Rosin the Beau Part 2

"Now don't you!" said Mrs. Sparrow, who was always fond of me, and thought it a terrible walk for me to take, so young, and with the "growing weakness" not out of me. "Don't ye go a step, Jacques! I expect you can come in just as well as not. There is a gentleman here, but he's so pleasant, I should wish to have you see him, if _I_ was the Father."

I was hesitating, all the shyness of a country-bred boy coming over me; for I had a quick ear, and this strange voice was not like the voices I was used to hearing; it was like Father L'Homme-Dieu's, fine and high-bred. But the next instant Father L'Homme-Dieu had stepped to the door of the study, and saw me.

"Come in, Jacques!" he cried. His eyes were bright, and his air gay, as I had never seen it. "Come in, my son! I have a friend here, and you are the very person I want him to meet." I stepped over the threshold awkwardly enough, and stood before the stranger. He was a young man, a few years older than myself; tall and slender,--we might have been twins as far as height and build went, but there the resemblance ceased. He was fair, with such delicate colouring that he might have looked womanish but for the dark fiery blue of his eyes, and his little curled moustache. He looked the way you fancy a prince looking, Melody, when Auntie Joy tells you a fairy story, though he was simply dressed enough.

"Marquis," said Father L'Homme-Dieu, with a shade of ceremony that I had never heard before in his tone, "let me present to you M. Jacques D'Arthenay, my friend! Jacques, this is the Marquis de Ste. Valerie."

He gave my name the French p.r.o.nunciation. It was kindly meant; at my present age, I think it was perhaps rightly done; but then, it filled me with a kind of rage. The angry blood of a false pride, a false humility, surged to my brain and sang in my ears; and as the young man stepped forward with outstretched hand, crying, "A compatriot. Welcome, monsieur!" I drew back, stammering with anger. "My name is Jacques De Arthenay!"[3] I said. "I am an American, a shoemaker, and the son of a farmer."

There was a moment of silence, in which I seemed to live a year. I was conscious of everything, the well-bred surprise of the young n.o.bleman, the half-amused vexation of the priest, my own clumsy, boyish rage and confusion. In reality it was only a few seconds before I felt my friend's hand on my shoulder, with its kind, fatherly touch.

"Sit down, my child!" he said. "Does it matter greatly how a name is p.r.o.nounced? It is the same name, and I p.r.o.nounced it thus, not without a reason. Sit down, and have peace!"

There was authority as well as kindness in his voice. I sat down, still trembling and blus.h.i.+ng. Father L'Homme-Dieu went on quietly, as if nothing had happened.

"It was for the marquis's sake that I gave your name its former--and correct--p.r.o.nunciation, my son Jacques. If I mistake not, he is of the same part of France from which your ancestors came. Huguenots of Blanque, am I not right, marquis?"

I was conscious that the stranger, whom I was inwardly accusing as a pretentious puppy, a slip of a dead and worthless tree, was looking at me intently; my eyes seemed drawn to his whether I would or no. So meeting those blue eyes, there pa.s.sed as it were a flash from them into mine, a flash that warmed and lightened, as a smile broke over his face.

"D'Arthenay!" he said, in a tone that seemed to search for some remembrance. "_D'Arthenay, tenez foi! n'est-ce pas, monsieur?_"

I started. The words were the motto of my father's house. They were engraved on the stone which marked the grave of my grandfather many times back, Jacques, Sieur D'Arthenay. Seeing my agitation, the marquis leaned forward eagerly. He was full of quick, light gestures, that somehow brought my mother back to me.

"But, we are neighbours!" he cried. "We must be friends, M. D'Arthenay.

Your tower--it is a n.o.ble ruin--stands not a league from my chateau in Blanque. The Ste. Valeries and the D'Arthenays were always friends, since Adam was, and till the Grand Monarque separated them with his accursed Revocation. Monsieur, that I am enchanted at this rencounter!

_La bonne aventure, oh gai! n'est-ce pas, mon pere?_"

There was no resisting his eager gaiety. And when he quoted the nursery song that my mother used to sing, my stubborn resentment--at what? who can say?--broke and melted away, and I was smiling back into the bright, merry eyes. Once more he held out his hand, and this time I took it gladly. Father L'Homme-Dieu looked on in delight; it was a good moment.

After that the talk flowed freely. I found that the young marquis, having come on a pleasure tour to the United States, had travelled thus far out of the general route to look up the graves of some of his mother's people, who had come out with Baron Castine, but had left him, as my ancestor had done, on account of his marriage with the Indian princess. They were the Belleforts of Blanque.

"Bellefort!" I cried. "That name is on several stones in our old burying-ground. The Belforts of our village are their descendants, Father L'Homme-Dieu."

"Not Ham?" cried the father, bursting into a great laugh. "Not Ham Belfort, Jacques?"

I laughed back, nodding. "Just Ham, father!"

I never saw Father L'Homme-Dieu so amused. He struck his hands together, and leaned back in his chair, repeating over and over, "Ham Belfort!

Cousin of the Marquis de Ste. Valerie! Ham Belfort! Is it possible?"

The young n.o.bleman looked from one to the other of us curiously.

"But what?" he asked. "Ham! _c'est-a-dire, jambon, n'est-ce pas?_"

"It is also a Biblical name, marquis!" said Father L'Homme-Dieu. "I must ask who taught you your catechism!"

"True! true!" said the marquis, slightly confused. "_Sem, Ham, et j.a.phet_, perfectly! and--I have a cousin, it appears, named Jam--I should say, Ham? Will you lead me to him, M. D'Arthenay, that I embrace him?"

"You shall see him!" I said. "I don't think Ham is used to being embraced, but I will leave that to you. I will take you to see him, and to see the graves in the burying-ground, whenever you say."

"But now, at the present time, this instant!" cried Ste. Valerie, springing from his chair. "Here is Father L'Homme-Dieu dying of me, in despair at his morning broken up, his studies destroyed by chatter. Take me with you, D'Arthenay, and show me all things; Ham, also his brothers, and Noe and the Ark, if they find themselves also here. Amazing country!

astonis.h.i.+ng people!"

So off we went together, he promising Mrs. Sparrow to return in time for dinner, and informing her that she was a sylphide, which caused her to say, "Go along!" in high delight. He had brought a letter to the priest, from an old friend, and was to stay at the house.

Back across the brown fields we went. I was no longer alone; the world was full of new light, new interest. I felt that it was good to be alive; and when my companion began to sing in very lightness of heart, I joined in, and sang with right good will.

"La bonne aventure, oh gai!

La bonne aventure!"

He told me that his mother always sang him this song when he had been a good boy; I replied that mine had done the same. How many French mothers have sung the merry little lilt, I wonder? We sang one s.n.a.t.c.h and another, and I could not see that the marquise had had the advantage of the little peasant girl, if it came to songs.

The marquis--but why should I keep to the empty t.i.tle, which I was never to use after that first hour? Nothing would do but that we should be friends on the instant, and for life,--Jacques and Yvon. "Thus it was two centuries ago," my companion declared, "thus shall it be now!" and I, in my dream of wonderment and delight, was only too glad to have it so.

We talked of a thousand things; or, to be precise, he talked, and I listened. What had I to say that could interest him? But he was full of the wonders of travel, the strangeness of the new world and the new people. Niagara had shaken him to the soul, he told me; on the wings of its thunder he had soared to the empyrean. How his fanciful turns of expression come back to me as I write of him! He was proud of his English, which was in general surprisingly good.

New York he did not like,--a savage in a Paris gown, with painted face; but on Boston he looked with the eyes of a lover. What dignity! what Puritan, what maiden grace of withdrawal! An American city, where one feels oneself not a figure of chess, but a human being; where no street resembles the one before it, and one can wander and be lost in delicious windings! Ah! in Boston he could live, the life of a poet, of a scholar.

"And then,--what, my friend? I come, I leave those joys, I come away here, to--to the locality of jump-off, as you say,--and what do I find?

First, a pearl, a saint; for n.o.bleness, a prince, for holiness, an anchorite of Arabia,--Le Pere L'Homme-Dieu! Next, the ancient friend of my house, who becomes on the instant mine also, the brother for whom I have yearned. With these, the graves of my venerable ancestors, heroes of constancy, who lived for war and died for faith; graves where I go even now, where I kneel to pay my duty of respect, to drop the filial tear!"

"Don't forget your living relations!" I said, with some malice. "Here is your cousin, coming to meet us."

FOOTNOTE:

[3] p.r.o.nounced Jakes Dee Arthenay.

CHAPTER V.

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.