Jack (11 page)

One night the black boy was undressing, and Jack heard him singing to himself in a language that was strange.

“What are you singing, Mβdou?”

“I am not singing, sir; I’m talking negro talk!” and Mβdou confided to his friend his intention of running away from school. He had thought of it for some time, and was only waiting for pleasant weather; and now he meant to go to Dahomey, and find Kιrika. If Jack would go with him, they would go to Marseilles on foot, and then go on board some vessel. Nothing could happen to them, for he had his amulet all safe. Jack made many objections. Dahomey had no charms for him. He thought of the copper basin, and the terrible heads, with an emotion of sick horror; and, besides, how could he go so far from his mother?

“Good,” said Mβdou; “you can remain here, and I will go alone.”

“And when?”

“Tomorrow,” answered the negro, resolutely closing his eyes as if he knew that he would need all the strength that sleep could give him.

The next morning, when Jack passed through the large recitation-room, he saw Mβdou busily scrubbing the floor, and concluded that he had relinquished his project.

The classes were busy for an hour or two, when Moronval appeared. “Where is Mβdou?” he asked abruptly. “He has gone to market,” answered madame. Jack, however, said to himself that Madou would not return.

In a little while Moronval came back and asked the same question. His wife answered, uneasily, that she could not understand the boy’s prolonged absence.

Dinner-time came, but no Mβdou, no vegetables, and no meat.

“Something must have happened,” said Madame Moronval, more indulgent than her impatient husband, who paced up and down the corridor with his rod in his hand, while the hungry schoolboys were quite ready to devour each other. Finally, Madame Moronval sallied forth herself to buy some provisions; and on her return, burdened with packages, she was greeted by an enthusiastic shout from the children, who, when the fierceness of their hunger abated, ventured on surmises as to Madou’s whereabouts. Moronval shrewdly suspected the truth. “How much money did he have?” he asked.

“Fifteen francs,” was his wife’s timid answer.

“Fifteen francs! Then it is certain he has run away!”

“But where has he gone?” asked the doctor; “he could hardly reach Dahomey with that amount.”

Moronval scowled fiercely, and went to report to the police, for it was very essential to him that the child should be found, or, at all events, prevented from reaching Marseilles. Moronval was in wholesome fear of Monsieur Bonfils. “The world is so wicked, you know,” he said to his wife; “the boy might make some complaints which would injure the school.” Consequently, in making his report at the police office, he stated that Mβdou had carried away a large sum. “But,” he added, assuming an air of indifference, “the money part of the matter is of very little importance, compared to the dangers that the poor child runs—this dethroned king without country or people;” and Moronval dashed away a tear.

“We will find him, my good sir,” said the official; “have no anxiety.”

But Moronval was anxious, nevertheless, and so agitated, that, instead of awaiting quietly at home the result of the investigations, as he had been advised to do, he started out himself, with all the children to join in the search.

They went to each one of the gates, interrogated the customhouse officers, and gave them a description of Mβdou. Then the party repaired to the police court, for Moronval had the singular idea that in this way his pupils might learn something of Parisian life. The children, fortunately, were too young to understand all they saw, but they carried away with them a most sinister impression. Jack especially, who was the most intelligent of the boys, returned to the academy with a heavy heart, shocked at the glimpse he had caught of this under-current of life. Over and over again he said to himself, “Where can Mβdou be?”

Then the child consoled himself with the thought that the negro was far on the road to Marseilles; which road little Jack pictured to himself as running straight as an arrow, with the sea at its termination, and the vessel lying ready to sail. Only one thing disturbed him in regard to Mβdou’s journey: the weather, that had been so fine the day of his departure, had suddenly changed; and now the rain fell in torrents,—hail too, and even snow; and the wind blew around their frail dwelling, causing the poor little children of the sun to shiver in their sleep, and dream of a rocking ship and a heavy sea. Curled up under his blankets one night, listening to the howling of the fierce wind, Jack thought of his friend, imagined him half frozen lying under a tree, his thin clothing thoroughly wet. But the reality was worse than this.

“He is found!” cried Moronval, rushing into the dining-room, one morning. “He is found; I have just been notified by the police. Give me my hat and my cane!”

He was in a state of great excitement. As much from the desire to flatter the master, as from the love of noise that characterizes boys, the children hailed this news with a wild hurrah. Jack did not speak, but sighed as he said to himself, “Poor Mβdou!”

Mβdou had been, in fact, at the station-house since the evening before. It was there, amid criminals of all grades, that the presumptive heir of the kingdom of Dahomey was found by his excellent tutor.

“Ah, my unfortunate child! have I found you at last?”

The worthy Moronval could say no more; and, on seeing him throw his long arms eagerly about the neck of the little black boy, the inspector of police could not help thinking: “At last I have seen one teacher who loves his pupils!” Mβdou, however, displayed the utmost indifference. His face was positively without expression; not a ray of shame or of apprehension was visible. His eyes were wide open, but he seemed to see nothing; his face was pale—and the pallor of a negro is something appalling. He was covered with mud from head to foot, and looked like some amphibious animal who, after swimming in the water, had rolled in the mud on the shore. No hat, and no shoes. What had happened to him? He alone could have told you, and he would not speak. The policeman said, that, making his rounds the evening before, he had found the boy hidden in a lime-kiln, that he was half-starved, and stupefied by the excessive heat. Why had he lingered in Paris?

This question Moronval did not ask; nor, indeed, did he speak one word to Mβdou during their long drive to the academy. The boy was so worn out and crushed that he sank into a corner, while Moronval glanced at him occasionally with an expression of rage that at any other time would have terrified him.

Moronval’s glance was like a keen rapier, with a flash like lightning, crossing a poor little broken blade, shivered and rusty.

When Jack saw the pitiful black face, the rags and the dirt, he could hardly recognize the little king. Mβdou, as he passed, said good morning in so mournful a tone that Jack’s eyes filled with tears. The children saw nothing more of the black boy that day. Recitations went on in their usual routine, and at intervals the sound of a lash was heard, and heavy groans from Moronval’s private study. Madame Moronval turned pale, and the book she held trembled. Even when all was again silent, Jack fancied that he still heard the groans.

At dinner the principal was radiant, though seemingly exhausted by fatigue. “The little wretch!” he said to Dr. Hirsch and his wife. “The little wretch! Just, see the state he has put me into!”

That night Jack found the bed next to his occupied. Poor Mβdou had put his master into such a state that he himself had not been able to go to bed without assistance. Madame Moronval and Dr. Hirsch were there watching the lad, whose sleep was broken by those heavy sighs and sobs common to children after a day of painful excitement.

“Then, Dr. Hirsch, you don’t think him ill?” asked Madame Moronval, anxiously.

“Not in the least, madame; that race has a covering like a monitor!”

When they were alone, Jack took Mβdou’s hand and found it as burning hot as a brick from the furnace. “Dear Mβdou,” he whispered. Mβdou half opened his eyes and looked at his friend with an expression of utter discouragement.

“It’s all over with Mβdou,” he murmured; “Mβdou has lost his Gri-gri, and will never see Dahomey again.”

This was the reason, then, that he had not left Paris. Two hours after he had run away from the academy, the fifteen francs of market-money and his medal had been stolen from him. Then, relinquishing all idea of Marseilles, of the ship and of the sea, knowing that without his Gri-gri Dahomey was unattainable, Mβdou had spent eight days and nights in the lowest depths of Paris, looking for his amulet. Fearing that Moronval would discover his whereabouts, he hid during the day and ventured into the streets only after nightfall. He slept by the side of piles of bricks and mortar, which partly protected him from the wind; or crawled into an open doorway, or under the arches of a bridge.

Favored by his size and by his color, Mβdou glided about almost unseen; he had associated with criminals of all classes, and had escaped without contamination, for he thought only of finding his amulet. He had shared a crust of bread with assassins, and drank with robbers; but the little king escaped from these dangers as he had from others in Dahomey, where, when hunting with Kιrika, he had been awakened by the trumpeting of elephants and the roaring of wild beasts, and saw, under some gigantic tree, the dim shadow of some strange animal passing between himself and the bivouac fires; or caught a glimpse of some great snake slowly winding through the underbrush. But the monsters to be found in Paris are more terrible even than those in the African forests; or they would have been, had he understood the dangers he incurred. But he could not find his Gri-gri. Mβdou could not talk much, his exhaustion was so great; and Jack fell asleep with his curiosity but partially satisfied.

In the middle of the night he was awakened suddenly by a shout from Mβdou, who was singing and talking in his own language with frightful volubility. Delirium had begun.

In the morning, Dr. Hirsch announced that Mβdou was very ill. “A brain-fever!” he said, rubbing his hands in glee.

This Dr. Hirsch was a terrible man. His head was stuffed full of all sorts of Utopian ideas, of impracticable theories, and notions absolutely without method. His studies had been too desultory to amount to anything. He had mastered a few Latin phrases, and covered his real ignorance by a smattering of the science of medicine as practised among the Indians and the Chinese. He even had a strong leaning toward the magic arts, and when a human life was intrusted to his care he took that opportunity to try some experiments. Madame Moronval was inclined to call in another physician, but the principal, less compassionate, and unwilling to incur the additional expense, determined to leave the case solely in the hands of Dr. Hirsch. Wishing to have no interference, this singular physician pretended that the disease was contagious, and ordered Madou’s bed to be placed at the end of the garden in an old hot-house. For a week he tried on his little victim every drug he had ever heard of, the child making no more resistance than a sick dog would have done. When the doctor, armed with his bottles and his powders, entered the hot-house, the “children of the sun,” to whose minds a physician was always more or less of a magician, gathered about the door and listened, saying to each other in awed tones, “What is he going to do now to Mβdou?” But the doctor locked the door, and peremptorily ordered the children from its vicinity, telling them that they would be ill too, that Mβdou’s illness was contagious; and this last idea added additional mystery to that corner of the garden.

Jack, nevertheless, desired to see his friend so much that he alone of all the boys would have gladly passed the threshold, had it not been too closely guarded. One day, however, he seized an occasion when the doctor had gone in search of some forgotten drug, and crept softly into the improvised infirmary.

It was one of those half rustic buildings which are used as a shelter for rakes and hoes, or even to house some tender plants. Close by the side of Mβdou’s iron bed, in the corner, was a pile of earthen flowerpots; a broken trellis, some panes of glass, and a bundle of dried roots, completed the dismal picture; and in the chimney, as if for the protection of some fragile tropical plant, flickered a tiny fire.

Mβdou was not asleep. His poor little thin face had still the same expression of absolute indifference. His black hands, tightly clenched, lay on the outside of the bedclothes. There was a look of a sick animal in his whole attitude, and in the manner in which he turned his face toward the wall, as if an invisible road was open to his eyes through the white stones, and every chink in the wall had become a brilliant outlook toward a country known to him alone.

Jack whispered, “It is I, Mβdou,—little Jack.”

The child looked at him vacantly; he no longer understood the French language. In his fever, all recollection of it had vanished. Instinct had effaced all that art had inculcated, and Mβdou understood and spoke nothing save his savage dialect. At this moment, another of “the children of the sun,” Said, encouraged by Jack’s example, followed him into the sickroom, but, startled and disturbed by the strange scene, retreated to the doorway, and stood with affrighted eyes.

Mβdou drew one long, shivering sigh.

“He is going to sleep, I think,” whispered Said, shivering with terror; for, older than Jack, he intuitively felt the cold blast from the wings of Death, which already fanned the brow of the sick boy.

“Let us go,” said Jack, pale and troubled; and they hastily ran down the garden-walk, leaving their comrade alone in the twilight. Night came on. In that silent room, which the children had left, the fire crackled cheerfully, burning brightly, and illuminating every corner as if in search of something that was hidden. The light flickered on the ceiling and was reflected on every small window-pane, glanced over the little bed, and brought out the color of Mβdou’s red sleeve, until tired apparently of its fruitless search, discouraged and exhausted, and convinced that its heat was useless, for no one was there to warm. The fire gave one last expiring flicker, and then, like the poor little half-frozen king, who had so loved it, sank into eternal rest.