So many of your wildly impulsive people repent them of their generosities as soon as the magnanimous fervour has cooled. The grandeur of Paragot lay in the fact that he never repented. He was fantastic, self-indulgent, wastrel, braggart, what you will; but he had an exaggerated notion of the value of every human soul save his own. The destiny of poor Blanquette was to him of infinitely more importance than that of the wayward genius that was Paragot. The pathos of his point of view had struck me, even as a child, when he discoursed on my prospects.
"I am Paragot, my son," he would say, "a film full of wind and wonder, fantasy and folly, driven like thistledown about the world. I do not count. But you, my little Asticot, have the Great Responsibility before you. It is for you to uplift a corner of the veil of Life and show joy to men and women where they would not have sought it. Work now and gather wisdom, my son, so that when the Great Day comes you may not miss your destiny." And once, he added wistfully--"as I have missed mine."
As Paragot decided that we should not start off then and there into the unknown but remain at the cafe until we had laid our plan of campaign, Blanquette took her valise into the house, and, for the rest of the day, busied herself in the kitchen with the _patronne_; Paragot drank with the villagers in the cafe; and I, when Thierry and Narcisse had given me all the companions.h.i.+p they had to offer, curled myself up on the mattress spread in a corner of the tiny _salle a manger_ and went to sleep.
The next morning Paragot awakened with an Idea. He would go to Aix-les-Bains which was close by, and would return in the evening. The nature of his errand he would not tell me. Who was I, little grey worm that I was, to question his outgoings and his incomings? The little grey worm would stay with Blanquette and Narcisse and see to it that they did not bite each other. I humbly accepted the rebuke and obeyed the behest.
The afternoon found the three of us in a field under a tree; Blanquette embracing her knees, and the dog asleep with his throat across her feet.
She was wearing her old cotton dress, and as she had been helping the _patronne_ all the morning, her sleeves were rolled up to her elbows displaying stout, stubby arms. The top b.u.t.ton of her bodice was open; she was bare-headed, but her hair, little deeper in shade than her tanned face and neck, was coiled neatly. Had it not been for the hard grip of the day before I should have jealously resented her admission into our vagabond fraternity. As it was, from the height of my sixteen-year-old masculinity I somewhat looked down upon her: not as poor Blanquette, the zither-playing vagrant; but as a girl. Could we, creation"s lords, do with a creature of an inferior s.e.x in our wanderings? Could she perform our feats of endurance? I questioned her anxiously.
"_Moi?_" she laughed, "I am as strong as any man. You will see."
She leaped to her feet and, before I could protest, had picked me off the ground like a kitten and was tossing me in her arms.
"_Voila!_" she said, depositing me tenderly on the gra.s.s; and having collected the dislodged Narcisse she embraced her knees and laughed again. It was a kind honest laugh; a good-natured, big boy"s laugh, coming full out of her eyes and shewing her strong white teeth. I lost the sense of insult in admiration of her strength.
"You should have been a boy, Blanquette," said I.
She a.s.sented, acknowledging at once her inferiority and thus restoring my self respect.
"You are lucky, you, to be one. In this world the egg is for the men and the sh.e.l.l is for the women."
"Why don"t you cut off your hair and put on boy"s clothes?" I asked.
"Then you would get the egg. No one could tell the difference."
"You don"t think I look like a woman? I? _Mon Dieu!_ Where are your eyes?"
She was actually indignant with me who had thought to please her: my first encounter with the bewildering paradox of woman.
"_Ah! mais non_," she panted. "I may be strong like a man, but _grace a Dieu_, I don"t resemble one. Look."
And she sat bolt upright, her hands at her waist developing her bust to its full extent. She was not _jolie, jolie_, she explained, but she was as solidly built as another; I was to examine myself and see how like I was to the flattest of boards. Routed I chewed blades of gra.s.s in silence until she spoke again.
"Tell me of the _patron_."
"The _patron_?" I asked, puzzled.
"Yes--Monsieur--your master."
"You must call him _maitre_," said I, "not _patron_." For the _patron_ was any peddling "boss," the leader of a troupe of performing dogs or the miserable landlord of a village inn, Paragot a _patron_!
"I meant no harm. I have too much respect for him," said Blanquette, humbly.
Again reinstated in my position of superiority I explained the Master to her feminine intelligence.
"He has been to every place in the world and knows everything that is to be known, and speaks every language that is spoken under the sun, and has read every book that ever was written, and I have seen him break a violin over a man"s head."
"_Tiens!_" said Blanquette.
"In the Forum at Rome last winter he had an argument with the most learned professor in Europe who is making the excavations, and proved him to be wrong."
"_Tiens!_" repeated Blanquette, much impressed, though of Forum or excavations she had no more notion than Narcisse.
"If he wanted to be a king tomorrow, he would only have to go up to a throne and sit upon it."
"But no," said Blanquette. "To be a king one must be a king"s son."
"How do you know that he isn"t?" I asked with a could-and if-I-would expression of mystery.
"King"s sons don"t go about the high roads with little _gamins_ like you," replied the practical Blanquette.
"How do you know that I am not a king"s son too?" I asked, less with the idea of self-aggrandis.e.m.e.nt than that of vindication of Paragot.
"Because you yourself said that your mother sold you as my mother sold me to Pere Paragot."
Whereupon it suddenly occurred to me that as far as retentiveness of memory was concerned, Blanquette was not such a fool as in my arrogance I had set her down to be. I was going to retort that his magnificence in purchasing me proved him a personage of high order, but as I quickly reflected that the same argument might apply to the rank of the contemned Pere Paragot, I refrained. A silence ensuing, I uncomfortably resolved to study my master with a view to acquiring his skill in repartee.
"But what does he do, the Master?" enquired Blanquette.
"Do? What do you mean?"
"How does he earn his living?"
"That shows you know nothing about him," I cried triumphantly. "King"s sons do not earn their living. They have got it already. Haven"t you ever read that in books?"
"I can read and write, but I don"t read books," sighed Blanquette. "I am not clever. You will have to teach me."
"This is the book I am reading," said I, taking the "Recits des Temps Merovingiens" from my pocket.
Again Blanquette sighed. "You must be very clever, Asticot."
"Not at all," said I modestly, but I felt that it was nice of Blanquette to realise the intellectual gulf between us. "It is the Master who has taught me all I know." I spoke, G.o.d wot, as if my knowledge would have burst through the covers of an Encyclopaedia--"Three years ago I could not speak a word of French. Fancy. And now----"
"You still talk like an Englishman," said Blanquette.
Looking back now on those absurd far-off days, I wonder whether after all I did not learn as much that was vital from Blanquette as from Paragot. Her downright, direct, unimaginative common-sense amounted to genius. At the time I preferred genius in the fantastic form which inflated my bubbles of self-conceit, instead of bursting them; but in after life one has a high appreciation of the burster.
In the moment"s mortification, however, I recriminated.
"You make worse mistakes than I do. You say "_j"allons faire_," when you ought to say "_je vais faire_" and I heard you talk about _une chien_."
"That is because I have no education," replied Blanquette, with her grave humility. "I speak like the peasants; not like instructed people--not like the Master, for instance."
"No one could speak like the Master," said I.
There was a long silence. Blanquette hugged her knees and Narcisse snored at her feet, accepting her as vagabond comrade. I lay on my back and forgot Blanquette; and out of the intricacies of myriad leaf and branch against the sky wove pictures of Merovingian women. There where the black branches cut a lozenge of blue was the pale Queen Galeswinthe lying on her bed. Through yon dark cl.u.s.ter of under-leaves one could discern the strangler sent by King Hilperic to murder her. And in that radiant patch silhouetted clear and cold and fierce in loveliness was Fredegonde waiting for the King. She was a glittering sword of a woman whose slayings fascinated me. I much preferred her to the gentler Brunehilde whose form I saw outlined in a soft shadow of green. I tried to find frames in my aerial gallery for Brunehilde"s two daughters, Ingonde and Chlodoswinde, especially the latter whose name appealed to my acquired taste for odd nomenclature, and the conscious effort brought me back to the modern world, and the sound of Blanquette"s voice.