"Is your wife better? I heard she was poorly."
"No, she ain"t! I expect she"ll turn up her toes now most any day."
This seemed awkward. I muttered some expressions of regret, and was about to move on, when my companion, who had been gazing speechless and motionless at the figure before him, caught my arm.
"Present me!" he whispered. "Holy Blue! this is my cousin, my own blood!
Present me, Jacques!"
Now, I had never had occasion to make a formal introduction in my life, Melody. I had not yet begun to act as master of ceremonies at b.a.l.l.s, only as fiddler and call-man; and it is the living truth that the only form of words I could bring to mind at the moment was, "Gents, balance to partners!" I almost said it aloud; but, fortunately, my wits came back, and I stammered out, sorely embarra.s.sed:
"Ham, this is--a gentleman--who--who is staying with Father L"Homme-Dieu."
"That so? Pleased to meet you!" and Ham held out a hand like a shoulder of mutton, and engulfed the marquis"s slender fingers.
"I am delighted to make the acquaintance of Mr. Belfort," said Ste.
Valerie, with winning grace. "I please myself to think that we are related by blood. My mother was a Bellefort of Blanque; it is the French form of your name, Mr. Belfort."
"I want to know!" said Ham. "_Darned_ pleased to meet you!" He laboured for a moment, casting a glance of appeal at the oxen, who showed no disposition to a.s.sist him; then added, "You"re slim-appearin" for a Belfort; they run consid"able large in these parts."
"Truly, yes!" cried the marquis, laughing delightedly. "You desire to show the world that there are still giants. What pleasure, what rapture, to go through the crowd of small persons, as myself, as D"Arthenay here, and exhibit the person of Samson, of Goliath!"
Ham eyed him gravely. "Meanin" shows?" he asked, after a pause of reflection. "No, we"ve never shew none, as I know of. We"ve been asked, father "n" I, to allow guessin" on our weight at fairs and sech, but we jedged it warn"t jest what we cared about doin". Sim"lar with shows!"
This speech was rather beyond Ste. Valerie, and seeing him look puzzled, I struck in, "Mr. Ste. Valerie wants to see the old graves in the old burying-ground, Ham. I told him there were plenty of Belforts there, and spelling the name as he does, with two l"s and an e in the middle."
"I want to know if he spells it that way!" said Ham, politely. "We jedged they didn"t know much spellin", in them times along back, but I presume there"s different idees. Does your folks run slim as a rule?"
"Very slim, my cousin!" said Yvon. "Of my generation, there is none so great as myself."
"I _want_ to know!" said Ham; and the grave compa.s.sion in his voice was almost too much for my composure. He seemed to fear that the subject might be a painful one, and changed it with a visible effort.
"Well, there"s plenty in the old berr"in-ground spelt both ways. Likely it don"t matter to "em now."
He pondered again, evidently composing a speech; again he demanded help of the oxen, and went so far as to examine an ear of the nigh ox with anxious attention.
""Pears as if what Belforts is above the sod ought to see something of ye!" he said at last. "My woman is sick, and liable to turn--I should say, liable to pa.s.s away most any time; but if she should get better, or--anything--I should be pleased to have ye come and stop a spell with us at the grist-mill. Any of your folks in the grist business?"
"Grisst?" Ste. Valerie looked helplessly at me. I explained briefly the nature of a grist-mill, and said truly that Ham"s mill was one of the pleasantest places in the neighbourhood. Yvon was enchanted. He would come with the most lively pleasure, he a.s.sured Ham, so soon as Madame Belfort"s health should be sufficiently rehabilitated. I remember, Melody, the pride with which he rolled out that long word, and the delight with which he looked at me, to see if I noticed it.
"Meantime," he added, "I shall haste at the earliest moment to do myself the honour to call, to make inquiries for the health of madame, to present my respectful homages to monsieur your father. He will permit me to embrace him as a son?"
Fortunately Ham only heard the first part of this sentence; he responded heartily, begging the marquis to call at any hour. Then, being at the end of his talk, he shook hands once more with ponderous good will, and pa.s.sed on, he and the oxen rolling along with equal steps.
Ste. Valerie was silent until Ham was out of earshot; then he broke out.
"Holy Blue! what a prodigy! You suffer this to burst upon me, Jacques, without notice, without preparation. My nerves are permanently shattered. You tell me, a man; I behold a tower, a mountain, Atlas crowned with clouds! Thousand thunders! what bulk! what sinews! and of my race! Amazing effect of--what? Climate? occupation? In France, this race shrinks, diminishes; a rapier, keen if you will, but slender like a thread; here, it swells, expands, towers aloft,--a club of Hercules. And with my father, who could sit in my pocket, and my grandfather, who could sit in his! Figure to yourself, Jacques, that I am called _le grand Yvon!_" He was silent for a moment, then broke out again. "But the mind. D"Arthenay! the brain; how is it with that? Thought,--a lightning flash! is it not lost, wandering through a head large like that of an ox?"
I cannot remember in what words I answered him, Melody. I know I was troubled how to make it clear to him, and he so different from the other. I seemed to stand midway between the two, and to understand both.
Half of me seemed to spring up in joy at the voice of the young foreigner; his lightness, his quickness, the very way he moved his hands, seemed a part of my own nature that I had not learned to use, and now saw reflected in another. I am not sure if I make myself clear, my child; it was a singular feeling. But when I would spring forward with him, and toss my head and wave my hands as he did,--as my mother Marie did,--there was something held me back; it was the other nature in me, slow and silent, and--no! not cold, but loath to show its warmth, if I may put it so. My father in me kept me silent many a time when I might have spoken foolishness. And it was this half, my father"s half, that loved Ham Belfort, and saw the solid sweetness of nature that made that huge body a temple of good will, so to speak. He had the kind of goodness that gives peace and rest to those who lean against it. His mill was one of the places--but we shall come to that by and by!
Walking on as we talked, we soon came to the village, and I begged my new friend to come in and see my father and my home. We entered. My father was standing by the fire, facing the door, with one hand on the tall mantel-shelf. He was in one of his waking dreams, and I was struck deeply, Melody, by the beauty, and, if I may use the word about a plain man, the majesty of his looks. My companion was struck, too, for he stopped short, and murmured something under his breath; I heard the word "n.o.blesse," and thought it not amiss. My father"s eyes (they were extraordinarily bright and blue) were wide open, and looked through us and beyond us, yet saw nothing, or nothing that other eyes could see; the tender look was in them that meant the thought of my mother. But Abby came quietly round from the corner where she sat sewing, and laid her hand on his arm, and spoke clearly, yet not sharply, telling him to look and see, Jakey had brought a gentleman to see him. Then the vision pa.s.sed, and my father looked and saw us, and came forward with a stately, beautiful way that he could use, and bade the stranger welcome.
Ste. Valerie bowed low, as he might to a prince. Hearing that he was a Frenchman, my father seemed pleased. "My dear wife was a Frenchwoman!"
he said. "She was a musician, sir; I wish you could have heard her play."
"He was himself also of French descent," Ste. Valerie reminded him, with another bow; and told of the ruined tower, and the old friendship between the two houses. But my father cared nothing for descent.
"Long ago, sir!" he said. "Long ago! I have nothing to do with the dead of two hundred years back. I am a plain farmer; my son has learned the trade of shoemaking, though he also has some skill with the fiddle, I am told. Nothing compared to his mother, but still some skill."
Ste. Valerie looked from one of us to the other. "A farmer,--a shoemaker!" he said, slowly. "Strange country, this! And while your _vieille n.o.blesse_ make shoes and till the soil, who are these, monsieur, who live in some of the palaces that I have seen in your cities? In many, truly, persons of real n.o.bility also, gentlemen, whether hunting of race or of Nature"s own. But these others? I have seen them; large persons, both male and female, red as beef, their grossness illuminated with diamonds of royalty, their dwelling a magazine from the Rue de la Paix. These things are shocking to a European, M. D"Arthenay!" My father looked at him with something like reproof in his quiet gaze.
"I have never been in cities," he said. "I consider that a farmer"s life may be used as well as another for the glory of G.o.d."
Then, with a wave of his hand, he seemed to put all this away from him, and with a livelier air asked the stranger to take supper with us. Abby had been laying the cloth quietly while we were talking, and my father would have asked her to sit down with us, but she slipped away while his face was turned in the other direction, and though he looked once or twice, he soon forgot. Poor Abby! I had seen her looking at him as he talked, and was struck by her intent expression, as if she would not lose a word he might say. It seemed natural, though, that he should be her first thought; he had always been, since my mother died.
So presently we three sat about the little table, that was gay with flowers and pretty dishes. I saw Ste. Valerie"s wondering glances; was it thus, he seemed to ask, that a farmer lived, who had no woman to care for him? My father saw, too, and was pleased as I had rarely seen him.
He did not smile, but his face seemed to fill with light.
"My wife, sir," he said, "loved to see things bright and adorned. I try--my son and I try--to keep the table as she would like it. I formerly thought these matters sinful, but I have been brought to a clearer vision,--through affliction." (Strange human nature, Melody, my child! he was moved to say these words to a stranger, which he could not have said to me, his son!) "She had the French taste and lightness, my wife Mary. I should have been proud to have you see her, sir; the Lord was mindful of His own, and took her away from a world of sin and suffering."
The light died out; his eyes wandered for a moment, and then set, in a way I knew; and I began to talk fast of the first thing that came into my mind.
CHAPTER VI.
I COULD write a whole book about the summer that followed this spring day, when I first met Yvon de Ste. Valerie. Yes, and the book would be so long that no mortal man would have time to read it; but I must hurry on with my story; for truth to tell, my eyes are beginning to be not quite what they have been,--they"ll serve my time, I hope, but my writing was always small and crabbed,--and I must say what I have to say, shorter than I have begun, I perceive. After the first week, then, which he spent with Father L"Homme-Dieu, Yvon came over to our village and boarded with Abby Rock. The Father was pleased to have him come; he knew it would be a great thing for me, and he thought it would not hurt the young gentleman to live for a time with plain folks. But if he thought Yvon would look down on our village people, or hold himself better than they, he was mistaken. In a week the young Frenchman was the son and brother of the whole village. Our people were dear, good people, Melody; but I sometimes thought them a little dull; that was after my mother"s death. I suppose I had enough of another nature in me to be troubled by this, but not enough to know how to help it; later I learned a little more; but indeed, I should justly say that my lessons were begun by Yvon de Ste. Valerie. It was from him I learned, my dear, that nothing in this world of G.o.d"s is dull or common, unless we bring dull hearts and dim eyes to look at it. It is the vision, the vision, that makes the life; that vision which you, my child, with your sightless eyes, have more clearly than almost any one I have known.
He was delighted with everything. He wanted to know about everything. He declared that he should write a book, when he returned to France, all about our village, which he called Paradise. It is a pretty place, or was as I remember it. He must see how bread was made, how wool was spun, how rugs were braided. Many"s the time I have found him sitting in some kitchen, winding the great b.a.l.l.s of rags neatly cut and st.i.tched together, listening like a child while the woman told him of how many rugs she had made, and how many quilts she had pieced; and she more pleased than he, and thinking him one wonder and herself another.
He was in love with all the girls; so he said, and they had nothing to say against it. But yet there was no girl could carry a sore heart, for he treated them all alike. In this I have thought that he showed a sense and kindness beyond his years or his seeming giddiness; for some of them might well enough have had their heads turned by a gentleman, and one so handsome, and with a tongue that liked better to say "Angel!" to a woman than anything more suited to the average of the s.e.x. But no girl in the village could think herself for a moment the favoured maiden; for if one had the loveliest eyes in the world, the next had a cheek of roses and velvet, and the third walked like a G.o.ddess, and the fourth charmed his soul out of his body every time she opened her lips. And so it went on, till all understood it for play, and the pleasantest play they ever saw. But he vowed from the first that he would marry Abby Rock, and no other living woman. Abby always said yes, she would marry him the first Sunday that came in the middle of the week; and then she would try to make him eat more, though he took quite as much as was good for him, not being used to our hearty ways, especially in the mornings.
Abby was as pleased with him as a child with a kitten, and it was pretty to see them together.
"Light of my life!" Yvon would cry. "You are exquisite this morning!
Your eyes are like stars on the sea. Come, then, angelic Rock, _Rocher des Anges_, and waltz with your Ste. Valerie!" And he would take Abby by the waist, and try to waltz with her, till she reached for the broomstick. I have told you, Melody, that Abby was the homeliest woman the Lord ever made. Not that I ever noticed it, for the kindness in her face was so bright I never saw anything but that; but strangers would speak of it, and Yvon himself, before he heard her speak, made a little face, I remember, that only I could see, and whispered, had I brought him to lodge with Medusa? Medusa, indeed! I think Abby"s smile would soften any stone that had ever had a human heart beating in it, instead of the other way.
But the place in the village that Yvon loved best was Ham Belfort"s grist-mill; and when he comes to my mind, in these days, when sadder visions are softened and partly dim to me, it is mostly there that I seem to see my friend.
It was, as I have said, one of the pleasantest places in the world. To begin with, the colour and softness of it all! The window-gla.s.s was powdered white, and the light came through white and dim, and lay about in long powdery shafts, and these were white, too, instead of yellow. So was the very dust white; or rather, it was good oatmeal and wheat flour that lay thick and crumbling on the rafters above, and the wheels and pulleys and other gear. As for Ham, the first time Yvon saw him in the mill, he cried out "Mont Blanc!" and would not call him anything else for some time. For Ham was whiter than all the rest, in his working-dress, cap and jacket and breeches, white to begin with, and powdered soft and furry, like his face and eyebrows, with the flying meal. Down-stairs there was plenty of noise; oats and corn and wheat pouring into the hoppers, and the great stones going round and round, and wheels creaking and buzzing, and belts droning overhead. Yvon could not talk at all here, and I not too much; only Ham"s great voice and his father"s (old Mr. Belfort was Ham over again, gray under the powder, instead of pink and brown) could roar on quietly, if I may so express it, rising high above the rattle and clack of the machinery, and yet peaceful as the stream outside that turned the great wheels and set the whole thing flying. So, as he could not live long without talking, Yvon loved best the loft above, where the corn was stored, both in bags and unground, and where the big blowers were, and the old green fire-engine, and many other curious things. I had known them all my life, but they were strange to him, and he never tired, any more than if he had been a boy of ten. Sometimes I wondered if he could be twenty-two, as he said; sometimes when he would swing himself on to the slide, where the bags of meal and flour were loaded on to the wagons. Well, Melody, it was a thing to charm a boy"s heart; it makes mine beat a little quicker to think of it, even now; perhaps I was not much wiser than my friend, after all. This was a slide some three feet wide, and say seven or eight feet long, sloping just enough to make it pleasant, and polished till it shone, from the bags that rubbed along it day after day, loading the wagons as they backed up under it. Nothing would do but we must slide down this, as if, I say, we were children of ten years old, coming down astride of the meal-sacks, and sending a plump of flour into the air as we struck the wagon. Father Belfort thought Yvon was touched in the brain; but he was all the more gentle on this account. Boys were not allowed on the slide, unless it were a holiday, or some boy had had a hard time with sickness or what not; it was a treat rarely given, and the more prized for that. But Yvon and I might slide as much as we pleased. "Keep him cheerful, Jakey!" the dear old man would say. "Let him kibobble all he"s a mind to! I had a brother once was looney, and we kep" him happy all his life long, jest lettin" him stay a child, as the Lord intended. Six foot eight he stood, and weighed four hundred pounds."
And when the boy was tired of playing we would sit down together, and call to Ham to come up and talk; for even better than sliding, Yvon loved to hear his cousin talk. You can take the picture into your mind, Melody, my dear. The light dim and white, as I have told you, and very soft, falling upon rows and rows of full sacks, ranged like soldiers; the great white miller sitting with his back against one of these, and his legs reaching anywhere,--one would not limit the distance; and running all about him, without fear, or often indeed marking him in any way, a mult.i.tude of little birds, sparrows they were, who spent most of their life here among the meal-sacks. Sometimes they hopped on his shoulder, or ran over his head, but they never minded his talking, and he sat still, not liking to disturb them. It was a pretty sight of extremes in bulk, and in nature too; for while Ham was afraid to move, for fear of troubling them, they would bustle up to him and c.o.c.k their heads, and look him in the eye as if they said, "Come on, and show me which is the biggest!"
There you see him, my dear; and opposite to him you might see a great mound or heap of corn that shone yellow as gold. "_Le Mont d"Or_," Yvon called it; and nothing would do but he must sit on this, lifted high above us, yet sliding down every now and then, and climbing up again, with the yellow grains slipping away under him, smooth and bright as pebbles on the sh.o.r.e. And for myself, I was now here and now there, as I found it more comfortable, being at home in every part of the friendly place.
How we talked! Ham was mostly a silent fellow; but he grew to love the lad so that the strings of his tongue were loosened as they had never been before. His woman, too (as we say in those parts, Melody; wife is the more genteel expression, but I never heard Ham use it. My father, on the other hand, never said anything else; a difference in the fineness of ear, my dear, I have always supposed),--his woman, I say, or wife, had not "turned up her toes," but recovered, and as he was a faithful and affectionate man, his heart was enlarged by this also. However it was, he talked more in those weeks, I suppose, than in the rest of his life put together. Bits of his talk, homely and yet wise, come back to me across the sixty years. One day, I remember, we talked of life, as young men love to talk. We said nothing that had not been said by young men since Abel"s time, I do suppose, but it was all new to us; and indeed, my two companions had fresh ways of putting things that seemed to make them their own in a manner. Yvon maintained that gaiety was the best that life had to give; that the b.u.t.terfly being the type of the human soul, the nearer man could come to his prototype, the better for him and for all. Sorrow and suffering, he cried, were a blot on the scheme, a mistake, a concession to the devil; if all would but spread their wings and fly away from it, houp! it would no longer exist. "_Et voila!_"
We laughed, but shook our heads. Ham meditated awhile, and then began in his strong, quiet voice, a little husky, which I always supposed was from his swallowing so much raw meal and flour.