Claude let silence speak consent. He stooped, and began to load himself with their joint property. He had had, in his life, several sorts of trouble of mind; but only just now at twenty was he making the acquaintance of his conscience. Vermilionville was the call that had been sounding within him all these months, and Marguerite was the haunting fantasy.
CHAPTER X.
A STRONG TEAM.
I would not wish to offend the self-regard of Vermilionville. But—what a place in which to seek enlargement of life! I know worth and greatness have sometimes, not to say ofttimes, emerged from much worse spots; from little lazy villages, noisy only on Sunday, with grimier court-houses, deeper dust and mud, their trade more entirely in the hands of rat-faced Isaacs and Jacobs, with more frequent huge and solitary swine slowly scavenging about in abysmal self-occupation, fewer vine-clad cottages, raggeder negroes, and more decay. Vermilionville is not the worst, at all. I have seen large, and enlarging, lives there.
Hither came the two St. Pierres. “No,” Claude said; “they would not go to the Beausoleil house.” Privately he would make himself believe he had not returned to any thing named Beausoleil, but only and simply to Vermilionville. On a corner opposite the public square there was another “hotel;” and it was no great matter to them if it was mostly pine-boards, pale wall-paper, and transferable whitewash. But, not to be outdone by its rival round the corner, it had, besides, a piano, of a quality you may guess, and a landlady’s daughter who seven times a day played and sang “I want to be somebody’s darling,” and had no want beyond. The travellers turned thence, found a third house full, conjectured the same of the only remaining one, and took their way, after all, towards Zoséphine’s. It was quite right, now, to go there, thought Claude, since destiny led; and so he let it lead both his own steps and the thrumping boots of this dear figure in Campeachy hat and soft untrimmed beard, that followed ever at his side.
And then, after all!—looking into those quiet black eyes of Zoséphine’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-shirted 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 Zoséphine:
“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, dass 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 Zoséphine smiled and secretly thanked God 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 passed 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?