Where, then, should they go? Claude stood with his arms akimbo, looked into his father’s face, tried to hide his perplexity under a smile, and then glanced at their little pile of effects. There lay their fire-arms, the same as ever; but the bundles in Madras handkerchiefs had given place to travelling-bags, and instead of pots and pans here were books and instruments. What reply did these things make? New Orleans? The great city? Even Claude shrank from that thought.
No, it was the name of quite a different place they spoke; a name that Claude’s lips dared not speak, because, for lo! these months and months his heart had spoken it,—spoken it at first in so soft a whisper that for a long time he had not known it was his heart he heard. When something within uttered and re-uttered the place’s name, he would silently explain to himself: “It is because I am from home. It is this unfixed camp-life, this life without my father, without Bonaventure, that does it. This is not love, of course; I know that: for, in the first place, I was in love once, when I was fourteen, and it was not at all like this; and in the second place, it would be hopeless presumption in me, muddy-booted vagabond that I am; and in the third place, a burnt child dreads fire. And so it cannot be love. When papa and I are once more together, this unaccountable longing will cease.”
But, instead of ceasing, it had grown. The name of the place was still the only word the heart would venture; but it meant always one pair of eyes, one young face, one form, one voice. Still it was not love—oh, no! Now and then the hospitality of some plantation-house near the camp was offered to the engineers; and sometimes, just to prove that this thing was not love, he would accept such an invitation, and even meet a pretty maiden or two, and ask them for music and song—for which he had well-nigh a passion—and talk enough to answer their questions and conjectures about a surveyor’s life, etc.; but when he got back to camp, matters within his breast were rather worse than better.
He had then tried staying in camp, but without benefit,—nothing cured, every thing aggravated. And yet he knew so perfectly well that he was not in love, that just to realize the knowledge, one evening, when his father was a day’s march ahead, and he was having a pleasant chat with the “chief,” no one else nigh, and they were dawdling away its closing hour with pipes, metaphysics, psychology, and like trifles, which Claude, of course, knew all about,—Claude told him of this singular and amusing case of haunting fantasy in his own experience. His hearer had shown even more amusement than he, and had gone on smiling every now and then afterward, with a significance that at length drove Claude to bed disgusted with him and still more with himself. There had been one offsetting comfort; an unintentional implication had somehow slipped in between his words, that the haunting fantasy had blue eyes and yellow hair.
“All right,” the angry youth had muttered, tossing on his iron couch, “let him think so!” And then he had tossed again, and said below his breath, “It is not love: it is not. But I must never answer its call; if I do, love is what it will be. My father, my father! would that I could give my whole heart to thee as thou givest all to me!”
God has written on every side of our nature,—on the mind, on the soul, yes, and in our very flesh,—the interdict forbidding love to have any one direction only, under penalty of being forever dwarfed. This Claude vaguely felt; but lacking the clear thought, he could only cry, “Oh, is it, is it, selfishness for one’s heart just to be hungry and thirsty?”
And now here sat his father, on all their worldly goods, his rifle between his knees, waiting for his son’s choice, and ready to make it his own. And here stood the son, free of foot to follow that voice which was calling to-day louder than ever before, but feeling assured that to follow it meant love without hope for him, and for this dear father the pain of yielding up the larger share of his son’s heart,—as if love were subject to arithmetic!—yielding it to one who, thought Claude, cared less for both of them than for one tress of her black hair, one lash of her dark eyes. While he still pondered, the father spoke.
“Claude, I tell you!” his face lighted up with courage and ambition. “We better go—Mervilionville!”
Claude’s heart leaped, but he kept his countenance. “Vermilionville? No, papa; you will not like Vermilionville.”
“Yaas! I will like him. ’Tis good place! Bonaventure come from yondah. When I was leav’ Gran’ Point’, Bonaventure, he cry, you know, like I tole you. He tell Sidonie he bringin’ ed’cation at Gran’ Point’ to make Gran’ Point’ more better, but now ed’cation drive bes’ men ’way from Gran’ Point’. And den he say, ‘St. Pierre, may bee you go Mervilionville; dat make me glad,’ he say: ‘dat way,’ he say, ‘what I rob Peter I pay John.’ Where we go if dawn’t go Mervilionville? St. Martinville, Opelousas, New Iberia? Too many Creole yondah for me. Can’t go to city; city too big to live in. Why you dawn’t like Mervilionville? You write me letter, when you was yondah, you like him fus’ class!”