Rosin the Beau

by Laura Elizabeth Howe Richards

Ste. Valerie was silent until Ham was out of earshot; then he broke out.

"Holy Blue! what a prodigy! You suffer this to burst upon me, Jacques, without notice, without preparation. My nerves are permanently shattered. You tell me, a man; I behold a tower, a mountain, Atlas crowned with clouds! Thousand thunders! what bulk! what sinews! and of my race! Amazing effect of—what? Climate? occupation? In France, this race shrinks, diminishes; a rapier, keen if you will, but slender like a thread; here, it swells, expands, towers aloft,—a club of Hercules. And with my father, who could sit in my pocket, and my grandfather, who could sit in his! Figure to yourself, Jacques, that I am called le grand Yvon!" He was silent for a moment, then broke out again. "But the mind. D'Arthenay! the brain; how is it with that? Thought,—a lightning flash! is it not lost, wandering through a head large like that of an ox?"

I cannot remember in what words I answered him, Melody. I know I was troubled how to make it clear to him, and he so different from the other. I seemed to stand midway between the two, and to understand both. Half of me seemed to spring up in joy at the voice of the young foreigner; his lightness, his quickness, the very way he moved his hands, seemed a part of my own nature that I had not learned to use, and now saw reflected in another. I am not sure if I make myself clear, my child; it was a singular feeling. But when I would spring forward with him, and toss my head and wave my hands as he did,—as my mother Marie did,—there was something held me back; it was the other nature in me, slow and silent, and—no! not cold, but loath to show its warmth, if I may put it so. My father in me kept me silent many a time when I might have spoken foolishness. And it was this half, my father's half, that loved Ham Belfort, and saw the solid sweetness of nature that made that huge body a temple of good will, so to speak. He had the kind of goodness that gives peace and rest to those who lean against it. His mill was one of the places—but we shall come to that by and by!

Walking on as we talked, we soon came to the village, and I begged my new friend to come in and see my father and my home. We entered. My father was standing by the fire, facing the door, with one hand on the tall mantel-shelf. He was in one of his waking dreams, and I was struck deeply, Melody, by the beauty, and, if I may use the word about a plain man, the majesty of his looks. My companion was struck, too, for he stopped short, and murmured something under his breath; I heard the word "Noblesse," and thought it not amiss. My father's eyes (they were extraordinarily bright and blue) were wide open, and looked through us and beyond us, yet saw nothing, or nothing that other eyes could see; the tender look was in them that meant the thought of my mother. But Abby came quietly round from the corner where she sat sewing, and laid her hand on his arm, and spoke clearly, yet not sharply, telling him to look and see, Jakey had brought a gentleman to see him. Then the vision passed, and my father looked and saw us, and came forward with a stately, beautiful way that he could use, and bade the stranger welcome. Ste. Valerie bowed low, as he might to a prince. Hearing that he was a Frenchman, my father seemed pleased. "My dear wife was a Frenchwoman!" he said. "She was a musician, sir; I wish you could have heard her play."

"He was himself also of French descent," Ste. Valerie reminded him, with another bow; and told of the ruined tower, and the old friendship between the two houses. But my father cared nothing for descent.

"Long ago, sir!" he said. "Long ago! I have nothing to do with the dead of two hundred years back. I am a plain farmer; my son has learned the trade of shoemaking, though he also has some skill with the fiddle, I am told. Nothing compared to his mother, but still some skill."

Ste. Valerie looked from one of us to the other. "A farmer,—a shoemaker!" he said, slowly. "Strange country, this! And while your vieille noblesse make shoes and till the soil, who are these, monsieur, who live in some of the palaces that I have seen in your cities? In many, truly, persons of real nobility also, gentlemen, whether hunting of race or of Nature's own. But these others? I have seen them; large persons, both male and female, red as beef, their grossness illuminated with diamonds of royalty, their dwelling a magazine from the Rue de la Paix. These things are shocking to a European, M. D'Arthenay!" My father looked at him with something like reproof in his quiet gaze.

"I have never been in cities," he said. "I consider that a farmer's life may be used as well as another for the glory of God."

Then, with a wave of his hand, he seemed to put all this away from him, and with a livelier air asked the stranger to take supper with us. Abby had been laying the cloth quietly while we were talking, and my father would have asked her to sit down with us, but she slipped away while his face was turned in the other direction, and though he looked once or twice, he soon forgot. Poor Abby! I had seen her looking at him as he talked, and was struck by her intent expression, as if she would not lose a word he might say. It seemed natural, though, that he should be her first thought; he had always been, since my mother died.

So presently we three sat about the little table, that was gay with flowers and pretty dishes. I saw Ste. Valerie's wondering glances; was it thus, he seemed to ask, that a farmer lived, who had no woman to care for him? My father saw, too, and was pleased as I had rarely seen him. He did not smile, but his face seemed to fill with light.