PARVA DOMUS, MAGNA QUIES.
“No, no, Jack; no, dear child; do not be alarmed, you shall never go
back to that school. Did they dare to strike you? Cheer up, dear. I
tell you that you shall never go there again, but shall always be with
me. I will arrange a little room for you to-day, and you will see how
nice it is to be in the country. We have cows and chickens, and that
reminds me the poultry has not yet been fed. Lie down, dear, and rest a
while. I will wake you at dinner-time, but first drink this soup. It is
good, is it not? And to think that while I was calmly sleeping, you
were alone in the cold and dark night. I must go. My chickens are
calling me;” and with a loving kiss Ida went off on tiptoe, happy and
bright, browned somewhat by the sun, and dressed with rather a
theatrical idea of the proprieties. Her country costume had a great
deal of black velvet about it, and she wore a wide-brimmed Leghorn hat,
trimmed with poppies and wheat.
Jack could not sleep, but his bath and the soup prepared by Mère
Archambauld, his mother’s cook, had restored his strength to a very
great degree, and he lay on the couch, looking about him with calm,
satisfied eyes.
There was but little of the old luxury. The room he was in was large,
furnished in the style of Louis XVI., all gray and white, without the
least gilding. Outside, the rustling of the leaves, the cooing of the
pigeons on the roof, and his mother’s voice talking to her chickens,
lulled him to repose.
One thing troubled him: D’Argenton’s portrait hung at the foot of the
bed, in a pretentious attitude, his hand on an open book.
The child said to himself, “Where is he? Why have I not seen him?”
Finally, annoyed by the eyes of the picture, which seemed to pursue him
either with a question or a reproach, he rose and went down to his
mother.
She was busy in the farm-yard; her gloves reached above her elbows, and
her dress, looped on one side, showed her wide striped skirt and high
heels.
Mère Archambauld laughed at her awkwardness. This woman was the wife of
an employé in the government forests, who attended to the culinary
department at Aulnettes, as the house was called where Jack’s mother
lived.
“Heavens! how pretty your boy is!” said the old woman, delighted by
Jack’s appearance.
“Is he not, Mère Archambauld? What did I tell you?”
“But he looks a good deal more like you, madame, than like his papa.
Good day, my dear! May I give you a kiss?”
At the word papa, Jack looked up quickly.
“Ah, well! if you can’t sleep, let us go and look at the house,” said
his mother, who quickly wearied of every occupation. She shook down her
skirts, and took the child over this most original house, which was
situated a stone’s throw from the village, and realized better than
most poets’ dreams those of D’Argenton. The house had been originally a
shooting-box belonging to a distant château. A new tower had been
added, and a weathercock, which last gave an aspect of intense
respectability to the place. They visited the stable and the orchard,
and finished their examination by a visit to the tower.
A winding staircase, lighted by a skylight of colored glass, led to a
large, round room containing four windows, and furnished by a circular
divan covered with some brilliant Eastern stuff. A couple of curious
old oaken chests, a Venetian mirror, some antique hangings, and a high
carved chair of the time of Henri II., drawn up in front of an enormous
table covered with papers, composed the furniture of the apartment. A
charming landscape was visible from the windows, a valley and a river,
a fresh green wood, and some fair meadow-land.
“It is here that HE works,” said his mother, in an awed tone.
Jack had no need to ask who this HE might be.
In a low voice, as if in a sanctuary, she continued, without looking at
her son,—
“At present he is travelling. He will return in a few days, however. I
shall write to him that you are here; he will be very glad, for he is
very fond of you, and is the best of men, even if he does look a little
severe sometimes. You must learn to love him, little Jack, or I shall
be very unhappy.”
As she spoke she looked at D’Argenton’s picture hung at the end of this
room, a picture of which the one in her room was a copy; in fact, a
portrait of the poet was in every room, and a bronze bust in the
entrance-hall, and it was a most significant fact that there was no
other portrait than his in the whole house. “You promise me, Jack, that
you will love him?”
Jack answered with much effort, “I promise, dear mamma.”
This was the only cloud on that memorable day. The two were so happy in
that quaint old drawing-room. They heard Mère Archambauld rattling her
dishes in the kitchen. Outside of the house there was not a sound. Jack
sat and admired his mother. She thought him much grown and very large
for his age, and they laughed and kissed each other every few minutes.
In the evening they had some visitors. Père Archambauld came for his
wife, as he always did, for they lived in the depths of the forest. He
took a seat in the dining-room.
“You will drink a glass of wine, Father Archambauld. Drink to the
health of my little boy. Is he not nice? Will you take him with you
sometimes into the forest?”
And as he drank his wine, this tawny giant, who was the terror of the
poachers throughout the country, looked about the room with that
restless glance acquired in his nightly watchings in the forest, and
answered timidly,—
“That I will, Madame d’Argenton.”
This name of D’Argenton, thus given to his mother, mystified our little
friend. But as he had no very accurate idea of either the duties or
dignities of life, he soon ceased to take any notice of his mother’s
new title, and became absorbed in a rough game of play with the two
dogs under the table. The old couple had just gone, when a carriage was
heard at the door.
“Is it you, doctor?” cried Ida from within, in joyous greeting,
“Yes, madame; I come to learn something about your sick son, of whose
arrival I have heard.”
Jack looked inquisitively at the large, kindly face crowned by snowy
locks. The doctor wore a coat down to his heels, and had a rolling
walk, the result of twenty years of sea-life as a surgeon.
“Your boy is all right, madame. I was afraid, from what I heard through
my servant, that he and you might require my services.”
What good people these all were, and how thankful little Jack felt that
he had forever left that detestable school!
When the doctor left, the house was bolted and barred, and the mother
and child went tranquilly to their bedroom.
There, while Jack slept, Ida wrote to D’Argenton a long letter, telling
him of her son’s arrival, and seeking to arouse his sympathy for the
little lonely fellow, whose gentle, regular breathing she heard at her
side. She was more at her ease when two days later came a reply from
her poet.
Although full of reproaches and of allusions to her maternal weakness,
and to the undisciplined nature of her child, the letter was less
terrible than she had anticipated. In fact, D’Argenton concluded that
it was well to be relieved of the enormous expenses at the academy, and
while disapproving of the escapade, he thought it no great misfortune,
as the Institution was rapidly running down. “Had he not left it?” As
to the child’s fixture, it should be his care, and when he returned a
week later, they would consult together as to what plan to adopt.
Never did Jack, in his whole life, as child or man, pass such a week of
utter happiness. His mother belonged to him alone. He had the dogs and
the goat, the forest and the rabbits, and yet he did not leave his
mother for many minutes at a time. He followed her wherever she went,
laughed when she laughed without asking why, and was altogether
content.
Another letter. “He will come to-morrow!”
Although D’Argenton had written kindly, Ida was still nervous, and
wished to arrange the meeting in her own way. Consequently she refused
to permit him to go with her to the station in the little carriage. She
gave him several injunctions, painful to them both, as if they had each
been guilty of some great fault, and to the boy inexpressibly
mortifying.
“You will remain at the end of the garden,” she said, “and do not come
until I call you.”
The child lingered an hour in expectation, and when he heard the
grinding of the wheels, ran down the garden walk, and concealed himself
behind the gooseberry bushes. He heard D’Argenton speak. His tone was
harder, sterner than ever. He heard his mother’s sweet voice answer
gently, “Yes, my dear—no, my dear.” Then a window in the tower opened.
“Come, Jack, I want you, my child!”
The boy’s heart beat quickly as he mounted the stairs. D’Argenton was
leaning back in the tall armchair, his light hair gleaming against the
dark wood. Ida stood by his side, and did not even hold out her hand to
the little fellow. The lecture he received was short and affectionate
to a certain extent. “Jack,” he said, in conclusion, “life is not a
romance; you must work in earnest. I am willing to believe in your
penitence; and if you behave well, I will certainly love you, and we
three may live together happily. Now listen to what I propose. I am a
very busy man.—I am, nevertheless, willing to devote two hours every
day to your education. If you will study faithfully, I can make of you,
frivolous as you are by nature, a man like myself.”
“You hear, Jack,” said his mother, alarmed at his silence, “and you
understand the sacrifice that your friend is ready to make for you—”
“Yes, mamma,” stammered Jack.
“Wait, Charlotte,” interrupted D’Argenton; “he must decide for himself:
I wish to force no one.”
Jack, petrified at hearing his mother called Charlotte, and unable to
find words to express his sense of such generosity, ended by saying
nothing. Seeing the child’s embarrassment, his mother gently pushed him
into the poet’s arms, who pressed a theatrical kiss on his brow.
“Ah, dear, how good you are!” murmured the poor woman, while the child,
dismissed by an imperative gesture, hastily ran down the stairs.
In reality Jack’s installation in the house was a relief to the poet.
He loved Ida, whom he called Charlotte in memory of Goethe, and also
because he wished to obliterate all her past, and to wipe out even the
name of Ida de Barancy. He loved her in his own fashion, and made of
her a complete slave. She had no will, no opinion of her own, and
D’Argenton had grown tired of being perpetually agreed with. Now, at
least, he would have some one to contradict, to argue with, to tutor,
and to bully; and it was in this spirit that he undertook Jack’s
education, for which he made all arrangements with that methodical
solemnity characteristic of the man’s smallest actions.
The next morning, Jack saw, when he awoke, a large card fastened to the
wall, and on it, inscribed in the beautiful writing of the poet, a
carefully prepared arrangement for the routine of the day.
“_Rise at six_. From six to seven, breakfast; from seven to eight,
recitation; from eight to nine,” and so on.
Days ordered in this systematic manner resemble those windows whose
shutters hardly permit the entrance of air enough to breathe, or light
to see with. Generally these rules are made only to be broken, but
D’Argenton allowed no such laxity.
D’Argenton’s method of education was too severe for Jack, who was,
however, by no means wanting in intelligence, and was well advanced in
his studies. He was disturbed, too, by the personality of the poet, to
whom he had a very strong aversion, and above all he was overwhelmed by
the new life he was leading.
Suddenly transported from the mouldy lane, and from the academy, to the
country, to the woods and the fields, he was at once excited and
charmed by Nature. The truest way would have been to have laid aside
all books until the child himself demanded them. Often of a sunny day,
when he sat in the tower opposite his teacher, he was seized with a
strong desire to leap out of the window, and rush into the fresh woods
after the birds that had just flown away, or in search of the squirrel
of which he had caught a glimpse. What a penance it was to write his
copy, while the wild roses beckoned him to come and pluck them!
“This child is an idiot,” cried D’Argenton, when to all his questions
Jack stammered some answer as far from what he should have said as if
he had that moment fallen from the light cloud he had been steadily
watching. At the end of a month the poet announced that he relinquished
the task, that it was a mere loss of precious time to himself, and of
no use to the boy, who neither could nor would learn anything. In
reality, he was by no means unwilling to abandon the iron rules he had
established, and which pressed with severity on himself as well as on
the child. Ida, or rather Charlotte, made no remonstrance. She
preferred to think her boy incapable of study rather than endure the
daily scenes, and the incessant lectures and tears of this educational
experiment.
Above everything she longed for peace. Her aims were as restricted as
her intellect, and she lived solely in the present, and any future,
however brilliant, seemed to her too dearly purchased at the price of
present tranquillity.
Jack was very happy when he no longer saw under his eyes that placard:
“Rise at six. From six to seven, breakfast; from seven to weight,” &c.
The days seemed to him longer and brighter. As if he understood that
his presence in the house was often an annoyance, he absented himself
for the whole day with that absolute disregard of time natural to
children and loungers.
He had a great friend in the forester. As soon as he was dressed in the
morning he started for Father Archambauld’s, just as the old man’s
wife, before going to her Parisians, as she called her employers,
served her husband’s breakfast in a fresh, clean room hung with a light
green paper that represented the same hunting-scene over and over
again.
When the forester had finished his meal, he and little Jack started out
on a long tramp. Father Archambauld showed the child the pheasants’
nests, with their eggs like large pearls, built in the roots of the
trees; the haunts of the partridges, the frightened hares, and the
young kids. The hawthorn’s white blossoms perfumed the air, and a
variety of wild flowers enamelled the turf. The forester’s duty was to
protect the birds and their young broods from all injury, and to
destroy the moles and snakes. He received a certain sum for the heads
or tails of these vermin, and every six months carried to Corbiel a bag
of dry and dusty relics. He would have been better pleased could he
have taken also the heads of the poachers, with whom he was in constant
conflict. He had also a great deal of trouble with the peasants who
injured his trees.
A doe could be replaced, a dead pheasant was no great matter; but a
tree, the growth of years, was a vastly different affair. He watched
them so carefully that he knew all their maladies. One species of fir
was attacked by tiny worms, which come in some mysterious way by
thousands. They select the strongest and handsomest specimens, and take
possession of them. The trees have only their resinous sap as a weapon
of defence. This sap they pour over their enemies, and over their eggs
deposited in the crevices of the bark. Jack watched this unequal
contest with the greatest interest, and saw the slow dropping of these
odorous tears. Sometimes the fir-tree won the victory, but too often it
perished and withered slowly, until at last the giant of the forest;
whose lofty top had been the haunt of singing-birds, where bees had
made their home, and which had sheltered a thousand different lives,
stood white and ghastly as if struck by lightning.
During these walks through the woods, the forester and his companion
talked very little. They listened rather to the sweet and innumerable
sounds about them. The sound of the wind varied with every tree that it
touched. Among the pines it moaned and sighed like the sea. Among the
birches and aspens, it rattled the leaves like castanets; while from
the borders of the ponds, which were numerous in this part of the
forest, came gentle rustlings from the long, slender, silken-coated
reeds. Jack learned to distinguish all these sounds and to love them.
The little boy, however, had incurred the enmity of many of the
peasants, who saw him constantly with the forester, to whom they had
sworn eternal hatred. Cowardly and sulky, they touched their hats
respectfully enough to Jack when they met him with Father Archambauld,
but when he was alone, they shook their fists at him with horrible
oaths.
There was one old woman, brown as an Indian squaw, who haunted the very
dreams of the child. On his way home at sunset, he always met her with
her fagots on her back. She stood in the path and assailed him with her
tongue; and sometimes, merely to frighten him, ran after him for a few
steps. Poor little Jack often reached his mother’s side breathless and
terrified, but, after all, this only added another interest to his
life. Sometimes Jack found his mother in the kitchen talking in a low
voice; no sound was to be heard in the house save the ticking of the
great clock in the dining-room. “Hush, my dear,” said his mother; “He
is up-stairs. He is at work!”
Jack sat down in a corner and watched the cat lying in the sun. With
the awkwardness of a child who makes a noise merely because he knows he
ought not to do so, he knocked over something, or moved the table.
“Hush, dear,” exclaimed Charlotte, in distress, while Mother
Archambauld, laying the table, moved on the points of her big
feet—moved as lightly as possible, so as not to disturb “her master who
was at work.”
He was heard up-stairs—pushing back his chair, or moving his table. He
had laid a sheet of paper before him; on this paper was written the
title of his book, but not another word. And yet he now had all that
formerly he had said would enable him to make a reputation,—leisure,
sufficient means, freedom from interruption, a pleasant study, and
country air. When he had had enough of the forest, he had but to turn
his chair, and from another window he obtained an admirable view of sky
and water. All the aroma of the woods, all the freshness of the river,
came directly to him. Nothing could disturb him, unless it might be the
cooing and fluttering of the pigeons on the roof above.
“Now to work!” cried the poet. He opened his portfolio, and seized his
pen, but not one line could he write. Think of it! To live in a
pavilion of the time of Louis XV., on the edge of a forest in that
beautiful country about Etiolles, to which the memory of the Pompadour
is attached by knots of rose-colored ribbons and diamond buckles. To
have around him every essential for poetry,—a charming woman named in
memory of Goethe’s heroine, a Henri II. chair in which to write, a
small white goat to follow him from place to place, and an antique
clock to mark the hours and to connect the prosaic Present with the
romance of the Past! All these were very imposing, but the brain was as
sterile as when D’Argenton had given lessons all day and retired to his
garret at night, worn out in body and mind.
When Charlotte’s step was heard on the stairs, he assumed an expression
of profound absorption. “Come in,” he said, in reply to her knock,
timidly repeated. She entered fresh and gay, her beautiful arms bared
to the elbows, and with so rustic an air that the rice-powder on her
face seemed to be the flour from some theatrical mill in an opéra
bouffe.
“I have come to see my poet,” she said, as she came in. She had a way
of drawling out the word poet that exasperated him. “How are you
getting on?” she continued. “Are you pleased?”
“Pleased? Can one ever be pleased or satisfied in this terrible
profession, which is a perpetual strain on every nerve!”
“That is true enough, my friend; and yet I would like to know—”
“To know what? Have you any idea how long it took Goethe to write his
_Faust?_ And yet he lived in a thoroughly artistic atmosphere. He was
not condemned, as I am, to absolute solitude—mental solitude, I mean.”
The poor woman listened in silence. From having so often listened to
similar complaints from D’Argenton, she had at last learned to
understand the reproaches conveyed in his words.
The poet’s tone signified, “It is not you who can fill the blank around
me.” In fact, he found her stupid, and was bored to death when alone
with her.
Without really being conscious of it, the thing that had fascinated him
in this woman was the frame in which she was set. He adored the luxury
by which she was surrounded. Now that he had her all to
himself—transformed and rechristened her, she had lost half her charm
in his eyes, and yet she was more lovely than ever. It was amusing to
witness the air of business with which he opened each morning the three
or four journals to which he subscribed. He broke the seals as if he
expected to find in their columns something of absorbing personal
interest; as, for example, a critique of his unwritten poem, or a
resume of the book that he meant some day to write. He read these
journals without missing one word, and always found something to arouse
his contempt or anger. Other people were so fortunate: their pieces
were played; and what pieces they were! Their books were printed; and
such books! As for himself, his ideas were stolen before he could write
them down.
“You know, Charlotte, yesterday a new play by Emile Angier was
produced; it was simply my _Pommes D’Atlante_.”
“But that is outrageous! I will write myself to this Monsieur Angier,”
said poor Lottie, in a great state of indignation.
During these remarks, Jack said not one word; but as D’Argenton lashed
himself into frenzy, his old antipathy to the child revived, and the
heavy frowns with which he glanced toward the little fellow showed him
very clearly that his hatred was only smothered, and would burst forth
on the smallest provocation.