Part 21

“Then work on it all night, and show it to me all completed in the morning, or thy bones shall mourn thine idleness,” said Pierre with a flicker of his little eyes. And he shut Hyacinthe into the workshop with a smoky lamp, his tools and the sandal-wood cabinet.

It was nothing unusual. The boy had often been left before to finish a piece of work overnight while Pierre went off to his brandies. But this was Christmas Eve, and he was very tired. The cold crept into the shed until the scent of the sandal-wood could not make him dream himself warm, and the roof cracked sullenly in the frost. There came upon Hyacinthe one of those awful, hopeless despairs that children know. It seemed to be a living presence that caught up his soul and crushed it in black hands. “In all the world, nothing!” said he, staring at the dull flame; “no place, no heart, no love! O kind God, is there a place, a love for me in another world?”

I cannot endure to think of Hyacinthe, poor lad, shut up despairing in the work-shop with his loneliness, his cold, and his hunger, on the eve of Christmas. He was but an overgrown, unhappy child, and for unhappy children no aid, at this season, seems too divine for faith. So Madame says, and she is very old and very wise. Hyacinthe even looked at the chisel in his hand, and thought that by a touch of that he might lose it all, all, and be at peace, somewhere not far from God; only it was forbidden. Then came the tears, and great sobs that sickened and deafened him, so that he scarcely heard the gentle rattling of the latch.

At least, I suppose it came then, but it may have been later. The story is all so vague here, so confused with fancies that have spoiled the first simplicity. I think that Hyacinthe must have gone to the door, opening it upon the still woods and the frosty stars, and the lad who stood outside in the snow must have said; “I see you are working late, comrade. May I come in?” or something like it.

Hyacinthe brushed his ragged sleeve across his eyes, and opened the door wider with a little nod to the other to enter. Those little lonely villages strung along the great river see strange wayfarers adrift inland from the sea. Hyacinthe said to himself that surely here was such a one.

Afterwards he told the curé that for a moment he had been bewildered. Dully blinking into the stranger’s eyes, he lost for a flash the first impression of youth and received one of some incredible age or sadness. But this also passed and he knew that the wanderer’s eyes were only quiet, very quiet, like the little pools in the wood where the wild does went to drink. As he turned within the door, smiling at Hyacinthe and shaking some snow from his fur cap, he did not seem more than sixteen or so.

“It is very cold outside,” he said. “There is a big oak tree on the edge of the fields that has split in the frost and frightened all the little squirrels asleep there. Next year it will make an even better home for them. And see what I found close by!” He opened his fingers, and showed Hyacinthe a little sparrow lying unruffled in the palm.

“_Pauvrette!_” said the dull Hyacinthe.

“_Pauvrette!_ Is it then dead?” He touched it with a gentle forefinger.

“No,” answered the strange boy, “it is not dead. We’ll put it here among the shavings, not far from the lamp, and it will be well by morning.”

He smiled at Hyacinthe again, and the shambling lad felt dimly as if the scent of the sandal-wood had deepened, and the lamp flame burned clearer. But the stranger’s eyes were only quiet, quiet.

“Have you come far?” asked Hyacinthe. “It is a bad season for travelling, and the wolves are out in the woods.”

“A long way,” said the other; “a long, long way. I heard a child cry. . .”

“There is no child here,” answered Hyacinthe, shaking his head. “Monsieur L’Oreillard is not fond of children, he says they cost too much money. But if you have come far, you must be cold and hungry, and I have no food nor fire. At the Cinq Châteaux you will find both!”

The stranger looked at him again with those quiet eyes, and Hyacinthe fancied his face was familiar. “I will stay here,” he said. “You are very late at work and you are unhappy.”

“Why, as to that,” answered Hyacinthe, rubbing again at his cheeks and ashamed of his tears, “most of us are sad at one time or another, the good God knows. Stay here and welcome if it pleases you, and you may take a share of my bed, though it is no more than a pile of balsam boughs and an old blanket, in the loft. But I must work at this cabinet, for the drawer must be finished and the handles put on and these corners carved, all by the holy morning; or my wages will be paid with a stick.”

“You have a hard master,” put in the other boy, “if he would pay you with blows upon the feast of Noel.”

“He is hard enough,” said Hyacinthe; “but once he gave me a dinner of sausages and white wine, and once, in the summer, melons. If my eyes will stay open, I will finish this by morning, but indeed I am sleepy. Stay with me an hour or so, comrade, and talk to me of your wanderings, so that the time may pass more quickly.”

“I will tell you of the country where I was a child,” answered the stranger.

And while Hyacinthe worked, he told—of sunshine and dust; of the shadows of vine-leaves on the flat white walls of a house; of rosy doves on the flat roof; of the flowers that come in the spring, crimson and blue, and the white cyclamen in the shadow of the rocks; of the olive, the myrtle and almond; until Hyacinthe’s slow fingers ceased working, and his sleepy eyes blinked wonderingly.

“See what you have done, comrade,” he said at last; “you have told of such pretty things that I have done no work for an hour. And now the cabinet will never be finished, and I shall be beaten.”

“Let me help you,” smiled the other; “I also was bred a carpenter.”

At first Hyacinthe would not, fearing to trust the sweet wood out of his own hands, but at length he allowed the stranger to fit in one of the little drawers, and so deftly was the work done, that Hyacinthe pounded his fists on the bench in admiration. “You have a pretty knack” he cried; “it seemed as if you did but hold the drawer in your hands a moment, and hey! ho! it jumped into its place!”

“Let me fit in the other little drawers, while you go and rest a while,” said the wanderer. So Hyacinthe curled up among the shavings, and the stranger fell to work upon the little cabinet of sandal-wood.

Here begins what the curé will have it is a dream within a dream. Sweetest of dreams was ever dreamed, if that is so. Sometimes I am forced to think with him, but again I see as clearly as with old Madame’s eyes, that have not seen the earthly light for twenty years, and with her and Hyacinthe, I say “Credo.”

Hyacinthe said that he lay among the shavings in the sweetness of the sandal-wood, and was very tired. He thought of the country where the stranger had been a boy; of the flowers on the hills; of the laughing leaves of aspen, and poplar; of the golden flowering anise and the golden sun upon the dusty roads, until he was warm. All the time through these pictures, as through a painted veil, he was aware of that other boy with the quiet eyes, at work upon the cabinet, smoothing, fitting, polishing. “He does better work than I,” thought Hyacinthe, but he was not jealous. And again he thought, “It is growing towards morning. In a little while I will get up and help him.” But he did not, for the dream of warmth and the smell of the sandal-wood held him in a sweet drowse. Also he said that he thought the stranger was singing as he worked, for there seemed to be a sense of some music in the shed, though he could not tell whether it came from the other boy’s lips, or from the shabby old tools as he used them, or from the stars. “The stars are much paler,” thought Hyacinthe, “and soon it will be morning, and the corners are not carved yet. I must get up and help this kind one in a little moment. Only I am so tired, and the music and the sweetness seem to wrap me and fold me close, so that I may not move.”

He lay without moving, and behind the forest there shone a pale glow of some indescribable colour that was neither green nor blue, while in Terminaison the church bells began to ring. “Day will soon be here!” thought Hyacinthe, immovable in that deep dream of his, “and with day will come Monsieur L’Oreillard and his stick. I must get up and help, for even yet the corners are not carved.”

But he did not get up. Instead, he saw the stranger look at him again, smiling as if he loved him, and lay his brown finger lightly upon the four empty corners of the cabinet. And Hyacinthe saw the little squares of reddish wood ripple and heave and break, as little clouds when the wind goes through the sky. And out of them thrust forth little birds, and after them the lilies, for a moment living, but even while Hyacinthe looked, growing hard and reddish-brown and settling back into the sweet wood. Then the stranger smiled again, and laid all the tools neatly in order, and, opening the door quietly, went away into the woods.

Hyacinthe lay still among the shavings for a long time, and then he crept slowly to the door. The sun, not yet risen, sent his first beams upon the delicate mist of frost afloat beneath the trees, and so all the world was aflame with splendid gold. Far away down the road a dim figure seemed to move amid the glory, but the glow and the splendour were such that Hyacinthe was blinded. His breath came sharply as the glow beat in great waves on the wretched shed; on the foam of shavings; on the cabinet with the little birds and the lilies carved at the corners.

He was too pure of heart to feel afraid. But, “Blessed be the Lord,” whispered Hyacinthe, clasping his slow hands, “for He hath visited and redeemed His people, But who will believe?”

Then the sun of Christ’s day rose gloriously, and the little sparrow came from his nest among the shavings and shook his wings to the light.

Printed in Great Britain by MACKAYS LTD. Chatham

TRANSCRIBER NOTES

Mis-spelled words and printer errors have been fixed.

Inconsistency in hyphenation has been retained.