Bonaventure Part 25

And then, after all!--looking into those quiet black eyes of Zosephine's,--to hear that Marguerite was not there! Gone! Gone to the great city, the place "too big to live in." Gone there for knowledge, training, cultivation, larger life, and finer uses! Gone to study an art,--an art! Risen beyond him "like a diamond in the sky." And he fool enough to come rambling back, blue-s.h.i.+rted and brown-handed, expecting to find her still a tavern maid! So, farewell fantasy! 'Twas better so; much better. Now life was simplified. Oh, yes; and St.

Pierre made matters better still by saying to Zosephine:

"I dinn' know you got one lill gal. Claude never tell me 'bout dat. I spec' dat why he dawn't want 'come yeh. He dawn't like gal; he run f'om 'em like dog from yalla-jacket. He dawn't like none of 'm. What he like, da.s.s his daddy. He jus' married to his daddy." The father dropped his hand, smilingly, upon his son's shoulder with a weight that would have crushed it in had it been ordinary cast-iron.

Claude took the hand and held it, while Zosephine smiled and secretly thanked G.o.d her child was away. In her letters to Marguerite she made no haste to mention the young man's re-appearance, and presently a small thing occurred that made it well that she had left it untold.

With Claude and his father some days pa.s.sed unemployed. Yet both felt them to be heavy with significance. The weight and pressure of new and, to them, large conditions, were putting their inmost quality to proof. Claude saw, now, what he could not see before; why his friend the engineer had cast him loose without a word of advice as to where he should go or what he should do. It was because by asking no advice he had really proposed to be his own master. And now, could he do it?

Dare he try it?

The first step he took was taken, I suppose, instinctively rather than intelligently; certainly it was perilous: he retreated into himself.

St. Pierre found work afield, for of this sort there was plenty; the husbandmen's year, and the herders' too, were just gathering good momentum. But Claude now stood looking on empty-handed where other men were busy with agricultural utensils or machines; or now kept his room, whittling out a toy miniature of some apparatus, which when made was not like the one he had seen, at last. A great distress began to fill the father's mind. There had been a time when he could be idle and whittle, but that time was gone by; that was at Grande Pointe; and now for his son--for Claude--to become a lounger in tavern quarters--Claude had not announced himself to Vermilionville as a surveyor, or as any thing--Claude to be a hater of honest labor--was this what Bonaventure called civilize-ation? Better, surely better, go back to the old pastoral life. How yearningly it was calling them to its fragrant bosom! And almost every thing was answering the call. The town was tricking out its neglected decay with great trailing robes of roses. The spade and hoe were busy in front flower-beds and rear kitchen-gardens. Lanes were green, skies blue, roads good. In the _bas fonds_ the oaks of many kinds and the tupelo-gums were hiding all their gray in s.h.i.+mmering green; in these coverts and in the reedy marshes, all the feathered flocks not gone away north were broken into nesting pairs; in the fields, crops were springing almost at the sower's heels; on the prairie pastures, once so vast, now being narrowed so rapidly by the people's thrift, the flocks and herds ate eagerly of the bright new gra.s.s, and foals, calves, and lambs stood and staggered on their first legs, while in the door-yards housewives, hens, and mother-geese warned away the puppies and children from downy broods under the shade of the China-trees. But Claude? Even his books lay unstudied, and his instruments gathered dust, while he pottered over two or three little wooden things that a boy could not play with without breaking. At last St. Pierre could bear it no longer.

"Well, Claude, da.s.s ten days han'-runnin' now, we ain't do not'in' but whittlin'."

Claude slowly pushed his model from him, looked, as one in a dream, into his father's face, and suddenly and for the first time saw what that father had suffered for a fortnight. But into his own face there came no distress; only, for a moment, a look of tender protestation, and then strong hope and confidence.

"Ya.s.s," he said, rising, "da.s.s true. But we dawn't got whittle no mo'." He pointed to the model, then threw his strong arms akimbo and asked, "You know what is dat?"

"Naw," replied the father, "I dunno. I t'ink 'taint no real mash-in'

[machine] 'cause I dawn't never see nuttin' like dat at Belle Alliance plant-ation, neider at Belmont; and I know, me, if anybody got one mash-in', any place, for do any t'in' mo' betteh or mo' quicker, Mistoo Walleece an' M'sieu Le Bourgeois dey boun' to 'ave 'im. Can't hitch nuttin' to dat t'ing you got dare; she too small for a rat. What she is, Claude?"

A yet stronger hope and courage lighted Claude's face. He laid one hand upon the table before him and the other upon the shoulder of his sitting companion:

"Papa, if you want to go wid me to de city, we make one big enough for two mule'. Da.s.s a mash-in'--a new mash-in'--my mash-in'--my invention!"

"Invench? What dat is--invench?"

Some one knocked on the door. Claude lifted the model, moved on tiptoe, and placed it softly under the bed. As he rose and turned again with reddened face, a card was slipped under the door. He took it and read, in a pencil scrawl,--

"State Superintendent of Public Education,"--

looked at his father with a broad grin, and opened the door.

Mr. Tarbox had come at the right moment. There was a good hour and a half of the afternoon still left, and he and Claude took a walk together. Beyond a stile and a frail bridge that spanned a gully at one end of the town, a n.o.ble avenue of oaks leads toward Vermilion River. On one side of this avenue the town has since begun to spread, but at that time there were only wide fields on the right hand and on the left. At the farther end a turn almost at right angles to the left takes you through a great gate and across the railway, then along a ruined hedge of roses, and presently into the oak-grove of the old ex-governor's homestead. This was their walk.

By the time they reached the stile, Claude had learned that his friend was at the head of his line, and yet had determined to abandon that line for another

"Far up the height-- Excelsior!"

Also that his friend had liked him, had watched him, would need him, and was willing then and there to a.s.sure him a modest salary, whose amount he specified, simply to do whatever he might call upon him to do in his (Claude's) "line."

They were walking slowly, and now and then slower still. As they entered the avenue of oaks, Claude declined the offer. Then they went very slowly indeed. Claude learned that Mr. Tarbox, by some chance not explained, had been in company with his friend the engineer; that the engineer had said, "Tarbox, you're a born contractor," and that Claude and he would make a "strong team;" that Mr. Tarbox's favorite study was human nature; that he knew talent when he saw it; had studied Claude; had fully expected him to decline to be his employee, and liked him the better for so doing.

"That was just a kind of test vote; see?"

Then Mr. Tarbox offered Claude a partners.h.i.+p; not an equal one, but withal a fair interest.

"We've got to commence small and branch out gradually; see?" And Claude saw.

"Now, you wonder why I don't go in alone. Well, I'll tell you; and when I tell you, I'll astonish you. I lack education! Now, Claude, I'm taking you into my confidence. You've done nothing but go to school and study for about six years. I had a different kind of father from yours; I never got one solid year's schooling, all told, in my life.

I've picked up cords of information, but an ounce of education's worth a ton of information. Don't you believe that? eh? it is so! I say it, and I'm the author of the A. of U. I. I like to call it that, because it brings you and I so near together; see?" The speaker smiled, was still, and resumed:

"That's why I need you. And I'm just as sure you need me. I need not only the education you have now, but what you're getting every day.

When you see me you see a man who is always looking awa-a-ay ahead. I see what you're going to be, and I'm making this offer to the Claude St. Pierre of the future."

Mr. Tarbox waited for a reply. The avenue had been pa.s.sed, the railway crossed, and the hedge skirted. They loitered slowly into the governor's grove, under whose canopy the beams of the late afternoon sun were striking and glancing. But all their light seemed hardly as much as that which danced in the blue eyes of Mr. Tarbox while Claude slowly said:

"I dunno if we can fix dat. I was glad to see you comin'. I reckon you jus' right kind of man I want. I jus' make a new invention. I t'ink 'f you find dat's good, dat be cawntrac' enough for right smart while.

And beside', I t'ink I invent some mo' b'fo' long."

But Mr. Tarbox was not rash. He only asked quiet and careful questions for some time. The long sunset was sending its last rays across the grove-dotted land, and the birds in every tree were filling the air with their sunset song-burst, when the two friends re-entered the avenue of oaks. They had agreed to join their fortunes. Now their talk drifted upon other subjects.

"I came back to Vermilionville purposely to see you," said Mr. Tarbox.

"But I'll tell you privately, you wasn't the only cause of my coming."

Claude looked at him suddenly. Was this another haunted man? Were there two men haunted, and only one fantasy? He felt ill at ease. Mr.

Tarbox saw, but seemed not to understand. He thought it best to speak plainly.

"I'm courting her, Claude; and I think I'm going to get her."

Claude stopped short, with jaws set and a bad look in his eye.

"Git who?"

But Mr. Tarbox was calm--even complacent. He pushed his silk hat from his forehead, and said:

... "'One made up Of loveliness alone; A woman, of her gentle s.e.x The seeming paragon.'

I refer to the Rose of Vermilionville, the Pearl of the Parish, the loveliest love and fairest fair that ever wore the s.h.i.+ning name of Beausoleil. She's got to change it to Tarbox, Claude. Before yon sun has run its course again, I'm going to ask her for the second time.

I've just begun asking, Claude; I'm going to keep it up till she says yes."

"She's not yondah!" snarled Claude, with the frown and growl of a mastiff. "She's gone to de city."

Mr. Tarbox gazed a moment in blank amazement. Then he slowly lifted his hat from his head, expanded his eyes, drew a long slow groan, turned slowly half around, let the inhalation go in a long keen whistle, and cried:

"Oh! taste! taste! Who's got the taste? What do you take me for? Who _are_ you talking about? That little monkey? Why, man alive, it's the mother I'm after. Ha, ha, ha!"

If Claude said any thing in reply, I cannot imagine what it was. Mr.

Tarbox had a right to his opinion and taste, if taste it could be called, and Claude was helpless to resent it, even in words; but for hours afterward he execrated his offender's stupidity, little guessing that Mr. Tarbox, in a neighboring chamber, alone and in his night-robe, was bending, smiting his thigh in silent merriment, and whispering to himself:

"He thinks I'm an a.s.s! He thinks I'm an a.s.s! He can't see that I was simply investigating him!"

CHAPTER XI.

HE ASKS HER AGAIN.