Napoléon et Wellington, Papiers

Inédits, publiés par Clément P.-J. PROUDHON

Inédits, publiés par Clément P.-J. PROUDHON
Rochel (conclusion)

Cosmopolis

An International Review.

No. X.-OCTOBER, 1896.

A SON OF A SAINT.

IN his left hand was a large bundle wrapt in a red handkerchief. With his right he raised his blue cap by the shining peak and scratched his head with two unoccupied fingers. To him thinking was an effort, and that helped him to think. Great drops of sweat ran together upon his forehead and fell upon his high cheek-bone. Then he laughed-a low suppressed chuckle of real emotions, which mocked each other because they found no words.

"Perriton !" was all he said.

There are villages whose windows, from a far horizon, glisten welcome to the approaching traveller. Others, half hidden amongst dark orchards and tall elm-trees, play hide and seek with him as he winds upon his way. But of Perriton is neither hint nor suspicion, until from the hill-top at a glance the whole place lies without concealment in the valley at his feet.

It was summer time at noon. On one side dog-roses sprawled over a high hedge-row. On the other a narrow spinney of dark pines skirted a strip of rough waste. And a brazen sun glared straight down upon a shadeless road, two inches deep in dust as fine and white as flour.

Midway between the wheel-ruts stood this man in the full strength of his manhood. He might be five-and-thirty, certainly not more; and his face was brown and hard as bronze. Despite the heat, he showed no sign of fatigue. Yet he had tramped miles. The dust lay thick in every crease of his loose NO. X. (VOL. IV.)

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trousers and old woollen jersey. It even whitened his brown beard. There was not a breath of wind. He must have stirred

it step by step.

Perriton! Well-I'm blessed!"

He looked down upon the little place where he was born and laughed again, nodding his head with the humorous condescension of one who has been round the world.

The village lay before him like an open map.

Roof and homestead, field and garden, remained unchanged. Nothing had been added, God knows, these fifteen years; and, on the solid masonry and thick mud walls of long ago, a century leaves merely a line in record of decay.

There was the thatched cottage where he was brought up, with the lean-to shed behind, in which his father worked at the loom; and opposite, the little house with red tiles, the house of the Atwoods—and Miriam; then the orchard running alongside the road; and next to that the meeting-house; and away beyond the church and poplar trees the mansion of Mr. Craddock, the factor. Hundreds of times he had been there with his father's cloth.

His memory peopled the place with the companions of his boyhood. He did not think of them as changed. He watched for some familiar figure, but not a soul passed down the street this summer noon. Away in the meadows, too far for recognition, folk were busy carrying hay. Boys were bathing below the hatches in the winding overgrown brook, and running naked up and down the bank.

"God!

How it all comes back," he muttered.

He slowly crossed the strip of hard hoof-trodden waste, and sat beside the dry ditch below the pines. There was no need to go down much before night. He was a plain, rough man of few words; but the sight of these familiar scenes had moved him more than he knew. Recollections of his boyhood came fleeting across his brain-visions, none the less vivid because he was unskilled in any art of expression. He saw the sights; he heard the sounds; he pieced together the story of his life down to the early morning with the grey dawn creeping over the hill, more than fifteen years ago, when he ran away to sea.

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A large kitchen with white-washed walls. It was afternoon, and the sunlight falling aslant through the small panes of the window cast a trellis-work of shadow across the blue pavingstones of the floor. The crockery upon the dresser glistened above reproach. All the furniture, the settle, the plain oak bench, and the chairs shone in the light. But everything looked bare. There were no ornaments. Nothing but the

mere necessities of frugal life, except the plants, a lemonscented verbena-the leaves of which it was accounted sin to pinch-and some fuchsias and geraniums not yet in flower, standing on the sill to serve as a window-blind. Upon a small round table in the corner was a Bible, beneath a pile of hymnbooks, and over the mantelpiece hung a text printed in plain black letters

"THOU GOD SEEST ME."

He stood again in the blue flagstone floor- a young boy premeditating sin. He had the courage for it, more than enough of physical courage, and yet he was afraid. The spirit of the words above the mantelpiece had been impressed upon him from his cradle, and always as a warning and a threat. There was to be no evasion of hell-fire. He feared God quite as much as he feared the Devil. Yet Miriam and the rest would jeer if he did not go; and he feared Miriam more than either.

Upon one side of a passage, the kitchen occupied the whole cottage floor. There was also a window looking out upon the back, and a passer in the street could see right through the house into the garden. If his stepmother should come by and catch sight of him, there would be an end to hesitation, sure enough. Then Miriam would call him "chucklehead," and, more than anything, he hated being called names by a girl.

From the shed close by came the rattle of his father's loom. He had no fear of interference from his father. From early morning until dark night, Abraham Lockwood never left his work, except for meals, or for those spiritual exercises which were the breath of that little sect of Early Christians of which he was a member. The weaving was a solitary tude. The loom almost filled his workshop, and, even had there been

room for visitors, no idle conversation could have beguiled Abraham from his work, and no ordinary talk could have been heard above the rumble and the din. Hour after hour he went on, singing hymns in snatches to the clacking of his shuttle, making strange pauses upon unexpected syllables, sometimes so long that he seemed to have forgotten. Yet he never failed to take up the note again at last.

That afternoon through the open window his voice came deep and clear :---

Not all-clacketty, clack, clack-clack-the blood of beasts

On Jew-clacketty clack-ish alt-clack-clack-ars slain

Can give the guilty con-clackelly clack, clack-clack-science peace, Or wipe a-clack, clack-way the clacketty, clack, clack-clack, clacketty clack, clack-clack, clack-clack-stain.

Suddenly above the singing and the noise broke out the shrill treble of his stepmother.

"Abraham, there's that thing of a pig out again."

Hymn and shuttle stopped. There was not a sound except the big blue-bottle buzzing against the window-pane. Now or never was the moment to get away unseen; but he could not make up his mind.

A shadow blotted out the mottled sunlight that fell between the leaves of the flowers, and through the open window was hurled at him the word

"Chucklehead !"

He looked up quickly. Miriam Atwood, a girl of his own age, was outside upon the causeway, peering into the kitchen. Seeing him alone there, she stood upright with her face close against the pane. She had run across the road without her hat, and her blue-black hair fell over her forehead. Mischief gleamed in her great dark eyes.

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What?" he answered, with a sullen impatience.

"Are you coming or not? Jack is gone on. He knew you

wouldn't go. He wasn't going to wait all night."

Her mockery was a spur to his halting resolution.

"Yes, I'm coming."

"Go on. Your mother won't let you out. You've got to go to chapel."

"She will. I haven't. I was catching flies."

"Make haste, then."