Jack (14 page)

“Heavens! how pretty your boy is!” said the old woman, delighted by Jack’s appearance.

“Is he not, Mθre 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 chβteau. 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 Mθre 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. Pθre 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 bow 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!”