At the word papa, Jack looked up quickly.
“Ah, well! if you can’t sleep, let us go and look at the house,” said his mother, who quickly wearied of every occupation. She shook down her skirts, and took the child over this most original house, which was situated a stone’s throw from the village, and realized better than most poets’ dreams those of D’Argenton. The house had been originally a shooting-box belonging to a distant château. A new tower had been added, and a weathercock, which last gave an aspect of intense respectability to the place. They visited the stable and the orchard, and finished their examination by a visit to the tower.
A winding staircase, lighted by a skylight of colored glass, led to a large, round room containing four windows, and furnished by a circular divan covered with some brilliant Eastern stuff. A couple of curious old oaken chests, a Venetian mirror, some antique hangings, and a high carved chair of the time of Henri II., drawn up in front of an enormous table covered with papers, composed the furniture of the apartment. A charming landscape was visible from the windows, a valley and a river, a fresh green wood, and some fair meadow-land.
“It is here that HE works,” said his mother, in an awed tone.
Jack had no need to ask who this HE might be.
In a low voice, as if in a sanctuary, she continued, without looking at her son,—
“At present he is travelling. He will return in a few days, however. I shall write to him that you are here; he will be very glad, for he is very fond of you, and is the best of men, even if he does look a little severe sometimes. You must learn to love him, little Jack, or I shall be very unhappy.”
As she spoke she looked at D’Argenton’s picture hung at the end of this room, a picture of which the one in her room was a copy; in fact, a portrait of the poet was in every room, and a bronze bust in the entrance-hall, and it was a most significant fact that there was no other portrait than his in the whole house. “You promise me, Jack, that you will love him?”
Jack answered with much effort, “I promise, dear mamma.”
This was the only cloud on that memorable day. The two were so happy in that quaint old drawing-room. They heard Mère Archambauld rattling her dishes in the kitchen. Outside of the house there was not a sound. Jack sat and admired his mother. She thought him much grown and very large for his age, and they laughed and kissed each other every few minutes. In the evening they had some visitors. Père Archambauld came for his wife, as he always did, for they lived in the depths of the forest. He took a seat in the dining-room.