listen to what I have to
say. You have your heart set, I perceive, upon poetry. At Dreux, I
have a friend, one Monsieur Bril--Georges Bril. He lives in a little
cleared space in a houseful of books. He is a learned man; he visits
Paris each year; he himself has written books. He will tell you when
the catacombs were made, how they found out the names of the stars,
and why the plover has a long bill. The meaning and the form of
poetry is to him as intelligent as the baa of a sheep is to you. I
will give you a letter to him, and you shall take him your poems and
let him read them. Then you will know if you shall write more, or
give your attention to your wife and business."
"Write the letter," said David, "I am sorry you did not speak of
this sooner."
At sunrise the next morning he was on the road to Dreux with the
precious roll of poems under his arm. At noon he wiped the dust from
his feet at the door of Monsieur Bril. That learned man broke the
seal of M. Papineau's letter, and sucked up its contents through his
gleaming spectacles as the sun draws water. He took David inside to
his study and sat him down upon a little island beat upon by a sea
of books.
Monsieur Bril had a conscience. He flinched not even at a mass
of manuscript the thickness of a finger length and rolled to an
incorrigible curve. He broke the back of the roll against his knee
and began to read. He slighted nothing; he bored into the lump as a
worm into a nut, seeking for a kernel.
Meanwhile, David sat, marooned, trembling in the spray of so much
literature. It roared in his ears. He held no chart or compass for
voyaging in that sea. Half the world, he thought, must be writing
books.
Monsieur Bril bored to the last page of the poems. Then he took off
his spectacles, and wiped them with his handkerchief.
"My old friend, Papineau, is well?" he asked.
"In the best of health," said David.
"How many sheep have you, Monsieur Mignot?"
"Three hundred and nine, when I counted them yesterday. The flock
has had ill fortune. To that number it has decreased from eight
hundred and fifty."
"You have a wife and home, and lived in comfort. The sheep brought
you plenty. You went into the fields with them and lived in the
keen air and ate the sweet bread of contentment. You had but to be
vigilant and recline there upon nature's breast, listening to the
whistle of the blackbirds in the grove. Am I right thus far?"
"It was so," said David.
"I have read all your verses," continued Monsieur Bril, his eyes
wandering about his sea of books as if he conned the horizon for a
sail. "Look yonder, through that window, Monsieur Mignot; tell me
what you see in that tree."
"I see a crow," said David, looking.
"There is a bird," said Monsieur Bril, "that shall assist me where I
am disposed to shirk a duty. You know that bird, Monsieur Mignot; he
is the philosopher of the air. He is happy through submission to his
lot. None so merry or full-crawed as he with his whimsical eye and
rollicking step. The fields yield him what he desires. He never
grieves that his plumage is not gay, like the oriole's. And you have
heard, Monsieur Mignot, the notes that nature has given him? Is the
nightingale any happier, do you think?"
David rose to his feet. The crow cawed harshly from his tree.
"I thank you, Monsieur Bril," he said, slowly. "There was not, then,
one nightingale among all those croaks?"
"I could not have missed it," said Monsieur Bril, with a sigh. "I
read every word. Live your poetry, man; do not try to write it any
more."
"I thank you," said David, again. "And now I will be going back to
my sheep."
"If you would dine with me," said the man of books, "and overlook
the smart of it, I will give you reasons at length."
"No," said the poet, "I must be back in the fields cawing at my
sheep."
Back along the road to Vernoy he trudged with his poems under his
arm. When he reached his village he turned into the shop of one
Zeigler, a Jew out of Armenia, who sold anything that came to his
hand.
"Friend," said David, "wolves from the forest harass my sheep on the
hills. I must purchase firearms to protect them. What have you?"
"A bad day, this, for me, friend Mignot," said Zeigler, spreading
his hands, "for I perceive that I must sell you a weapon that will
not fetch a tenth of its value. Only last I week I bought from
a peddlar a wagon full of goods that he procured at a sale by a
_commissionaire_ of the crown. The sale was of the _château_ and
belongings of a great lord--I know not his title--who has been
banished for conspiracy against the king. There are some choice
firearms in the lot. This pistol--oh, a weapon fit for a prince!--it
shall be only forty francs to you, friend Mignot--if I lose ten by
the sale. But perhaps an arquebuse--"
"This will do," said David, throwing the money on the counter. "Is
it charged?"
"I will charge it," said Zeigler. "And, for ten francs more, add a
store of powder and ball."
David laid his pistol under his coat and walked to his cottage.
Yvonne was not there. Of late she had taken to gadding much among
the neighbours. But a fire was glowing in the kitchen stove. David
opened the door of it and thrust his poems in upon the coals. As
they blazed up they made a singing, harsh sound in the flue.
"The song of the crow!" said the poet.
He went up to his attic room and closed the door. So quiet was the
village that a score of people heard the roar of the great pistol.
They flocked thither, and up the stairs where the smoke, issuing,
drew their notice.
The men laid the body of the poet upon his bed, awkwardly arranging
it to conceal the torn plumage of the poor black crow. The women
chattered in a luxury of zealous pity. Some of them ran to tell
Yvonne.
M. Papineau, whose nose had brought him there among the first,
picked up the weapon and ran his eye over its silver mountings with
a mingled air of connoisseurship and grief.
"The arms," he explained, aside, to the _curé_, "and crest of
Monseigneur, the Marquis de Beaupertuys."