The Story of a Child Part 18

CHAPTER LXVIII.

The following morning at daybreak when I awoke, a noisy cadence, to which I was unaccustomed, fell upon my ears; the neighboring weaver had already commenced, even with the dawn, to work his ancient loom, and the musical to and fro of its shuttle had roused me. Then after the first drowsy, dreamy moment I remembered, with overwhelming joy, that I was at my uncle's in the south; that this was the morning of the first day; that I had before me the prospect of a whole summer of out-of-door life and wildest liberty--had August and September, two months that at present pa.s.s as quickly as if they were but two days, but which then seemed of a fairly respectable duration. With a feeling of rapture, after I had wholly shaken off my sleep, I came into a full consciousness of myself and the realities of my life; I felt "joy at my waking."

The preceding winter I had read a story of the Indians of the Great Lakes, and one thing in it had impressed me so deeply that I always remembered it: an old Indian chief, whose daughter was pining away because of her love for a white man, had finally consented to give her to the alien so that she might once more feel "joy at her waking."

Joy at her waking! Indeed, for some time I had myself noticed that the moment of waking is always the one in which I had the most distinct and vivid impression of joy or sorrow; and it is then, at the waking hour, that one finds it so particularly painful to be without joy; my first little sorrows and remorses, my anxieties about the future, were the things that usually obtruded themselves cruelly--however the feeling of sadness vanished very quickly in those days.

At a later time I had very gloomy and sad awakenings. And there are times now when I have moments of terrifying clearness of vision during which I seem to see, if I may so express it, into the depths of life; it is at such moments that life presents itself to me without those pleasing mirages that during the day still delude me; during those moments I appear to have a more vivid realization of the rapid flight of the years, the crumbling away of all that I endeavor to hold to, I almost realize the final unimaginable nothingness, I see the bottomless pit of death, near at hand, no longer in any way disguised.

But that morning I had a joyful awaking, and unable to remain quietly in bed, I rose immediately. So impatient was I to be out that I scarcely took time to ask myself where I should begin my first day's round of visits.

I had all the nooks and corners of the village to see again, the gothic ramparts and the lovely river; and my uncle's garden to revisit, where probably, since last year, the rarest b.u.t.terflies had become domiciled.

I had visits to make to the ancient and curious houses in the neighborhood, where lived all the kind old women who, in the past summer, had lavished upon me their most luscious grapes as if they were my feudal due;--there was in particular a certain Madame Jeanne, a rich old peasant, who had taken so great a fancy to me that she liked to humor my every whim, and who, for my amus.e.m.e.nt, every time she pa.s.sed on her way, like Nausicaa, from the washing-place, looked comically out of the corner of her eyes towards my uncle's house. And, too, there were the surrounding vineyards, and woods, and mountain paths; and beyond, Castelnau, rearing its battlements and towers above the pedestal of chestnuts and oak trees, called me to its ruins! Where should I run first, and how could I ever weary of so beautiful a land!

The sea, to which I was now scarcely ever taken, was for the moment completely forgotten.

After these two happy months school was to re-open. I could not bear to think of it, but its monotony would be broken by a great event, the return of my brother. His four years were not quite completed; but we knew that he had already left the "mysterious island," and we expected him to arrive home in October. For me it would be like becoming acquainted with a stranger. I was somewhat anxious to know whether he would love me when he met me, if he would approve of a thousand little things I did,--how, for instance, my way of playing Beethoven would please him.

I thought constantly of his approaching arrival; I was so overjoyed, and I antic.i.p.ated with so keen a delight the change his coming would make in my life, that I did not feel a particle of the melancholy which usually beset me in the autumn.

I meant to consult him about a thousand troublous matters, to confide to him all my anguish and uncertainty in regard to the future; I knew also that my parents depended upon him to give them definite advice about me, and expected him to direct me towards a scientific career: that was the one dark spot upon his return.

Awaiting his dread decision, I threw aside all care and amused myself as gayly as possible; I put even less restraint than usual upon myself during the vacation which I regarded as likely to be the very last of my childhood.

CHAPTER LXIX.

After the noon dinner it was the custom in my uncle's house to sit for an hour or two in the entry-way of the house, that vestibule inlaid with flagstones and ornamented with a large, burnished, copper fountain, for it was the coolest place during the heated period of the day. Here it was almost dark, for everything was closed; two or three rays of sunshine, in whose light the flies danced, filtered in through the cracks of the ma.s.sive Louis XIII door. In the silent village no one was astir, and one heard there only the everlasting clucking of the hens,--all other living creatures seemed asleep.

I, however, did not remain long in the cool vestibule. The bright sunshine lured me out; and, too, scarcely had I installed myself there in the circle before I heard a knocking at the street door: the three little Peyrals had come to fetch me, and to apprise me of their presence they lifted the old iron knocker that was hot enough to burn their fingers.

Then with hats pulled over our eyes and equipped with hammers, staffs and b.u.t.terfly-nets we would start out in search of new adventures. First we pa.s.sed through the narrow gothic streets paved with pebbles, then we struck into the paths that lay just beyond the village, paths that were always covered with wheat-chaff that got into our shoes, and into which we sank ankle deep; finally we reached the open country, the vineyards, and the roads that led to the woods, or better still those that brought us to the river which we forded by means of the flower-covered islets.

This wild liberty was a complete avengement for the monotony of my cribbed and cabined home life, ever the same all the year through; but I still lacked the companionship of little boys of my own age, I needed to clash with them,--and, too, this freedom lasted only a couple of months.

CHAPTER LXX.

One day I had a great desire, wherefore I do not know, unless out of pure bravado and the spirit of perversity, to do something unseemly.

After having searched all of one morning for this something I found it.

It is well known that the swarms of flies which one finds in the south during the summer, and which contaminate everything are a veritable plague. I knew that there was a trap set for them in the middle of my uncle's kitchen. It was a treacherous pipe of a special shape, at the bottom of which, in the soapy pan of water there, the flies were invariably drowned. Now on the particular day in which I felt so devilish I bethought me of that disgusting blackish ma.s.s at the bottom of the vessel, made up of the thousands of flies drowned during the past two or three days, and I wondered what sort of toothsome dish I should make of it, a pancake, perhaps, or better still, an omelette.

Quickly and nervously, and with a loathing that almost made me vomit, I poured the pasty black ma.s.s into a plate and carried it to the house of old Madame Jeanne, the only one in the world willing to do anything and everything for me.

"A fly omelette! To be sure! Why not! That is very simple!" she exclaimed. She went immediately to the fire with a frying pan and some eggs. She gave the unclean mess a good preliminary beating, and then she placed it on her high and ancient fireplace. As I watched her procedure I was dismayed and surprised at myself.

But the three little Peyrals, whom I had met unexpectedly, went into such ecstasies over my idea, a thing they always did, that I was fortified; and when the omelette, at just the right time, was turned out hot upon a plate we started forth triumphantly to carry the exhibit home to show to our families. We formed a procession in the order of our respective heights, and as we marched we sang, "The Star of Night" in voices loud and hoa.r.s.e enough to summon the devil to earth.

CHAPTER LXXI.

In the mountains the end of summer was always a beautiful season, for the meadows lying at the foot of the hillside forests, already yellow, were purple with crocuses. Then, too, the vintage commenced and lasted for about fifteen days,--days of enchantment for us.

We now spent most of our time in the shady nooks of the woods and meadows in the neighborhood of the Peyral vineyards; there we had play-dinners consisting of candy and fruits. We would spread out on the gra.s.s what we considered a most elegant cloth, and this we decorated, after the old fashion, with garlands of flowers, and we put on it plates made of yellow and red vine leaves. The vintagers brought us the most luscious grapes, bunches chosen from among a thousand; and, with the heat of the sun to aid, we sometimes became a little tipsy, not, however, made so by sweet wine, for we had drunk none, but by the juice of the grapes merely, in the self-same fashion as did the wasps and flies that warmed themselves upon the trellises. . . .

One morning at the end of September, when the weather was rainy and it was chilly enough for me to realize that melancholy autumn was near at hand, I was attracted into the kitchen by the bright wood fire that leaped gayly in the high, old-fashioned chimney-place. And as I stood there, idle and out of sorts, because of the rain, I amused myself by melting a pewter plate and plunging it, in its liquid state, into a pail of water.

The result was a shapeless, bright, and silvery-gray lump which very much resembled silver-ore. I looked at the ma.s.s thoughtfully for some time: an idea germinated, and there and then I planned a new amus.e.m.e.nt which became our most delightful pastime during those last days of vacation.

That same evening we held a conference on the steps of the great stairway, and I told the Peyrals that from the aspect of the soil and the plants I had come to the conclusion that there were silver mines in this part of the country. As I spoke I a.s.sumed the knowing and bold airs of one of those venturesome scouts, who is usually the princ.i.p.al personage in old-fashioned stories of American adventure.

Searching for mines fell well into line with the abilities of my little band, for often, armed with pick and shovel, they had set out to discover fossils or rare stones.

The next day, therefore, half way up the mountain, when we arrived at a path chosen by me for its appropriateness, for it was lonely and mysterious, shut in by forest trees and embedded between high, moss-grown, rocky banks, I stopped my little band peremptorily, as if I were endowed with the keen scent of an Indian chief. I pretended that I had here recognized the presence of precious ore-beds; and, in truth, when we dug in the place I indicated we found the first nuggets, the melted plate that I had buried there the day before.

These mines occupied us constantly until the end of my stay. The Peyrals were convinced and full of amazement, and although I spent some time each morning in the kitchen melting plates and covers to feed our vein of silver, I very nearly deluded myself into believing in the reality of the mine.

The isolated silent spot, so exquisitely beautiful, where these excavations took place, and the melancholy but enchanting serenity of the end of summer, gave a rare charm to our little dream of adventure.

We were, however, most amusingly secret and mysterious in regard to our discovery; we considered it a tribal secret, and we cherished it as such.

Our riches, mixed in with some of the red mountain soil, we h.o.a.rded in an old trunk in my uncle's attic as if the latter were an Ali Baba's cave.

We pledged ourselves to leave it there during the winter, until the next vacation, at which time we counted on making additions to our treasure.

CHAPTER LXXII.