VTHE ABDICATION
IN the days that followed I came to understand by all sorts of small tokens, not to speak of the remarks of servants, that the house no longer belonged to grandfather, but to my parents, and that only a simple formality remained to be accomplished for the treaty to be final. Grandfather no longer having the responsibility—though in truth the responsibility had never weighed heavily upon him—had no desire to keep the honours of headship. More than once I heard father speaking to him to the following effect:
“I do not want anything to be changed—I want everything to be as it has always been—I want to take from you nothing but your cares.”
“Oho!” grandfather would reply with his little laugh, “you are lucky if you know just what you want.”
And he would run his fingers carelessly through his beard, as if nothing were worth any trouble. Still, a plan was simmering in his mind, of which we were speedily advised. When once he had hold of an idea nothing, neither entreaties nor protests, would induce him to letit go. Aunt Deen’s tumultuous reproaches, father’s brief, clear-cut, unanswerable arguments, mother’s entreaties,—he received them all with equal tranquillity of temper and heeded none of them. From his amiable and detached air one would have deemed him easily amenable to persuasion, if it had not been for his wicked little laugh which upset everything.
One fine morning we were all informed of his decision to give up the room with two windows which he occupied in the very heart of the house, which was vast, comfortable and easy to keep warm, and to take possession of what?—no one could have guessed—the tower chamber! This room had long been unoccupied, and all the winds of heaven blew through it. No sooner had he made known his intention than the entire household, after fruitless attempts to make him abandon his purpose, must needs bend every nerve to help him move without delay. Without waiting for any of us he was already leading the way to the staircase laden with the most precious of his possessions.
“Wait at least until we sweep, clean and dust,” urged Aunt Deen, armed with the wolf’s head.
“It’s not worth while,” he assured her. “One can live very comfortably with spiders and dust.”
This scandal at least was avoided. Aunt Deen was ahead of him, and he was obliged to have a few minutes’ patience, little as he liked it; after which he resolutely laid hold of the bannister, bearing his barometer, violin case and pipes. Down he came again for hisspy-glass. The rest of the removal did not interest him at all. His clothes, linen and furniture might follow him or not, as it happened. He showed his confidence in me by requesting me to carry a treatise on astronomy, a volume about cryptograms, the coloured illustrations of which I already knew, showing the principal species of mushrooms, and another work which from its title I believed to be a book of devotion: the “Confessions of Jean Jacques Rousseau”—I had almost forgotten the “Prophecies of Michel Nostradamus,” and a collection of the “True Limping Messenger of Berne and Vevey,” an almanac famous and precious from every point of view, but chiefly for its meteorological bulletins. For grandfather was greatly interested in the condition of the atmosphere. He would snuff it up, so to speak, from his window morning and night, at whatever risk of taking cold; and he was always observing the movements of the clouds and the shining of the stars. He loved to cite the authority of a certain Mathew de la Drôme, with whom he was in correspondence, and whom we children had come to believe to be a sorcerer or a mender of weather. He himself used to make forecasts—and if you wanted to flatter him, you would ask him to predict the weather. He was seldom mistaken, whether it was that luck was on his side or that he really had rightly interpreted the direction of the winds. This trivial reputation, which he enjoyed, seemed to make him one with themysterious laws of nature, whose oracles he uttered.
As soon as he had moved his books and instruments thither he found himself at home in the tower chamber and declared himself pleased with it. It had a view of the sky and at the same time of all four quarters of the horizon; and would capture the slightest ray of the sun, from whatsoever direction it might come. As for the direction of the wind, that would be easily ascertained.
A great clatter informed him that his furniture was following him upstairs. Aunt Deen was presiding over the removal in person, not without mutterings and grumblings. With the bedside steps under one arm, a bolster under the other, and a candle-stick in each hand, she preceded, with stimulating remarks, a squad which followed in Indian file, but without much team work in their manœuvres. Tem Bossette came first with an easy chair on his head (he had consented to a reconciliation, sealed by a bottle of red wine). Then appeared a wardrobe oscillating on four legs, which on reaching the top of the stairs were revealed as half belonging to The Hanged and half (the smaller half) to Mimi Pachoux, whom also victory had recalled to the fold.
“Upon my word,” said Aunt Deen to her brother during the defiling of her troops, “I’d like to know why you couldn’t stay downstairs! Hoisting all your things up this narrow staircase!”
And as grandfather indifferently acknowledged her remark merely by avague gesture she resorted next to sarcasm:
“Of course, that doesn’t distress Monsieur! Monsieur would never put himself out for a trifle like that! Comfortably seated in the easy chair that poor Tem has drenched with sweat, Monsieur will observe the progress of events! And meanwhile, I shall have to come up and down a hundred times a day. And the maids likewise. But you don’t care what trouble you make us: you’ll always find everything you need ready at your hand.”
The attack was direct and severe. Before replying grandfather cast a startled glance upon the seat which Tem had transported, fearful of the reported deluge. When he perceived it to be dry and intact he recovered his serenity and replied with the utmost calmness:
“I ask nothing of any one.”
“Because you never lack for anything; you live like a pig in clover.”
They were both right. Grandfather never made any demands, but every one was eager to anticipate his slightest wish. Thus he uttered no complaint against the piercing winds that besieged his tower; but the day after his removal all the chinks around the doors and windows were carefully stopped up.
Aunt Deen’s dissatisfaction had given voice to the general opinion. This unexpected exodus, utterly without necessity, cast a shadow over our father and mother, who vainly sought for its reason.
“Why must you be up so high?”
“Altitude has always agreed with me.”
I admit that on this occasion I sided with grandfather. The tower chamber with its four views, its isolation, its special odour (it had never been opened except when some one went for apples, which used to ripen there all winter long) had long had an irresistible attraction for me. Since it was henceforth to be inhabited I promised myself to visit it frequently.
This episode was soon put into the shade by another, much more important and of a character to make a much deeper impression upon my imagination. Coming home from school one morning, I learned from my usual source of information, Aunt Deen, that this time it was settled. She imparted this news with an air of great mystery, but mystery itself with her was noisy in its manifestation. The word settled assumed upon her lips a formidable importance. What was settled?
“The deed is signed. Just now. I am very glad.”
What deed? I didn’t understand a word of it all.
“Well, we are to remain in our house.Theycan never trouble us again.”
Didn’t I already know thattheyhad been utterly routed, dispersed, chastised, overcome, beaten, reduced to nothingness, like the Persians in my ancient history whom a handful of Greeks had chasedinto the sea? How should she think to surprise me by telling me a secret already several days old, perhaps several weeks old, and about which every one had been talking freely? A child does not enter the region of preparations, delays, formalities and judicial scribblings. But a capital event shortly illustrated Aunt Deen’s declaration.
Grandfather returned earlier than usual from his walk, and as one of us remarked upon his abnormal punctuality he took himself off without a word. When, after the second bell, we entered the dining-room with empty stomachs and ravenous appetites, what was our surprise to find him already there, sitting at table, but not in his official place, the place of honour in the centre opposite our mother, as is fitting for the head of the family, the reigning king. Without confiding his intention to any one, he had changed the napkin rings and had taken his place at the end of the table, opposite the window. It is true that he had chosen a very good place whence he could see the trees in the garden and even a bit of sky between their branches. To a lover of sunshine the view was not unimportant. But all the same it was a revolution in the family life and the entire domestic economy. Or rather, I was not mistaken, it was an abdication.
I was well up in abdications. Had I not been obliged to study in my history book those of the sluggard kings, whose hair they cut off before immuring them in a cloister?—and in spite of myself I gazedat grandfather’s slightly curling white hair. Above all I had heard my brother Bernard reciting the story of Charles V, by which I had been strongly impressed. That master of the world, laying aside his grandeur, had retired to a monastery of Estramadura, where he mended clocks, and to give himself a foretaste of death had had his funeral celebrated while he was still alive. Historians that dote upon truth have since then assured me that these details are fabulous. I am sorry, for I have not forgotten them, whereas an innumerable number of demonstrated facts have dropped out of my memory. But at that time I believed with iron conviction in the retirement of Charles V, the false obsequies and the clocks. Grandfather also knew how to mend clocks, and I at once established relations between the two sovereigns.
Aunt Deen, punctual for once, and our mother, who was not far behind us, shared our astonishment. Then all eyes were fixed upon our father, who was just then entering the room. At a glance he took in the situation, and with him decision was never slow to follow. He came forward with rapid steps.
“No, no,” he said, “I will not have this. Nothing should be changed here. Father, take your own place, I beg.”
Assuredly not one of us would have resisted an entreaty which was also a command. But our father’s energetic regulating force had before our very faces come in contact with another force the power of which I hadnever dreamed of, that of immovability. Grandfather did not stir. He had resolved not to stir.
Father, receiving no reply, repeated his request more gently,—I can not say more humbly, for at all times, in spite of himself, he wore an air of pride. He received in the face an outburst of that eternal little laugh, with the added accompaniment of the words:
“Oho! what a fuss about nothing.”
“Father, give me this proof of your affection!”
“One place or another, what’s the odds? I am very comfortable here, and here I stay,” he said, adding in a tone of superb disdain, “if you only knew, my poor Michel, how little I care!”
He cared for nothing: Tem Bossette had told me so; everything was all one to him; one seat or another, one house or another. Such words as these, uttered before us children, were enough to exasperate our father, but he controlled himself.
“There must be a headship in the family,” he urged.
“Bah! We live under a republic, and I believe in liberty.”
Father saw that it was perfectly useless to insist, and he merely added:
“Then you do really refuse to come back to your own place?”
“I shall not move.”
Philomena, the waitress, offered the platter. Father signed to her tooffer it to grandfather, after which there was nothing for him but to take the seat of honour. It was a relief to us all; we all felt that the place belonged to him by right and that he alone deserved to occupy it. He and no one else had long been the head of the family. At the slightest difficulty or vexation every one turned to him, every one appealed to him. Now the disquietude which had weighed upon the house for so long a time would be ended. Now we should be directed. No more sluggard kings! The reins of government, as my history book expressed it, would be held in strong hands. And it was right that the head of the house should have all the insignia of authority. A king does not occupy the second place, and evidently my father would not have crowned himself of his own accord.
Thus the transferrence of power had taken place in our presence.
I should not have anticipated the change of feeling which took place within me, almost suddenly. Grandfather’s government had always seemed to me precarious and derisory. But as soon as he refused to exercise it I began to admire his disinterestedness and to discover the poetry of abdication. His sovereign disdain of material things appeared to me full of grandeur, and I even went so far as to interpret to myself the expression which had once seemed sacrilegious to me—“whether one lives in one house or another.” If he had done nothing to protect our house, perhaps it was because he cared for higher and more distantthings. From his tower chamber he was entering into communication with the winds and the stars, predicting the future. The weather and the universe were absorbing him; he could no longer devote himself to common tasks. There was another mode of interpreting life, which I vaguely felt without understanding it, and which attracted me by its unusualness, and its enigma. The deposed king, clothed in the mystery which was conferred upon him by an unimaginable learning, was recovering his prestige and even assuming, all unaware to himself, a degree of ascendancy over my spirit.
I gazed by turns at father and grandfather: father in his normal place, thinking of each of us, diffusing peace and order about him; the light of his marvellous aptitude at command shining from his clear cut features and especially from his piercing eyes; grandfather, the delicate lines of his face, almost feminine notwithstanding his long white beard, his eyes always slightly clouded, often abstracted, indifferent to all around him, and more interested in the trees of the garden or the bit of sky that he saw through the window than in us. For the first time I was astonished to find such a difference between the two men. I had never observed it before, or had not thought about it. Now it struck me so strongly that I almost uttered my surprise aloud. It doubtless would have escaped me had I not felt the unseemliness ofthe fact. A son ought to resemble his father—there could be no doubt upon the subject. Or else it wasn’t worth while to be the son of some one. And whom was I like?