Jack Part 15

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 fas.h.i.+on, 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 f.a.gots on her back. She stood in the path and a.s.sailed 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--pus.h.i.+ng back his chair, or moving his table.

He had laid a sheet of paper before him; on this paper was written the t.i.tle 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 a.s.sumed 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 opera 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'Ar-genton, 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.

CHAPTER X.--THE FIRST APPEARANCE OF BeLISAIRE.

One afternoon, when D'Argenton and Charlotte had gone to drive, Jack, who was alone with Mother Archambauld, saw that he must relinquish his usual excursion to the forest on account of a storm that was coming up.

The July sky was heavy with black clouds, copper-colored on the edges; distant rumblings of thunder were heard, and the valley had that air of expectation which often precedes a storm.

Fatigued by the child's restlessness, the forester's wife looked out at the weather, and said to Jack,--

"Come, Master Jack, it does not rain; and it would be very kind of you to go and get me a little gra.s.s for my rabbits."

The child, enchanted at being of use, took a basket and went gayly off to search in a ditch for the food the rabbits liked.

The white road stretched before him, the rising wind blew the dust in clouds, when suddenly Jack heard a voice crying, "Hats! Hats to sell!

Nice Panamas!"

Jack looked over the edge of the ditch, and saw a pedler carrying on his shoulders an enormous basket piled with straw hats. He walked as if he were footsore and weary.

Have you ever thought how dismal the life of an itinerant salesman must be? He knows not where he will sleep at night, or even that he can obtain the shelter of a barn; for the average peasant always regards a pedler, or any stranger, indeed, as an adventurer, and watches him with distrustful eyes.

"Hats! Hats to sell!" For whose ears did he intend this repet.i.tion of his monotonous cry? There was not a person in sight, nor a house. Was it for the benefit of the birds, who, feeling the coming of the storm, had taken shelter in the trees? The man took a seat on a pile of stones, while Jack, on the other side of the road, examined him with much curiosity. His face was forbidding to a certain extent, but expressed so much suffering in the heavy features, that Jack's kind heart was filled with pity. At that moment a thunder-clap was heard; the man looked up at the skies anxiously, and then called to Jack to ask how far off the village was.

"Half a mile exactly," answered the child.

"And the shower will be here in a few moments," said the pedler, despairingly. "All my hats will be wet, and I shall be ruined."

The child thought of his own memorable journey, and he wished to do a kind act.

"You can come to our house," he said, "and then your hats will not be injured." The pedler grasped eagerly at this permission, for his merchandise was so delicate. The two hurried on as fast as possible; the man walking, however, as if he were treading on hot iron.

"Are you in pain?" asked the child.