Little Peter: A Christmas Morality for Children of any Age

  CHAPTER IX.

  WHICH IS VERY SHORT, BECAUSE, IN SOME WAYS, IT IS RATHER SAD.

  Have you ever looked for something you cared for very much and failedto find it? A dolly, for instance, forgotten at play in the garden,swept up with the dead leaves, and never seen after. Or, still worse, adear little kitten of an adventurous turn of mind, that went out in thewoods for a walk by himself and never came home again, though you randown the church-lane and up to the top of the pasture, crying, 'Puss,puss, puss!' till you were quite hoarse, and cross, and tired, andnurse said you must come in because it was past bed-time and the dewwas rising, and a number of other things which were perfectly true, butwhich didn't throw any light on the whereabouts of the kitten. How didyou feel? Why, just the most miserable little boy or girl in all theworld, to be sure.

  Or supposing, on the other hand, that you found dolly at last, afterall; but with all the red washed off her lips and cheeks, and the mouldmixed up with her yellow hair, and her smart frock wet and torn, andone of her waxen legs squashed flat where the wheel of the gardener'sbarrow had gone over it. Or that the keeper brought back poor kittysome three or four days later, stiff and cold, and said:--'Binpoaching, bin caught in a gin; thought little missy 'ud like to knowthe end of 'er.' Well, did that make matters much better? I don't thinkso myself, and at one time of my life I had a good deal of experiencein these things, so I have the right to speak. For it is a poorpleasure at best to play that dolly is sick of a fever, when you seethat she does not get a bit better, even though you dose her ten timesa day with an elaborate preparation of slate-pencil scrapings. And asto begging a candle-box of the housemaid for a coffin, and having agrand funeral in the shrubbery for the kitten, that is terrible workindeed, and makes your eyes so red with crying that you are quiteashamed to go down to dessert in the evening.

  Now, if you and I have felt so very unhappy over our dolls and kittenswhen we lost them--and found them again, maybe, but always a good dealthe worse for the losing--how do you think Master Lepage felt as hewent out that dark, stormy, snowy night, with the charcoal-burner andGustavus, into the forest? He was very silent as he tramped throughthe snow, while the wind roared in the pines above him, and blew aboutthe flame of his torch, making it twist and twirl, and flicker andglimmer, sometimes casting a red glare far over the white ground andthe great, grey tree-stems and John Paqualin's crooked, uncouth formflitting on just ahead of him; and sometimes dying down till all thescene was wrapped in darkness. He was very silent, I say, and not a bitlike vivacious, loquacious Master Lepage who used to sit and hold forthin the wine-shop, and thump the table and make the glasses ring; butmore like Sergeant Lepage, who, with his teeth set and his face fierceand white, had marched up under fire of the enemies' guns in battlelong ago in Italy or Africa. Lepage marched under fire now, and thebattlefield was his own heart. And oh! dear me, how many of his mostcherished ideas and beliefs the shot from those guns knocked over--hispride, his self-importance, his trust in his own intellect and insightand acuteness, his politics, his philosophy; nothing, in short, nothingwas left standing, except a sense of remorse for his past folly and hislove for his wife and his children.

  'If they have been merely delayed by the storm, we shall meet them onthe road here. If they are lost, they will have begun wandering onthe first stretch of moorland,' said John Paqualin. 'See, the snowis ceasing, the stars begin to show in heaven. Eh! the frost, how itbites!'

  And so it did. As the snow stopped, the night grew colder and colder,for all the ice-fairies came tripping out far and wide over hill andvalley, and built transparent piers and bridges across the streamsand pools, and hung icicles from the rocks and from the overhangingeaves of the houses, and froze the breath on Lepage's long moustache,and made the earth like iron beneath his feet. Yet he and his twocompanions still marched on through the forest. They could go butslowly, for in the open spaces the snow had drifted deep, and where theforest paths crossed each other it required all the charcoal-burner'sknowledge and skill to tell which was the right one. Now and again theywould halt for a minute or two and call aloud, and then listen hopingfor an answer; but it was close upon midnight, and they had walked morethan half the way to Nullepart before they came upon any trace of thosethey so earnestly searched for.

  Here, as I have already told you, the path crosses a wide stretch ofrolling moorland, covered with heather and stunted bushes, thorns andbrambles and whortle-berry and juniper; while in places crop out largelimestone blocks and boulders, some standing together and looking likethe ruins of a giant's castle, others but just peeping above therough soil and encrusted with stone-crop, and ferns and many kinds ofmosses--a lovely play-place on a summer day, when the butterflies sportover the heath, and the dragon-flies over the pools in the marshes, butbleak and desolate enough on a December night, with the harsh northwind and the snowstorm. On the edge of this moorland, before leavingthe shelter of the pines, Paqualin stopped.

  'Shout,' he said, turning to the others, 'shout your loudest. The frosthas caught me by the throat, and squeezed my crooked windpipe till Iam as hoarse as a raven. But you are strong men. Shout, Lepage, forlove of your wife. And you, good ass, there, for love of Eliza yoursweetheart; she'll pay you in thistles, prickles and all, if you findher.'

  So they shouted, and this time there was an answer--a boy's voice halfchoked with crying. And with a pale, haggard face, and in his eyes alook of terror, from among the snow-laden pine-trees, came Antony.

  'You alone!' cried Lepage. 'I trusted her to you; where are your motherand brothers?'

  'She sent us on to try to get help. Paul is here just behind me. Welost ourselves, and wandered. She could get no further, and littlePeter is dead asleep, under the big rocks, there to the right, out onthe moor. Eliza does nothing but cry, and won't move.'

  The boy was utterly faint and disheartened. He threw himself down onthe snow, and covered his face with his hands.

  'I did my best, father,' he said, 'indeed, indeed I did; but I couldn'tfind the way. It was dark, and there was nothing to guide us, and I gotbewildered with the cold. We were too late in starting, I know--thatwas my fault. But I did my best afterwards. Oh! father, I did try totake care of them. I couldn't help it. Say you forgive me.'

  Paqualin did not wait to hear more. 'The big rocks out to the right,'he repeated.

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  His limbs were stiff with the sharp cold, which had penetrated histhreadbare clothes, and his feet were numb with the snow that hadworked its way in through the worn, cracked leather of his wretchedboots. Oh, yes! I am afraid he was a very funny figure indeed; and thatall the little boys in Nullepart would have hooted louder than ever ifthey could have seen him, as with his long grasshopper legs, wild redhair, and tattered cloak streaming out behind him, he shambled along,slipping and staggering, in the half darkness over that long half-mileof heath, and stone, and prickly bushes, and sly, deceitful snow-driftsthat stretched between the edge of the forest and the rocks.

  'Here is help,' he shrieked in his shrill voice. 'It is I--I, JohnPaqualin. Here is help.'

  As he passed round in front into the shelter of the tall, grey rocks,Susan Lepage rose up from the foot of them with a great cry.

  She flung her arms about him, and rested her fair head on his shoulder.

  'Ah! God has sent you,' she sobbed. 'I called upon Him in thebitterness of my anguish, and He has heard me. Save us, John Paqualin;in mercy save me and my children.'

  The charcoal-burner's torch slipped from his grasp, and fell hissingupon the ground.

  'The dog gets something more than his bone for once,' he said betweenhis teeth.

  For a minute or so, in that mysterious, ghostly radiance of dancingstar-light and white snow, he stood holding the weeping woman in hisarms.

  'God sent me, though, did He?' he murmured at last. 'Then I must do Hisgood pleasure, not my own.'

  Paqualin spoke low, and quite softly, notwithstanding that queer crackin his voice.

  'Look up, an
d take courage; there is better comfort than mine at hand.Your two boys are safely cared for already, and your husband is coming.The trouble is over. For you, at least, the morning begins to break.'

  Then, as he heard the crunch of hurried footsteps coming over the snowbehind him, he turned and cried:--

  'Here, take your wife, Lepage!'

  Paqualin moved aside.

  'For the man,' he said, half aloud--'well--what he's a right to. Getback to your kennel, you hound.'

  Now Eliza was sitting with her back against one of the rocks in theburrow, where the snow was lightest, and little Peter, closely wrappedin his mother's shawl, lay stupefied with sleep, with his head in herlap. As Paqualin turned round, she moaned out:--

  'No, no, don't come near me. I am dreadfully ill--probably I shallnever recover. I think I shall die. But I won't give way, I won'tlisten to you. To the last I am true to Gustavus. Ah! my poor heart,how it beats. Yes, I should like to have bidden a last farewell toGustavus.'

  'Don't fret,' answered the charcoal-burner. 'Thy mooncalf is on theroad. He'll be here in plenty of time to say a good deal besidesgood-bye to you, unless I am very much mistaken.'

  Eliza gave a prodigious sigh.

  'He will be too late, I know it, I know it. Ah! how will he livewithout me, poor, faithful, broken-hearted Gustavus?'

  Whether it was his mother's cry that roused him, or the sudden lightsand the voices, I do not know; but little Peter half awoke from theheavy torpor of sleep into which the cold and fatigue had plunged him.

  'I will not hush, Eliza. I love John Paqualin. Yes, I love him,' hemurmured.