Tears leaped into the eyes of both. Bonaventure s.n.a.t.c.hed Claude to his arms and kissed him. It was less than nothing to him that every eye on and off the train was on them. He relaxed his grasp. "Sidonie! tell him farewell!--ah! nay! shake not hands only! Kiss her, Claude! Kiss him, my own Sidonie, kiss him farewell!"
It was done. Claude blushed red, and Sidonie stepped back, wiping her eyes. Maximian moved into the void, and smiling gave his hand to the young adventurer.
"Adjieu, Claude." He waved a hand awkwardly. "Teck care you"seff," and dropped the hand audibly against his thigh.
Claude"s eye sought his father. St. Pierre pressed forward, laid his right hand upon his son"s shoulder, and gazed into his face. His voice was low and husky. He smiled.
"Claude,"--tears rose in his eyes, but he swallowed them down,--"Claude,--my baby,"--and the flood came. The engine-bell rang.
The conductor gave the warning word, the youth leaped upon his father"s neck. St. Pierre thrust him off, caught his two cheeks between fluttering palms and kissed him violently; the train moved, the young man leaped aboard, the blue uniforms disappeared, save one on the rear platform, the bell ceased, the gliding ma.s.s shrunk and dwindled away, the rails clicked more and more softly, the tearful group drew closer together as they gazed after the now-unheard train.
It melted to a point and disappeared, the stillness of forest and prairie fell again upon the place, the soaring sun shone down, and Claude St. Pierre was gone to seek his fortune.
CHAPTER III.
THE TAVERN FIRESIDE.
I call to mind a certain wild, dark night in November. St. Pierre lay under his palmetto thatch in the forest behind Grande Pointe, and could not sleep for listening to the wind, and wondering where his son was, in that wild Texas norther. On the Mississippi a steamer, upward bound, that had whistled to land at Belmont or Belle Alliance plantation, seemed to be staying there afraid to venture away. Miles southward beyond the river and the lands on that side, Lake des Allemands was combing with the tempest and hissing with the rain.
Still farther away, on the little bayou and at the railway-station in the edge of the swamp that we already know, and westward over the prairie where Claude had vanished into the world, all life was hidden and mute. And farther still, leagues and leagues away, the mad tempest was riding the white-caps in Berwick"s Bay and Grande Lake; and yet beyond, beyond New Iberia, and up by Carancro, and around again by St. Martinville, Breaux Bridge, Grand Coteau, and Opelousas, and down once more across the prairies of Vermilion, the marshes about Cote Blanche Bay, and the islands in the Gulf, it came bounding, screaming, and buffeting. And all the way across that open sweep from Mermentau to Cote Gelee it was tearing the rain to mist and freezing it wherever it fell, only lulling and warming a little about Joseph Jefferson"s Island, as if that prank were too mean a trick to play upon his orange-groves.
In Vermilionville the wind came around every corner piercing and pinching to the bone. The walking was slippery; and though it was still early bedtime and the ruddy lamp-light filled the wet panes of some window every here and there, scarce a soul was stirring without, on horse or afoot, to be guided by its kindly glow.
At the corner of two streets quite away from the court-house square, a white frame tavern, with a wooden Greek porch filling its whole two-story front and a balcony built within the porch at the second-story windows in oddest fashion, was glowing with hospitable firelight. It was not nearly the largest inn of the place, nor the oldest, nor the newest, nor the most accessible. There was no clink of gla.s.s there. Yet in this, only third year of its present management, it was the place where those who knew best always put up.
Around the waiting-room fire this evening sat a goodly semicircle of men,--commercial travellers. Some of them were quite dry and comfortable, and wore an air of superior fortune over others whose shoes and lower garments sent out more or less steam and odor toward the open fireplace. Several were smoking. One who neither smoked nor steamed stood with his back to the fire and the skirts of his coat lifted forward on his wrists. He was a rather short, slight, nervy man, about thirty years of age, with a wide pink baldness running so far back from his prominent temples and forehead that when he tipped his face toward the blue joists overhead, enjoying the fatigue of a well-filled day, his polished skull sent back the firelight brilliantly. There was a light skirmish of conversation going on, in which he took no part. No one seemed really acquainted with another.
Presently a man sitting next on the left of him put away a quill toothpick in his watch-pocket, looked up into the face of the standing man, and said, with a faint smile:
"That job"s done!"
With friendly gravity the other looked down and replied, "I never use a quill toothpick."
"Yes," said the one who sat, "it"s bad. Still I do it."
"Nothing," continued the other,--"nothing harder than a sharpened white-pine match should ever go between the teeth. Brush thoroughly but not violently once or twice daily with a moderately stiff brush dipped in soft water into which has been dropped a few drops of the tincture of myrrh. A brush of badger"s hair is best. If tartar acc.u.mulates, have it removed by a dentist. Do not bite thread or crack nuts with the teeth, or use the teeth for other purposes than those for which nature designed them." He bent toward his hearer with a smile of irresistible sweetness, drew his lips away from his gums, snapped his teeth together loudly twice or thrice, and smiled again, modestly. The other man sought defence in buoyancy of manner.
"Right you are!" he chirruped. He reached up to his adviser"s blue and crimson neck-scarf, and laid his finger and thumb upon a large, solitary pear-shaped pearl. "You"re like me; you believe in the real thing."
"I do," said the pearl"s owner; "and I like people that like the real thing. A pearl of the first water _is_ real. There"s no sham there; no deception--except the iridescence, which is, as you doubtless know, an optical illusion attributable to the intervention of rays of light reflected from microscopic corrugations of the nacreous surface. But for that our eye is to blame, not the pearl. See?"
The seated man did not reply; but another man on the speaker"s right, a large man, widest at the waist, leaned across the arm of his chair to scrutinize the jewel. Its owner turned his throat for the inspection, despite a certain grumness and crocodilian aggressiveness in the man"s interest.
"I like a diamond, myself," said the new on-looker, dropped back in his chair, and met the eyes of the pearl"s owner with a heavy glance.
"Tastes differ," kindly responded the wearer of the pearl. "Are you acquainted with the language of gems?"
The big-waisted man gave a negative grunt, and spat bravely into the fire. "Didn"t know gems could talk," he said.
"They do not talk, they speak," responded their serene interpreter.
The company in general noticed that, with all his amiability of tone and manner, his mild eyes held the big-waisted man with an uncomfortable steadiness. "They speak not to the ear, but to the eye and to the thought:
"Thought is deeper than all speech; Feeling deeper than all thought; Souls to souls can never teach What unto themselves was taught.""
The speaker"s victim writhed, but the riveted gaze and an uplifted finger pinioned him. "You should know--every one should know--the language of gems. There is a language of flowers:
"To me the meanest flower that blows can give Thoughts that do often lie too deep for tears."
But the language of gems is as much more important than that of flowers as the imperishable gem is itself more enduring than the withering, the evanescent blossom. A gentleman may not with safety present to a lady a gem of whose accompanying sentiment he is ignorant. But with the language of gems understood between them, how could a sentiment be more exquisitely or more acceptably expressed than by the gift of a costly gem uttering that sentiment with an unspoken eloquence! Did you but know the language of gems, your choice would not be the diamond. "Diamond me no diamonds," emblems of pride--
"Pride in their port, defiance in their eye, I see the lords of humankind pa.s.s by."
"Your choice would have been the pearl, symbol of modest loveliness.
"Full many a gem of purest ray serene The dark, unfathomed caves of ocean bear;"
"Orient pearls at random strung;"
"Fold, little trembler, thy fluttering wing, Freely partake of love"s fathomless spring; So hallowed thy presence, the spirit within Hath whispered, "The angels protect thee from sin."""
The speaker ceased, with his glance hovering caressingly over the little trembler with fluttering wing, that is, the big-waisted man.
The company sat in listening expectancy; and the big-waisted man, whose eyes had long ago sought refuge in the fire, lifted them and said, satirically, "Go on," at the same time trying to buy his way out with a smile.
"It"s your turn," quickly responded the jewel"s owner, with something droll in his manner that made the company laugh at the other"s expense. The big-waisted man kindled, then smiled again, and said:
"Was that emblem of modest loveliness give" to you symbolically, or did you present it to yourself?"
"I took it for a debt," replied the wearer, bowing joyously.
"Ah!" said the other. "Well, I s"pose it was either that or her furniture?"
"Thanks, yes." There was a pause, and then the pearl"s owner spoke on.
"Strange fact. That was years ago. And yet"--he fondled his gem with thumb and finger and tender glance--"you"re the first man I"ve met to whom I could sincerely and symbolically present it, and you don"t want it. I"m sorry."
"I see," said the big-waisted man, glaring at him.
"So do I," responded the pearl"s owner. A smile went round, and the company sat looking into the fire. Outside the wind growled and scolded, shook and slapped the house, and thrashed it with the rain. A man sitting against the chimney said:
"If this storm keeps on six hours longer I reduce my estimate of the cotton-crop sixty-five thousand bales." But no one responded; and as the importance died out of his face he dropped his gaze into the fire with a pretence of deep meditation. Presently another, a good-looking young fellow, said:
"Well, gents, I never cared much for jewelry. But I like a nice scarf-pin; it"s n.o.bby. And I like a handsome seal-ring." He drew one from a rather chubby finger, and pa.s.sed it to his next neighbor, following it with his eyes, and adding: "That"s said to be a real intaglio. But--now, one thing I don"t like, that"s to see a lady wear a quant.i.ty of diamond rings outside of her glove, and heavy gold chains, and"--He was interrupted. A long man, with legs stiffened out to the fire, lifted a cigar between two fingers, sent a soft jet of smoke into the air, and began monotonously:
""Chains on a Southern woman? Chains?"
I know the lady that wrote that piece." He suddenly gathered himself up for some large effort. "I can"t recite it as she used to, but"--And to the joy of all he was interrupted.
"Gentlemen," said one, throwing a cigarette stump into the fire, "that brings up the subject of the war. By the by, do you know what that war cost the Government of the United States?" He glanced from one to another until his eye reached the wearer of the pearl, who had faced about, and stood now, with the jewel glistening in the firelight, and who promptly said: