Part 6 (1/2)
An empty world! His dream-impression of universal desolation and desertion came suddenly back upon the prelate's mind, and a sudden trembling seized him, though he could discover in himself no cause for fear. Anxiously he surveyed the strange and solitary little wayfarer on the threshold of the Cathedral, and while he thus looked, the boy said wistfully--
”I should have rested here within, but it is closed against me.”
”The doors are always locked at night, my child,” returned the Cardinal, recovering from his momentary stupor and bewilderment, ”But I can give you shelter. Will you come with me?”
With a half-questioning, half-smiling look of grateful wonder, the boy withdrew his hands from their uplifted, supplicating and almost protesting att.i.tude against the locked Cathedral-door, and moving out of the porch shadows into the wide glory of the moonlight, he confronted his interlocutor--
”Will I come with you?” he said--”Nay, but I see you are a Cardinal of the Church, and it is I should ask 'will you receive me?' You do not know who I am--nor where I came from, and I, alas! may not tell you! I am alone; all--all alone,--for no one knows me in the world,--I am quite poor and friendless, and have nothing where--with to pay you for your kindly shelter--I can only bless you!”
Very simply, very gravely the young boy spoke these words, his delicate head uplifted, his face s.h.i.+ning in the moon-rays, and his slight, childish form erect with a grace which was not born of pride so much as of endurance, and again the Cardinal trembled, though he knew not why.
Yet in his very agitation, the desire he had to persuade the tired child to go with him grew stronger and overmastered every other feeling.
”Come then,” he said, smiling and extending his hand, ”Come, and you shall sleep in my room for the remainder of the night, and to-morrow we will talk of the future. At present you need repose.”
The boy smiled gratefully but said nothing, and the Cardinal, satisfied with the mere look of a.s.sent walked with his foundling across the square and into the Hotel Poitiers. Arrived at his own bed-room, he smoothed his couch and settled the pillows carefully with active zeal and tenderness. The boy stood silently, looking on.
”Sleep now, my child,” said the Cardinal,--”and forget all your troubles. Lie down here; no one will disturb you till the morning.”
”But you, my lord Cardinal,” said the boy--”Are you depriving yourself of comfort in order to give it to me? This is not the way of the world!”
”It is MY way,” said the Cardinal cheerfully,--”And if the world has been unkind to you, my boy, still take courage,--it will not always be unjust! Do not trouble yourself concerning me; I shall sleep well on the sofa in the next room--indeed, I shall sleep all the better for knowing that your tears have ceased, and that for the present at least you are safely sheltered.”
With a sudden quick movement the boy advanced and caught the Cardinal's hands caressingly in his own.
”Oh, are you sure you understand?” he said, his voice growing singularly sweet and almost tender as he spoke--”Are you sure that it is well for you to shelter me?--I--a stranger,--poor, and with no one to speak for me? How do you know what I may be? Shall I not perhaps prove ungrateful and wrong your kindness?”
His worn little face upturned, shone in the dingy little room with a sudden brightness such as one might imagine would illumine the features of an angel, and Felix Bonpre looked down upon him half fascinated, in mingled pity and wonder.
”Such results are with G.o.d, my child,” he said gently--”I do not seek your grat.i.tude. It is certainly well for me that I should shelter you,--it would be ill indeed if I permitted any living creature to suffer for lack of what I could give. Rest here in peace, and remember it is for my own pleasure as well as for your good that I desire you to sleep well.”
”And you do not even ask my name?” said the boy, half smiling and still raising his sorrowful deep blue eyes to the Cardinal's face.
”You will tell me that when you please,” said Felix, laying one hand upon the soft curls that cl.u.s.tered over his foundling's forehead--”I am in no wise curious. It is enough for me to know that you are a child and alone in the world,--such sorrow makes me your servant.”
Gently the boy loosened his clasp of the Cardinal's hands.
”Then I have found a friend!” he said,--”That is very strange!” He paused, and the smile that had once before brightened his countenance shone again like a veritable flash of sunlight--”You have the right to know my name, and if you choose, to call me by it,--it is Manuel.”
”Manuel!” echoed the Cardinal--”No more than that?”
”No more than that,” replied the boy gravely--”I am one of the world's waifs and strays,--one name suffices me.”
There followed a brief pause, in which the old man and the child looked at each other full and steadfastly, and once again an inexplicable nervous trembling seized the Cardinal. Overcoming this with an effort, he said softly,--
”Then--Manuel!--good night! Sleep--and Our Lady's blessing be upon you!”
Signing the cross in air he retired, carefully shutting the door and leaving his new-found charge to rest. When he was once by himself in the next room, however, he made no attempt to sleep,--he merely drew a chair to the window and sat down, full of thoughts which utterly absorbed him. There was nothing unusual, surely, in his finding a small lost boy and giving him a night's lodging?--then why was he so affected by it? He could not tell. He fully realized that the plaintive beauty of the child had its share in the powerful attraction he felt,--but there was something else in the nature of his emotion which he found it impossible to define. It was as though some great blankness in his life had been suddenly filled;--as if the boy whom he had found solitary and weeping within the porch of the Cathedral of Notre Dame, belonged to him in some mysterious way and was linked to his life so closely and completely as to make parting impossible. But what a fantastic notion!
Viewed by the light of calm reason, there was nothing in the occurrence to give rise to any such sentiment. Here was a poor little wayfarer, evidently without parents, home, or friends,--and the Cardinal had given him a night's lodging, and to-morrow--yes, to-morrow, he would give him food and warm clothing and money,--and perhaps a recommendation to the Archbishop in order that he might get a chance of free education and employment in Rouen, while proper enquiries were being made about him. That was the soberly prosaic and commonplace view to take of the matter. The personality of the little fellow was intensely winning,--but after all, that had nothing to do with the facts of the case. He was a waif and stray, as he himself had said; his name, so far as he seemed to know it, was Manuel,--an ordinary name enough in France,--and his age might be about twelve,--not more.
Something could be done for him,--something SHOULD be done for him before the Cardinal parted with him. But this idea of ”parting” was just what seemed so difficult to contemplate! Puzzled beyond measure at the strange state of mind in which he found himself, Felix Bonpre went over and over again all the events of the day in order,--his arrival in Rouen,--his visit to the Cathedral, and the grand music he had heard or fancied he heard there,--his experience with the sceptical little Patoux children and their mother,--his conversation with the Archbishop, in which he had felt much more excitement than he was willing to admit,--his dream wherein he had been so painfully impressed with a sense of the desertion, emptiness, and end of the world, and finally his discovery of the little lonely and apparently forsaken boy, thrown despairingly as it were against the closed Cathedral, like a frail human wreck cast up from the gulf of the devouring sea. Each incident, trivial in itself, yet seemed of particular importance, though he could not explain or a.n.a.lyse why it should be so.