_ AU LARGE CHAPTER V. FATHER AND SON
Such strange things storms do,--here purifying the air, yonder treading down rich harvests, now replenishing the streams, and now strewing shores with wrecks; here a blessing, there a calamity. See what this one had done for Marguerite! Well, what? She could not lament; she dared not rejoice. Oh! if she were Claude and Claude were she, how quickly--
She wondered how many miles a day she could learn to walk if she should start out into the world on foot to find somebody, as she had heard that Bonaventure had once done to find her mother's lover. There are no Bonaventures now, she thinks, in these decayed times.
"Mamma,"--her speech was French,--"why do we never see Bonaventure? How far is it to Grande Pointe?"
"Ah! my child, a hundred miles; even more."
"And to my uncle Rosamond's,--Rosamond Robichaux, on Bayou Terrebonne?"
"Fully as far, and almost the same journey."
There was but one thing to be done,--crush Claude out of her heart.
The storm had left no wounds on Grande Pointe. Every roof was safe, even the old tobacco-shed where Bonaventure had kept school before the schoolhouse was built. The sheltering curtains of deep forest had broken the onset of the wind, and the little cotton, corn, and tobacco fields, already harvested, were merely made a little more tattered and brown. The November air was pure, sunny, and mild, and thrilled every now and then with the note of some lingering bird. A green and bosky confusion still hid house from house and masked from itself the all but motionless human life of the sleepy woods village. Only an adventitious China-tree here and there had been stripped of its golden foliage, and kept but its ripened berries with the red birds darting and fluttering around them like so many hiccoughing Comanches about a dramseller's tent. And here, if one must tell a thing so painful, our old friend the mocking-bird, neglecting his faithful wife and letting his home go to decay, kept dropping in, all hours of the day, tasting the berries' rank pulp, stimulating, stimulating, drowning care, you know,--"Lost so many children, and the rest gone off in ungrateful forgetfulness of their old hard-working father; yes;" and ready to sing or fight, just as any other creature happened not to wish; and going home in the evening scolding and swaggering, and getting to bed barely able to hang on to the roost. It would have been bad enough, even for a man; but for a bird--and a mocking-bird!
But the storm wrought a great change in one small house not in Grande Pointe, yet of it. Until the storm, ever since the day St. Pierre had returned from the little railway-station where Claude had taken the cars, he had seemed as patiently resigned to the new loneliness of Bayou des Acadiens as his thatched hut, which day by day sat so silent between the edges of the dark forest and the darker stream, looking out beyond the farther bank, and far over the green waste of rushes with its swarms of blackbirds sweeping capriciously now this way and now that, and the phantom cloud-shadows passing slowly across from one far line of cypress wood to another. But since that night when the hut's solitary occupant could not sleep for the winds and for thought of Claude, there was a great difference inside. And this did not diminish; it grew. It is hard for a man to be both father and mother, and at the same time be childless. The bonds of this condition began slowly to tighten around St. Pierre's heart and then to cut into it. And so, the same day on which Claude in Vermilionville left the Beausoleils' tavern, the cabin on Bayou des Acadiens, ever in his mind's eye, was empty, and in Grande Pointe his father stood on the one low step at the closed door of Bonaventure's little frame schoolhouse.
He had been there a full minute and had not knocked. Every movement, to-day, came only after an inward struggle. Many associations crowded his mind on this doorstep. Six years before, almost on this spot, a mere brier-patch then, he and Maximian Roussel had risen from the grassy earth and given the first two welcoming hand-grasps to the schoolmaster. And now, as one result, Claude, who did not know his letters then, was rising--nay, had risen--to greatness! Claude, whom once he would have been glad to make a good fisherman and swamper, or at the utmost a sugar-boiler, was now a greater, in rank at least, than the very schoolmaster. Truly "knowledge is power"--alas! yes; for it had stolen away that same Claude. The College Point priest's warning had come true: it was "good-by to Grande Pointe!"--Nay, nay, it must not be! Is that the kind of power education is? Power to tear children from their parents? Power to expose their young heads to midnight storms? Power to make them eager to go, and willing to stay away, from their paternal homes? Then indeed the priest had said only too truly, that these public schools teach every thing except morals and religion! From the depth of St. Pierre's heart there quickly came a denial of the charge; and on the moment, like a chanted response, there fell upon his listening ear a monotonous intonation from within the door. A reading-class had begun its exercise. He knew the words by heart, so often had Claude and he read them together. He followed the last stanza silently with his own lips.
"Remember, child, remember
That you love, with all your might,
The God who watches o'er us
And gives us each delight,
Who guards us ever in the day,
And saves as in the night."
Tears filled the swamper's eyes. He moved as if to leave the place. But again he paused, with one foot half lowered to the ground. His jaws set, a frown came between his eyes; he drew back the foot, turned again to the door, and gave a loud, peremptory knock.
Bonaventure came to the door. Anxiety quickly overspread his face as he saw the gloom on St. Pierre's. He stood on the outer edge of the sill, and drew the door after him.
"I got good news," said St. Pierre, with no softening of countenance.
"Good news?"
"Yass.--I goin' make Claude come home."
Bonaventure could only look at him in amazement. St. Pierre looked away and continued:
"'S no use. Can't stand it no longer." He turned suddenly upon the schoolmaster. "Why you di'n' tell me ed'cation goin' teck my boy 'way from me?" In Bonaventure a look of distressful self-justification quickly changed to one of anxious compassion.
"Wait!" he said. He went back into the schoolroom, leaving St. Pierre in the open door, and said:
"Dear chil'run, I perceive generally the aspects of fatigue. You have been good scholars. I pronounce a half-hollyday till to-morrow morning. Come, each and every one, with lessons complete."
The children dispersed peaceably, jostling one another to shake the schoolmaster's hand as they passed him. When they were gone he put on his coarse straw hat, and the two men walked slowly, conversing as they went, down the green road that years before had first brought the educator to Grande Pointe.
"Dear friend," said the schoolmaster, "shall education be to blame for this separation? Is not also non-education responsible? Is it not by the non-education of Grande Pointe that there is nothing fit here for Claude's staying?"
"You stay!"
"I? I stay? Ah! sir, I stay, yes! Because like Claude, leaving my home and seeking by wandering to find the true place of my utility, a voice spake that I come at Grande Pointe. Behole me! as far from my childhood home as Claude from his. Friend,--ah! friend, what shall I,--shall Claude,--shall any man do with education! Keep it? Like a miser his gol'? What shall the ship do when she is load'? Dear friend,"--they halted where another road started away through the underbrush at an abrupt angle on their right,--"where leads this narrow road? To Belle Alliance plantation only, or not also to the whole worl'? So is education! That road here once fetch me at Grande Pointe; the same road fetch Claude away. Education came whispering, 'Claude St. Pierre, come! I have constitute' you citizen of the worl'. Come, come, forgetting self!' Oh, dear friend, education is not for self alone! Nay, even self is not for self!"
"Well, den,"--the deep-voiced woodman stood with one boot on a low stump, fiercely trimming a branch that he had struck from the parent stem with one blow of his big, keen clasp-knife,--"self not for self,--for what he gone off and lef' me in de swamp?"
"Ah, sir!" replied Bonaventure, "what do I unceasingly tell those dear school-chil'run? 'May we not make the most of self, yet not for self?'" He laid his hand upon St. Pierre's shoulder. "And who sent Claude hence if not his unselfish father?"
"I was big fool," said St. Pierre, whittling on.
"Nay, wise! Discovering the great rule of civilize-ation. Every man not for self, but for every other!"
The swamper disclaimed the generous imputation with a shake of the head.
"Naw, I dunno nut'n' 'bout dat. I look out for me and my boy, me.--And beside,"--he abruptly threw away the staff he had trimmed, shut his knife with a snap, and thrust it into his pocket,--"I dawn't see ed'cation make no diff'ence. You say ed'cation--priest say religion--me, I dawn't see neider one make no diff'ence. I see every man look out for hisself and his li'l' crowd. Not you, but"--He waved his hand bitterly toward the world at large.
"Ah, sir!" cried Bonaventure, "'tis not something what you can see all the time, like the horns on a cow! And yet, sir,--and yet!"--he lifted himself upon tiptoe and ran his fingers through his thin hair--"the education that make' no difference is but a dead body! and the religion that make' no difference is a ghost! Behole! behole two thing' in the worl', where all is giving and getting, two thing', con_tra_ry, yet resem'ling! 'Tis the left han'--alas, alas!--giving only to get; and the right, blessed of God, getting only to give! How much resem'ling, yet how con_tra_ry! The one--han' of all strife; the other--of all peace. And oh! dear friend, there are those who call the one civilize-ation, and the other religion. Civilize-ation? Religion? They are one! They are body and soul! I care not what religion the priest teach you; in God's religion is comprise' the total _mecanique_ of civilize-ation. We are all in it; you, me, Claude, Sidonie; all in it! Each and every at his task, however high, however low, working not to get, but to give, and not to give only to his own li'l' crowd, but to all, to all!" The speaker ceased, for his hearer was nodding his head with sceptical impatience.
"Yass," said the woodman, "yass; but look, Bonaventure. Di'n' you said one time, 'Knowledge is power'?"
"Yes, truly; and it is."
"But what use knowledge be power if goin' give ev't'in' away?"
Bonaventure drew back a step or two, suddenly jerked his hat from his head, and came forward again with arms stretched wide and the hat dangling from his hand. "Because--because God will not let it sta-a-ay given away! 'Give--it shall be give' to you.' Every thing given out into God's worl' come back to us roun' God's worl'! Resem'ling the stirring of water in a bucket."
But St. Pierre frowned. "Yass,--wat' in bucket,--yass. Den no man dawn't keep nut'n'. Dawn't own nut'n' he got."
"Ah! sir, there is a better owning than to _own_. 'Tis giving, dear friend; 'tis giving. To get? To have? That is not to own. The giver, not the getter; the giver! he is the true owner. Live thou not to get, but to give." Bonaventure's voice trembled; his eyes were full of tears.
The swamper stood up with his own eyes full, but his voice was firm. "Bonaventure, I don't got much. I got dat li'l' shanty on Bayou des Acadiens, and li'l' plunder inside--few kittle', and pan',--cast-net, fish-line', two, t'ree gun', and--my wife' grave, yond' in graveyard. But I got Claude,--my boy, my son. You t'ink God want me give my son to whole worl'?"
The schoolmaster took the woodsman's brown wrist tenderly into both his hands, and said, scarce above a whisper, "He gave His, first. He started it. Who can refuse, He starting it? And thou wilt not refuse." The voice rose--"I see, I see the victory! Well art thou nominated 'St. Pierre!' for on that rock of giving"--
"Naw, sir! Stop!" The swamper dashed the moisture from his eyes and summoned a look of stubborn resolve. "Mo' better you call me St. Pierre because I'm a fisherman what cuss when I git mad. Look! You dawn't want me git Claude back in Gran' Point'. You want me to give, give. Well, all right! I goin' _quit_ Gran' Point' and give myself, me, to Claude. I kin read, I kin write, I t'ink kin do better 'long wid Claude dan livin' all 'lone wid snake' and alligator. I t'ink dass mo' better for everybody; and anyhow, I dawn't care; I dawn't give my son to nobody; I give myself to Claude."
Bonaventure and his friend gazed into each other's wet eyes for a moment. Then the schoolmaster turned, lifted his eyes and one arm toward the west, and exclaimed:
"Ah, Claude! thou receivest the noblest gift in Gran' Point'!" _