"True!" cried Yvon, his pa.s.sion breaking out. "Yes, it is true! What, then? Because my sister is to marry, some day,--she is but just out of her pinafores, I tell you,--because some day she is to marry, and the estates are to join, is that a reason that my friend is to be insulted, my pleasure broken up, my summer destroyed? I insist upon knowing what that cat said to you, Jacques!"
"She told me what you acknowledge," I said. "That I can be insulted I deny, unless there be ground for what is said. Mme. de Lalange did what she considered to be her duty; and--and I have spent a month of great happiness with you, marquis, and it is a time that will always be the brightest of my life."
But at this Yvon flung himself on my neck--it is not a thing practised among men in this country, but in him it seemed nowise strange, my blood being partly like his own--and wept and stormed. He loved me, I am glad to believe, truly; yet after all the most part was to him, that his party of pleasure was spoiled, and his plans broken up. And then I remembered how we had talked together that day in the old grist-mill, and how he had said that when trouble came, we should spread our wings and fly away from it. And Ham"s words came back to me, too, till I could almost hear him speak, and see the grave, wise look of him. "Take good stuff, and grind it in the Lord"s mill, and you"ve got the best this world can give." And I found that Ham"s philosophy was the one that held.
There was no more question of the gay party that afternoon. Mlle. de Ste. Valerie did not dine with us, word coming down that her head ached, and she would not go out. Yvon and I went to walk, and I led the way to my tower (so I may call it this once), thinking I would like to see it once more. All these three months and more (counting from the day I first met Yvon de Ste. Valerie at the priest"s house), I had played a second in the duet, and that right cheerfully. Though my own age, the marquis was older in many ways from his knowledge of society and its ways, and his gay, masterful manner; and I, the country lad, had been too happy only to follow his lead, and go about open-eyed, seeing all he would show, and loving him with honest admiration and pride in him. But it was curious to see how from this moment we changed; and now it was I who led, and was the master. The master in my own house, I thought for a moment, as we sat on the shelf under the great round window, and looked out over the lands that had once belonged to my people. Here once more the dream came upon me, and I had a wild vision of myself coming back after years, rich and famous, and buying back the old tower, building the castle, and holding that sweet princess by my side. The poet Coleridge, my dear, in describing a man whose wits are crazed, makes use of this remarkable expression:
"How there looked him in the face An angel beautiful and bright, And how he knew it was a fiend, That miserable knight."
This knowledge was also mercifully mine. And I was helped, too, by a thing slight enough, and yet curious. Being in distress of mind, I sought some use of my hands, as is the case with most women and some men. I fell to pulling off the dead leaves of ivy from the wall; and so, running my hand along the inside of the window, felt beneath it a carving on the stone. I lifted the leaves, which here were not so thick as in most places, and saw a shield carved with arms, and on it the motto I knew well: "_D"Arthenay, tenez foi!_"
I told my friend that I must be gone that night; that I knew his aunt desired it, and was entirely in her right, it being most unfitting that a stranger should be present on such an occasion as this. Doubtless other friends would be coming, too, and my room would be wanted.
Here he broke out in a storm, and vowed no one should have my room, and I should not stir a foot for a hundred of them. And here had she kept him in the dark, as if he were a babe, instead of the head of the house.
It was an affront never to be forgiven. If the vicomte had not been the friend of his father, he would break off the match, and forbid him the house. As it was, he was powerless, tied hand and foot.
I interrupted him, thinking such talk idle; and begged to know what manner of man this was who was coming. Was he--was he the man he should be?
He was a gallant gentleman, Yvon confessed; there was no fault to find with him, save that he was old enough to be the girl"s father. But that was all one! If he were twenty viscounts, he should not turn out his, Yvon"s friend, the only man he ever cared to call his brother,--and so on and so on, till I cut him short. For now I saw no way, Melody, but to tell him how it was with me; and this I did in as few words as might be, and begged him to let me go quietly, and say no more. For once, I think, the lad was put to such depth of sorrow as was in him. He had never guessed, never thought of this; his sister was a child to him, and must be so, he supposed, to all. How could he tell? Why had he brought me here, to suffer? He was a criminal! What could he do? And then there struck him a thought, and he glanced up sharply at me, and I saw not the face of my friend, but one cold and questioning. Had I spoken to his sister? Did she--
I cut him short at the word. Of that, I said, he could judge better than I, having been in my company daily for three months. He fell on my neck again, and implored my pardon; and said, I think, that twenty viscounts were less n.o.ble than I. I cared little for my n.o.bility; all I asked was to get away, and hide my wound among my own friendly people.
And so it was arranged that I was to go that night; and we walked back to the chateau, speaking little, but our hearts full of true affection, and--save for that one sting of a moment--trust in each other.
CHAPTER XI.
THE disturbance of my mind had been so great, that all this while I had forgotten the letter of which Mme. de Lalange had spoken the night before. I had seen it when I first went to my room, but was in no mood for village news then; I saw that it was in the large round hand of Ham Belfort, and thought it kind in him to write, seeing that it cost him some effort; then I forgot it, as I said. But now, going again to my room, and with nothing much to do save wait the hour of my departure, I took the letter up, idly enough, thinking I might as well do this as another thing. This is what I read, Melody. No fear of my forgetting the words.
FRIEND JAKEY:
I am sorry to have bad news to send you this first time of my writing. Father says to prepare your mind, but I never found it work that way myself, always liking to know straight out how things was, and I think you are the same. Your father has been hearty, for him, till about a week ago. Then he begun to act strange, and would go about looking for your mother, as if she was about the place.
Abby kep watch on him, and I happened in once or twice a day, just to pa.s.s the word, and he was always just as polite, and would read me your letters. He thought a sight of your letters, Jakey, and they gave him more pleasure than likely he"d have had if you"d have ben here, being new and strange to him, so to speak. He was a perfect gentleman; he like to read them letters, and they done credit to him and you. Last night Abby said to me, she guessed she would take her things over and stay a spell at the house, till your father was some better, he was not himself, and she owed it to you and your mother. I said she was right, I"d gone myself, but things wasn"t so I could leave, and a woman is better in sickness, however it may be when a man is well. She went over early this morning, but your father was gone. There warn"t no hide nor hair of him round the house nor in the garding. She sent for me, and I sarched the farm; but while I was at it, seems as if she sensed where he was, and she went straight to the berrin-ground, and he was layin on your mother"s grave, peaceful as if he"d just laid down a spell to rest him. He was dead and cold, Jakes, and you may as well know it fust as last. He hadn"t had no pain, for when I see him his face was like he was in heaven, and Abby says it come nearer smiling than she"d seen it sence your mother was took. So this is what my paneful duty is to tell you, and that the Lord will help you threw it is my prayer and alls that is in the village. Abby is real sick, or she would write herself. She thought a sight of your father, as I presume likely you know. We shall have the funeral to-morrow, and everything good and plain, knowing how he would wish it from remembering your mother"s. So no more, Friend Jakey; only all that"s in the village feels for you, and this news coming to you far away; and would like you to feel that you was coming home all the same, if he is gone, for there aint no one but sets by you, and they all want to see you back, and everybody says it aint the same place with you away. So I remain your friend,
HAM BELFORT.
P.S. I"d like you to give my regards to Eavan, if he remembers the grist-mill, as I guess likely he doos. Remember the upper and nether millstones, Jakey, and the Lord help you threw.
H. B.
It is sometimes the bitterest medicine, Melody, that is the most strengthening. This was bitter indeed; yet coming at this moment, it gave me the strength I needed. The sharp sting of this pain dulled in some measure that other that I suffered; and I had no fear of any weakness now. I do not count it weakness, that I wept over my poor father, lying down so quietly to die on the grave of his dear love. In my distraction, I even thought for a moment how well it was with them both, to be together now, and wished that death might take me and another to some place where no foolish things of this world should keep us apart; but that was a boy"s selfish grief, and I was now grown a man.
I read Ham"s letter over and over, as well as I could for tears; and it seemed to me a pure fruit of friendship, so that I gave thanks for him and Abby, knowing her silent for want of strength, not want of love. I should still go home, to the friendly place, and the friendly people who had known my birth and all that had fallen since. I had no place here; I was in haste to be gone.
At first I thought not to tell Yvon of what had come to me; but he coming in and finding me as I have said, I would not have him mistake my feeling, and so gave him the letter. And let me say that a woman could not have been tenderer than my friend was, in his sympathy and grieving for me. I have told you that he and my poor father were drawn to each other from the first. He spoke of him in terms which were no more than just, but which soothed and pleased me, coming from one who knew n.o.bility well, both the European sense of it, and the other. Upon this, Yvon pressed me to stay, declaring that he would go away with me, and we would travel together, till my hurt was somewhat healed, or at least I had grown used to the sting of it; but this I could not hear of. He helped me put my things together, for by this time night was coming on.
He had found his sister so suffering, he told me, that she felt unable to leave her bed; and so he had thought it best not to tell her of my departure till the morrow. And this was perhaps the bitterest drop I had to drink, my dear, to leave the house like a thief, and no word to her who had made it a palace of light to me. Indeed, when Yvon left me, to order the horses, a thought came into my mind which I found it hard to resist. There was a little balcony outside my window, and I knew that my dear love"s window (I call her so this once, the pain coming back sharp upon me of that parting hour) opened near it. If I took my violin and stepped outside, and if I played one air that she knew, then, I thought, she would understand, at least in part. She would not think that I had gone willingly without kissing her sweet hand, which I had counted on doing, the custom of the country permitting it. I took the violin, and went out into the cool night air; and I laid my bow across the strings, yet no sound came. For honour, my dear, honour, which we bring into this world with us, and which is the only thing, save those heavenly ones, that we can take from this world with us, laid, as it were, her hand on the strings, and kept them silent. A thing for which I have ever since been humbly thankful, that I never willingly or knowingly gave any touch of pain to that sweet lady"s life. But if I had played, Melody; if it had been permitted to me as a man of honour as well as a true lover, it was my mother"s little song that I should have played; and that, my child, is why you have always said that you hear my heart beat in that song.
"Il y a longtemps que je t"aime; Jamais je ne t"oublierai!"
Before we rode away, Mme. de Lalange came out to the door, leaning on her crutched stick; the horses being already there, and I about to mount. She swept me a curtsey of surprising depth, considering her infirmity.
"M. D"Arthenay," she said, "I think I have done you an injustice. I cannot regret your departure, but I desire to say that your conduct has been that of a gentleman, and that I shall always think of you as n.o.ble, and the worthy descendant of a great race." With that she held out her hand, which I took and kissed, conceiving this to be her intention; that I did it with something the proper air her eyes a.s.sured me. It is a graceful custom, but unsuited to our own country and race.
I could only reply that I thanked her for her present graciousness, and that it was upon that my thought should dwell in recalling my stay here, and not upon what was past and irrevocable; which brought the colour to her dry cheek, I thought, but I could say nothing else. And so I bowed, and we rode away; my few belongings having gone before by carrier, all save my violin, which I carried on the saddle before me.
Coming to the Tour D"Arthenay, we checked our horses, with a common thought, and looked up at the old tower. It was even as I had seen it on first arriving, save that now a clear moonlight rested on it, instead of the doubtful twilight. The ivy was black against the white light, the empty doorway yawned like a toothless mouth, and the round eye above looked blindness on us. As I gazed, a white owl came from within, and blinked at us over the curve. Yvon started, thinking it a spirit, perhaps; but I laughed, and taking off my hat, saluted the bird.
"_Monsieur mon locataire_," I said, "I have the honour to salute you!"
and told him that he should have the castle rent free, on condition that he spared the little birds, and levied taxes on the rats alone.
Looking back when we had ridden a little further, the tower had turned its back on me, and all I saw was the heaps of cut stone, lying naked in the moonlight. That was my last sight of the home of my ancestors. I had kept faith.
CHAPTER XII.
HERE ends, my dear child, the romance of your old friend"s life; if by the word romance we may rightly understand that which, even if not lasting itself, throws a brightness over all that may come after it. I never saw that fair country of France again, and since then I have lived sixty years and more; but what I brought away with me that sorrowful night has sweetened all the years. I had the honour of loving as sweet a lady as ever stepped from heaven to earth; and I had the thought that, if right had permitted, and the world been other than it was, I could have won her. Such feelings as these, my dear, keep a man"s heart set on high things, however lowly his lot may be.
I came back to my village. My own home was empty, but every house was open to me; and not a man or a woman there but offered me a home for as long as I would take it. My good friend Ham Belfort would have me come to be a son to him, he having no children. But my duty, as he clearly saw when I pointed it out, was to Abby Rock; and Abby and I were not to part for many years. Her health was never the same after my father"s death; it was her son I was to be, and I am glad to think she found me a good one.
Father L"Homme-Dieu made me kindly welcome, too, and to him and to Abby I could open my heart, and tell them all that had befallen me in these three life-long months. But I found a strange difference in their manner of receiving it; for whereas the Father understood my every feeling, and would nod his head (a kind hand on my shoulder all the while), and say yes, yes, I could not have done otherwise, and thus it was that a gentleman should feel and act,--which was very soothing to me,--Abby, on the other hand, though she must hear the story over and over again, could never gain any patience in the hearing.
"What did they want?" she would cry, her good homely face the colour of a red leaf. "An emperor would be the least that could suit them, I"ll warrant!" And though she dared not, after the first word, breathe anything against my sweet young lady, she felt no such fear about the old one, and I verily believe that if she had come upon Mme. de Lalange, she would have torn her in pieces, being extraordinary strong in her hands. Hag and witch were the kindest words she could give her; so that at last I felt bound to keep away from the subject, from mere courtesy to the absent. But this, as I have since found by observation, was the mother-nature in Abby, which will fill the mildest woman with desire to kill any one that hurts or grieves her child.
For some time I stuck close to my shoemaker"s bench, seeking quiet, as any creature does that is deeply wounded (for the wound was deep, my dear; it was deep; but I would not have had it otherwise), and seeing only those home friends, who had known the shape of my cradle, as it were, and to whom I could speak or not, as my mind was. I found solid comfort in the society of Ham, and would spend many hours in the old grist-mill; sometimes sitting in the loft with him and the sparrows, sometimes hanging over the stones, and watching the wheat pour down between them, and hearing the roar and the grinding of them. The upper and nether millstones! How Ham"s words would come back, over and over, as I thought how my life was ground between pain and longing! One day, I mind, Ham came and found me so, and I suppose my face may have showed part of what I felt; for he put his great hand on my shoulder, and shouted in my ear, "Wheat flour, Jakey! prime wheat flour, and good riz bread; I see it rising, don"t you be afeard!" But by and by the neighbours in the country round heard of my being home again; and thinking that I must have learned a vast deal overseas, they were set on having me here and there to fiddle for them. At first I thought no, I could not; there seemed to be only one tune my fiddle would ever play again, and that no dancing tune. But with using common sense, and some talk with Father L"Homme-Dieu, this foolishness pa.s.sed away, and it seemed the best thing I could do, being in sadness myself, was to give what little cheer I could to others. So I went, and the first time was the worst, and I saw at once here was a thing I could do, and do, it might be, better than another. For being with the marquis, Melody, and seeing how high folks moved, and spoke, and held themselves, it was borne in upon me that I had special fitness for a task that might well be connected with the pleasure of youth in dancing. Dancing, as I have pointed out to you many times, may be considered in two ways: first, as the mere fling of high spirits, young animals skipping and leaping, as kids in a meadow, and with no thought save to leap the highest, and prance the furthest; but second, and more truly, I must think, to show to advantage the grace (if any) and perfection of the human body, which we take to be the work of a divine hand, and the beauty of motion in accord with music. And whereas I have heard dancing condemned as unmanly, and fit only for women and young boys, I must still take the other hand, and think there is no finer sight than a well-proportioned man, with a sense of his powers, and a desire to do justice to them, moving through the figures of a contra-dance. But this is my hobby, my dear, and I may have wearied you with it before now.
I undertook, then, as my trade allowed it,--and indeed, in time the bench came to hold only the second place in the arrangement of my days,--to give instruction in dancing and deportment, to such as desired to improve themselves in these respects. The young people in the villages of that district were honest, and not lacking in wits; but they were uncouth to a degree that seemed to me, coming as I did from the home of all grace and charm, a thing horrible, and not to be endured. They were my neighbours; I was bound, or so it seemed to me, to help them to a right understanding of the mercies of a bountiful Providence, and to prevent the abuse of these mercies by cowish gambols.
I let it be understood wherever I went that whoever would study under me must be a gentleman; for a gentleman is, I take it, first and last, a gentle man, or one who out of strength brings sweetness, as in the case of Samson"s lion. To please, first the heart, by a sincere and cordial kindness, and next the eye, by a cheerful and (so far as may be) graceful demeanour; this disposition will tend, if not to great deeds, at least to the comfort and happiness of those around us. I was thought severe, and may have been so; but I lived to see a notable change wrought in that country. I remember the day, Melody, when a young man said to me with feeling, "I cannot bear to see a man take off his hat to a woman. _It makes me sick!_" To-day, if a man, young or old, should fail in this common courtesy, it would be asked what cave of the woods he came from. But let fine manners come from the heart, I would always say, else they are only as a gay suit covering a deformed and shapeless body. I recall an occasion when one of my pupils, who had made great progress by a.s.siduous study, and had attained a degree of elegance not often reached in his station, won the admiration of the whole room by the depth and grace of his bow. I praised him, as he deserved; but a few minutes after, finding him in the act of mimicking, for the public diversion, an awkward, ill-dressed poor lad, I dismissed him on the instant, and bade him never come to my cla.s.ses again.
In these ways, my child, I tried, and with fair measure of success, to ease the smart of my own pain by furthering the pleasure of others; in these ways, to which I added such skill as I had gained on the violin, making it one of my chief occupations, when work was slack, to play to such as loved music, and more especially any who were infirm in health, or in sorrow by one reason or another. It was a humble path I chose, my dear; but I never clearly saw my way to a loftier one, and here I could do good, and think I did it, under Providence. As an instance,--I was sent for, it may have been a year or two after my trouble, to go some distance. A young lady was ill, and being fanciful, and her parents well-to-do, she would have me come and play to her, having heard of me from one or another. I went, and found a poor shadow of a young woman, far gone in a decline, if I could judge, and her eyes full of a trouble that came from no bodily ailment, my wits told me. She sent her people away, saying she must have the music alone. I have seldom found a better listener, Melody, or one who spoke to me more plain in silence, her spirit answering to the music till I almost could hear the sound of it.
Feeling this, I let myself slip into the bow, as it were, more than I was aware of; and presently forgot her, or next thing to it, and was away in the rose-garden of Chateau Claire, and saw the blue eyes that held all heaven in them, and heard the voice that made my music harsh.
And when at last I brought it down to a whisper, seeing the young woman"s eyes shut, and thinking she might be asleep, she looked up at me, bright and sharp, and said, "You, too?"
I never saw her again, and indeed think she had not long to live. But it is an instance, my dear, of what a person can do, if the heart within him is tender to the sorrows of others.
After Abby"s death,--but that was years after all this,--I found it wise to leave my native village. I will not go into the cause of this, my child, since it was a pa.s.sing matter, or so I trusted. There was some one there who had great good will to me, and, not knowing my story, may have fancied that I was one who could make her happy; I thought it right to tell her how I had fared, and then, she being in distress, I left my home, and from that time, I may say, had many homes, yet none my own. I have met with rare kindness; no man of my generation, I would wager, has the number of friends I can boast, and all kind, all hearty, all ready with a "welcome to Rosin the Beau." And now here, at your aunts" kind wish and your prayer, my dearest Melody, dear as any child of my own could be, I am come to spend my last days under your roof; and what more could mortal man ask than this, I truly know not. My violin and your voice, Melody; they were made for each other; everybody says that, my dear, and neither you nor I would deny it. And when the _obligato_ is silent, as shortly it must be in the good course of nature, it is my prayer and hope that you will not miss me too much, my dear, but will go on in joy and in cheer, shedding light about you, and with your own darkness yielding a clear glory of kindness and happiness. Do not grieve for the old man, Melody, when the day comes for him to lay down the fiddle and the bow. I am old, and it is many years that Valerie has been dead, and Yvon, too, and all of them; and happy as I am, my dear, I am sometimes tired, and ready for rest. And for more than rest, I trust and believe; for new life, new strength, new work, as G.o.d shall please to give it me.
"I"ve travelled this country all over, And now to the next I must go; But I know that good quarters await me, And a welcome to Rosin the Beau."
THE END.