Nobody's Boy (1878)

MY ADOPTED FATHER

Mother Barberin kissed her husband; I was about to do the same when he put out his stick and stopped me.

"What's this?... you told me...."

"Well, yes, but it isn't true ... because...."

"Ah, it isn't true, eh?"

He stepped towards me with his stick raised; instinctively I shrunk back. What had I done? Nothing wrong, surely! I was only going to kiss him. I looked at him timidly, but he had turned from me and was speaking to Mother Barberin.

"So you're keeping Shrove Tuesday," he said. "I'm glad, for I'm famished. What have you got for supper?"

"I was making some pancakes and apple fritters."

"So I see, but you're not going to give pancakes to a man who has covered the miles that I have."

"I haven't anything else. You see we didn't expect you."

"What? nothing else! Nothing for supper!" He glanced round the kitchen.

"There's some butter."

He looked up at the ceiling, at the spot where the bacon used to hang, but for a long time there had been nothing on the hook; only a few ropes of onions and garlic hung from the beam now.

"Here's some onions," he said, knocking a rope down with his big stick; "with four or five onions and a piece of butter we'll have a good soup. Take out the pancakes and fry the onions in the pan!"

"Take the pancakes out of the frying pan!"

Without a word, Mother Barberin hurried to do what her husband asked. He sat down on a chair by the corner of the fireplace. I had not dared to leave the place where his stick had sent me. Leaning against the table, I looked at him.

He was a man about fifty with a hard face and rough ways. His head leaned a little bit towards his right shoulder, on account of the wound he had received, and this deformity gave him a still more forbidding aspect.

Mother Barberin had put the frying pan again on the fire.

"Is it with a little bit of butter like that you're going to try and make a soup?" he asked. Thereupon he seized the plate with the butter and threw it all into the pan. No more butter ... then ... no more pancakes.

At any other moment I should have been greatly upset at this catastrophe, but I was not thinking of the pancakes and fritters now. The thought that was uppermost in my mind was, that this man who seemed so cruel was my father! My father! Absently I said the word over and over again to myself. I had never thought much what a father would be. Vaguely, I had imagined him to be a sort of mother with a big voice, but in looking at this one who had fallen from heaven, I felt greatly worried and frightened. I had wanted to kiss him and he had pushed me away with his stick. Why? My mother had never pushed me away when I went to kiss her; on the contrary, she always took me in her arms and held me tight.

"Instead of standing there as though you're made of wood," he said, "put the plates on the table."

I nearly fell down in my haste to obey. The soup was made. Mother Barberin served it on the plates. Then, leaving the big chimney corner, he came and sat down and commenced to eat, stopping only from time to time to glance at me. I felt so uncomfortable that I could not eat. I looked at him also, but out of the corner of my eye, then I turned my head quickly when I caught his eye.

"Doesn't he eat more than that usually?" he asked suddenly.

"Oh, yes, he's got a good appetite."

"That's a pity. He doesn't seem to want his supper now, though."

Mother Barberin did not seem to want to talk. She went to and fro, waiting on her husband.