Читать книгу The Sin of Monsieur Antoine - George Sand - Страница 10

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"Take a pencil, Emile," said the manufacturer to his son, who followed him, fearing that he might meet with some accident; "make no mistake in the figures I am going to call off to you.—One, two, three wheels broken here.—The staircase carried away.—The large engine damaged—three thousand, five, seven or eight—Let us take the highest figure; that's the safest way in business.—Put down eight thousand francs.—What! the dam broken? that's strange! Put down fifteen thousand. We must rebuild it all in Roman cement. There's a corner that has given way.—Write, Emile.—Emile, have you written that?"

For an hour Monsieur Cardonnet continued thus to estimate his losses and the necessary outlay; and when he called upon his son to foot up the figures, he shrugged his shoulders impatiently because the young man, whether from distraction or because he was out of practice, did not perform that task as rapidly as he wished.

"Have you done it?" he asked, after two or three moments of restrained impatience.

"Yes, father; it amounts to about eighty thousand francs."

"About?" repeated Monsieur Cardonnet with a frown. "What sort of a word is that? Well, well," he added, glancing at him with a penetrating, mocking expression, "I see that you are a little confused from being perched up in a tree. I have made the calculation in my head, and I regret that I am obliged to tell you that it was done before you had sharpened your pencil. There'll be eighty-one thousand five hundred francs to be laid out all over again."

"That's a good deal," said Emile, striving to conceal his impatience beneath a serious air.

"I wouldn't have believed that this little water-course could have so much force," observed Monsieur Cardonnet, as calmly as if he were making an expert estimate of a loss in which he was not interested; "but it won't take long to repair. Holà! you fellows.—There's a beam caught between two of the large wheels, and there's just enough water left to keep it banging. Take it out of there at once or my wheels will be broken."

They made haste to obey, but the task was more difficult than it seemed. All the weight of the machinery seemed to rest on that obstacle, which bade fair not to be the first to give way. Several men rubbed the skin off their hands to no purpose.

"Look out and not hurt yourselves!" cried Emile instinctively, taking a hand himself to lessen their difficulty.

But Monsieur Cardonnet shouted in his turn:

"Pull there! push!—Bah! your arms are made of flax!"

The perspiration was rolling down their faces, but they made no headway.

"Get away from there, all of you," suddenly exclaimed a voice that Emile instantly recognized, "and let me try it—I prefer to do it alone."

And Jean, armed with a crow-bar, quickly pried out a large stone which no one had noticed. Then, with wonderful dexterity, he gave the beam a powerful push.

"Gently, deuce take it!" cried Monsieur Cardonnet, "you'll smash everything."

"If I smash anything, I'll pay for it," retorted the peasant, with playful bluntness. "Now, two of you boys come here. All together now! Courage, little Pierre, that's good!—Another bit, my old Guillaume!—Oh! the clever fellows!—Softly! softly! let me take my foot away, or you'll crush it for me, son of the devil!—Now she goes!—push—don't be afraid—I have it!"

And in less than two minutes Jean, whose presence and voice seemed to electrify the other workmen, relieved the machinery of the extraneous object which endangered it.

"Come with me, Jean," said Monsieur Cardonnet, thereupon.

"What for?" rejoined the peasant. "I have done enough of that sort of work for to-day, monsieur."

"That is why I want you to come and drink a glass of my best wine. Come, I say, I have something to say to you. My son, go and tell your mother to put some Malaga on my table."

"Your son?" said Jean, looking at Emile with some signs of emotion. "If he is your son, I will go with you, for he seems to me like a good fellow."

"Yes, my son is a good fellow, Jean," said Monsieur Cardonnet to the peasant, when the latter accepted a full glass from Emile's hand. "And you are a good fellow, too, and it's high time that you should show it a little better than you have been doing for two months past."

"I beg your pardon, monsieur," replied Jean, looking about him with a suspicious air, "but I am too old to go to school, and I didn't come here all in a sweat to listen to moral preaching as cold as hoar-frost. Here's your health, Monsieur Cardonnet; and I thank you, young man, whose feelings I must have hurt last night. You bear me no grudge, do you?"

"Wait a moment," said Monsieur Cardonnet; "before you go back to your fox's hole, take this pour-boire."

And he handed him a piece of gold.

"Keep it, keep it," said Jean testily, pushing away the proffered gratuity with a movement of his elbow. "I am not self-seeking, as you must know, and it wasn't to please you that I helped your carpenters. It was simply to keep them from breaking their backs for nothing. And then when a man knows his trade it irritates him to see people go about it wrong end to. My blood's a little quick, and in spite of myself I meddled in something that didn't concern me."

"Just as you happened to be where you had no business to be," rejoined Monsieur Cardonnet sternly, and with an evident purpose to awe the audacious peasant. "Jean, this is the last opportunity for us to come to an understanding and make each other's acquaintance; make the most of it or you'll be sorry. When I came here last year, I observed your activity, your intelligence, and the affection with which all the workmen and all the people of this village regarded you. I received most satisfactory accounts of your probity, and I resolved to put you in charge of my carpentering work; I offered to pay you double wages, by the day or by the job as you chose. You made me nonsensical answers as if you did not consider me a serious-minded man."

"That was not the trouble, monsieur, begging your pardon. I told you that I didn't need your work because I had more work in the village than I could do."

"A mere pretext and a lie! Your affairs were in bad shape then and now they're in worse shape than ever! Being prosecuted for debt, you have been obliged to leave your house, to abandon your workshop, and to hide in the mountains, like game pursued by hunters."

"When you undertake to argue," rejoined Jean, haughtily, "you should tell the truth. I am not prosecuted for debt, as you say, monsieur. I have always been an honest, well-behaved man, and if I owe a sou in the village or the neighborhood, let some one come forward and say so and raise his hand against me. Search and you will find no one!"

"None the less, there are three warrants out against you, and the gendarmes have been chasing you for two months and can't succeed in apprehending you."

"And so it will be as long as I choose! The great difficulty is that the worthy gendarmes ride their horses along one bank of the Creuse, while I ply my legs along the other! They are very sick, poor fellows! being paid to take the air and make reports as to what they don't do. Don't pity them so deeply, Monsieur Cardonnet, the government pays them, and the government is rich enough for me to dodge the payment of a thousand francs—for it's the truth that I am sentenced to pay a thousand francs or go to prison! It surprises you, doesn't it, young man, that a poor devil who has always obliged his neighbor instead of injuring him should be hunted like an escaped convict? You haven't a bad heart yet, although you are rich, because you are young. Let me tell you what my crime was. For sending three bottles of wine from my vineyard to a friend who was sick, I was arrested by the excisemen for selling wine without paying the taxes on it; and as I could not lie and humiliate myself for the sake of compromising, as I told the truth, which is that I did not sell a drop of wine, and consequently could not be punished, I was sentenced to pay what they call the minimum fine, five hundred francs. The minimum, if you please! five hundred francs, my year's wages, for a gift of three bottles of wine! To say nothing of the fact that my poor comrade was sentenced too, and that was what made me angriest. And as I could not pay such an amount, they seized everything, ransacked everything, sold everything I had, even my carpentering tools. After that, where was the use of paying for a license to carry on a trade that wouldn't support me? I stopped doing it; and one day, when I was working as a journeyman away from home, there was another prosecution and a quarrel with the deputy, when I almost forgot myself and struck him. What was to become of me? There was no bread in my chest, so I took my gun and went out into the furze and killed a hare. Formerly, in this country, poaching had become a custom and a privilege. The nobles in the old days didn't keep such close watch, just after the Revolution; they even poached with us when they had a fancy to do so."

"Witness Monsieur de Châteaubrun, who does it still," said Monsieur de Cardonnet, ironically.

"As long as he doesn't trespass on your estates, what harm does that do you?" retorted the peasant in an irritated tone. "However, for shooting a hare and catching two rabbits in a trap I was taken again and sentenced to pay a fine, and to imprisonment. But I escaped from the claws of the gendarmes as they were taking me to the government inn, and since then I have lived as I choose, and haven't chosen to hold out my arm for the chain to be put on."

"Everyone knows very well how you live, Jean," said Monsieur Cardonnet. "You wander about night and day, poaching everywhere and at all seasons, never sleeping two nights in succession in the same place, but generally in the open air; sometimes accepting hospitality at Châteaubrun, whose châtelain was nursed by your mother. I do not blame him for assisting you, but he would act more wisely, from the point of view of your own interests, to preach work and a regular life to you. But come, we have had enough of these useless words, and now you must listen to me. I am sorry for your lot, and I am going to restore your liberty by becoming surety for you. You will get off with a few days' imprisonment, just for form's sake. I will pay all your fines, and then you can hold up your head once more. Isn't that clear?"

"Oh! you are right, father," cried Emile; "you are kind and just. Well, Jean, did I deceive you?"

"It seems that you have met before," said Monsieur Cardonnet.

"Yes, father," replied Emile warmly. "Jean rendered me a great service last night; and what draws me to him even more strongly is that I saw him this morning risk his life seriously to pull a child out of the water, and he saved him. Jean, accept my father's offer and let his generosity triumph over misplaced pride."

"That is very well, Monsieur Emile," replied the carpenter. "You love your father; that is as it should be. I respected mine. But let us see, Monsieur Cardonnet, on what conditions will you do all this for me?"

"That you work on my buildings," replied the manufacturer. "You shall have the superintendence of the carpentering."

"Work on your factory, which will be the ruin of so many people!"

"No, but which will make the fortune of all my workmen, and yours, too."

"Well," said Jean, somewhat shaken, "if I don't do your work others will and I shan't be able to prevent them. I will work for you then, until I have earned a thousand francs. But who will keep me while I am paying my debt to you day by day?"

"I will, for I will add a third to your day's wages."

"A third is very little, for I must dress myself. I am stripped bare."

"Well! I will double it. Your day's wages would be thirty sous at the current rate hereabout; I will pay you three francs and you shall receive half of it every day, the other half going toward your indebtedness to me."

"Very well; it will take a long while—at least four years."

"You are wrong; it will be just two years. I think that two years hence I shall have nothing more to build."

"What, monsieur, I am to work for you every day—every day in the year without a break?"

"Except Sunday."

"Oh! Sunday—I should think so! But shan't I have one or two days a week to pass as I choose?"

"Jean, you are growing lazy, I see. There's one result of a vagabond life already."

"Hush!" exclaimed the carpenter, proudly, "lazy yourself! Jean was never lazy, and he won't begin at sixty. But I'll tell you, I have an idea that induces me to take your work. I have an idea of building myself a little house. As they've sold mine, I prefer to have a new one, built by myself alone, to suit my taste, my fancy. That's why I want at least one day a week."

"That is something I will not allow," replied the manufacturer stiffly. "You will have no house, you will have no tools of your own, you will sleep under my roof, you will eat under my roof, you will use no tools but mine, you——"

"That's quite enough to show me that I shall be your property and your slave. Thanks, monsieur, the bargain's off."

And he walked toward the door.

Emile considered his father's terms very hard; but Jean's plight would become still harder if he refused them. So he tried to bring about a compromise.

"Good Jean," he said, retaining him, "reflect, I implore you. Two years are soon passed, and with the little savings you will be able to make in that time, especially," he added, looking at Monsieur Cardonnet with an expression that was at once imploring and firm, "as my father will keep you in addition to the wages agreed upon——"

"Really?" said Jean, shaken once more.

"Granted," said Monsieur Cardonnet.

"Well, Jean, your clothes are a small matter, and my mother and I will take pleasure in replenishing your wardrobe. At the end of two years, therefore, you will have a thousand francs net; that is enough to build a bachelor's house for your own use, as you are a bachelor."

"A widower, monsieur," sighed Jean, "and a son killed in the field."

"Whereas, if you use up your salary every week," said the elder Cardonnet, unmoved, "you will waste it, and at the end of the year you will have built nothing and saved nothing."

"You take too much interest in me; what difference does that make to you?"

"It makes this difference, that my work, being constantly interrupted, will progress slowly, that I shall never have you at hand, and that, two years hence, when you come and offer to work longer for me, I shall not need you any longer. I shall have been compelled to give your place to some one else."

"There will always be work to be done keeping the plant in order. Do you think I mean to cheat you out of your money?"

"No, but I should prefer being cheated to being delayed."

"Ah! what a hurry you are in to enjoy your prosperity! Well! give me one day a week and let me have my own tools."

"He seems to think a great deal of this day of freedom, father," said Emile; "let him have it."

"I will let him have Sunday."

"And I accept it only as a day of rest," said Jean, indignantly; "do you take me for a pagan? I don't work on Sunday, monsieur; that would bring me ill-luck, and I should do bad work for both you and myself."

"Well, my father will give you Monday——"

"Hush, Emile, not Monday! I don't agree to that. You don't know this man. Intelligent as he is and prolific in inventions, sometimes successful, often puerile, he never enjoys himself except when he is working at absurd things for his own use; he is something of a carpenter, a cabinet-maker, Heaven knows what! He is clever with his hands, but when he abandons himself to his own whims, he becomes idle, absent-minded and incapable of serious work."

"He is an artist, father," said Emile, smiling, but with tears in his eyes; "have a little compassion for genius!"

Monsieur Cardonnet cast a contemptuous glance at his son, but Jean took the young man's hand.

"My boy," he said, with his strange and noble familiarity, "I do not know whether you really do me justice or are laughing at me, but what you say is true! I have too much of the spirit of invention for the sort of work he would have me do here. When I work for my friends in the village, for Monsieur Antoine or the curé or the mayor or poor beggars like myself, they say: 'Do as you please, carry out your own ideas, old fellow! it may take a little longer, but it will be all right!' And then I take pleasure in working, yes, so much pleasure that I don't count the hours and spend part of the night at it. It tires me, it gives me the fever, it almost kills me sometimes! but I like it, you see, my boy, as other men like wine. It's my amusement. Oh! you laugh and make fun of me, Monsieur Cardonnet; your sneering is an insult, and you shouldn't have me, no, you shouldn't have me, even if the gendarmes were here and my head was in danger. Sell myself to you, body and soul, for two years! Do what pleases you, watch you plan, and not give my opinion! for if you know me, I know you too: I know what sort of a man you are, and that there isn't a nail driven on your premises until you've measured it. And I shall be a day-laborer, working to pay my taxes as my dead and gone father worked for the abbés of Gargilesse. No, God forbid! I will not sell my soul to such tiresome, stupid labor. If you would give me my day of recreation and compensation, to satisfy my old customers and myself! but no, not an hour!"

"No, not an hour," said Monsieur Cardonnet angrily; for the self-esteem of the artist was now involved on both sides. "Off with you, I'll have none of you; take this napoléon and go and get hanged elsewhere."

"They don't hang people now, monsieur," said Jean, throwing the gold piece on the floor, "and even if they did, I shouldn't be the first honest man who ever passed through the hangman's hands."

"Emile," said Monsieur Cardonnet, as soon as he was gone, "go and send up the constable, that man standing on the stoop with a little iron fork in his hand."

"Great Heaven! what are you going to do?" said Emile in dismay.

"Bring that man back to reason, to respectable behavior, to work, to safety, to happiness. When he has passed a night in jail, he will be more tractable, and some day he will bless me for delivering him from his internal devil."

"But, father, to interfere with personal liberty! You can't——"

"I am mayor since this morning, and it is my duty to lock up vagabonds. Do as I say, Emile, or I will go myself."

Emile still hesitated. Monsieur Cardonnet, unable to brook the slightest shade of resistance, pushed him sharply away from the door and went out, to issue orders to the constable, in the capacity of chief magistrate of the village, to arrest Jean Jappeloup, native of Gargilesse, a carpenter by trade, and without any known domicile.

This mission was extremely distasteful to the rustic functionary, and Monsieur Cardonnet read his hesitation on his face.

"Caillaud," he said, in an imperative tone, "your dismissal within a week, or twenty francs reward!"

"Very good, monsieur," said Caillaud; and he set off at a round pace, waving his pike.

He overtook the fugitive within two gun-shots of the village; it was not a difficult task, for the latter was walking slowly, with his head hanging forward on his breast, absorbed in painful reflections.

"If it wasn't for my wrong-headedness," he was saying to himself, "I should be now on the road to rest and comfort, instead of which I must put on the collar of poverty again, stray like a wolf among the rocks and bramble-bushes, and be too often a burden to poor Antoine, who is kind, who always gives me a hearty welcome, but who is poor and gives me more bread and wine than I can pay for with partridges and hares for his table, taken in my snares. And then what breaks my heart is the idea of leaving forever this poor dear village where I was born, where I have passed all my life, where all my friends are, and where I can never show my face again unless like a starved dog that runs the risk of a bullet to get a piece of bread. And yet all the people here are kind to me; and if they weren't afraid of the gendarmes they would give me shelter!"

As he mused thus Jean heard the bell ringing the evening Angelus, and tears rolled unbidden down his tanned cheeks. "No," he thought, "there isn't a bell within ten leagues that has such a sweet tone as the bell of Gargilesse church!"—A nightingale sang among the hawthorns in the hedge near by.—"You are very lucky," he said, speaking aloud in his revery, "you can build your nest here, steal from all the gardens I know so well, and feed on everybody's fruit, without any complaint being lodged against you."

"Complaint, that's the word," said a voice behind him; "I arrest you in the name of the law!"

And Caillaud seized him by the collar.