Part 5
My mother and sister had left Mlle. Jalabert's, and now lived with my father near the Boulevard Montmartre. And when the fighting was at its height they came to fetch me home, and invited Barty, for the Rohans were away from Paris. So home we walked, quite leisurely, on a lovely peaceful summer evening, while the muskets rattled and the cannons roared round us, but at a proper distance; women picking linen for lint and chatting genially the while at shop doors and porter's lodge-gates; and a piquet of soldiers at the corner of every street, who felt us all over for hidden cartridges before they let us through; it was all entrancing! The subtle scent of gunpowder was in the air--the most suggestive smell there can be. Even now, here in England, the night of the fifth of November never comes round but I am pleasantly reminded of the days when I was "en pleine révolution" in the streets of Paris with my father and mother, and Barty and my little sister--and genial _piou-pious_ made such a Conscientious examination of our garments. Nothing brings back the past like a sound or a smell--even those of a penny squib!
Every now and then a litter borne by soldiers came by, on which lay a dead or wounded officer. And then one's laugh died suddenly out, and one felt one's self face to face with the horrors that were going on.
Barty shared my bed, and we lay awake talking half the night; dreadful as it all was, one couldn't help being jolly! Every ten minutes the sentinel on duty in the court-yard below would sententiously intone:
"Sentinelles, prenez-garde à vous!" And other sentinels would repeat the cry till it died away in the distance, like an echo.
And all next day, or the day after--or else the day after that, when the long rattle of the musketry had left off--we heard at intervals the "feu de peloton" in a field behind the church of St.-Vincent de Paul, and knew that at every discharge a dozen poor devils of insurgents, caught red-handed, fell dead in a pool of blood!
I need hardly say that before three days were over the irrepressible Barty had made a complete conquest of my small family. My sister (I hasten to say this) has loved him as a brother ever since; and as long as my parents lived, and wherever they made their home, that home has ever been his--and he has been their son--almost their eldest born, though he was younger than I by seven months.
Things have been reversed, however, for now thirty years and more; and his has ever been the home for me, and his people have been my people, and ever will be--and the God of his worship mine!
What children and grandchildren of my own could ever be to me as these of Barty Josselin's?
"Ce sacré Josselin--il avait tous les talents!"
And the happiest of these gifts, and not the least important, was the gift he had of imparting to his offspring all that was most brilliant and amiable and attractive in himself, and leaving in them unimpaired all that was strongest and best in the woman I loved as well as he did, and have loved as long--and have grown to look upon as belonging to the highest female type that can be; for doubtless the Creator, in His infinite wisdom, might have created a better and a nicer woman than Mrs. Barty Josselin that was to be, had He thought fit to do so; but doubtless also He never did.
Alas! the worst of us is that the best of us are those that want the longest knowing to find it out.
My kind-hearted but cold-mannered and undemonstrative Scotch father, evangelical, a total abstainer, with a horror of tobacco--surely the austerest dealer in French wines that ever was--a puritanical hater of bar sinisters, and profligacy, and Rome, and rank, and the army, and especially the stage--he always lumped them together more or less--a despiser of all things French, except their wines, which he never drank himself--remained devoted to Barty till the day of his death; and so with my dear genial mother, whose heart yet always yearned towards serious boys who worked hard at school and college, and passed brilliant examinations, and got scholarships and fellowships in England, and state sinecures in France, and married early, and let their mothers choose their wives for them, and train up their children in the way they should go. She had lived so long in France that she was Frencher than the French themselves.
And they both loved good music--Mozart, Bach, Beethoven--and were almost priggish in their contempt for anything of a lighter kind; especially with a lightness English or French! It was only the musical lightness of Germany they could endure at all! But whether in Paris or London, enter Barty Josselin, idle school-boy, or dandy dissipated guardsman, and fashionable man about town, or bohemian art student; and Bach, lebewohl! good-bye, Beethoven! bonsoir le bon Mozart! all was changed: and welcome, instead, the last comic song from the Château des Fleurs, or Evans's in Covent Garden; the latest patriotic or sentimental ditty by Loïsa Puget, or Frédéric Bérat, or Eliza Cook, or Mr. Henry Russell.
And then, what would Barty like for breakfast, dinner, supper after the play, and which of all those burgundies would do Barty good without giving him a headache next morning? and where was Barty to have his smoke?--in the library, of course. "Light the fire in the library, Mary; and Mr. Bob [that was me] can smoke there, too, instead of going outside," etc., etc., etc. It is small wonder that he grew a bit selfish at times.
Though I was a little joyous now and then, it is quite without a shadow of bitterness or envy that I write all this. I have lived for fifty years under the charm of that genial, unconscious, irresistible tyranny; and, unlike my dear parents, I have lived to read and know Barty Josselin, nor merely to see and hear and love him for himself alone.
Indeed, it was quite impossible to know Barty at all intimately and not do whatever he wanted you to do. Whatever he wanted, he wanted so intensely, and at once; and he had such a droll and engaging way of expressing that hurry and intensity, and especially of expressing his gratitude and delight when what he wanted was what he got--that you could not for the life of you hold your own! Tout vient à qui ne sait pas attendre!
Besides which, every now and then, if things didn't go quite as he wished, he would fly into comic rages, and become quite violent and intractable for at least five minutes, and for quite five minutes more he would silently sulk. And then, just as suddenly, he would forget all about it, and become once more the genial, affectionate, and caressing creature he always was.
But this is going ahead too fast! revenons. At the examinations this year Barty was almost brilliant, and I was hopeless as usual; my only consolation being that after the holidays we should at last be in the same class together, _en quatrième_, and all through this hopelessness of mine!
Laferté was told by his father that he might invite two of his school-fellows to their country-house for the vacation, so he asked Josselin and Bussy-Rabutin. But Bussy couldn't go--and, to my delight, I went instead.
That ride all through the sweet August night, the three of us on the impériale of the five-horsed diligence, just behind the conductor and the driver--and freedom, and a full moon, or nearly so--and a tremendous saucisson de Lyon (à l'ail, bound in silver paper)--and petits pains--and six bottles of bière de Mars--and cigarettes ad libitum, which of course we made ourselves!
The Lafertés lived in the Department of La Sarthe, in a delightful country-house, with a large garden sloping down to a transparent stream, which had willows and alders and poplars all along its both banks, and a beautiful country beyond.
Outside the grounds (where there were the old brick walls, all overgrown with peaches and pears and apricots, of some forgotten mediæval convent) was a large farm; and close by, a water-mill that never stopped.
A road, with thick hedge-rows on either side, led to a small and very pretty town called La Tremblaye, three miles off. And hard by the garden gates began the big forest of that name: one heard the stags calling, and the owls hooting, and the fox giving tongue as it hunted the hares at night. There might have been wolves and wild-boars. I like to think so very much.
M. Laferté was a man of about fifty--entre les deux âges; a retired maître de forges, or iron-master, or else the son of one: I forget which. He had a charming wife and two pretty little daughters, Jeanne et Marie, aged fourteen and twelve.
He seldom moved from his country home, which was called "Le Gué des Aulnes," except to go shooting in the forest; for he was a great sportsman and cared for little else. He was of gigantic stature--six foot six or seven, and looked taller still, as he had a very small head and high shoulders. He was not an Adonis, and could only see out of one eye--the other (the left one, fortunately) was fixed as if it were made of glass--perhaps it was--and this gave him a stern and rather forbidding expression of face.
He had just been elected Mayor of La Tremblaye, beating the Comte de la Tremblaye by many votes. The Comte was a royalist and not popular. The republican M. Laferté (who was immensely charitable and very just) was very popular indeed, in spite of a morose and gloomy manner. He could even be violent at times, and then he was terrible to see and hear. Of course his wife and daughters were gentleness itself, and so was his son, and everybody who came into contact with him. _Si vis pacem, para bellum_, as Père Brossard used to impress upon us.
It was the strangest country household I have ever seen, in France or anywhere else. They were evidently very well off, yet they preferred to eat their mid-day meal in the kitchen, which was immense; and so was the mid-day meal--and of a succulency!...
An old wolf-hound always lay by the huge log fire; often with two or three fidgety cats fighting for the soft places on him and making him growl; five or six other dogs, non-sporting, were always about at meal-time.
The servants--three or four peasant women who waited on us--talked all the time; and were _tutoyées_ by the family. Farm-laborers came in and discussed agricultural matters, manures, etc., quite informally, squeezing their bonnets de coton in their hands. The postman sat by the fire and drank a glass of cider and smoked his pipe up the chimney while the letters were read--most of them out loud--and were commented upon by everybody in the most friendly spirit. All this made the meal last a long time.
M. Laferté always wore his blouse--except in the evening, and then he wore a brown woollen vareuse, or jersey; unless there were guests, when he wore his Sunday morning best. He nearly always spoke like a peasant, although he was really a decently educated man--or should have been.
His old mother, who was of good family and eighty years of age lived in a quite humble cottage in a small street in La Tremblaye, with two little peasant girls to wait on her; and the La Tremblayes, with whom M. Laferté was not on speaking terms, were always coming into the village to see her and bring her fruit and flowers and game. She was a most accomplished old lady, and an excellent musician, and had known Monsieur de Lafayette.
We breakfasted with her when we alighted from the diligence at six in the morning; and she took such a fancy to Barty that her own grandson was almost forgotten. He sang to her, and she sang to him, and showed him autograph letters of Lafayette, and a lock of her hair when she was seventeen, and old-fashioned miniatures of her father and mother, Monsieur and Madame de something I've quite forgotten.
M. Laferté kept a pack of bassets (a kind of bow-legged beagle), and went shooting with them every day in the forest, wet or dry; sometimes we three boys with him. He lent us guns--an old single-barrelled flint-lock cavalry musket or carbine fell to my share; and I knew happiness such as I had never known yet.
Barty was evidently not meant for a sportsman. On a very warm August morning, as he and I squatted "à l'affût" at the end of a long straight ditch outside a thicket which the bassets were hunting, we saw a hare running full tilt at us along the ditch, and we both fired together. The hare shrieked, and turned a big somersault and fell on its back and kicked convulsively--its legs still galloping--and its face and neck were covered with blood; and, to my astonishment, Barty became quite hysterical with grief at what we had done. It's the only time I ever saw him cry.
"_Caïn! Caïn! qu'as-tu fait de ton frère?_" he shrieked again and again, in a high voice, like a small child's--like the hare's.
I calmed him down and promised I wouldn't tell, and he recovered himself and bagged the game--but he never came out shooting with us again! So I inherited his gun, which was double-barrelled.
Barty's accomplishments soon became the principal recreation of the Laferté ladies; and even M. Laferté himself would start for the forest an hour or two later or come back an hour sooner to make Barty go through his bag of tricks. He would have an arm-chair brought out on the lawn after breakfast and light his short black pipe and settle the programme himself.
First, "_le saut périlleux_"--the somersault backwards--over and over again, at intervals of two or three minutes, so as to give himself time for thought and chuckles, while he smoked his pipe in silent stodgy jubilation.
Then, two or three songs--they would be stopped, if M. Laferté didn't like them, after the first verse, and another one started instead; and if it pleased him, it was encored two or three times.
Then, pen and ink and paper were brought, and a small table and a kitchen chair, and Barty had to draw caricatures, of which M. Laferté chose the subject.
"Maintenant, fais-moi le profil de mon vieil ami M. Bonzig, que j' n' connais pas, que j' n'ai jamais vu, mais q' j'aime beaucoup." (Now do me the side face of my old friend M. Bonzig, whom I don't know, but am very fond of.)
And so on for twenty minutes.
Then Barty had to be blindfolded and twisted round and round, and point out the north--when he felt up to it.
Then a pause for reflection.
Then: "Dis-moi qué'q' chose en anglais."
"How do you do very well hey diddle-diddle Chichester church in Chichester church-yard!" says Barty.
"Qué'q' çà veut dire?"
"Il s'agit d'une église et d'un cimetière!" says Barty--rather sadly, with a wink at me.
"C'est pas gai! Qué vilaine langue, hein? J' suis joliment content que j' sais pas I'anglais, moi!" (It's not lively! What a beastly language, eh? I'm precious glad _I_ don't know English.)
Then: "Démontre-moi un problème de géométrie."
Barty would then do a simple problem out of Legendre (the French Euclid), and M. Laferté would look on with deep interest and admiration, but evidently no comprehension whatever. Then he would take the pen himself, and draw a shapeless figure, with A's and B's and C's and D's stuck all over it in impossible places, and quite at hazard, and say:
"Démontre-moi que A + B est plus grand que C + D." It was mere idiotic nonsense, and he didn't know better!
But Barty would manage to demonstrate it all the same, and M. Laferté would sigh deeply, and exclaim, "C'est joliment beau, la géométrie!"
Then: "Danse!"
And Barty danced "la Paladine," and did Scotch reels and Irish jigs and break-downs of his own invention, amidst roars of laughter from all the family.
Finally the gentlemen of the party went down to the river for a swim--and old Laferté would sit on the bank and smoke his brûle-gueule, and throw carefully selected stones for Barty to dive after--and feel he'd scored off Barty when the proper stone wasn't found, and roar in his triumph. After which he would go and pick the finest peach he could find, and peel it with his pocket-knife very neatly, and when Barty was dressed, present it to him with a kindly look in both eyes at once.
"Mange-moi ça--ça t' fera du bien!"
Then, suddenly: "Pourquoi q' tu n'aimes pas la chasse? t'as pas peur, j'espère!" (Why don't you like shooting? you're not afraid, I hope!)
[Illustration: LE PÈRE POLYPHÈME]
"'Sais pas,'" said Josselin; "don't like killing things, I suppose.'"
So Barty became quite indispensable to the happiness and comfort of Père Polyphème, as he called him, as well as of his amiable family.
On the 1st of September there was a grand breakfast in honor of the partridges (not in the kitchen this time), and many guests were invited; and Barty had to sing and talk and play the fool all through breakfast; and got very tipsy, and had to be put to bed for the rest of the day. It was no fault of his, and Madame Lafertó declared that "ces messieurs" ought to be ashamed of themselves, and watched over Barty like a mother. He has often declared he was never quite the same after that debauch--and couldn't feel the north for a month.
The house was soon full of guests, and Barty and I slept in M. Laferté's bedroom--his wife in a room adjoining.
Every morning old Polyphemus would wake us up by roaring out:
"Hé! ma femme!"
"Voilà, voilà, mon ami!" from the next room.
"Viens vite panser mon cautère!"
And in came Madame L. in her dressing-gown, and dressed a blister he wore on his big arm.
Then: "Café!"
And coffee came, and he drank it in bed.
Then: "Pipe!"
And his pipe was brought and filled, and he lit it.
Then: "Josselin!"
"Oui, M'sieur Laferté."
"Tire moi une gamme."
"Dorémifasollasido--Dosilasolfamirédo!" sang Josselin, up and down, in beautiful tune, with his fresh bird-like soprano.
"Ah! q' ça fait du bien!" says M. L.; then a pause, and puffs of smoke and grunts and sighs of satisfaction.
"Josselin?"
"Oui, M'sieur Laferté!"
"'La brune Thérèse!'"
And Josselin would sing about the dark-haired Thérèsa--three verses.
"Tu as changé la fin du second couplet--tu as dit '_des comtesses_' au lieu de dire '_des duchesses_'--recommence!" (You changed the end of the second verse--you said "countesses" instead of "duchesses"--begin again.)
And Barty would re-sing it, as desired, and bring in the duchesses.
"Maintenant, 'Colin, disait Lisette!'"
And Barty would sing that charming little song, most charmingly:
"'Colin,' disait Lisette, 'Je voudrais passer l'eau! Mais je suis trop pauvrette Pour payer le bateau!' 'Entrez, entrez, ma belle! Entrez, entrez toujours! Et vogue la nacelle Qui porte mes amours!"
And old L. would smoke and listen with an air of heavenly beatitude almost pathetic.
"Elle était bien gentille, Lisette--n'est-ce pas, petiot?--recommence!" (She was very nice, Lisette; wasn't she, sonny?--being again!)
"Now both get up and wash and go to breakfast. Come here, Josselin--you see this little silver dagger" (producing it from under his pillow). "It's rather pointy, but not at all dangerous. My mother gave it me when I was just your age--to cut books with; it's for you. Allons, file! [cut along] no thanks!--but look here--are you coming with us à la chasse to-day?"
"Non, M. Laferté!"
"Pourquoi?--t'as pas peur, j'espère!"
"Sais pas. J' n'aime pas les choses mortes--ça saigne--et ça n' sent pas bon--ça m'fait mal au coeur." (Don't know. I'm not fond of dead things. They bleed--and they don't smell nice--it makes me sick.)
And two or three times a day would Barty receive some costly token of this queer old giant's affection, till he got quite unhappy about it. He feared he was despoiling the House of Laferté of all its treasures in silver and gold; but he soothed his troubled conscience later on by giving them all away to favorite boys and masters at Brossard's--especially M. Bonzig, who had taken charge of his white mouse (and her family, now quite grown up--children and grandchildren and all) when Mlle. Marceline went for her fortnight's holiday. Indeed, he had made a beautiful cage for them out of wood and wire, with little pasteboard mangers (which they nibbled away).
Well, the men of the party and young Laferté and I would go off with the dogs and keepers into the forest--and Barty would pick filberts and fruit with Jeanne and Marie, and eat them with bread-and-butter and jam and _cernaux_ (unripe walnuts mixed with salt and water and verjuice--quite the nicest thing in the world). Then he would find his way into the heart of the forest, which he loved--and where he had scraped up a warm friendship with some charcoal-burners, whose huts were near an old yellow-watered pond, very brackish and stagnant and deep, and full of leeches and water-spiders. It was in the densest part of the forest, where the trees were so tall and leafy that the sun never fell on it, even at noon. The charcoal-burners told him that in '93 a young de la Tremblaye was taken there at sunset to be hanged on a giant oak-tree--but he talked so agreeably and was so pleasant all round that they relented, and sent for bread and wine and cider and made a night of it, and didn't hang him till dawn next day; after which they tied a stone to his ankles and dropped him into the pond, which was called "the pond of the respite" ever since; and his young wife, Claire Élisabeth, drowned herself there the week after, and their bones lie at the bottom to this very day.
And, ghastly to relate, the ringleader in this horrible tragedy was a beautiful young woman, a daughter of the people, it seems--one Séraphine Doucet, whom the young viscount had betrayed before marriage--le droit du seigneur!--and but for whom he would have been let off after that festive night. Ten or fifteen years later, smitten with incurable remorse, she hanged herself on the very branch of the very tree where they had strung up her noble lover; and still walks round the pond at night, wringing her hands and wailing. It's a sad story--let us hope it isn't true.
Barty Josselin evidently had this pond in his mind when he wrote in "Âmes en peine":
Sous la berge hantée L'eau morne croupit-- Sous la sombre futaie Le renard glapit, Et le cerf-dix-cors brame, et les daims viennent boire à l'Étang du Répit. "Lâchez-moi, Loupgaroux!" Que sinistre est la mare Quand tombe la nuit; La chouette s'effare-- Le blaireau s'enfuit! L'on y sent que les morts se réveillent--qu'une ombre sans nom vous poursuit. "Lâchez-moi, Loup-garoux!"
Forêt! forêt! what a magic there is in that little French dissyllable! Morne forêt! Is it the lost "s," and the heavy "^" that makes up for it, which lend such a mysterious and gloomy fascination?