He put his face down close, and shut his eyes, drawing in the delicious odor with long, deep breaths. What bliss it would be to have that whole loaf for his own,--he, little Jules, who was to have no supper that night! He held it up in the moonlight, hungrily looking at it on every side. There was not a broken place to be found anywhere on its surface; not one crack in all that hard, brown glaze of crust, from which he might pinch the tiniest crumb.
For a moment a mad impulse seized him to tear it in pieces, and eat every sc.r.a.p, regardless of the reckoning with Brossard afterwards. But it was only for a moment. The memory of his last beating stayed his hand. Then, fearing to dally with temptation, lest it should master him, he thrust the bread under his arm, and ran every remaining step of the way home.
Brossard took the loaf from him, and pointed with it to the stairway,--a mute command for Jules to go to bed at once. Tingling with a sense of injustice, the little fellow wanted to shriek out in all his hunger and misery, defying this monster of a man; but a struggling sparrow might as well have tried to turn on the hawk that held it. He clenched his hands to keep from s.n.a.t.c.hing something from the table, set out so temptingly in the kitchen, but he dared not linger even to look at it. With a feeling of utter helplessness he pa.s.sed it in silence, his face white and set.
Dragging his tired feet slowly up the stairs, he went over to the cas.e.m.e.nt window, and swung it open; then, kneeling down, he laid his head on the sill, in the moonlight. Was it his dream that came back to him then, or only a memory? He could never be sure, for if it were a memory, it was certainly as strange as any dream, unlike anything he had ever known in his life with Henri and Brossard. Night after night he had comforted himself with the picture that it brought before him.
He could see a little white house in the middle of a big lawn. There were vines on the porches, and it must have been early in the evening, for the fireflies were beginning to twinkle over the lawn. And the gra.s.s had just been cut, for the air was sweet with the smell of it. A woman, standing on the steps under the vines, was calling "Jules, Jules, it is time to come in, little son!"
But Jules, in his white dress and shoulder-knots of blue ribbon, was toddling across the lawn after a firefly.
Then she began to call him another way. Jules had a vague idea that it was a part of some game that they sometimes played together. It sounded like a song, and the words were not like any that he had ever heard since he came to live with Henri and Brossard. He could not forget them, though, for had they not sung themselves through that beautiful dream every time he had it?
"Little Boy Blue, oh, where are you?
O, where are you-u-u-u?"
He only laughed in the dream picture and ran on after the firefly. Then a man came running after him, and, catching him, tossed him up laughingly, and carried him to the house on his shoulder.
Somebody held a gla.s.s of cool, creamy milk for him to drink, and by and by he was in a little white night-gown in the woman"s lap. His head was nestled against her shoulder, and he could feel her soft lips touching him on cheeks and eyelids and mouth, before she began to sing:
"Oh, little Boy Blue, lay by your horn, And mother will sing of the cows and the corn, Till the stars and the angels come to keep Their watch, where my baby lies fast asleep."
Now all of a sudden Jules knew that there was another kind of hunger worse than the longing for bread. He wanted the soft touch of those lips again on his mouth and eyelids, the loving pressure of those restful arms, a thousand times more than he had wished for the loaf that he had just brought home. Two hot tears, that made his eyes ache in their slow gathering, splashed down on the window-sill.
Down below Henri opened the kitchen door and snapped his fingers to call the dog. Looking out, Jules saw him set a plate of bones on the step.
For a moment he listened to the animal"s contented crunching, and then crept across the room to his cot, with a little moan. "O-o-oh--o-oh!" he sobbed. "Even the dog has more than I have, and I"m _so_ hungry!" He hid his head awhile in the old quilt; then he raised it again, and, with the tears streaming down his thin little face, sobbed in a heartbroken whisper: "Mother! Mother! Do you know how hungry I am?"
A clatter of knives and forks from the kitchen below was the only answer, and he dropped despairingly down again.
"She"s so far away she can"t even hear me!" he moaned. "Oh, if I could only be dead, too!"
He lay there, crying, till Henri had finished washing the supper dishes and had put them clumsily away. The rank odor of tobacco, stealing up the stairs, told him that Brossard had settled down to enjoy his evening pipe. Through the cas.e.m.e.nt window that was still ajar came the faint notes of an accordeon from Monsieur Greville"s garden, across the way.
Gabriel, the coachman, was walking up and down in the moonlight, playing a wheezy accompaniment to the only song he knew. Jules did not notice it at first, but after awhile, when he had cried himself quiet, the faint melody began to steal soothingly into his consciousness. His eyelids closed drowsily, and then the accordeon seemed to be singing something to him. He could not understand at first, but just as he was dropping off to sleep he heard it quite clearly:
"Till the stars and the angels come to keep Their watch, where my baby lies fast asleep."
Late in the night Jules awoke with a start, and sat up, wondering what had aroused him. He knew that it must be after midnight, for the moon was nearly down. Henri was snoring. Suddenly such a strong feeling of hunger came over him, that he could think of nothing else. It was like a gnawing pain. As if he were being led by some power outside of his own will, he slipped to the door of the room. The little bare feet made no noise on the carpetless floor. No mouse could have stolen down the stairs more silently than timid little Jules. The latch of the kitchen door gave a loud click that made him draw back with a shiver of alarm; but that was all. After waiting one breathless minute, his heart beating like a trip-hammer, he went on into the pantry.
The moon was so far down now, that only a white glimmer of light showed him the faint outline of things; but his keen little nose guided him.
There was half a cheese on the swinging shelf, with all the bread that had been left from supper. He broke off great pieces of each in eager haste. Then he found a crock of goat"s milk. Lifting it to his mouth, he drank with big, quick gulps until he had to stop for breath. Just as he was about to raise it to his lips again, some instinct of danger made him look up. There in the doorway stood Brossard, bigger and darker and more threatening than he had ever seemed before.
[Ill.u.s.tration: "IT FELL TO THE FLOOR WITH A CRASH."]
A frightened little gasp was all that the child had strength to give. He turned so sick and faint that his nerveless fingers could no longer hold the crock. It fell to the floor with a crash, and the milk spattered all over the pantry. Jules was too terrified to utter a sound. It was Brossard who made the outcry. Jules could only shut his eyes and crouch down trembling, under the shelf. The next instant he was dragged out, and Brossard"s merciless strap fell again and again on the poor shrinking little body, that writhed under the cruel blows.
Once more Jules dragged himself up-stairs to his cot, this time bruised and sore, too exhausted for tears, too hopeless to think of possible to-morrows.
Poor little prince in the clutches of the ogre! If only fairy tales might be true! If only some gracious spirit of elfin lore might really come at such a time with its magic wand of healing! Then there would be no more little desolate hearts, no more grieved little faces with undried tears upon them in all the earth. Over every threshold where a child"s wee feet had pattered in and found a home, it would hang its guardian Scissors of Avenging, so that only those who belong to the kingdom of loving hearts and gentle hands would ever dare to enter.
CHAPTER IV.
A LETTER AND A MEETING.
Nearly a week later Joyce sat at her desk, hurrying to finish a letter before the postman"s arrival.
"Dear Jack," it began.
"You and Mary will each get a letter this week. Hers is the fairy tale that Cousin Kate told me, about an old gate near here. I wrote it down as well as I could remember. I wish you could see that gate. It gets more interesting every day, and I"d give most anything to see what lies on the other side. Maybe I shall soon, for Marie has a way of finding out anything she wants to know. Marie is my new maid. Cousin Kate went to Paris last week, to be gone until nearly Christmas, so she got Marie to take care of me.
"It seems so odd to have somebody b.u.t.ton my boots and brush my hair, and take me out to walk as if I were a big doll. I have to be very dignified and act as if I had always been used to such things. I believe Marie would be shocked to death if she knew that I had ever washed dishes, or pulled weeds out of the pavement, or romped with you in the barn.
"Yesterday when we were out walking I got so tired of acting as if I were a hundred years old, that I felt as if I should scream. "Marie," I said, "I"ve a mind to throw my m.u.f.f in the fence-corner and run and hang on behind that wagon that"s going down-hill." She had no idea that I was in earnest. She just smiled very politely and said, "Oh, mademoiselle, impossible! How you Americans do love to jest." But it was no joke. You can"t imagine how stupid it is to be with n.o.body but grown people all the time. I"m fairly aching for a good old game of hi spy or prisoner"s base with you. There is nothing at all to do, but to take poky walks.
"Yesterday afternoon we walked down to the river. There"s a double row of trees along it on this side, and several benches where people can wait for the tram-cars that pa.s.s down this street and then across the bridge into Tours. Marie found an old friend of hers sitting on one of the benches,--such a big fat woman, and oh, such a gossip! Marie said she was tired, so we sat there a long time. Her friend"s name is Clotilde Robard. They talked about everybody in St. Symphorien.
"Then I gossiped, too. I asked Clotilde Robard if she knew why the gate with the big scissors was never opened any more. She told me that she used to be one of the maids there, before she married the spice-monger and was Madame Robard. Years before she went to live there, when the old Monsieur Ciseaux died, there was a dreadful quarrel about some money.
The son that got the property told his brother and sister never to darken his doors again.
[Ill.u.s.tration: OUT WITH MARIE.]
"They went off to America, and that big front gate has never been opened since they pa.s.sed out of it. Clotilde says that some people say that they put a curse on it, and something awful will happen to the first one who dares to go through. Isn"t that interesting?
"The oldest son, Mr. Martin Ciseaux, kept up the place for a long time, just as his father had done, but he never married. All of a sudden he shut up the house, sent away all the servants but the two who take care of it, and went off to Algiers to live. Five years ago he came back to bring his little grand-nephew, but n.o.body has seen him since that time.
"Clotilde says that an orphan asylum would have been a far better home for Jules (that is the boy"s name), for Brossard, the caretaker, is so mean to him. Doesn"t that make you think of Prince Ethelried in the fairy tale? "Little and lorn; no fireside welcomed him and no lips gave him a friendly greeting."
"Marie says that she has often seen Jules down in the field, back of his uncle"s house, tending the goats. I hope that I may see him sometime.
"Oh, dear, the postman has come sooner than I expected. He is talking down in the hall now, and if I do not post this letter now it will miss the evening train and be too late for the next mail steamer. Tell mamma that I will answer all her questions about my lessons and clothes next week. Oceans of love to everybody in the dear little brown house."
Hastily scrawling her name, Joyce ran out into the hall with her letter. "Anything for me?" she asked, anxiously, leaning over the banister to drop the letter into Marie"s hand. "One, mademoiselle," was the answer. "But it has not a foreign stamp."
"Oh, from Cousin Kate!" exclaimed Joyce, tearing it open as she went back to her room. At the door she stooped to pick up a piece of paper that had dropped from the envelope. It crackled stiffly as she unfolded it.
"Money!" she exclaimed in surprise. "A whole twenty franc note. What could Cousin Kate have sent it for?" The last page of the letter explained.
"I have just remembered that December is not very far off, and that whatever little Christmas gifts we send home should soon be started on their way. Enclosed you will find twenty francs for your Christmas shopping. It is not much, but we are too far away to send anything but the simplest little remembrances, things that will not be spoiled in the mail, and on which little or no duty need be paid. You might buy one article each day, so that there will be some purpose in your walks into Tours.
"I am sorry that I can not be with you on Thanksgiving Day.
We will have to drop it from our calendar this year; not the thanksgiving itself, but the turkey and mince pie part.
Suppose you take a few francs to give yourself some little treat to mark the day. I hope my dear little girl will not be homesick all by herself. I never should have left just at this time if it had not been very necessary."
Joyce smoothed out the bank-note and looked at it with sparkling eyes.
Twenty whole francs! The same as four dollars! All the money that she had ever had in her whole life put together would not have amounted to that much. Dimes were scarce in the little brown house, and even pennies seldom found their way into the children"s hands when five pairs of little feet were always needing shoes, and five healthy appet.i.tes must be satisfied daily.
All the time that Joyce was pinning her treasure securely in her pocket and putting on her hat and jacket, all the time that she was walking demurely down the road with Marie, she was planning different ways in which to spend her fortune.