His father came home late that night. He hummed as he groped upstairs and fumbled his way along the passage to the front room. The full hours of the night in towns, where huddled creatures live, poured in upon René as he lay in sleeplessness, staring, staring at the never-darkened sky.
From this torment to escape he could find no other solace than the attempt to be “nice” to his father. It was forced on him, and after the first plunge he found it not so very difficult, and there was some reward in his mother’s anxious satisfaction. Both men played up to keep things lively for the woman, and the elder set himself almost desperately to make the younger laugh. At first when they were alone together Mr. Fourmy made the mistake of trying droll stories spiced and hot on his son, but he was met with a stare so blank and uncomprehending, so freezing, that he never tried them again. Then, more successfully, he drew on his own reminiscences, and practiced his not inconsiderable talent for caricature and exaggerated mimicry upon the odd characters he had known and the members of his own family. This met with encouragement from René, who was interested. From his father’s chuckling monologue he learned that the Fourmys were the oddest family that ever was—Scotch, French, Dutch, Jewish, reg’lar English, in fact; Nonconformist for generations; clever, close, proud, hard, acquisitive, narrow, pious, with occasional outcrops of wickedness to leaven the lump; shy, harsh, undemonstrative; loathing any kind of excess; clinging to the middle way, bound never to rise above respectable mediocrity; dreading anything so conspicuous as eminence; never reaching to any higher public office than a District Council or a Board of Guardians.
“Two of my brothers are Guardians,” said Mr. Fourmy, “and they could predict no worse for me than that I should come to the workhouse. They know well enough that no Fourmy could ever get to prison. We can’t be bad enough.”
“Where did we come from?” asked René.
“Scotland, but that’s a long time ago. Your great-aunt Janet’s father started a tannery somewhere near Lancaster. That would be somewhere about the time of Napoleon. At least, I remember reading a little book the old gentleman wrote about a tour he made in France and Germany when the Continent was opened up after Elba and all that.”
“But why are we fixed here?”
“Don’t your big books tell you that?”
For once in a way René saw that his father was twitting him.
“Big books don’t account for humble folk like us.”
“The biggest books do, my boy.” And to René’s surprise and delight his father raised his voice and trolled out some verses that excited and exalted him. They were all about joy and freedom and the awfulness of losing them, but no single phrase bit into his mind to take possession of it.