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Autumn Glory; Or, The Toilers of the Field

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Title: Autumn Glory; Or, The Toilers of the Field

Author: René Bazin


        
Release date: December 9, 2011 [eBook #38255]

Language: English

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AUTUMN GLORY

       *       *       *       *       *

    Jarrold & Sons'

    New Six-Shilling Fiction.

    By MAURUS JOKAI.

    _Halil the Pedlar._

    (The White Rose.)


    By COUNT LEO TOLSTOI.

    _Tales From Tolstoi._

    Translated from the Russian by R. NISBET
    BAIN, and with Biography of the Author.


    By the Author of "ANIMA VILIS."

    _Distaff._

    By MARYA RODZIEWICZ.

    Translated from the Polish by COUNT STANISLAUS
    C. DE SOISSONS.


    By RENE BAZIN.

    _Autumn Glory._

    Translated by MRS. ELLEN WAUGH.


    By the Author of

    "DUKE RODNEY'S SECRET."

    _Ivy Cardew._

    By PERRINGTON PRIMM.


    By HULBERT FULLER.

    _God's Rebel._


    By MARTHA BAKER DUNN.

    _Memory Street._


    London:
    JARROLD & SONS,
    Publishers,
    10 & 11, Warwick Lane,
    E.C.

    At the Libraries.
    And of all Booksellers.

       *       *       *       *       *

[Illustration: Rene Bazin]


AUTUMN GLORY

Or

The Toilers of the Field

by

RENE BAZIN

Author of "A Blot of Ink," etc.

Translated by Mrs. Ellen Waugh

With Photogravure Portrait of the Author

SANS PEUR ET
SANS REPROCHE







[Illustration]

Authorised Edition

London
Jarrold & Sons      All Rights Reserved
10 & 11, Warwick Lane, E.C.      1901

Translated from the French, "La Terre qui Meurt,"
by Mrs. Ellen Waugh.

Copyright
London: Jarrold & Sons




CONTENTS.


    CHAPTER                                  PAGE

        I. LA FROMENTIERE                       7

       II. THE FAMILY LUMINEAU                 24

      III. THE DWARF ORCHARD                   48

       IV. THE MICHELONNES                     65

        V. PLOUGHING IN SEPTEMBER              77

       VI. THE APPEAL TO THE MASTER           102

      VII. DRIOT'S RETURN                     116

     VIII. IN THE PLACE DE L'EGLISE           133

       IX. THE CONSCRIPTS OF SALLERTAINE      147

        X. THE UPROOTED VINEYARD              158

       XI. THE DANCE AT LA SEULIERE           178

      XII. ROUSILLE'S LOVE DREAM              196

     XIII. THE AUCTION                        208

      XIV. DWELLERS IN TOWNS                  240

       XV. THE EMIGRANT                       255

      XVI. HER FATHER'S BIDDING               264

     XVII. A FEBRUARY NIGHT                   274

    XVIII. SPRINGTIDE                         289




AUTUMN GLORY.




CHAPTER I.

LA FROMENTIERE.


"Quiet! Bas-Rouge, down! Don't you know folk born and bred here?"

The dog thus addressed, a mongrel in which some twenty breeds were
mixed, with grey long-haired coat changing to auburn silky fleece
about the paws, at once left off barking at the gate, trotted along
the grassy path bordering the field, and, content at having done his
duty, sat down at the extreme edge of the line of cabbages which the
farmer was trimming. Along the same path a man was approaching, clad
in gaiters and a suit of well-worn corduroys. His pace was the even
steady gait of a man accustomed to tramp the country. The face in its
setting of black beard was drawn and pale, the eyes, accustomed to
roam the hedges and rest nowhere, bore an expression of weariness and
mistrust, the contested authority of an agent. He was the head-keeper
and steward to the Marquis de la Fromentiere.

He came to a halt behind Bas-Rouge, whose eyelids gave a furtive
quiver, though his ears made not the slightest movement.

"Good day, Lumineau."

"Good day."

"I have a word to say to you. M. le Marquis has written."

Probably he expected the farmer to leave his cabbages and come towards
him. Not a bit of it. The yeoman of the Marais bending double, a huge
bundle of green leaves in his arms, stood some thirty feet off,
looking askance at the keeper waiting motionless in the path. What did
he want of him? His well-fed cheeks broadened into a smile, his clear,
deep-set eyes lengthened. In order to show his independence, he bent
down and resumed his labours for a moment without reply. He felt
himself upon the ground that he looked upon as his own, which his race
had cultivated by virtue of a contract indefinitely renewed. Around
him, his cabbages formed an immense square, a billowy mass of superb
growth, firm and heavy, their colour comprising every imaginable shade
of green, blue, and violet, tinting in harmony with the hues of the
setting sun. Of huge stature though he was, the farmer plunged to his
middle, like a ship, in this compact sea of vegetation. All that was
to be seen above it was the short coat and round felt hat, set well
back on his head, from which hung velvet streamers, the headgear of La
Vendee.

When by this period of silence and labour he had sufficiently marked
the superiority of a tenant farmer over a hired labourer, Lumineau
straightening himself, said:

"You can talk on; there's no one here but me and my dog."

Nettled, the man replied,

"M. le Marquis is displeased that you did not pay your rent at
Midsummer. It will soon be three months in arrears."

"But he knows that I have lost two oxen this year; that the wheat is
poor; and that one must live, I and my sons, and the 'Creatures.'"

By "Creatures" the farmer meant, as is customary in the Marais, his
two daughters, Eleonore and Marie-Rose.

"Tut, tut," replied the keeper, "it is not reasons he wants from you,
my good man, it's the money."

The farmer shrugged his shoulders.

"Were he here at the Chateau the Marquis would not require it; I would
soon explain how things stand. He and I were friends, I may say, as
his father and mine were before us. I could show him what changes time
has brought about with me. He would understand. But now one only has
to do with paid agents, no longer the Master; he is no more to be
seen, and some folks say we shall never see him at La Fromentiere any
more. It is a bad thing for us."

"Very likely," returned the keeper, "but it is not my place to discuss
orders. When will you pay?"

"It's easy to ask when will you pay, but it's another thing to find
the money."

"Well then, I am to answer, No."

"You will answer, Yes, as it must be. I will pay at Michaelmas, which
is not far off now."

The farmer was about to stoop to resume his work when the keeper
added:

"You will do well, too, Lumineau, to look after your man. I found some
snares the other day in the preserves of La Cailleterie, which could
only have been laid by him."

"Had he written his name upon them?"

"No. But he is known to be the most desperate poacher in the country
round. You beware! The Marquis has written to me that you were to go
out, bag and baggage, if I caught any one of you poaching again."

The farmer let fall his armful of cabbage leaves, and extending his
two fists, cried:

"You liar! He cannot have said that. I know him better than you do,
and he knows me. And it's not to a fellow of your sort that he would
give any such instructions. M. le Marquis to turn me off his land, me,
his old Lumineau! It is false."

"Those were his written instructions."

"Liar!" repeated the farmer.

"All very well; we shall see," quoth the agent, turning to resume his
way. "You have been warned. That Jean Nesmy will pay you a bad turn
one of these days; without taking into account, that for a penniless
lad from the Bocage, he is rather too sweet on your daughter. People
are talking, you know."

Ramming his hat down on his head, with crimsoned face and inflated
chest, the farmer advanced a few steps, as though to fall upon the man
who had insulted him; but he, leaning on his stout thorn stick, had
already walked on, and his discontented face was seen outlined against
the hedge as he rapidly receded. He had a certain dread of the
colossal farmer whose strength was still formidable despite his years,
and, moreover, an uneasy sense of the past ill success of his threats,
a recollection of having been, more than once, disavowed by the
Marquis de la Fromentiere, their joint master, whose leniency towards
the Lumineau family he never could understand.

The farmer stopped short, following with his eyes the head-keeper's
receding figure. He watched as it passed along the fence in the
opposite corner to the gate, scaled it, and disappeared to the left of
the farm buildings along the green path leading to the Chateau. When
he had watched the man finally out of sight:

"No," the farmer exclaimed aloud. "No, the Marquis did not say it!
Turn us out!"

For the moment the agent's evil insinuations against Marie-Rose, his
youngest daughter, were completely forgotten, his mind wholly absorbed
in the threat of being turned out. Slowly, with a harder look in them
than was their wont, he suffered his eyes to wander around, as if to
call all the familiar objects to witness that the man had lied; then,
stooping down, he resumed his labours.

The sun, already low in the heavens, had nearly reached the row of
young elms which bordered the field to the west, their lopped branches
that ended in tufts of leaves resembling huge marguerites were bending
to the strong sea breeze. It was the beginning of September, the time
of evening when a glow of heat seems to traverse the descending chills
of night. The farmer worked on as quickly and unremittingly as any
younger man; his outstretched hand snapped off the crisp leaves close
down to the stem of the cabbages with a noise as of breaking glass,
where they lay in heaps along the furrows beneath the over-arching
rows of plants. Hidden in the gloom, whence was emitted the warm,
moist smell of earth, he was lost amid the huge velvety leaves
intersected with their purple veins of colour. In truth he made one
with the vegetation, and it would have been difficult to discern which
was corduroy and which cabbage in the billowy expanse of the
blue-green field.

Withal, close to earth as was his bent body, his soul was agitated and
deep in thought; and as he worked, the farmer continued to ponder
many things. The irritation caused by the keeper's threats had
subsided; it only needed reflection to dismiss all fear of hard
treatment from the Marquis. Did they not both come of a good stock;
and did they not acknowledge it, one of the other? For the yeoman's
ancestor was a Lumineau who had fought in the great war; and although
now in these changed times he never mentioned past glories, neither
the nobles nor the peasants were ignorant that his ancestor, a giant,
surnamed Brin d'Amour, in the war of La Vendee, had taken the generals
of the insurrection across the marshes in his own punt, had fought
brilliantly, and had received a sword of honour, which now hung, eaten
with rust, behind one of the farm presses. The family was one of the
most widely connected in the country side. He claimed cousinship with
thirty farmers, spread over that district which formed the Marais,
extending from Saint Gilles to the Ile de Bouin. No one, himself
included, could tell at what period his forefathers had begun to till
the fields of La Fromentiere. They had been there of right for
generations, the Marquis in his Castle, the Lumineaus in their farm,
united through long custom, each knowing the land and alike loving it;
drinking the vintage of the soil together when they met; never
dreaming that one or the other could ever forsake Chateau or farm
bearing one and the same name.

And, in truth, eight years ago, great had been the astonishment when
one Christmas morning, amid falling sleet, M. Henri, the present
Marquis, a man of forty, a greater hunter, harder drinker, and more
boorish mannered than any of his predecessors, had said to Toussaint
Lumineau, "My Toussaint, I am going to live in Paris. My wife cannot
accustom herself to this place; it is too dull and too cold for her.
But do not worry; I shall come back." He had never come back, save on
rare occasions for a day or two. But, of course, he had not forgotten
the past. He still remained the same uncouth, kindly master known of
old, and the keeper had lied when he talked of their being turned out.

No, the more Toussaint Lumineau thought of it the less did he believe
that a master so rich, so liberal, so good at heart, could have
written such words. Only the rent must be paid. Well, so it should.
The farmer himself did not possess two hundred francs ready-money in
the walnut wood chest beside his bed; but his children were rich,
having inherited over two thousand francs apiece from their mother, La
Luminette, dead now these three years past. So he would ask Francois,
his second son, to lend him the sum due to the master. Francois was
not a lad without heart, he would not let his old father be in
difficulties. Once again anxiety for the morrow would be dispelled,
good harvests would come, prosperous years which should make all
hearts light again.

Weary of his stooping posture, the farmer straightened himself, passed
his flannel shirt sleeve over his perspiring face, then turned his
eyes to the roof of La Fromentiere with the expression of one gazing
on some well beloved object. To wipe his brow he had taken off his
hat; now, in the oblique ray of sunshine which no longer reached the
grass or the cabbages, in the soft declining light like that of a
happy old age, he raised his firm, square-cut face. His complexion,
unlike the cadaverous hue of peasants accustomed to scant living, was
clear and healthy; the full cheeks with their narrow line of black
whisker, straight nose, broad at the base, square jaw, in fact the
whole face and clear grey eyes--eyes that always looked a man full in
the face, betokened health, vigour, and the habit of command, while
the long lips, refined-looking despite the weather-beaten skin,
drooping at the corners, bespoke the ready fluency and somewhat
haughty spirit of a son of the Marshes, who looks down upon everyone
not belonging to that favoured spot. The perfectly white hair,
dishevelled and fine, formed a fitting setting to the head, and shone
with a silvery sheen.

Standing thus motionless with head uncovered in the waning light, the
farmer of La Fromentiere presented an imposing appearance, making it
easy to understand the distinction of _la Seigneurie_ commonly given
him in the neighbourhood. He was called Lumineau l'Eveque, to single
him out from others of the name, Lumineau le Pauvre; Lumineau
Barbefine; Lumineau Tournevire.

He was looking at his beloved La Fromentiere. Some hundred yards away
to the south, among the stems of elms, the pale red tiles stood out
like rough enamels. Borne on the evening wind there came the sound of
the lowing of cattle going home to their sheds, the smell of the
stables, the pungent aroma of camomile and fennel stored up in the
barn. Nor was that all that presented itself to the farmer's mind as
he gazed on his roof illuminated by the last rays of the declining
sun; he called to his mental vision the two sons and two daughters
living under that roof, Mathurin, Francois, Eleonore, and Marie-Rose,
the heavy burdens, yet mixed with how much sweetness of his life. The
eldest, his splendid eldest, doomed by a terrible misfortune to be a
cripple, only to see others work, never to share it himself; Eleonore,
who took the place of her dead mother; Francois, weak of nature, in
whom could be seen but the incomplete, uncertain future master of the
farm; Rousille, the youngest girl, just twenty.... Had the keeper lied
again when speaking of the farm-servant's love-making? Not unlikely.
How could a servant, the son of a poor widow in the Bocage, that
heavy, unproductive land, how could he dare to pay court to the
daughter of a farmer of the Marais? He might feel friendship and
respect for the pretty girl, whose smiling face attracted many a
remark on the way back from Mass on Sundays at Sallertaine; but
anything more?... Well, one must watch.... It was but for a moment
that Toussaint Lumineau pondered the man's insinuations; then with a
sense of tenderness and comfort his thoughts flew to the absent one,
the son next in age to Rousille, Andre, the Chasseur d'Afrique, now in
Algiers as orderly to his Colonel, a brother of the Marquis de la
Fromentiere. But one month more and that youngest son would be home,
his time of service expired. They would see him again, the fair,
handsome young fellow, so tall, the living portrait of his father
grown young again, full of noble vigour and love for Sallertaine and
the farmstead. And all anxieties would be forgotten and merged in the
joy of having the son home again, who used to make the ladies of
Chalons turn as he passed, to say to each other: "That is a handsome
lad, Lumineau's youngest son!"

The farmer often remained thus, the day's work done, sunk in thought
before his farmstead. This time he remained longer than usual in the
midst of the swaying masses of leaves, now grown grey, indistinct
looking in the gathering darkness like some unfamiliar ground. The
trees themselves had become but vague outlines bordering the fields.
The large expanse of clear sky overhead, still bright with golden
glory, suffered but faint rays to fall to earth, making objects
visible but only dimly. Lumineau, putting both hands to his mouth to
carry the sound, turned towards the farm, and called out lustily:

"Ohe! Rousille?"

The first to respond to the call was the dog, Bas-Rouge, who, at the
sound of his master's voice, flew like an arrow from the far end of
the field. Then a young, clear voice was heard in the distance:

"Yes, father, I am coming."

The farmer stooped, took a cord, and bound a huge mass of leaves
together, loaded it on his shoulder, and staggering under its weight,
with arms raised to steady it, his head buried in the soft burden,
followed the furrow, turned, and proceeded down the trodden path. As
he reached the corner of the field a girl's slender form rose up
before a break in the hedge. With agile movement Rousille cleared the
fence; as she alighted her short petticoats revealed a pair of black
stockings and sabots turned up at the toes.

"Good evening, father."

He could not refrain from thinking of what the keeper had said, and
made no reply.

Marie-Rose, her two hands on her hips, nodding her little head as if
meditating something grave, watched him go. Then entering in among the
furrows she gathered together the remainder of the fallen leaves,
knotted them with the cord she had brought, and, as her father had
done, raised the green mass, and though bending beneath the weight,
proceeded with light step down the grassy path.

To go into the field, collect, and bind together the leaves must have
taken some ten minutes; her father should have reached the farm by
now. She neared the fence, when suddenly from the top of the slope,
the foot of which she was skirting, came a whistle like that of a
plover. She was not frightened. Now a man jumped over the brambles
into the field. Rousille threw down her burden. He approached no
nearer, and they began to talk in brief sentences.

"Oh, Rousille, what a heavy load you are carrying."

"I am strong enough. Have you seen my father?"

"No, I have only just come. Has he said anything against me?"

"He did not say a word. But he looked at me.... Believe me, Jean, he
mistrusts us. You ought not to stay out to-night, for he dislikes
poaching and you will be scolded."

"What can it matter to him if I shoot at night, so long as I am as
early next morning at my work as anyone else? Do I grumble over my
work? Rousille, I was told at La Seuliere, and the miller of
Moque-Souris told me too, that plovers have been seen on the Marais.
It will be full moon to-night, I mean to go out, and you shall have
some to-morrow morning."

"Jean," she returned, "you ought not.... I assure you."

The young man was carrying a gun slung across his shoulder; over his
brown coat he wore a short blouse scarcely reaching to his waist-belt.
He was slim, about the same height as Rousille, dark, sinewy, pale,
with regular features, and a small moustache, slightly curled at the
corners of the mouth. The complexion alone served to show that he was
not a native of the Marais, where the mists soften and tint the skin,
but of a district where the soil is poor and chalky, and where small
holdings and penury abound. Withal, from his lean, self-possessed
countenance, straight-pencilled eyebrows, the fire and vivacity of the
eyes, one could discern a fund of indomitable energy, a tenacity of
purpose that would yield to no opposition.

Not for an instant did Rousille's fears move him. A little for love of
her, but far more for the pleasure of sport and of nocturnal marauding
so dear to the heart of primitive man, he had made up his mind to go
shooting that night on the Marais. That being the case, nothing would
have made him desist, not even the thought of displeasing Marie-Rose.

She looked but a child. Her girlish figure, her fresh young
complexion, the full oval of her face, the pure brow with its bands of
hair smoothly parted on either side, straight lips, which one never
knew were they about to part in a smile or to droop for tears, gave
her the appearance of a virgin in some sacred procession wearing a
broad band across the shoulders. Her eyes alone were those of a
woman, dark chestnut eyes the colour of the hair, wherein lay and
shone a tenderness youthful yet grave, noble and enduring.

Without having known it, she had been loved for a long time by her
father's farm-servant. For a year now they had been secretly engaged.
On Sundays, as she returned from Mass, wearing the flowered muslin
coif in the form of a pyramid, the coif of Sallertaine, many a
farmer's, or horse and cattle breeder's son, tried to attract her
gaze. But she paid no attention to them; had she not betrothed herself
to Jean Nesmy, the taciturn stranger, poor and friendless, who had no
place, no authority, no friendship save in her young heart? Already
she obeyed him. In her home they never spoke to each other.
Out-of-doors when they could meet their talk was always hurried on
account of her brothers' watchfulness, that of Mathurin especially,
the cripple, who was ever jealously prowling about. This time, too,
they must avoid being surprised.

Jean Nesmy, therefore, without stopping to consider Rousille's cause
for uneasiness, asked abruptly:

"Have you brought everything?"

Without further insistence she gave in.

"Yes," she answered; and producing from her pocket a bottle of wine
and slice of coarse bread, she held them out to him with a smile that
irradiated her whole face, despite the darkness. "Here, my Jean," she
said, "it was not easy; Lionore is always on the watch, and Mathurin
follows me about everywhere;" there was melody in her voice, as though
she was saying, "I love you."

"When will you be back?" she added.

"At dawn. I shall come by the dwarf orchard."

As he spoke, the youth raising his blouse had opened a linen ration
bag, brought back from his military service, and which he wore hung
round his neck. In it he stored the wine and bread.

Absorbed in the action, intent on the thing of the moment, he did not
notice that Rousille was bending forward listening to a sound from the
farm. When he had finished fastening the two buttons of the ration
bag, the girl was still listening.

"What am I to answer," she gravely said, "if father asks for you
presently? He is now shutting the door of the barn."

With a smile that displayed two rows of teeth white as milk, Jean
Nesmy, touching his hat, unadorned and wider than those worn in the
Marais, said:

"Good night, Rousille. Tell your father that I am going to be out all
night, and hope to bring back some plovers for my little sweetheart!"

He turned, sprang up the slope, jumped down into the neighbouring
field, and the next second the barrel of his gun caught the light as
it disappeared among the branches.

Rousille still stood before the break in the hedge, her heart had
gone forth with the wanderer. Then, for the second time, a noise broke
the stillness of evening. Now it was the sound of frightened fowls,
the flapping of wings, the noise of a key turning in the lock--the
sign that Eleonore, as always before supper, was locking the door of
the fowl-house; Marie-Rose would be late. Hurriedly she caught up her
load of leaves, cleared the fence, and hastened back to the farm. Soon
she had reached the uneven grassy path, which, coming from the high
lands, makes a bend ere, a little further on, it reaches the edge of
the Marais. Crossing it, she pushed open the side entrance of a large
gate, followed a half-fallen wall covered with creepers, and passing
through a ruined archway, whose gaping interstices had once formed the
imposing centre of the ancient walls, she entered a courtyard,
surrounded with farm buildings. The barn wherein was piled the green
forage stood to the left beside the stables. The girl threw in the
bundle of leaves she had brought, and shaking her damp dress, went
towards the long, low, tiled dwelling-house forming the end of the
courtyard. Arrived at the last door on the right, where light shone
through chinks and keyhole, she paused a little. A feeling of dread,
often experienced, had come over her. From inside could be heard the
sound of spoons clinking against the sides of plates; men's voices, a
dragging step along the floor. Softly as she could she opened the door
and slipped in.




CHAPTER II.

THE FAMILY LUMINEAU.


The family was assembled in the large living-room, or "house-place" of
the farm. As the girl entered all eyes were turned upon her, but not a
word was spoken. Feeling isolated, she crept along beside the wall,
trying by lessening the noise of her sabots the sooner to escape
observation, and having reached the chimney-corner, stooped down and
held out her hands to the fire, as if she were cold.

Her sister Eleonore, a tall young woman with horse-like profile,
lifeless blue eyes, and heavy apathetic face, drew back either to make
way for her or to mark the ill-feeling existing between them, and
continued to eat her slice of bread and few scraps of meat standing,
the time-honoured custom among the women of La Vendee. The
chimney-corner, blackened with smoke, hid them from the rest of the
family as they stood one on either side; the dancing flames between
them lit up, from time to time, the inmates and contents of the big
house-place, built at a period when wood was plentiful, and houses
and furniture were intended to last; while overhead numberless rafters
discoloured with smoke and dust, joined the huge centre beam. The
fitful flames anon rested on the woodwork of two four-post beds that
stood against the wall, each with a walnut wood chest beside it, by
aid of which the occupants mounted to the heavy structures, two
wardrobes, some photographs, and a rosary hung round a copper crucifix
over the nearest bed.

The three men at the table in the centre of the room were seated on
the same bench in order of precedence; first, at the farthest end from
the door, the father, then Mathurin, then Francois. A small petroleum
lamp shed its light upon their bent heads, upon the soup-tureen, a
dish of cold bacon, and another of uncooked apples. They were not
eating from the tureen as do many peasant farmers, but each had his
plate, and beside it his metal spoon, fork, and knife, not a
pocket-knife but a proper table one, a luxury introduced by Francois
on his return from military service; from which the old farmer had
drawn his conclusion that the outside world was full of changes.

Toussaint Lumineau looked worried and kept silence. His calm, strong
face, though that of an old man, contrasted strangely with the
deformed features of his eldest son, Mathurin. Formerly they had been
alike; but since the misfortune of which they never spoke and which
yet haunted the memories of all at La Fromentiere, the son was only
the grotesque suffering caricature of his father. The enormous head,
covered with a bush of tawny hair, was sunk between his high,
thickened shoulders. The width of chest, length of arms, and size of
hands denoted a man of gigantic stature; but when this giant,
supported by his crutches, stood up, one saw a poor twisted, thickened
torso, with contorted powerless legs dragging after it; a
prize-fighter's body terminating in two wasted limbs, capable at most
of supporting it for a few seconds, and from which even, powerless as
they now were, the life was gradually ebbing. Scarce thirty years of
age, the beard which grew almost to his cheek-bones was grey in
places. Above the muddy-veined cheek-bones, from out the tangled mass
of hair and beard which gave him the appearance of a wild animal,
shone a pair of deep blue eyes, small, sad-looking, whence would flash
all suddenly the wild exasperation of one condemned to a living death,
who counted each stage of his torture. It was as though one half of
him were assisting with impotent rage at the slow agony of the other.
His forehead was lined with wrinkles which made deep furrows between
the eyebrows.

"Our poor eldest son, the handsomest of them all, what a wreck he is!"
their mother used sorrowfully to say.

She had reason to pity him. Six years ago he had come home from his
military service as handsome a fellow as when he went. The three
years of barrack life had passed over his simple peasant nature, over
his dreams of ploughing the land and harvesting, over the tenets of
faith he held in common with his race, with scarce a trace of harm.
Innate contempt of the life led in towns had been his protection.
"Lumineau's eldest son is not like other lads; he is not a bit
changed," was the verdict of the neighbours.

One evening when he had taken a waggon-load of corn to the
flour-miller of Chalons, he came back with empty sacks, but beside
him, sitting upon a pile of them, was a laughing girl from
Sallertaine, Felicite Gauvrit, of La Seuliere, whom he wished to take
for wife. The dusk of evening was over the roads, it was hard to
distinguish ruts from tufts of grass; but he, all absorbed in his
sweetheart, confident that his horse knew the way, was not even
holding the reins that had fallen and were dragging on the ground. And
suddenly, as they were descending a hill close to La Fromentiere, the
horse, struck by a branch from a tree, started into a gallop. The
waggon jerked from side to side, was in danger of being upset; the
wheels were on the bank, the girl wanted to jump out.

"Don't be frightened, Felicite, I will manage him!" cried her lover.
And standing up he leant forward to seize the horse by the bit and
stop him. But whether the darkness, a jolt, or ill-luck deceived him,
he overbalanced and fell along the harness. There were two
simultaneous cries, one from the waggon, one from beneath it. The
wheel had gone over his limbs. When Felicite Gauvrit could get to her
lover's assistance, she found him trying in vain to struggle up from
the ground. For eight months Mathurin was groaning in agony; then his
groans ceased, his sufferings grew less acute; but first the feet
became paralyzed, then the knees, and gradually the slow death
mounted.... At the present time he could only drag his lower limbs
after him, crawling on his knees and wrists, grown to an enormous
size. He could still guide a punt upon the canals of the Marais, but
his strength was soon exhausted. In a hand-cart, such as farm children
use for a plaything, the father or brother would draw him to the more
distant fields whither the plough had preceded them; and thus, utterly
useless, the young man would look on at the work to which he was born,
and which he still loved so passionately. "Our poor eldest Lumineau,
the handsomest of them all!"

His gay spirits had flown; his character had become as changed and
warped as his body. He had grown hard, suspicious, cruel. His brothers
and sisters hid all their little concerns from the man who looked upon
the happiness of others as a personal wrong to himself; they feared
his skill at ferreting out any love-making; the treachery which would
prompt him to try and mar it. He, who never could hope now to inspire
love, could not brook that others should possess it. Above all, could
not brook that another should take the place which came to him by
right of birth, that of future master, of the father's successor to
the farm.

On that account he was jealous of Francois, and still more of Andre,
the handsome young Chasseur d'Afrique, their father's favourite. He
even was jealous of the farm-servant, who might become dangerous, did
he marry Rousille.

Sometimes Mathurin Lumineau said to himself:

"If only I could get well again! I believe I do feel better!" At other
times a kind of rage would take possession of him, and he would not
speak for days, would hide away in corners or in the stables, until a
flood of tears would melt his passion. At those times one man only
could go near him: his father. One thing alone softened the cripple's
churlishness, and that was to look on the home fields, to see the oxen
at work, the seed sown which should yield abundantly in its season,
and to gaze out on to the horizon where he had tasted of the fulness
of life.

For the whole six years in which the girl he had loved had deserted
him, he had never once been into the town of Sallertaine, even to
Easter Communion, which he no longer attended. Nor had he ever met
Felicite Gauvrit, of La Seuliere, along the lanes.

He sometimes asked Eleonore:

"Do you ever hear any talk of her marrying? Is she still as handsome
as when she loved me?"

When Marie-Rose went into the supper-room that night, it was Mathurin
only whom she furtively glanced at, and his face seemed to her to wear
a malicious smile, as though he had seen, or guessed Jean's absence.

Near Mathurin sat Francois, a very different looking man from the
other, of middle height, stout, red faced, easy going. Of him,
Rousille had no fear.

He was more pleasure-loving than the rest of the family. No great
worker, extravagant, running off to all the fairs and markets, easy to
get on with because he needed the indulgence of others. Physically and
morally the counterpart of Eleonore, two years his senior, like her he
had a broad face, dull blue eyes, and the same apathetic nature which
so often called forth lectures from their father.

But while the girl in the protection of her home remained pure under
the influence of her good mother, now dead, who, like so many of the
simple peasant women of those parts, had lived a humble saint-like
life, Francois had been ruined by barrack life.

He had submitted to military discipline, but without understanding the
necessity for it; therefore without deriving the corresponding
benefit. He had been subject to his superiors, had received
punishment, had been sent hither and thither for three years; but he
had never made a friend, never felt himself encouraged in the few
halting intentions for good that he had taken with him from the home
life, never been treated as a man, who has a soul, and whom sacrifice,
however humble, can ennoble. On the other hand, he fell an easy prey
to all the evils of a soldier's life; the loose talk at mess, the
drinking habits of his companions, the constant endeavour to shirk
duty, the prejudices, in a word the hundred and one corruptions into
which young men can sink who are taken from their homes and sent out
into the world, new to the temptations of great cities, without a
guide at the very period when most they stand in need of one.

Neither better nor worse than the average of men home from military
training, he had brought back with him to La Fromentiere a remembrance
of illicit pleasures that followed him everywhere; defiance of all
authority, a disgust for the hard, uncertain, often unproductive work
of farming, which he contrasted with vague notions about civil
employment of which the leisure and privileges had been vaunted to
him. How far off was he now from the simple son of the marshes, with
fearless eyes, the inseparable companion, model and protector of
Andre, who, twirling his tamarind stick, would make the round of the
canals to see if the cows had strayed from the meadows, or to search
for any ducks which might have wandered into the ditches! With
unwilling spirit, and because he had nothing better to do, he had
returned to the care of the animals and to follow the plough. The
proximity of Chalons, its wine shops and taverns was a temptation to
him; urged on by his companions, weak and passive, he suffered himself
to be led away. On Tuesdays, particularly, market day, the poor old
father too often saw his son of seven-and-twenty start off from the
farm under various pretexts before it was dawn, to come back late at
night, stupefied, insensible to reproaches. It was an ever abiding
grief to the father. Francois had made La Fromentiere no longer the
sacred abode beloved by, defended by all, which no one had dreamed of
deserting. In that room where they were now assembled what a long line
of mothers and children, of grandsires and grandames, united or
resigned, had lived and died!

In those high beds ranged against the walls how many children had been
born, fed, and at last had slept their last sleep! There had been
sorrow and weeping there, but never ingratitude.

A whole forest might have been re-planted if all the wood burned in
that chimney, by those bearing the same name, could have re-taken
root. What was in store for his descendants hereafter?

The old farmer had noticed for months past that Francois and Eleonore
were plotting something; they received letters, one and the other, of
which they never spoke; they talked together in corners; sometimes of
a Sunday, Eleonore would write a letter on plain paper, not such as
she would use when writing to a friend. And the thought had come to
him that his two children, weary of rule and scoldings, were on the
look-out for a farm in some neighbouring parish, where they would be
their own masters--it was a thought he dared not dwell upon; he cast
it from him as unjust. Still it haunted his mind, for the future of La
Fromentiere was his one chief care, and, since his eldest son's
misfortune, Francois was the heir. When work went well, the father
would think joyfully, "After all, the lad is buckling to again."

In truth, of the four young people assembled that September evening in
the farm house-place, one only personified intact all the
characteristics, all the energy of the race, and this was little
Rousille, who was eating the crust of bread given her by Eleonore; one
face alone expressed the joy of living, the health of body and soul,
the brave spirit of one who has not yet had to do battle but who bides
her time, and this was the face of the girl to whom no one, as yet,
had spoken a word, and who was standing erect in the chimney-corner.

"Now the soup is finished," said the farmer. "Come, Mathurin, try a
slice of bacon with me."

"No. It is always the same thing with us."

"Well, and so much the better," replied the father, "bacon is very
good fare; I like it."

But the cripple, shrugging his shoulders, pushed away the dish,
muttering:

"I suppose other meat is too dear for us now, eh?"

Toussaint Lumineau's brows contracted at the mention of former
prosperity, but he replied, gently:

"You are right, my poor boy, it is a bad year, and expenses are
heavy," then, wishing to change the subject--"Has Jean not come in
yet?"

Three voices, in succession, replied:

"I have not seen him!"

"Nor I."

"Nor I."

After a silence, during which all eyes were turned towards the
chimney-corner.

"It would be best to ask Rousille," exclaimed Eleonore, "she must
know."

The girl half turning towards the table, her profile standing out in
the firelight, answered:

"Of course I do. I met him at the turn of the road by our swing gate;
he was going shooting."

"Again!" exclaimed the farmer. "Once for all this must be put a stop
to. To-night, when I was tying up my cabbages, the keeper of M. le
Marquis reprimanded me for that lad's poaching."

"But is he not free to shoot plovers?" asked Rousille. "Everyone
does."

A simultaneous snort proceeding from Eleonore and Francois marked
their hostility to the _Boquin_, the alien, Rousille's friend.

The farmer, reassured by the reflection that the keeper would not
trouble himself about Nesmy's shooting in the neutral ground of the
Marais, where anyone was free to go after wild-fowl as much as he
pleased, resumed his supper.

Francois was already nodding, and ate no more.

The cripple drank slowly, his eyes fixed on space, perhaps he was
thinking of the time when he, too, loved shooting.

There was an interval of apparent peace.

The summer breeze came through the chinks of the door with a gentle
murmur, regular as the waves on a seashore.

The two girls sitting on either side of the chimney-corner, were each
giving all their attention to the peeling of an apple, the conclusion
of their supper. But the farmer's mind was unsettled by the keeper's
words, and by Mathurin's "Meat is too dear for us, now." The old man
was looking back to the long ago, when the four children before him
had been busied with their own childish experiences, and could only
take their little part in the parents' interests according to their
age. First he looked at Mathurin, then at Francois, as though to
appeal to their memory about the old days when as tiny boys they drove
the cattle, or fished for eels. Too moved longer to keep silence, he
ended by saying:

"Ah, the country side has changed greatly since M. le Marquis' time!
Do you remember him, Mathurin?"

"Yes," returned Mathurin's thick voice. "I remember him. A big fellow,
very red in the face, who used to call out when he came in, 'Good
evening, my lads! Has father another bottle of old wine in the cellar?
Go and ask him, Mathurin, or you, Francois.'"

"Yes, that was just him all over," said the good farmer, with an
affectionate smile.

"He knew how to drink; and you would never find noblemen so affable as
ours; they would tell you stories that made you die with laughing. And
rich, children! They never used to mind waiting for the rent if there
had been a bad harvest. They have even made me a loan, more than once,
to buy oxen or seed. They were hot-tempered, but not to those who knew
how to manage them; while these agents...." he made a violent gesture
as if to knock someone down.

"Yes," replied Mathurin, "they are a bad lot."

"And Mademoiselle Ambroisine! She used to come to play with you,
Eleonore, but particularly with Rousille, for she was between Eleonore
and Rousille for age. I should say she must be about twenty-five by
now. How pretty she used to look, with her lace frocks, her hair
dressed like one of the saints in a church, her pretty laughing nods
to everyone she met when she went into Sallertaine. Ah, what a pity
that they have gone away. There are people who do not regret them; but
I am not one of those!"

Mathurin shook his tawny head, and in a voice that rose at the
slightest contradiction, exclaimed:

"What else could they do? They are ruined."

"Oh, ruined! Not so bad as that."

"You only need to look at the Chateau, shut up these eight years like
a prison; only need to hear what people say. All their property is
mortgaged; the notary makes no secret about it. You will see before
long that La Fromentiere is sold, and we with it!"

"No, Mathurin, that I shall not see, thank God, I shall be dead before
that. Besides, our nobles are not like us, my boy; they always have
property to come into when their own money runs a little short. I hope
better things than you. It is my idea that M. Henri will one day come
back to the Chateau, that he will stand just where you now are, and
with outstretched hand, say: 'Good day, Father Lumineau!' and
Mademoiselle Ambroisine too, who will be so delighted to kiss my two
girls on both cheeks, as we do in the Marais, and cry, 'How do you do,
Eleonore? How do you do, Marie-Rose?' Ah, it may all come about sooner
than you suppose."

With eyes raised to the mantel-piece, the old man seemed to be seeing
his master's daughter standing between his own two girls, while
something like a tear moistened his eyelids.

But Mathurin, striking the table with his fist, said, as he turned his
peevish face towards his father:

"Do you believe they are thinking of us? I tell you, no, unless it is
about Midsummer. I'll wager that the keeper just now asked you again
for the rent? The beggar only has that one word in his mouth."

Toussaint Lumineau leant back on the bench, thought for a moment, then
said in a low voice:

"You are right. Only one never can tell if the master really did order
him to speak as he did, Mathurin. He often invents words!"

"Yes, yes. And what did you answer?"

"That I would pay at Michaelmas."

"With what?"

A few minutes before the two girls had gone into the kitchen, to the
left of the house-place, and thence came in the sound of running water
and the washing of dishes. Every evening, at this hour, the men were
left to themselves; it was the time when they discussed matters of
interest. Already, in the previous year, the farmer had borrowed from
his eldest son the larger portion of the money that he had inherited
from his mother. He could therefore only hope for help from the
younger; but of that he had so little doubt that, speaking in a low
voice to avoid being overheard by his daughters, he said:

"I was thinking that Francois would help."

Francois, roused from his sleepiness by the foregoing talk, answered
hastily:

"No, no. Do not count on me. It cannot be done...." He had not the
courage to look his father in the face as he spoke, but fixed his gaze
on the ground like a schoolboy.

His father was not angry, he only replied gently:

"I would have repaid you, Francois, as I shall repay your brother. One
year is not like another. Good times will come back to us." And he
waited, looking at the thick tawny hair and bull neck of his eldest
son that scarcely rose above the table. But Francois must have already
made up his mind, and that very decidedly, for in a half-smothered
voice he made answer:

"Father, I cannot; nor can Eleonore. Our money is our own, is it not?
and each of us is free to use it as he or she pleases? Ours is already
invested. What does it matter to us if the Marquis does have to wait a
year for his money? You say he is so rich."

"What matter to us, Francois?" Then, and not till then, the father's
voice rose and became authoritative. He did not put himself into a
passion, he rather felt hurt as though not recognising his own flesh
and blood; it was as if, all suddenly, there had dawned upon him
without his understanding it the wide gulf that existed between the
feelings of the present generation and the past, and he said:

"What you say is not to my taste, Francois Lumineau. For my part, I
consider it a duty to pay what I owe--the family at the Chateau have
never done me a wrong. I and your mother, and Mathurin, who have known
them better than you, have always respected them; do you understand?
They are perfectly justified in spending their wealth as it seems them
best; that is a matter that does not concern us.... Not pay? And do
you know that they could turn us out of La Fromentiere?"

"Bah!" returned Francois. "And what does it matter whether we are here
or elsewhere? as far as farming goes, it does not pay so mighty well
anywhere."

Treacherously, without seeing the old man's pallor, struck to the
heart, he thus seceded from La Fromentiere. The sound of washing of
dishes was heard no more in the adjacent kitchen, the girls were
listening.

The farmer made no reply; but, rising, he drew himself up to his full
height, passed before his son, his intimidated son, who watched him
from the corner of his eye, and flung open the door that led into the
courtyard. A rush of air, the scent of leaves, the breath of green
fields, came into the heated room redolent of food. Francois,
hastening to make off, sidled along the wall, passed through the
kitchen, exchanging a few words with Eleonore as he went, and going
through the girls' bedchamber went out into the night.

It was the farmer's custom every night to cross his threshold and
breathe the fresh air before going to rest; to-night as usual he
walked out to the middle of the courtyard to judge of the weather for
the morrow. Some light clouds were gliding away towards the west,
rear-guard of a bank of more extended clouds deep down in the horizon.
Swept on by the wind to the neighbouring coast they formed themselves
into transparent islands, separating abysses of deep-blue sky studded
with stars. With the leisurely movement of a laden vessel the wind
bore on towards the ever-changing sea the kiss of earth, the scent and
thrill of vegetation, the scattered seeds, the germs entangled in the
dust failing hither and thither in mysterious rain-showers, the voice
of innumerable insects that sing in the grasses, and have no other
witness than the winds.

There was a sense of content, a series of waves, as it were, of calm
and fecundity following one upon the other, which should spread abroad
in many a sea-solitude the scent of the harvests of France.

And the farmer, drinking in the air wherein floated the essence of his
beloved Vendee, felt that love-thrill within him which, unable to
express, he experienced for it to the very marrow of his bones.

"How is it with these young people," he thought, "that they can he
indifferent to the farmstead? I have been young in my day, but it
would have taken a good deal to make me leave La Fromentiere. Perhaps
they find it dull; the house is not like it was in my dear wife's
time; I do not know how to keep them together as she did." And he
thought of la mere Lumineau, the good, saving housewife, haughty
towards strangers, loving to her own, who, with a word in the right
place, could always so quietly influence and control her boys, and
check the rivalry of her girls. Around him the stables, the barns, the
huge hayrick glistened in the moonlight.

A distant shot resounded from the Marais. Toussaint heard it, and his
thoughts turned at once to the man shooting. At the same instant a
voice behind him exclaimed:

"There's another plover down for Rousille!"

"That's enough, Mathurin!" said his father, who, without looking back,
had recognised the speaker. "Do not be telling tales, which you know
irritate me, against your sister. I am troubled to-night, my boy,
troubled enough about Francois."

The crutches striking on the gravel came nearer, and the farmer felt
the shaggy head touch his shoulder as the cripple straightened
himself.

"I am only speaking the truth, father," he said in a low voice, "these
are no tales. It makes my blood boil to see this _Boquin_ making love
to my sister in order to get hold of our money, and play the master
here. A fellow who has not a halfpenny to bless himself with! There is
no time to be lost, if he is to be brought to his senses."

"Do you really believe," asked the father, bending down a little to
him, "that a girl like Rousille would listen to my hired labourer?
Does she care anything for him, Mathurin?"

It was a weakness of Toussaint Lumineau to lend too ready ear to the
judgment and strictures of his eldest son. Even now that all hope had
been abandoned of seeing him his successor; after all the many proofs
experienced of the violence and malevolence of the cripple, he still
retained predominant influence over the father.

"Father, they are lovers!" As a whispered breath the words came to the
father's ear.

Rage at the happiness of others had distorted the younger man's
features. Toussaint Lumineau looked down at the face raised to his, so
white in the moonlight, and was struck by the air of suffering it
wore.

"If you watched them as I do," continued his son, "you would see that
though they never speak to each other indoors, outside they always
contrive to meet. I have often caught them talking and laughing
together like acknowledged lovers. You do not know that Jean Nesmy; he
is audacity itself. He lets you think that he likes shooting, and I do
not say but what he may, but he does not carry his love for it to
that extent, I'll be bound. Is it only for his own pleasure that he
is off to the far end of the Marais to shoot plovers; only for his own
pleasure that he risks malarial fever fishing for eels; that he spends
whole nights out after being hard at work all day? No, I tell you, it
is for Rousille, for Rousille, for Rousille!" His voice had risen, it
could be heard from within the house.

"I will be on the watch, my boy," returned his father soothingly, "do
not you worry yourself."

"Ah, if I were you, I would go at dawn to-morrow along the road to the
Marais, and if I caught them together...."

"Enough!" exclaimed his father, "you do yourself no good by so much
talking, Mathurin. Here is Eleonore coming to help you in."

Eleonore had come, as usual, to help Mathurin up the steps, and unlace
his boots. No sooner did she touch his arm than turning, he went in
with her. The sound of crutches and of footsteps died away; the father
was alone again.

"Come," he thought aloud, "if this be true, I will not suffer the
laugh to last long against me in the Marais!" He drew in a deep breath
of pure air, as though it were a bumper of wine, then to make sure
that Rousille had not gone out again, he entered the house by the door
in the middle, which was that of his daughter's bedchamber. All was
dark within; a ray of moonlight fell across the well-waxed wardrobes
furnishing the sides of the room--wardrobes always kept in perfect
order by Eleonore and Rousille. The farmer felt his way round the huge
walnut wood one which had formed his mother's dowry, had crossed the
room, and was making his way out into the kitchen communicating with
the large living-room where he and Mathurin slept, when behind him, in
the angle of a bed, a shadowy form arose:

"Father!"

He stopped.

"Is it you, Rousille? Are you not in bed?"

"No, I was waiting for you. I wanted to say something to you." They
were separated by the length of the room; the darkness was too great
for them to see each other. "As Francois cannot give you his money, I
have been thinking that I will give you mine."

"You are not afraid then that I shall not repay you?" the farmer asked
harshly.

The girlish voice, as if discouraged by this reception, and checked in
its enthusiasm, replied timidly:

"I will go to-morrow to fetch it ... the Michelonne's nephew has
it.... I will, indeed, and you shall have it the day after to-morrow."

If a tear rolled down his cheeks, the farmer was unaware of it; he
passed on into his own room.

Some minutes later, when Eleonore came into the room, a lighted candle
in her hand, Marie-Rose was no longer beside her bed, but was standing
before the open windows looking out on to the courtyard.

The farmhouse stood upon an eminence, and from this window there was a
view over the low wall, and through the arched gateway to the slopes
beyond, and even across the sedge-covered Marais.

The sisters often undressed without exchanging a word. Rousille was
gazing straight before her into the clear moonlight; her accustomed
eye could distinguish objects by it almost as accurately as by the
light of day. Immediately beyond the wall came a group of elms, under
shelter of which stood carts and ploughs, then a stretch of land lying
fallow, and beyond that again the broad flat expanse of marshland,
across which on most nights would come now faintly, now loudly, the
sound of the roll of the ocean, as of some far-off chariot that never
stopped. The immense grassy plain looked blue in the darkness; here
and there the water of a dyke shone in the moonlight. A few distant
lights, a window lit up, pierced the veil of mist that spread over the
meadows. Unerringly Rousille could name each farmstead to herself by
its beacon light, similar to that on the mast-head of a ship riding at
anchor; La Pinconniere, La Paree du Mont, both near; further away, Les
Levrelles; then so distant that their lights were only visible at
intervals, like tiny stars, La Terre-Aymont, La Seuliere, Malabrit,
and the flour-mill of Moque-Souris. By a group of starry points on the
right, she could discern the town of Sallertaine standing out on an
invisible mound in the middle of the Marais. Somewhere about there
Jean Nesmy was wading among the reeds, for love of Rousille. So she
continued to think of him; she seemed to see him so far, so very far
away, amid the dreamy shadows, and her lips pressed together, then
parted in a long, silent kiss.

There was a sudden swish of wings over the tiles of La Fromentiere.

"Do shut the window, Rousille," said Eleonore, waking up. "It is the
turn of the night, and blows in cold."

The sky was clear, the clouds had dispersed. The lights of
Moque-Souris were extinguished; those of Sallertaine had gradually
diminished like a bunch of currants pecked by birds.

"Until to-morrow, my Jean, in the dwarf orchard," murmured Rousille.
And slowly, musingly, the girl began unfastening her dress by the
light reflected from her white sheet, her young heart filled with
dreams of youth.




CHAPTER III.

THE DWARF ORCHARD.


Towards four o'clock the stars began to fade in the sky, the first
signs of daybreak to appear. A cock crowed. It was the same
golden-feathered cock, with fiery eyes under his red crest, that
crowed every morning. Marie-Rose had reared him. Now hearing it she
thought, "Thank you, little cock!" Then began to dress quietly, for
fear of rousing Eleonore, who still slept soundly.

She was quickly ready, and crossing the courtyard, turned to the left
past the ruined wall by a grassy path on the farm property, strewn
with fallen branches, which led down to the Marais. About some hundred
yards from La Fromentiere all vegetation abruptly ceased, and one came
upon a low wall grown with lichen and moss, surrounding an orchard of
about an acre in extent. Rousille, pushing open a gate in the middle
of the wall, entered.

It was a curious sight, this dwarf orchard. The cider apple and pear
trees with which it was planted had never been able to grow higher
than the top of the wall on account of the strong winds that blew
from the sea. Their stems were thick and gnarled, their branches all
bent and driven towards the east; leafless above, they met and
over-arched beneath. Looking at it from outside one simply saw a
billowy mass of bare branches; but on making one's way down the
central path, one found oneself in a leafy shade some four feet high,
safe from inquisitive eyes, from rain and heat, and from the gales
which sweep over the Marais. It was a sailor's folly, such as might be
found in far-off isles. As a child, it had been Rousille's playground;
now grown up, it was here she had come to meet her betrothed.

Entering, she stooped and made a path for herself towards the western
wall, then sitting upon the forked branch of an apple-tree, hidden
among them like a partridge in a corn-field, she gazed out upon the
vast plain along which Jean Nesmy must come.

At this early hour the Marais was covered with mists which did not
rise, but parted ever and anon, undulating in the breeze. The solitude
was unbroken, the atmosphere light, sensitive, nervous, carrying the
faintest sound without diminution. The bark of a dog at Sallertaine
came to her ears as if it were beside her. Great square corn-fields
that looked like patches of grey fur stitched together faded away into
nothing in the distance. Here and there canals, cutting each other at
right angles, looked like tarnished mirrors, the mist curling in smoke
above them. Then vaguely from out the fog darker outlines began to
appear, like oases in the desert; they were farmhouses built on the
low-lying ground of the marshland, with their outbuildings and groups
of poplars to lend shade. Now the undulating veil of mist began to
rise, rays of light touched the grasses, sheets of water sparkled like
windows in a setting sun. For many a league, from the bay of Bourgneuf
to Saint Gilles, the Marais of La Vendee had awakened to the light of
a fresh day.

Rousille rejoiced in it. She loved her native soil, faithful, true,
generous soil, ever yielding its increase whether in rain or sunshine;
where one would sleep one's last sleep to the sighing of the wind,
under the shelter of the Cross. She loved nothing better than that
horizon where every tiniest road was familiar to her, from the fence
that ran along the first meadow of La Fromentiere close at hand, to
the paths on the embankment which must be traversed pole in hand to
jump the dykes.

"Four o'clock," she said to herself, "and he has not come back yet!
What will father say?" She was beginning to grow uneasy, when, as she
was gazing into the distance towards the pointed clock tower of
Sallertaine, a voice startled her with:

"Rousille!" On the rising path, the marshland behind him, standing
looking at her in the light of the early morning, was Jean Nesmy.

"I did not see you come," she said.

He laughed, and with a proud air raised above his head a bundle of
feathers, four plovers and a teal tied together. The next moment,
resting the gun he carried against the inside of the wall, and
flinging over the birds, he dropped down beside Rousille.

"Rousille," he said, taking her hand under the arching apple-trees, "I
have had luck! Four plovers and such fine ones! I had a couple of
hours' sleep in the barn at La Pinconniere, and if the farmer had not
dragged me out this morning, I should have been late, I was so sound
asleep. And you?"

"I," replied Marie-Rose, as he sat opposite to her, "I am afraid.
Father spoke to me so angrily last night--he had been talking to
Mathurin in the courtyard--they must know."

"Well, and if they do? I am doing nothing to anger them. I mean to win
you by my work, to ask your father for your hand, and take you home as
my wife."

She looked at him, happy, despite her fears, at the determination she
read in the lad's face. And reserving her thought which answered yes,
she said without direct reply:

"What is it like in your home?"

"In my home," replied Jean Nesmy, contracting his eyes as if to fix
the picture thus evoked, and looking over Rousille's head--"in my home
is my mother, who is old and poor. The house she lives in is called
the Chateau, as I have told you before, in the parish of Chatelliers;
but it is not by any means a castle, Rousille, only two rooms, in
which live six little Nesmys besides myself, who am the eldest ... it
was, as you know, on account of our poverty and the number of children
that I could only serve one year in the army."

"Oh, yes, I remember," she answered, laughing, "that year seemed to me
longer than any other."

"I am the eldest; then come two girls, who are growing up. They are
not dressed altogether like you, for instance...."

An idea seized him, and with his hand quite near yet without touching
Rousille, he sketched about the young girl's shoulders and waist, the
little shawl and the long velvet ribbons encircling the bust. "All
round there two rows of velvet; rich girls have even three. You would
be charming, Rousille, in the costume of the Chatelliers and La
Flocelliere, for they dress in the same manner, the villages are quite
close."

She laughed, as if caressed by the hand which never touched her,
following its action with half-closed eyes.

"As you may suppose," he continued, "they only dress like that on
Sundays! There would not be bread in the house every day if I did not
send home the wages that your father gives me. Then I have two
brothers who have finished their schooling, and look after cows and
begin to do little odd jobs. The farmer who hires them gives them
each one row of potatoes to dig up for their own. It is a great help!"

"So I should think!" returned Rousille, with an air of conviction

"But above all," continued the lad, "our air is superb. We have plenty
of rain, indeed it rains without ceasing when the wind blows from
Saint Michael, a place about one league from us. But immediately after
we are in full sunshine; and as we have plenty of trees and moss and
ferns about us, the air is a very joy to breathe, quite different from
here; for our country is not at all like that of the Marais; it is all
hills, here, there, and everywhere, big and little; there is no
getting away from them. From any height it looks a perfect paradise.
Ah, Rousille, if you only knew Le Bocage, and the moors of Nouzillac,
you would never want to leave them!"

"And is the land tilled like this?"

"Very nearly, but much deeper. It takes strong oxen, sometimes six or
eight to plough."

"Father uses as many, when it pleases him."

"Yes, for the honour of it, Rousille, because your father is a rich
man. But down there, believe me, the soil has more granite and is
harder to turn."

She hesitated a little, the smile left her face as she asked:

"Do the women work in the fields?"

"Oh, no, of course not," answered the lad warmly. "We respect and
care for them as much as men do here in your Marais. Even my mother,
who goes gleaning at harvest-time and when the chestnuts are gathered,
is never seen working in the fields like a man. No, you may depend on
it, our women are more indoors spinning, than doing out-of-door work."

Recalled to the stern conditions of his daily life, the young man grew
grave, and added slowly:

"Rest assured, I will never slacken in my work. I am known for more
than two leagues round Chatelliers as a lad who has no fear of hard
work. We will have our own little house to ourselves, and if only I
have your love, Rousille, like my father and mother, I will never
complain of any hardships."

He had scarcely ended his speech of humble love-making when a voice
from the road called:

"Rousille!"

"We are betrayed!" she said, turning pale. "It is father."

They both remained motionless, with beating hearts, thinking only of
the voice that would call again.

And, in truth, it was now heard nearer.

"Rousille!"

She did not resist. Signing to Jean Nesmy to remain under cover of the
trees, and bending half double, she made her way out to the path that
divided the orchard. There straightening herself, she saw her father
standing before her in the road. He looked at his daughter for a
moment, as she presented herself, pale, breathless, dishevelled by the
branches, then said:

"What were you doing there?"

She would not lie; she felt herself lost. In her trouble involuntarily
she turned her head as if to invoke the protection of him in hiding,
and there just behind, erect, quite close to her, Rousille saw her
lover, who had come to her aid in the moment of danger. With an air of
defiance he drew himself up, and strode in front of her. Then the girl
ventured to look again at her father. He was no longer occupied with
her, nor had he the angry aspect she expected to see; his expression
was grave and sad, and he looked steadily at Jean Nesmy, who, pressing
forward on the grassy walk, had stopped at the opening, within three
feet of him:

"You here, my farm-servant!" he said.

Jean Nesmy made answer:

"Yes, I am here."

"You have been with Rousille, then?"

"And what is the harm?" inquired the lad, with a slight tremor, which
he could not control, not of fear, but of the hot blood of youth.

There was no anger in the farmer's voice. With head bent on his
breast, as of a master whose kindness has been abused, and who is
sorrowing, he said with a sigh:

"Come you here, at once, with me."

Not a word to Marie-Rose, not one look. It was a matter to be settled
among men first; the daughter did not count at present.

The farmer was already retracing his steps, walking with leisurely
stride towards La Fromentiere; Jean Nesmy followed at a short
distance, his gun slung on his back, swinging the birds he had shot in
one hand. Far behind them came Rousille in sore distress, sometimes
looking at Jean Nesmy, sometimes at the master who was to decide his
fate.

When the two men had gone into the courtyard, she did not dare to
follow them in, but leaning against a pillar of the ruined gateway,
half hidden behind it, her head on her arm, she waited to see what
would happen.

Her father and his man, crossing the yard, proceeded to Jean Nesmy's
room, which was to the left beyond the stables. There was no sound but
the noise of wooden shoes on the gravel; but Rousille had seen the
cripple crouching down in the first rays of the sun, beyond the
stables; he was nodding his head with an air of satisfaction, his
malicious eyes never leaving the stranger he had denounced, who,
yesterday so happy, was now the culprit.

Not far off, Francois, on a ladder, was cutting out a wedge of hay
from a rick, firm and compact as a wall; he, too, was watching slyly
from under the brim of his hat, but there was no malice upon his
phlegmatic countenance, nothing more than a mild curiosity broadening
his lips into a half smile under the heavy yellow moustache. He did
his work as slowly as possible so as to be able to remain there and
see the end of it.

Toussaint Lumineau and his man had soon reached the shed piled with
empty casks, baskets, spades, and pickaxes, that had for many a year
served as sleeping-place for the farm-servants. The master sat down on
the foot of the bed. The look on his face had not changed; it was
still the dignified paternal look of one who regrets parting from a
good servant, and yet is resolutely determined to suffer no
encroachment upon his authority, no disrespect to his position.
Leaning his elbow upon an old cask showing marks of tallow, on which
Jean Nesmy used to rest his candle at night, he slowly raised his
head, and in the daylight that streamed in at the open door, he at
length addressed the young man, who was standing bare-headed in the
middle of the shed.

"I hired you for forty pistoles," he said. "You received your wages at
Midsummer; how much is now owing to you?"

The lad, absorbed, began counting and recounting with his fingers on
his blouse, the veins of his forehead swelling with the effort; his
eyes were fixed on the ground, and not another thought disturbed the
complicated operation of the countryman calculating the price of his
labour. During this time, the farmer mentally went over the brief
history of his connection with the lad, who, come by chance to the
Marais in search of burnt cow-dung, used by the Vendeens for manure,
had been then and there hired by him, and had quickly fallen into the
ways of his new master. The farmer thought of the three years that the
stranger lad had lived under the roof of La Fromentiere, one before
his military training, two since; years of hard, thorough work, of
good conduct, without having once given cause for serious reproof, of
astonishing gentleness and submission despite his sons' hostility,
which, manifested on the very first day, had never lessened.

"It should make ninety-five francs," said Jean Nesmy.

"That is what I make it," said the farmer. "Here is the money. Count
and see if it is right." From his coat pocket where he had already
placed them, Toussaint Lumineau drew out a number of silver pieces
which he threw on the top of the cask. "Take it, lad."

Without touching the money Jean Nesmy had drawn back.

"You will not have me any longer at La Fromentiere?"

"No, my lad, you are going." The old man's voice faltered, and he
continued: "I am not sending you away because you are idle, nor even,
though it did annoy me, because you are too fond of shooting
wild-fowl. You have served me well. But my daughter is my own, Jean
Nesmy, and I have not given my consent to your courting her."

"If she likes me, and I like her, Maitre Lumineau?"

"You are not one of us, my poor boy. That a _Boquin_ should marry a
girl like Rousille is an impossibility, as you know. You should have
thought of it before."

For the first time Jean Nesmy's face grew a shade paler, he half
closed his eyes, the corners of his mouth drooped as though he were
about to burst into tears. In a low voice he said:

"I will wait for her as long as you think fit. She is young, and so am
I. Only say how long it must be, and I will submit."

But the farmer answered:

"No, it cannot be. You must go."

The young man quivered from head to foot. He hesitated for a moment,
with knitted brows, his eyes fixed on the ground, then decided not to
speak his thought: I will not give her up. I will come back. She shall
be mine. True to the taciturn race from which he sprang, he said
nothing, took up the money, counted it, dropping the pieces one by one
into his pocket as he did so. Then without another word, as though the
farmer were not in existence, he began to collect his clothes and
belongings. The blue blouse that he knotted by the sleeves to the
barrel of his gun held them all, save a pair of boots that he slung
on to a piece of string. When he had finished, he raised his hat, and
went out.

It was broad sunshine. Jean Nesmy walked slowly; the strong will that
dominated the slight youth made him hold his head high, and his eyes
scanned the windows of the house seeking Rousille. She was nowhere to
be seen. Then in the middle of the great courtyard, he, the hired
servant, who had been dismissed, who had but another moment to tread
the ground of La Fromentiere, called:

"Rousille!"

A pointed coif appeared at the angle of the gateway; Rousille came
forth from her shelter and ran to him, tears streaming down her face.
But almost at the same moment she stopped, intimidated by the sight of
her father on the threshold of the shed, and stricken with terror at a
cry which, rising from that side of the courtyard, some fifty paces
off, had caused Nesmy to turn his head:

"_Dannion!_"

A monstrous apparition came out from the stables. The cripple,
bare-headed, with eyes bloodshot, inspired by impotent rage, had
rushed out, with arms rigid on his crutches, his huge body shaking
with the effort. Roaring like some wild beast with wide-open mouth he
hurled the old cry of hatred at the stranger, the cry with which the
children of the Marais greet the despised dwellers of the Bocage.

"_Dannion! Dannion Sarraillon_--look to yourself!"

Rushing with a speed that betokened the violence and strength of the
man, he neared Nesmy. The rage in his heart, the jealousy that
tortured him, the agony caused by the effort he was making, rendered
the convulsed face terrible to behold, as it was projected forward by
jerks; while onlookers could not but think, with a shudder, what a
powerful man this deformed, unearthly looking creature had once been.

Seeing him come close up to the farm-servant, Rousille was terrified
for the man she loved. She ran to Jean Nesmy, put her two hands on his
arms, and drew him backward towards the road.

And, on her account, Jean Nesmy began to draw back, slowly, step by
step, while the cripple, growing still more furious, shouted
insultingly:

"Let go of my sister, _Dannion_!"

The farmer's loud voice interposed from the depths of the courtyard:

"Stop where you are, Mathurin; and you, Nesmy, loose your hold of my
daughter!"

And he advanced to them, without haste, as a man not desiring to
compromise his dignity. The cripple stopped short, let go of his
crutches, and sank exhausted to the ground.

But Jean Nesmy continued to retreat. He had placed his hand in
Rousille's; and soon they were within the portal of the gateway,
framed in sunshine. There lay the road. The young man bent towards
Rousille and kissed her cheek.

"Farewell, my Rousille," he said.

And she, running across the courtyard without looking back, her hands
to her face, wept bitterly.

Having watched her disappear round the corner of the house by the
barn, Nesmy called out:

"Mathurin Lumineau, I shall come back!"

"Only try!" retorted the cripple.

The whilom farm-servant of La Fromentiere began to mount the hill
beside the farm; clad in his russet work-day clothes he walked with
difficulty as if worn out with fatigue. His whole wardrobe, slung on
to his gun, consisted of but one coat, a blouse, three shirts, a
couple of boxwood bird calls for quails that clapped together as he
walked, and yet the load seemed heavy. A feeling of dismay at having
to go back to the daily seeking of employment had come over him while
making up the modest bundle. He was already thinking of his mother's
alarm at this sudden return. Every step was a wrench from some loved
object, for he had lived three years in this Fromentiere. His heart
was heavy with memories; he walked on slowly, looking at nothing yet
seeing every stick and stone. The trees he brushed past had all been
pruned by him, or flicked by his whip; every inch of ground had been
ploughed and reaped by him; he knew how every furrow was to be sown on
the morrow.

Having reached the back of the farm, at the rise of the road where
formerly four mills had been busily grinding corn and now only two
were at work, he turned to look back that he might increase the pain
of parting.

Below him, bathed in sunlight, lay the plain of the Marais, where
rushes, taking on their autumn array, formed golden circles round the
meadows; there were farms distinguishable by their groups of poplars,
inhabited islands in the desert of marshland, where he was leaving
good friends, and the recollection of happy hours that come back in
sorrow; his eyes scanned the crowded houses of Sallertaine and its
church dominating them all, recalling bygone Sundays. Then, with his
soul in his eyes, he bent them upon La Fromentiere, as a bird would
hover with wide extended wings.

From the height on which he stood the lad could discern the whole of
the farm, even to its slightest details. One by one he counted the
windows, the doors and gates, the paths round the fields along which
every evening, for the last two years especially, he had never failed
to sing as he drove the cattle homewards. When his eyes lighted on the
dwarf orchard, so distant that it looked no larger than a pea-pod, he
quickly turned away; as he did so, his foot struck against something
in the path, it was a dog lying down, quite still.

"What, you, Bas-Rouge?" said Jean. "My poor doggie, you cannot follow
me where I am going;" and, walking on, he stroked the dog's head
between his ears, in the place where Rousille loved to fondle him.
After some twenty paces, he said again:

"You must go back, Bas-Rouge. I do not belong to you any more."

Bas-Rouge trotted on a little further with his friend; but when they
had reached the last hedge of La Fromentiere, he stopped, and turned
slowly homewards.




CHAPTER IV.

THE MICHELONNES.


"Rousille," said her father, as shortly before noon she went into the
house to help her sister prepare dinner, "you will not take your meals
with us either to-day, or for some days to come. A girl like Eleonore,
who respects herself, would be ashamed to eat her food beside a young
woman who could allow a penniless _Boquin_ to make love to her. A
pretty kind of lover! A fellow from I don't know where, who would not
even have a wardrobe to furnish his house with! All very well for a
serving-maid, such as they are in those parts; but the whole kit of
them are not worth their salt in the Marais, those _dannions_! I am
cured of taking them into my service. There must have been some fine
tales going the round at my expense. And now, Rousille, mind that you
conduct yourself properly; and take yourself out of my sight!"

So the farmer spoke, far more harshly than he felt, because Mathurin
had been talking to him a long time after Nesmy had gone, and had
inspired him with some of his resentment.

Marie-Rose made no reply, shed no tear, but withdrew to her room. She
had no thought of dinner, either with or without them; but began to
dress herself in her best, as for Sunday, taking by turns from the
wardrobe a black skirt, raised from the ground by a broad tuck,
showing the pretty feet beneath; her most dainty coif and embroidered
pyramid of muslin kept in shape by silver paper that rested on her
hair; open-work stockings; sabots, like the prow of a ship, so much
did they turn up. A blue silk kerchief filled in the low bodice, as
was the custom in the Marais; there only remained to smooth the bands
of chestnut hair with a little water, to bathe her red eyes, then
going out into the courtyard she turned off on the road to
Sallertaine.

For the first time in her life she had a feeling of standing alone in
the world. Mathurin did not love her; Francois did not understand her.
Andre himself, the soldier brother so soon coming home, who had always
been kind, only treated her as a child to be teased and petted. And
she felt herself a woman--a woman who was learning to know sorrow, and
one who needed to pour out her trouble to sympathetic ears.

Hitherto, if they were unkind, if they neglected her, she had never
felt the need of telling her troubles to anyone; the thought of Jean
Nesmy had been enough to make her forget them all. But now that he
whom she loved had had to go, and that his going was the sorrow, her
soul cried out for aid--sought some safe place wherein to rest. In her
distress she thought of the sisters Michelonne. Rousille passed close
beside the dwarf orchard; Rousille skirted the edge of the Marais
whence can be seen Sallertaine upon its eminence. No, she had no other
hope save in those two dear old friends; no other regret than that she
had not before been to that little house in the town. The old sisters'
warmth of heart seemed to her just now a thing of priceless worth,
which, hitherto, had not been valued half enough. The mere thought of
their round faces, withered and smiling, was a goal to her. It seemed
as if only to see the Michelonnes, even if she might not speak one
word of her trouble, would be a consolation, because of their kind
hearts, and because, old maids though they were, they were not the
people to gossip about a young girl's red eyes. What excuse could she
make for going to them? Oh, it was very simple. She had promised to
draw out her money and lend it to her father to pay the rent. She had
only to say, "I have come for my money; father needs it." Then if they
guessed the slightest thing, she would tell all, all her trouble, all
the grief she could not endure alone.

It was close upon one o'clock. A mist of heat quivered over the
meadows. Rousille walked fast. Now she had reached the Grand Canal,
smooth as a mirror; there was the bridge across it, the winding road
flanked on either side by the white-washed houses of the outskirts of
Sallertaine, their orchards at the back looking towards the Marais.
Rousille walks faster. She is afraid of being hailed and stopped, for
the Lumineaus are known to everyone in the district. But the good
folks are either taking their noonday sleep, or else without quitting
their shady corners they call to her, "Good day, little one! How fast
you are walking!" "Yes, I am in a hurry. Sometimes one is." "Yes,
indeed," they reply, and on she goes. She has reached the long open
Place that narrows as it reaches the church. Now she has only eyes for
the humble dwelling which stands at the extreme end where the street
is narrowest, facing the side door of the church by which the faithful
enter on Sundays. It is a very little house, one window looks on to
the Place, the other on to a steep lane, the three steps to the
entrance are at the corner; it is also very old, and built under the
shadow of the clock tower, beneath the peal of bells, thus nearer to
Heaven.

The sisters Michelonne have lived there all their lives. Rousille can
picture them within the walls; a half smile, a ray of hope crosses her
sad face. She ascends the three steps, and pauses to regain breath.

When Rousille presses down the iron latch, the door opens to the
tinkle of so tiny a bell that it would need the ears of a cat to hear
it.

But they were true cats, ever on the watch, these two old sisters,
cloak-makers to the whole of Sallertaine. Scarcely did they divine a
visitor from the shadow cast through the glass door, than with
simultaneous movement their chairs, always close together, were pushed
back, their heads turned towards the door, and their busy hands sunk
on their laps. The two sisters were very much alike; the same deep,
arched wrinkles in the rosy faces, round the toothless mouths, round
the short noses, round the blue, childlike eyes that had a light in
them as of a perpetual laugh, and was the reflection of their sixty
years of work, of sisterly affection, and their good consciences.
There was also a twinkle in their eyes of fun without malice; a
something as of the flame of youth economised in the course of their
lives, and leaving a fund for their old age. Poverty had not been
wanting, but it had always been borne by them together. From
childhood's day they had worked side by side in the light of the same
window, day rising and setting on their busy needles never at rest.
There was no one in all Sallertaine, nor in Perrier, nor Saint Gervais
who could cut and make cloaks as skilfully as they could; and they
were general favourites. As soon as the weather was mild enough for
them to stand a pot of ivy geranium on the sill and to sit by the open
window, there was not a person coming down the lane, whether
fisherman, sportsman, drover, or horse-breeder, who did not call in as
he passed "Good day and good luck, _les Michelonnes_." To which they
would make some kind reply in soft voices, so alike that it was
impossible to distinguish one from the other. They were asked to St.
Sylvester gatherings because they had an inexhaustible store of songs,
when young folks had long come to the end of all they knew.

The Cure said of them: "The flower of my flock; it is a pity they have
no successors."

When Rose-Marie entered, they did not get up, but said both together,
Adelaide at the window, Veronique a little away:

"It is you, little Lumineau! Good day, pretty one!"

"Sit down, child," said Adelaide, "you are quite out of breath."

"But not ill?" asked Veronique. "Your eyes are as bright as if you had
fever?"

"Thank you, aunts," answered Marie-Rose. She called them aunts on
account of a distant relationship difficult to establish, but
principally on account of the old ladies' kindness. "I have been
walking quickly, and I do feel a little tired. I have come for some of
my money."

The sisters exchanged a side-look, laughing already at the thought of
the coming marriage, and the eldest, Adelaide, drawing her needle
across her lips as if to smooth out the wrinkles, asked:

"You are about to marry, then?"

"Oh, indeed no!" returned Marie-Rose, "I shall be married like you, my
aunts, to my seat in church and my rosary. It is for father, who has
not money to pay the rent of the farm; he is in arrears."

And as, while speaking, she did not look into her old friends' faces,
but into the shade of the room, somewhere towards the two beds ranged
along the side of the wall, the sisters Michelonne shook their heads
as though to communicate the impression that, all the same, some
disturbing element had entered into Rousille's life. But the sisters
were more instinctively polite than curious. They reserved their
thought for the long hours of chat together, and Adelaide, throwing
down her half-finished work, clasping her white bony hands, and
bending forward her thin body, said gaily:

"Well, my pretty one, you have come just at the right time! I had lent
your money on interest to my nephew, who, you know, breeds foals, and
very good ones, on the Marais. He is a sharp fellow, that Francois.
Would you believe it, yesterday he actually sold his dappled grey
filly--that flies like a plover, and was the envy of all the breeders
and dannions that went by the meadow--and for such a big price that he
would not even tell us the amount. So, you see, it will be quite easy
for him to pay back a good part of the loan. How much will you want?"

"A hundred and twenty pistoles."

"You shall have them. Are they wanted at once?"

"Yes, Aunt Adelaide. I promised them by to-morrow."

"Then, Veronique, my girl, suppose you were to go to our nephew? The
cloak can well wait an hour."

The younger sister rose at once; she was so short standing, that she
did not reach above the head of Marie-Rose sitting. Rapidly shaking
off the threads of cotton from her black apron, she kissed the girl on
both cheeks:

"Good-bye, Rousille. To-morrow the money will be here, and you will
only have to come and fetch it."

In the quiet of the sleepy town, Veronique's gliding steps could be
heard as they went down the lane. No sooner had she gone than Adelaide
went up to Marie-Rose and fixing upon the girl her clear kind eyes,
her eyelids quivering with uneasiness:

"Child," she said hurriedly, "you are in trouble; you have been
crying. Why, you are crying now!" The wrinkled hand seized the girl's
pink palm. "What is it, my Rousille? Tell me, as you would tell your
own mother. I love you as she would do."

Marie-Rose repressed her tears. She would not cry when she could
speak. Trembling at the contact of the hand which touched her own, her
eyes like diamonds, her face set, as though she were addressing those
enemies before whom her tongue had been tied:

"They have sent away Jean Nesmy," she said rising.

"He, my dear? Such a good worker? And why?"

"Because I love him, Aunt Michelonne. They turned him out this
morning. And they think that all is over between us because I shall
not see him again. They little know the girls of these parts."

"Well said, _Maraichine_," exclaimed the old aunt.

"I will give them all my money, yes, readily; but my love--where I
have placed it there I will leave it. It is as sacred as my baptismal
vows. I have no fear of poverty; no fear that he will forget me. The
day he comes back, for he has promised to come back, I will go to meet
him, and no one shall prevent me--had I to cross the Marais, were
there snow and ice, and all the girls of the town to mock at me, did
my father and my brothers forbid me to go, still I would do it!"

Erect, passionate, she made the walls of the little room unused to
loud voices ring with the voice of love and bitterness. It was to
herself, herself only, that she spoke, because she suffered. She was
looking straight before her, vaguely, apparently unaware of the
Michelonne's presence.

Adelaide, however, had risen, and was listening, agitated and excited,
so struck by Rousille's words, so carried out of the restricted circle
of everyday thought, that all the calm had vanished from her face, and
the quiet old maid, oppressed by the small cares of life, seemed
transformed into a woman--a woman who remembered and had regained her
youth to suffer with the other.

"You are right, dear child. I thoroughly approve. Love him truly!"

At these words Rousille, looking down at the old lady, had the
revelation of a being hitherto unknown to her. There was a light in
her face; the poor arms, helpless from rheumatism, were held out
towards Rousille trembling with emotion.

"Yes, love him truly. Your happiness is with him. Leave it to time,
but do not yield, my Rousille, for I know others who in their youth
refused to marry to please their fathers, and who had such difficulty
afterwards to kill their hearts! Do not live alone, it is worse than
death! Your Nesmy, I know him--your Nesmy and you are true lovers of
the soil, such as the land can boast but few nowadays, and if old Aunt
Adelaide can help you, defend you, give you what is wanted to enable
you to marry, come to me, my child, at any time, come!"

She was holding Rousille now in close embrace, the girl bending over
the little black-robed figure and suffering her tears to flow on the
friendly shoulder, now that she had unburdened her heart.

For a moment the room was as silent as was the town slumbering in the
mid-day sun. Then the Michelonne, gently disengaging herself from the
girl's arms, went towards the window, standing where she could not be
seen from outside. Between the roofs of two adjoining houses, looking
westwards, was set, as in a frame, a corner of the Marais, its
reddish-brown rushes finally fading away on the horizon.

"It was Mathurin, was it not, who denounced you?" she asked in a low
voice.

"Yes, he was always watching me."

"He is jealous, you see. He has a grudge against you."

"For what, poor creature!"

"Your youth, my poor child. He is jealous of all who take the place
that should have been his; jealous of Francois, of Andre, of you. He
is like a lost soul when he hears that anyone but himself is to manage
your father's farm. Shall I tell you all?"

Her frail hand uplifted, she pointed to the distant Marais, where the
poplars, tiny as grains of oats, were standing out against the sky.

"Well, he still thinks of Felicite."

"Poor brother!" exclaimed Rousille, nodding her head. "If he is still
thinking of her, she is only making fun of him."

"Innocent," returned the old woman in a whisper, "I know what I know.
Beware of Mathurin, he has drunk too deeply of love to forget. Beware
of Felicite Gauvrit, because she is furious that being an heiress, no
suitors come to her."

Rousille was about to reply. Adelaide made her a sign to keep silence;
she had heard a footstep in the lane. Hastily drying her eyes, the old
lady re-seated herself and picked up her work, like a child surprised
in some fault by her mother. A pair of sabots was heard at the foot of
the wall, they passed the doorsteps, and went on down the Place. It
was not Veronique. Marie-Rose had drawn back; she was looking at her
one friend, so old, so worn, so timid, yet whose heart was so young.
And she thought no more of what she had been about to reply; she only
said simply:

"Good-bye, Aunt Michelonne. If I need help I shall know where to
come."

"Good-bye, dear child. Beware of Mathurin. Beware of the girl out
there!"

They said no more in words, only their eyes were fixed on each
other's, Rousille looking back until she had reached the door; then
the latch was lifted, fell back into its socket, and there only
remained in the silent chamber a little old woman stooping down over
her black work, but who could not see her needle for the mist of tears
in her eyes.




CHAPTER V.

PLOUGHING IN SEPTEMBER.


It was Monday, the third day after Rousille had seen the Michelonnes.
On the previous day, from morn till eve, storm clouds, rising out of
the sea, had discharged their contents on the arid earth, as pockets
full of corn are scattered by the sower. Showers of leaves, mostly
from the topmost branches, had fallen; others, heavy with moisture,
hung pendant. An aroma of damp earth rose up to the calm, milky sky;
there was not a breath stirring, the birds were silenced, the land
seemed intent upon the last drops of rain formed during the night,
that came crashing down at the foot of the trees with a ring as of
falling glass. Something in Nature seemed to have died with the last
breath of summer, and the whole earth to be conscious of its loss.

And in truth, on the hills of Chalons, the most distant area of La
Fromentiere, the far-off grinding of a plough, and the calls of the
man to his oxen, proclaimed that Autumn labour had begun.

In the farm bakery, left of the building, and dividing their room from
that of Francois, Eleonore and Marie-Rose were engaged heating the
oven. From the semicircular opening flames were shooting up, now in
heavy wreaths, now in groups of red petals set on upright stems.
Eleonore standing before it, in a print gown, was feeding the oven
with faggots of bramble, thrusting them with an iron fork into the
furnace. Marie-Rose was busily going backwards and forwards bringing
in the baskets of dough. They did not speak; for a long time there had
been a coolness between the sisters. But as for the tenth time
Eleonore looked towards the door, as if expecting to see some person
or thing in the courtyard, Rousille asked:

"What are you expecting, Eleonore?"

"Nothing," was the cross reply. "I am hot. My eyes smart." And she
busied herself with separating the burning embers, arranging them in
layers at the sides of the oven; this finished:

"Help me to fill the oven," she said.

One by one the loaves of leavened dough were placed by Rousille upon a
large flat shovel, which Eleonore slid over the burning bricks, and
drew out again with a sharp jerk. Twenty loaves there were of twelve
pound each; enough wherewith to feed all at La Fromentiere, and to
give to the poor of Monday for a fortnight. The last having been
placed, Eleonore closed the mouth of the oven with an iron plate; the
sisters had wiped their hot cheeks with their sleeves, the smell of
new bread was beginning to be perceptible through the chinks of the
oven, when a loud laughing voice called in from the yard:

"M Francois Lumineau. Is he at home?" and the postman, a visitor who
had been seen fairly often at La Fromentiere for some months past,
held out a letter with printed heading on it. He added jocosely, for
something to say:

"Another letter from the State Railways, Mam'selle Eleonore. Any of
you got friends there?"

"Thank you," returned Eleonore, hastily taking the letter and putting
it into the pocket of her apron, "I will give it to my brother. Fine
weather to-day for your round?"

"Aye, that it is. Better than for heating the oven I should say by the
look of you." The man made a half-turn on his well-worn shoes, and
went his way in the steady jog-trot of seven leagues a day at thirty
sous.

Eleonore, leaning against the doorpost, paid no further attention to
him; she was gazing, as if hypnotized, on the corner of white paper
that protruded from her pocket. She seemed strangely agitated, her
eyelids swelled, her breast heaved beneath the calico bodice all
streaked with flour and soot.

"There is some secret, I am sure," exclaimed Marie-Rose from behind
her. "I do not ask what it is, I am accustomed at home to be left to
myself. But still I cannot help seeing what is going on; only
yesterday, after mass, you and Francois went off by yourselves to
read some paper in the lane by the Michelonnes, I was there to fetch
my money, and saw you gesticulating.... And now you are crying. It is
hard, Eleonore, to see one's sister cry and not to know the
reason--not to be able to say one word to comfort her."

To Rousille's intense surprise, Eleonore, without turning, held out a
trembling hand towards her, and drew her younger sister tumultuously
to her beating heart; and for the first time for many years, overcome
with emotion, she leant her cheek on Rousille's, then suddenly broke
out into sobs.

"Yes," she sobbed, "there is a secret, my poor Rousille, such a secret
that I can never have the like again in all my life. I cannot tell it
to you ... it is there in the letter ... but Francois must read it
first, and then father--Heavens! what an unhappy girl I am!"

Tenderly Rousille pressed her face against her sister's all bathed in
tears.

"But the secret, Eleonore, it only concerns Francois, does it?"

"No, me too; me too! Oh, when you hear it, Rousille.... It was
Francois who persuaded me, he talked until I yielded ... and then I
signed ... and now it is all done. Still, were it not for him, I feel
that even now I could not do it; I would break the agreement--I would
refuse."

"You are going, Eleonore?" cried the girl, drawing back.

Her sister's white face was the only answer.

"You are going?" she repeated. "Oh, where? Oh, do not leave us."

Eleonore, stupefied for the moment, now gave way to a feeling of
anger, and repulsed the girl whom the instant before she had drawn to
her.

"Hold your tongue!" she said roughly. "Do not talk like that. Are you
going to tell tales of us?"

"I have no wish to do so."

"They are coming. You heard them. You said it aloud for them to hear,
you sneak!"

"Indeed, I did not."

"They are coming. Hark!"

The distant footsteps of the men, one following the other, were
audible. They were returning for the mid-day meal.

Eleonore, in terror, almost suppliant, her voice shaken with emotion,
ejaculated:

"Mathurin is coming first--if only he did not hear what you were
saying, Rousille. If he catches sight of me, he will guess
everything.... I dare not go back into the house with such red eyes.
You take my place. Go and pour out the soup, I will be with you in a
moment."

The men went into the house, walking in their usual leisurely manner;
Francois alone had a presentiment of the news awaiting them. The hot
sun had dried the moisture on grass and leaves, a soft haze lay all
around, the air was mild and balmy; linnets, innumerable, had settled
on the waggon-ruts, where lay thistles trodden down by the oxen. An
aroma of hot bread pervaded the farmyard, and cheered by the wholesome
smell the fine old farmer entered the house-place, whither Mathurin
had preceded him.

As soon as they had disappeared within the house, Eleonore, who had
been watching at the door of the bakery, crossed the yard to the
stable where Francois, having deposited his load of maize, was coiling
up the rope by which he had carried it.

"Francois," she exclaimed, "they want you. Your letter has been
burning me like fire." And still quite pale, Eleonore held out the
letter, watching it pass from her hands to those of her brother with a
nervous dread of the unknown future.

"When is it?" she asked. "Be quick!"

Without showing any emotion Francois tried to smile, as though to mark
masculine superiority over the weaker sex, as he proceeded
deliberately to open the envelope with his thick, moist fingers. He
read, reflected for a moment, then answered:

"Humph! to-morrow."

"To-morrow?"

"Yes, I have to be at La Roche at noon, to begin work on the railway."

Eleonore covered her face with both hands.

"Oh, I say, don't you go and leave me now," he continued. "Do you want
to?"

"No, Francois, but to go to-morrow--to-morrow!"

"Not to-morrow, to-night--at once. You ought to have expected it. Why,
you engaged with the owner of the coffee shop in Rue Neuve two months
ago. Did you sign the lease or not?"

"Yes."

"Did you promise to keep house for me?"

"Yes, Francois."

"When you bothered me to find you a good place at La Roche, did I not
trouble myself about you on the condition that you would keep house
for me? Yes or no? Of course, I want someone, and now you are not
willing to go?"

"I do not say...."

"Oh, well. I shall tell father presently what you promised. Stay
behind, if you like; but I warn you they will lead you a pretty life
at La Fromentiere when I am gone; without mentioning the action the
landlord at La Roche will bring against you at once, do you
understand? at once, if you refuse to take the shop you have rented.
Stay, if you like. I am going!"

She raised her arms above her head and always under the impression of
the moment, said:

"I will go; whatever time you like, I will be ready. Only I cannot
hear you tell father. Do not speak to him when I am there." She
hurriedly left the stable and went into the house to serve the
dinner, whilst Francois proceeded to give the oxen their forage,
taking as much time over it as he could.

Toussaint Lumineau was quietly talking with Mathurin. Sitting side by
side at the table, they watched their steaming plates of soup cool as
they discussed the new farm-servant whom it was necessary to engage
shortly.

"I will hire him at Chalons fair," said the father.

"That will be too late."

"We must do our best till then, my boy. I will look out for a strong
fellow, a lad from these parts."

"Yes, no _Boquin_, above all things! We know what they are!"

Toussaint Lumineau shook his head as he replied gently:

"Do not wrong the lad, Mathurin. I sent Jean Nesmy away, and for a
reason. But as regards work, I have nothing but good to say of him; he
worked well, and he loved farming, whilst others...." Little Rousille
was listening with eyes lowered, standing like a statue by the window.
Francois entered. "Whilst others," continued the farmer, slightly
raising his voice, "do not show as much energy as they might. Eh, my
Francois?"

The fair, ruddy-cheeked youth shrugged his shoulders as he took his
seat.

"The work is too hard," he said. "Since I came back I have felt that I
cannot accustom myself to that kind of thing."

"Oh, you half of a man," cried Mathurin. "Are you not ashamed of
yourself? If I could but walk, our father would have no need to hire
anyone. Look at these arms," and he held them out, the muscles showing
under his coat sleeves like knots of an oak-tree imprisoned within the
bark, while his face was suffused with crimson, the veins of his
forehead swelled, and his eyes were bloodshot.

"My poor boy!" said his father, touching his hand to calm him. "My
poor boy, I well know your misfortune has cost La Fromentiere dear."
Then after a short silence, he added: "Still we will get through some
good work, children, with Francois and Driot, who will soon be home,
and the man I am about to hire. I have a mind to start to-day on the
field of La Cailleterie, that has lain fallow there two years. The
rain we have had must have softened the ground, the plough will bite."

Eleonore, who had just then pushed open the inner door, stopped
tremblingly, seeing Francois in the act of moving his lips as if to
speak and tell their secret. But no word escaped the young man's lips
during the remainder of the meal. Towards the end, as they were rising
from table, Mathurin, looking at the sky through the smoke-begrimed
windows, said:

"Father, will you take me up there in the cart?"

"Of course I will. Go fetch the cart, Eleonore, and you, Francois,
yoke the oxen."

The farmer was well-nigh gay; the young people thought his mind was
dwelling upon Driot, whose name was now so constantly upon his lips.
But it was nothing but the first tillage of the season that made him
so content.

A quarter of an hour later the farmer passed round his body the strap
fixed to the box on wheels in which the cripple was seated and began
dragging it as one tows a boat; the oxen, led by Francois, going on in
front. They took the same road which Jean Nesmy had taken the morning
of his dismissal; his footprints were still visible in the dust. There
were four superb oxen, preceded by a grey mare, Noblet, Cavalier,
Paladin, and Matelot, all with tawny coats, widespread horns, high
backs, and slow supple gait. With perfect ease they drew the plough,
the share raised, up the steep ascent; and when a trail of bramble
across their path tempted them, they would simultaneously slacken
speed, and the iron chain that linked the foremost couple to the beam
would clank on the ground. Francois walked gloomily beside them, deep
in thought on matters not connected with the day's work.

Those following him, the farmer and his crippled son, were equally
silent, but their thoughts were centred on the soil over which they
were passing; and with the like sense of peaceful content their eyes
roamed over gates, ditches, fields, their minds filled with the same
simple interests. With them meditation was a sign of their calling,
the mark of the noble vocation of those by whose labours the world is
fed. Arrived at the top of the knoll in the field of La Cailleterie,
his father helped Mathurin out of the little cart to the foot of an
ash-tree, whose branches threw a light shadow over the slope. Before
them the fallow land, covered with weeds and ferns, fell away in an
even descent, surrounded by hedges on the four sides. Looking down the
slope and over the lower hedge could be seen the Marais fading away in
the distance like a blue plain.

And now the farmer, having loosened the pin that held the share,
himself guided the plough to the extreme left of the field, and put it
in place.

"You stay there in the sun," he said to Mathurin. "And you, Francois,
lead your oxen straight. This is a grand day for ploughing. Ohe!
Noblet, Cavalier, Paladin, Matelot!"

A cut of the whip sent the mare off, the four oxen lowered their horns
and extended their hocks, the ploughshare cut into the earth with the
noise of a scythe being whetted; the earth parted in brown clods that
formed high ridges on either side, falling back in powdery masses upon
themselves like water divided by the bow of a ship. The well-trained
oxen went straight and steadily. Their muscles under the supple skin
moved regularly and without more apparent effort than if they had been
drawing an empty cart upon an even road. Weeds lay uprooted in the
ruts; trefoil, wild oats, plantains, pimpernels, broom, its yellow
blossoms already mixed with brown pods, brakes folded back on their
long stems like young oaks cut down. A haze ascended from the upturned
earth exposed to the heat of the sun; in front the dust raised by the
feet of the oxen caused the team to proceed in a ruddy aureole,
through which numberless gnats and flies were darting.

Mathurin, in the shade of the mountain ash, looked on with envy as the
team descended the slope of the hill, and the forms of his father and
brother, the oxen and mare, grew smaller in the distance.

"Francois," exclaimed his father, enjoying the feeling of the shaft
under his hand, "Francois, see to Noblet, he is slackening. Touch up
Matelot! The mare is drawing to the left. Brisk up, my boy, you look
half asleep!"

And, in truth, Francois was taking no interest in guiding the plough.
He was feeling that the time had come for him to speak, and the
difficulty of beginning made him walk with head downcast. At the far
end of the field they turned and began the ascent, the plough marking
a second line of furrows beside the first. From where Mathurin sat he
had lost sight of them on the low ground; now the horns of the oxen
and his brother's goad came into view, and, to greet the return of the
plough, he began with stentorian voice to chant the slow refrain which
can be varied or ended at pleasure. The notes were flung far and wide
from his powerful chest, embellished with _fioriture_ ancient as the
art of ploughing itself. The oxen knew the rhythm, and stepped in time
to it; the cadence accompanied the groan of the wheels on their axes;
borne on the air, it was wafted afar o'er the hedges, telling other
labourers in fields that the plough was at work on the fallow land of
La Cailleterie. The cadence rejoiced the farmer's heart. But Francois
remained gloomy. As the plough neared the shade of the ash-tree,
Mathurin, whose thoughts were always busied with the future of La
Fromentiere, said:

"Father, it would be a good thing to re-plant our vineyard that is
dying off. As soon as Driot is home we should do it; what think you?"

The farmer stayed his oxen, lifted his hat to cool his hot head, and
smiled, well pleased.

"You are always thinking of something to the point, Mathurin. If the
wheat comes up well in La Cailleterie, faith of a Lumineau! I will lay
in a stock of vines. I am hopeful of our work to-day. Come on,
youngster, straighten the harness. Look to your mare, she is hot; coax
her a bit, walk beside her, that she may see you and go more quietly."

The team moved off again; a mist of heat enveloped men and beasts; the
air was thick with flies; turtle-doves, gorged with seed, took shelter
in the ash-trees from the burning heat of the stubble fields. The
cripple had ceased his song, and the farmer, as they got to the middle
of the field, said:

"It is your turn to tune up now, Francois. Sing, boy, it will gladden
your heart!"

The young man went on a few paces, then began: "Oh! oh! my men, oh!
oh! oh!" His voice, of higher register than Mathurin's, made the oxen
prick up their ears as it faltered past them; then, all suddenly, it
came to a dead stop, rendered mute by the fear that mastered the
singer. He pulled himself together, raised his head, and, looking
towards the Marais, made a fresh effort; a few more notes faltered
out, then a sob choked them, and, crimson with shame, the young man
resumed his way in silence, his face turned towards the fallow land,
walking in front of his father, who looked at him across the croup of
the oxen. No word was said by either until the farmer had finished the
furrow; then, at the end of the field, Toussaint Lumineau, troubled to
the very depths of his soul, said:

"You have news for me, Francois, what is it?"

They were some three feet apart, the father standing level with the
hedge, his son on the far side of the plough at the head of the oxen.

"That I am going away, father."

"What, Francois? The heat has turned your head, my boy. Are you
feeling ill?" But from the expression of his son's eyes he quickly saw
that this was a very different thing from some passing illness; that
misfortune was coming.

Francois had made up his mind to speak. With one hand resting on
Noblet's back, as if to support himself, trembling and nervous, yet
with hard, insolent look, he cried:

"I have had enough of this. I shall cut it."

"Enough of what, my lad?"

"Enough of digging the ground, enough of looking after the cattle,
enough of drudgery at seven-and-twenty to make money that all goes to
pay the rent of the farm. I mean to be my own master, and make money
for myself. I have got a situation on the railway, and I begin
to-morrow--to-morrow, do you hear?" His voice rose in a kind of
frenzy.

"I am accepted; there is nothing more to be said. The thing is done. I
am taking Eleonore to La Roche to keep house for me. She, too, has had
enough of this. She has found a good place, a shop where she will make
more than with you; at any rate, she will have a chance of
marrying.... And I don't see that we have acted badly towards you in
what we have done. Don't say that we have! And don't make that rueful
face about it! We have served our time with you, father, have waited
patiently for Andre's return. Now that he is coming home, let him help
you. It is his turn."

The unexpected blow had stupefied the farmer; he had grown very white.
With set teeth, one arm resting on the plough, he remained speechless,
his eyes fixed upon Francois as if demented. Slowly the full force of
the situation, with all its pain, filtered into his soul.

"But, Francois, what you tell me cannot be true; Eleonore never
complained of her work."

"Oh yes, she has; not to you."

"As for you, you have always had plenty of help. If I have sometimes
reproached you for idleness, it has been because times are hard for
everyone. But now that I am going to take on a farm-servant, now that
another fortnight will see Driot home, we shall be four of us,
counting myself, who am still of some use. You will not go, Francois?"

"Yes."

"Where will you do better than at home? Have you been short of food?"

"No."

"Have I ever refused you clothes, or even money for your tobacco?"

"No."

"Francois, it must be that military service has changed your heart
towards us."

"That may be."

"But say that you will not leave us?"

The young man put his hand into his coat pocket, and held out the
letter.

"I have to be there at noon to-morrow," he said. "If you don't believe
me, read for yourself."

The father stretched out his hand across the team for the letter,
trembling so much that he could scarcely take it. Once in his hands,
without opening it, in a sudden access of indignation he crumpled and
tore it into atoms, then crushed the pieces under his sabots into the
soft earth.

"There," he cried, "is an end to the letter. Now are you going?"

"That alters nothing," returned Francois.

He would have passed his father, but a powerful hand was laid upon his
shoulders, a voice commanded:

"Stay here!"

And the son was constrained to stay.

"Who engaged you, Francois?"

"The head of the office."

"No; who advised you? You did not do this thing by yourself, you had
the help of some gentleman. Who was it?"

The young man hesitated for a moment, then, feeling himself a
prisoner, stammered out:

"M. Meffray."

With one thrust the farmer sent him flying.

"Run; harness La Rousse to the dog-cart. Quick! I am going myself to
M. Meffray."

So he shouted in his rage. But when he saw his son obey him and take
the path towards the farm--when he found himself alone in the far end
of his field, he was seized with anguish. So far he had ever found
help in the difficulties of his life; this time, taken unawares by
danger in the full swing of work, he turned him slowly round as if
moved by habit, and searched the landscape as far as his eyes would
carry, for a helper, a support, someone who should defend his cause
and advise with him. His oxen standing still, looked at him out of
their large soft eyes. The first object he saw, in among the trees,
was the belfry of Sallertaine. He shook his head. No, the Cure, the
good old friend he consulted so willingly, could do nothing. Toussaint
Lumineau knew him to be powerless against town officials and
authorities, all the great unknown outside the parish. His gaze left
the church, passed over the farm without stopping, but rested awhile
on the pointed roofs of La Fromentiere. Ah! were the Marquis but
there! He feared nothing: neither uniforms, nor titles, nor long words
that poor uncultured people could not understand. And expense was
nothing to him. He would have made the journey from Paris to prevent a
_Maraichin_ from leaving the soil. Alas! the Chateau was empty. No
longer the Master to appeal to.... The old farmer's eyes fell upon the
two newly made furrows rising before him to the ash-tree on the hill;
then it struck him that Mathurin was waiting and wondering, and that
he must say something to prevent his growing uneasy.

"Ohe!" cried he, "Lumineau!"

Over the curve of the hill, through the still air, a voice replied:

"Here I am. You are not coming up again?"

"No; the chain has snapped. I must take back the team."

"All right."

"Do not mind waiting a bit; Rousille will come to fetch you. I am
going round by the slope of the meadow."

At the foot of the field, filled in with bundles of thorn, was a gap
in the hedge leading on to a narrow slip of meadow, and thence to the
farm. To avoid having to answer Mathurin's questions, the farmer
touched up his oxen and took this way back. In the middle of the
courtyard he perceived the dog-cart already harnessed, Francois
standing beside it in his Sunday clothes.

"Fasten up the oxen," he said roughly. Then, passing in front of him,
he opened the house door and called:

"Eleonore!"

There was no answer. Going through the house-place he passed into the
kitchen, where he met Rousille.

"Where is your sister?"

"She was talking to Francois in the courtyard just now. Shall I look
for her?"

"No, that will do. I will see her later on. Rousille, we have some
business at Chalons, Francois and I. We shall be back before supper.
Go to Mathurin, who will be tired of waiting so long at La
Cailleterie, and bring him back."

Without another word, the farmer returned to the yard, where Francois
awaited him. Getting into the cart, he signed to his son to take the
place beside him, and with a cut of the whip sent the mare,
unaccustomed to such harsh usage, off at a gallop.

"Where are they going at such speed?" thought the few spectators whom
they passed on their way--spectators whom nothing escapes: innkeepers
standing at their doors, tramps on the highway, peasants lopping the
trees. "What has come to them? Old Lumineau is lashing La Rousse, and
jerking the reins like a groom afraid of his master, and not a word
does he say to his lad."

In fact the farmer's wrath was growing as he meditated his wrongs; he
muttered between his teeth what he would say to that Meffray, while
his stalwart arms, eager for strife and vengeance, lashed into the
mare. Francois, on the contrary, exhausted by the effort he had made,
had relapsed into his usual apathy, and suffered himself to be carried
on towards his fate, looking at the hedges with vacant stare.

It was he, who on arrival at the Place by the Halles-Neuves of
Chalons, jumped down and tied the mare to a ring attached to one of
the pillars; then followed his father who turned up one of the streets
on the left, and stopped before a modern, narrow, red-brick building.
An iron plate, under the door bell, was inscribed, "Jules Meffray,
Ex-Sheriff's Officer, Town Councillor."

The farmer pulled the bell vigorously.

"Is your master in?" he asked the servant who opened the door.

The girl examined the peasant who inquired for her master in a tone
and look not of the pleasantest, and who presented himself in work-day
clothes soiled with mud, and replied:

"I think he is. What may be your business?"

"Tell him that Toussaint Lumineau, of La Fromentiere, wants to speak
to him; and let him be quick, I am in a hurry."

Astonished, not daring to show Lumineau into the dining-room where M.
Meffray was wont to receive his clients, the maid left the farmer and
his son standing in the shabby passage at the foot of the stairs. So
taken aback was she, that she did not see the shamefaced Francois
hidden in the background, but only the stalwart old peasant, whose
broad shoulders almost blocked the way as he stood erect, hat on head,
under the ill-kept hall lamp that was never lighted.

A few seconds later the garden door opened, and a tall, stout man came
in, dressed in a white flannel suit, a cap of the same material on his
head; his face was clean-shaven, his small eyes blinking, probably
with the sudden change from the outer glare. This was M. Meffray,
member for Chalons, an ambitious small tradesman, who, originally one
of them, was possessed by a secret animosity towards the peasant
class; and who, living amongst them, had only learnt to know their
defects of which he made use.

Informed of the manner in which Lumineau had presented himself,
dreading some violence, he stopped short at the foot of the staircase,
rested his elbow on the banisters, and touching the brim of his cap
with three fingers, said carelessly:

"They should have shown you in, farmer. But as it seems that you are
in haste, we can talk just as well here. I have done your son a
service, is that your reason for coming?"

"Just so," returned Lumineau.

"Can I do anything more for you?"

"I want to keep my boy, M. Meffray."

"Keep him? What do you mean?"

"Yes; that you should undo what you have done."

"But that depends upon him. Have you had your summons, Francois?"

"Yes, sir."

"Well, my friend, if you do not want to take the post, there is no
lack of candidates to fill your place, as you know. I have now ten
other applications which I have far more reason to support than I had
yours. For after all, you Lumineaus, you do not vote with us in the
elections. So do you wish to give up the place?"

"No, sir."

"It is I who will not have him go," broke in Toussaint Lumineau, "I
want him at La Fromentiere."

"But he is of age, farmer!"

"He is my son, M. Meffray. It is his part to work for me. Put
yourself in my place, I who am an old man. I had counted on leaving my
farm to him, as my father left it to me. He goes away, and takes my
daughter with him. So I lose two children, and through your fault."

"Excuse me; I did not seek him; he came to me."

"But without you he would not be going, nor Eleonore either! They had
to have recommendations. You call that doing a service, M. Meffray?
Did you even know what would be best for Francois--had you ever seen
him in his home to know if he was unhappy there? Monsieur Meffray, you
must give him back to me."

"Settle it with your son. It does not concern me."

"You will not speak to those who have entrapped my son, and annul the
agreement?" Advancing a step, and pointing at him with extended arm,
Toussaint Lumineau said in a loud voice: "Then you have done my son
more harm in one single day than I in all my life."

M. Meffray's heavy face crimsoned.

"Be off, old hound!" he shouted. "Be off, take your son! Manage your
own affairs. Ah! these peasants! Such are the thanks one gets for
troubling about them!"

The farmer seemed not to have heard; he remained motionless. But there
was a strange fire in his eyes; from the depths of his tortured
heart, from the depths of the faith taught to his race for generations
past, the words came to his lips:

"You shall answer for them," he said.

"How so?"

"There where they are going they will both be lost, M. Meffray. You
shall answer for their eternal perdition."

As though stupefied by a speech so unlike any he had ever heard, the
town councillor made no reply; it needed time for him to take in an
idea so different from those usually filling his mind; then throwing a
contemptuous glance at the huge peasant standing erect before him, he
turned on his heel, and moved to the garden door, with a muttered:

"Boor--go!"

Toussaint Lumineau and his son went out into the street, walking
silently side by side until they reached the Place. There the father,
unfastening the mare, said as he was about to put his foot on the step
of the cart:

"Get up, Francois. We will go home."

But the young man drew back.

"No," he said, "the thing is done; you will not make me alter it.
Besides, I arranged with Eleonore, who must have left La Fromentiere
by now. You will not find her there when you go back." He had taken
off his hat in farewell, and was looking uneasily at his old father,
who, leaning against the shaft with half-closed eyes, seemed about to
swoon. Under the colonnade of the Halles there was not a soul; a few
women in their shops round the Place were carelessly looking at the
two men. After a moment, Francois drew a little nearer and held out
his hand, doubtless to clasp that of his father for the last time; but
seeing him approach the old man revived, motioned his son away, sprang
into the cart, and lashing up La Rousse, drove off at a gallop.




CHAPTER VI.

THE APPEAL TO THE MASTER.


Eleonore had suffered herself to be persuaded. She had left her home.
Weak, and easily led, she had for months past listened too readily to
the promptings of vanity and laziness, which, censured by her father
at La Fromentiere, could be yielded to at will in the town. To have no
more baking to do, no more cows to milk, to be in some sort a lady, to
wear a hat trimmed with ribbons--such were the reasons for which she
went out into the unknown, with only her brother, who would be away
all day, for protector. Eleonore had yielded from force of example,
and in complete ignorance of the step she was taking. Thus she cast
herself adrift, and exposed herself to life in a suburb, to the
familiarities of frequenters of the cafe, without dreaming of its
dangers, with the utter ignorance of the peasant who knows nothing
beyond the troubles incidental to life in the country.

The separation was accomplished. At the moment that the farmer drove
away, intent upon the hope of still recovering his children, Eleonore
had hurriedly left the shelter of the barn where she had been hiding,
and, despite the entreaties of Marie-Rose and even of Mathurin, going
from room to room she had hurriedly collected the little store of
personal clothing and trinkets belonging to her. To all Rousille's
pleading, as to the calmer adjurations of Mathurin, she had replied:

"It is Francois' wish, my dears! I cannot tell if I shall be happy;
but it is too late now. My promise is given."

She was so greatly in fear of seeing her father come back that she was
almost frenzied with haste. Quickly she made up her bundle, went out
from La Fromentiere, and reached the hollow road, where, crouching
beneath the hedge, she waited for the steam tram that runs between
Fromentiere and Chalons. There some hours later Francois was to rejoin
her.

Meanwhile the farmer, driving La Rousse at her greatest speed, had
returned home.

"Eleonore!" he had cried.

"Gone," Mathurin had answered.

Then, half-mad with grief, the old man had flung the reins across the
steaming beast, and without a word of explanation had stridden away in
the direction of Sallertaine. Had he been actuated by a last hope and
idea? Or did his deserted house inspire him with dread?

Night was falling. He had not yet returned. A damp, encircling mist,
silent as death, enveloped all around. In the living-room of La
Fromentiere, beside the fire that no one tended, beside the simmering
pot that murmured as if in low plaint, the two remaining inmates of
the farm sat watching, but how differently! Rousille, nervous, burning
with fever, could not keep still; she was for ever rising from her
chair, clasping her hands, and murmuring: "My God, my God!" then going
to the open door to look out, shivering, into the dark, thick night.

"Listen!" she said.

The cripple listened, then said:

"It is the goatherd of Malabrit taking home his flock."

"Listen again!"

A distant sound of barking, borne on the silent air, died away in the
stillness.

"That is not Bas-Rouge's bark," returned Mathurin.

So from hour to hour, and minute to minute, a step, a cry, the rolling
of a vehicle, would keep their senses on the alert.

What were they expecting? Their father, who came not. But Rousille,
younger, more credulous, was expecting the others too, or if not both,
at least one, either Francois or Eleonore, who, repentant--was it too
much to hope--had come back. Oh, what joy it would be, what rapture to
see one of them! It seemed as if the other would have the right to go
if one came back to take his place in the home. The young girl felt
raised out of herself as a vague sense of duty came over her; she, the
only woman, the only one to act in her deserted home.

Mathurin sat in a stooping posture by the hearth, his feet wrapped in
a rug, the glow of the fire reddening the beard crushed beneath his
chin. For hours he had sat so, never moving, speaking as little as
possible; from time to time tears rolled down his cheeks; at other
times Rousille, looking at him, was astonished to see the shadow of a
smile cross his face--a smile she could in nowise understand.

Nine o'clock struck.

"Mathurin," exclaimed the girl, "I am afraid that some misfortune has
befallen father."

"He may be talking over his trouble with the Cure, or the Mayor."

"So I tell myself; yet, all the same, I am frightened."

"That's because you are not accustomed to wait as I am. What do you
want to do?"

"To go towards Sallertaine to meet him."

"Go, if you like."

Rousille ran to her room to get her black cloak. When she came back,
looking like a little nun, she found that Mathurin had thrown off the
rug, and was standing up. His crutches were lying on the ground, and
by an effort of will he stood nearly upright, resting one hand on the
table, the other on the back of his chair. He looked at his sister
with an air of pride and of suppressed pain, perspiration standing on
his forehead.

"Rousille," he said, "what should you do if father did not come back?"

"Oh, don't say such things," she exclaimed, covering her eyes with her
hand. "And do not exert yourself to stand like that; you make me feel
quite ill!"

"Well, I," continued Mathurin gravely, "should take the management
here. I feel strong enough. I feel that I am recovering."

"Sit down; sit down, I beg of you. You will fall."

But he remained standing until she reached the door. Scarce had she
crossed the threshold before she heard the human mass sink together
with a groan. She turned back, saw that he was in a sitting posture on
the chair, pressing both hands to his side, doubtless to still his
fast-beating heart; then noiselessly, timid as a fawn rising out of
the bracken, she ran into the courtyard, and out on to the road.

The rising moon had lessened the mist, already one could see a
considerable distance; in another hour it would be clear moonlight.
Avoiding the shade of the hedges, Marie-Rose followed the middle of
the path that, leading past the dwarf orchard, skirted the meadows;
she was frightened, almost running, nor did she slacken speed until
she reached the edge of the Marais, where the road suddenly widening
like a river that falls into the sea, mingled its grasses with those
of the marshland. Then, reassured by the moonlight, she stood still
and listened. Where could her father be?

She hoped to hear footsteps on the road, or even Bas-Rouge's bark. But
no; in the dream-like mist that incessantly formed and dispersed about
her, amid the dim moving lights and shadows around, there was but one
sound, that of the distant roll of the sea against the shores of La
Vendee. She was about to turn, follow the dyke to reach the bridge of
Sallertaine and its familiar houses, when a well-known whistle, like
that of a plover, met her ear. Could it be possible?

The young girl's blood rushed to her heart; she stopped short in
rapture and astonishment, without strength to look behind her.
Motionless she stood, listening to the coming of one her heart had
recognised. He came by the road she had come, from the thickets of La
Fromentiere. Erect, trembling, she stood on the grass-grown road, felt
two hands placed on her shoulders, then a rush of air that moved the
right side of her cloak, and a man had lightly sprung in front of her,
with the words:

"It is I, Rousille. I have not frightened you?"

There he was in his brown coat, stick in hand, looking well pleased at
his piece of audacity.

Notwithstanding her distress, Rousille could not repress a cry of joy.
A smile rose to her face like an air bubble on troubled waters that
none can hinder, and that widens as it goes.

"Oh how happy I am!" she said. But then quickly resumed: "No, I am
wrong to speak like that. You do not know of our trouble at home.
Francois has gone, Eleonore has gone; I am all alone there, and I have
come out to find father, who has not come home. I have no time to
spare for you, Jean Nesmy. It would be wrong!"

He watched the smile fade from her face in the moonlight; and as she
drew her cloak about her to resume her way, he said hurriedly:

"I know all, Rousille. For the last three days I have been at Chalons
trying to find a situation as near here as possible. I have not found
one. But this evening I heard of Francois' going; it is the talk of
the town in one way and another. I ran at once to La Fromentiere,
keeping out of sight. I watched you in the garden, in the barn. Since
sundown I have heard you crying; but the farmer was the only one I saw
go out."

"Where is he--at Sallertaine?"

"No; he went, but came back. I was in hiding about here. He passed
just where we are now standing, and he was gesticulating and talking
to himself as if he were demented."

Terrified, she asked:

"Was that long ago?"

"A quarter of an hour."

"Which way did he go?"

Jean Nesmy pointed in the direction of the mainland, and to the
wooden heights further away.

"To the grounds of the Chateau, I believe. He jumped the fence some
hundred yards from here."

"Thanks and good-bye, Jean. I must go."

But he, taking her hand, grew very grave in his turn.

"Yes," he replied, "I know quite well--but myself--soon you will have
me no longer. To-morrow I am going home to the Bocage; and I came back
to ask you one thing, Rousille. What shall I say to my mother
to-morrow when she asks me, 'Is it really true that she loves you?
What word of plighted troth did she give you when you parted? My poor
Jean, when true-hearted girls see their sweethearts going away from
them they say some word that is as binding as a betrothal ring,
something to comfort him in absence. What did she of La Fromentiere
say to you?' If you have said no word, she will not believe me!"

The dim solitude enveloping them threw their shadows faintly on the
grey grass. Rousille, her sweetheart's glowing eyes fixed upon her,
answered sadly:

"Do not come back until Driot is well settled at home. Some months
hence, in mid-winter, if our neighbours who frequent your markets tell
you that he is working like a true farmer, that he is to be seen at
fairs and gatherings, above all, that he is courting a girl at
Sallertaine, then come back and speak to father. My father will not
hear of a _Boquin_ for son-in-law; but if I will have no other husband
than you--if Andre speaks for me, who can tell? Father spoke well of
you after you went."

"Really, Rousille? What did he say?"

"No, not now. I must be going. Good-bye."

He raised his hat with a natural courtesy that sat well upon him; nor
did he seek to detain her longer.

Already Rousille, turning her back upon Sallertaine, was running
across the meadow; she had reached the last bushes that border the
Marais, her cloak fluttering in the mist. For more than a minute after
she had disappeared beyond the fence Jean Nesmy remained motionless,
on the same spot, where the words she had spoken were still ringing in
his ears. Then slowly, as one learning by heart who looks not about
him, he took his way towards Sallertaine and on from thence to
Chalons. His heart sang with joy as he repeated to himself: "In
mid-winter, if our neighbours who frequent your markets tell you that
he is working like a true farmer, come back...."

The one thing he saw on the road to Chalons was that the topmost
leaves of the willows were already turning yellow, and that the
branches were growing leafless.

Rousille, through a gap in the fence, had made her way into a stubble
field, thence through a narrow belt of wood. Then finding that she was
in the gravel walk of an avenue, she paused, terrified by the
solitude, and seized by the instinctive respect for the seigniorial
domain, where even then her people ventured but rarely, from fear of
displeasing the Marquis. She was in the outskirts of the park. On all
sides, lit by the peaceful light of the moon, were sloping lawns,
broken now by groups of forest-trees forming islands of black shade,
now disappearing in the blue mist of distance. Sometimes in light,
sometimes in shadow, Rousille followed the path, her eyes on the
watch, her heart beating wildly. She was seeking marks of footsteps on
the gravel; straining to see objects amid the dense thickets. Was that
her father over there, that dark form through the wood? No, it was but
the pile of a fence overgrown with brambles. Everywhere thorn-bushes,
roots, dead branches impeded the moss-grown paths. How neglect had
grown with years! The master absent, all was deserted, gone to waste.
As she pursued her way, Rousille began to realise more keenly her
sorrow at her brother's and sister's flight. They too, perhaps, would
never come back to their home; fear in her gave place to grief.

Suddenly, the path winding round a clump of cedars, she found herself
in front of the Chateau, with its huge main building flanked by towers
and pointed roofs, on which the weather-cocks that once told the
direction of the wind were now motionless with rust. Night owls were
silently chasing each other round the gables; the windows were shut,
the ground-floor secured with shutters strongly battened.

Anxious as she was, the young girl could not but stop for a moment to
look at the melancholy pile, stained by winter rains, already as grey
as any ruin; and as she stood there on the broad carriage-drive, her
ear detected a distant murmur of words.

"It is father," she thought without a moment's hesitation.

He was sitting some hundred yards away from the Chateau, on a bench
that Rousille knew well, placed in the half-bend of a group of
birches, and called by the country people the bench of the Marquise.
Bent double, his head resting on his hands, the old man was looking at
the Chateau and down the avenues that sloped towards the Marais. Under
the shadow of the birches Rousille drew nearer to him, and as she came
closer, she began to distinguish the words he was saying, like a
refrain: "Monsieur le Marquis! Monsieur le Marquis!" And as she
hastened over the soft turf which deadened her footsteps, Rousille had
the horrible dread that her father was mad. No, it was not that, but
grief, fatigue, and hunger, of which he was unconscious, had excited
his brain. Finding neither help nor support anywhere, in his despair
instinct and habit had brought him to the door of the Chateau, where
so often before he had come in sure hope of relief. He had lost all
knowledge of time, and only continued to address his lament,
"Monsieur le Marquis! Monsieur le Marquis!" to the ears of the master
too distant to pay heed. The girl, throwing back the hood of her
cloak, said softly so as not to startle him:

"Father, it is Rousille. I have been looking for you for an hour.
Father, it is late--come!"

The old farmer shuddered, looking at her with absent eyes that saw not
present objects.

"Only think," he said, "the Marquis is not here, Rousille. My house is
going to ruin, and he is not here to defend me. He should come back
when I am in trouble, should he not?"

"Of course, father, but he does not know of it; he is far away, in
Paris."

"The others, the people of Sallertaine, they can do nothing for us
because they are humble folks like ourselves, who have no authority
beyond their farms. I have been to the Mayor, to Guerineau, to de la
Pinconniere, le Glorieux, de la Terre-Aymont. They sent me away with
empty words. But the Marquis, Rousille, when he comes back--when he
knows all! Perhaps to-morrow?"

"Perhaps."

"Then he will not leave me alone in my grief. He will help me; he will
give me back Francois--eh, child? will he not give me back Francois?"

His voice was raised; the shrill words struck against the walls of the
Chateau, that sent them echoing back in softened accents to the
avenues, the lawns, until they were lost in the forest. The still,
pure night listened as they died away, as it listened to the rustle of
insects in the thickets.

Rousille, seeing her father in so great distress, sat down beside him,
and talked to him for a while, trying to inspire a hope which she did
not feel. And, possibly, a calming influence, a consoling power
emanated from her, for when she said: "There is Mathurin at home,
father, waiting for you," of his own accord he rose, and took his
daughter's arm. For a long while he looked into the face of his pretty
little Rousille, so pale with emotion and fatigue.

"True," he replied, "there is Mathurin. We must go."

And together they passed in front of the Chateau, turned into the
avenue leading towards the servants' offices, and thence into the
fields belonging to the farm. As they neared La Fromentiere, Rousille
felt that the farmer was gradually recovering his self-control, and
when they were in the courtyard, with a rush of pity for the cripple,
Rousille said:

"Father, Mathurin is very unhappy too. Do not talk much to him of your
distress."

Hereupon the farmer, whose courage and clear reasoning had revived,
passed his hand over his eyes, and preceding Rousille, pushed open the
door of the house-place, where his crippled son lay stretched deep in
thought, beside the nearly burnt-out candle.

"Mathurin, my son," he said, "do not worry overmuch ... they have
gone, but our Driot will soon be home again!"




CHAPTER VII.

DRIOT'S RETURN.


"Our Driot is coming." For a fortnight La Fromentiere lived on these
words. Work had been resumed the day after the trouble. A
farm-labourer, hired by Lumineau at Saint Jean-de-Mont, a tall, lean
man, with thighs as flat as his cheeks, replaced Jean Nesmy, and slept
in the room beyond the stable. Marie-Rose did, single-handed, the work
before shared by both sisters: housekeeping, cooking, dairy-work, and
bread-making. She rose earlier and went to bed later. Under her coif
she ever had some wise idea in her little head which prevented her
from thinking of the past; and in all her movements was displayed that
silent activity that the farmer had loved in his old Luminette.

Mathurin had of himself offered to look after the "birds," that is to
say, the stock of half-wild turkeys and geese bred at La Fromentiere.
Carrying a sack fastened across his shoulders, he would drag himself
down every morning to the edge of the first canal of the Marais,
where, at a part that widened out, were fastened the two boats
belonging to La Fromentiere. In the shallow water he would scatter his
supply of corn or buck-wheat, and from across the meadows drakes with
blue-tinted wings, ducks, grey, with a double notch cut on the right
side of their beaks to mark them as belonging to Lumineau, would hurry
and dive for their food. For hours Mathurin would find amusement in
watching them, then, lowering himself gently into one of the boats,
seated or kneeling, would try to recover the sure and rapid stroke
which at one time had made him famous among the puntsmen of the
Marais.

Toussaint Lumineau delighted to see him managing his boat near the
farm, thus distracting his mind, as he thought, from the ever present
regret. He would say: "The lad is regaining his old pleasure in
punting. It can but be good for him and for us all." But to Mathurin,
to Rousille, to his man, to the passers-by, sometimes even to his
oxen, often when alone to himself, he would talk of the son so soon to
be home again among them. Help was coming; youth and joy were
returning to sorrow-stricken La Fromentiere. At table nothing else was
talked about:

"Only twelve days; only ten; only seven. I will drive to Chalons to
meet him," said Lumineau.

"And I will make him some porridge," said Rousille, "he used to be so
fond of it before he joined his regiment."

"And I" said Mathurin, "will go in the punt with him the first time
he looks up his friends."

"How much there will be to hear!" exclaimed Rousille. "When he was
home on furlough he had an endless store of tales to tell. As for me,
I shall have no time to listen to them. I shall have to send him to
you, Mathurin. And what a change it will make in the house to have a
chatterbox among us." Then she added, with the grave air of one
entrusted with the household purse: "One change we must make, father,
and that will be to buy a paper on Sunday. He will not like to go
without one; our Andre is sure to want to know the news."

"He is young," said the father, as if to excuse him.

And all Andre's predilections, every recollection connected with him,
all the hopes that centred in his return were incessantly
recapitulated by one and the other in the living-room of La
Fromentiere, where the caress of such discourses must have ascended
more than once to the smoke-stained rafters.

Meanwhile the son thus occupying all their thoughts had not been told
by any of them of the going of Francois and Eleonore. Partly from
dislike to letter-writing, but principally to spare him pain, and to
avoid giving him bad news on the eve of his homecoming, the blow which
had so diminished the number of those he was to rejoin had been
withheld from him. For they could not tell how he would take the
absence of his favourite brother, his childhood's companion; it would
be better to break the news to him gently, when he should have come
back to France, back to his home. Soon a letter came, bearing the
Algiers postmark, giving from day to day the itinerary of the journey;
and under the elms of La Fromentiere would be heard, every successive
four-and-twenty hours, announced by one of the family lovingly,
meditated over by the others, "Now Driot must be leaving Algiers."
"Now Driot is on the sea." "Now Driot is in the train for Marseilles."
"Children, he has reached the soil of France."

So one morning, which chanced to be the last Saturday in September,
Toussaint Lumineau gave La Rousse a double feed of oats, and drew out
from the coach-house a tilbury, the body and wheels of which were
painted red. This tilbury was a relic of former prosperity, and as
well known in all the country side as were the round head, white hair,
and clear eyes of Toussaint Lumineau himself. He, harnessing the mare,
looked so joyous and happy, that Rousille, who had not heard him laugh
for many a day, as she watched him from the doorway, felt her eyes
fill with tears, she knew not wherefore, as though it were the return
of spring. The last strap buckled, the old farmer put on his best coat
with upright collar, fastened the broad blue Sunday belt round his
waist, and slipped two cigars at a halfpenny each into his coat
pocket, a luxury he never indulged in nowadays. Then swinging himself
up into the tilbury with a cheery, "Ohe, La Rousse!" he was off.

The mare started at such a pace that an instant later her headstall,
ornamented with a rosette, looked like a poppy swept along the hedges
by the wind. Bas-Rouge tore along after them. His master had called
out on starting, "Driot is coming, Bas-Rouge! Come to meet him!" and
the dog, all excitement, had dashed after La Rousse in ungainly
gallop. Soon they had reached Chalons. Without slackening speed, the
farmer drove through the streets, responding to the greeting of the
landlord of the Hotel des Voyageurs, and nicely marking by the angle
at which he raised his hat his sense of a tenant farmer's superiority
over shopkeepers as he returned their salutations, then proudly erect
upon the box-seat, tightening the reins, he turned in the direction of
the railway station, some two miles beyond the town.

People looking after him, said:

"He has gone to meet his lad, that's certain. Well, poor fellow, he
has had plenty of trouble, now he is having his share of good luck!"

La Rousse being restive, Lumineau alighted in the railway yard, and
stood at the head of the mare. Thence could be seen the perspective of
lines going towards La Roche--the lines by which one son had left, and
the other was so soon to return to La Fromentiere. He had not long to
wait. The train dashed into the station with a whistle; the farmer was
still quieting the mare, terrified by the noise, when the passengers
came thronging out: townspeople, men-of-war's men on leave,
fishmongers from Saint Gilles or Sables, and lastly a smart Chasseur
d'Afrique, slight and tall, his kepi well balanced, fair moustaches
waxed to a point, his knapsack full to bursting, who, after looking
eagerly round the yard, smiled and ran out with widespread arms:

"Father! Ah! what luck, it's father!"

The bystanders, indifferently looking on, saw the two men embrace each
other with a strong, almost suffocating pressure.

"My Driot!" exclaimed the old man. "How happy I am!"

"And I too, father!"

"No, not so happy as I am! If you only knew!"

"What, then?"

"I will tell you. Oh, my Driot, the joy of seeing you again!"

They disengaged themselves from each other's arms. The young soldier
adjusted his collar, and restored the equilibrium of his kepi on the
point of falling.

"Ah, I expect you will have no end of things to tell me, after all
this long time? Important, perhaps? You will tell me by degrees at La
Fromentiere, while we are at work. Ever so much better than letters,
eh?" And he threw back his fair head with a merry laugh.

His father could only respond with a faint smile; then, going towards
the tilbury, one on either side, they swung themselves up with the
elasticity of two men of the same age.

"Shall I drive?" asked Andre, and taking up the reins he gave a click
with his tongue. La Rousse pricked up her ears, reared playfully to
show that she recognised her young master, and with arched neck and
eyes aflame, she soon left far behind the two empty hotel omnibuses,
which were in the habit of racing each other on their way back from
the station. Those who had exchanged greetings with the farmer on his
way to the train, and many others, watched to see the two men pass by;
clear-starchers looking out as they ironed; the little dressmaker from
Nantes who came at the beginning of each season to take orders from
her ladies at Chalons; shopkeepers standing at their doors; peasants
at their dinners in inn parlours; all attracted by the sight of a
soldier, or gratified to have a sign of recognition from the two
Lumineaus. La Rousse trotted at such speed that the old man had not
time to resume his hat between his salutations. Remarks followed the
tilbury in the vacuum of air made by its rapid course.

"That's the son from Africa. A handsome lad! How well his blue tunic
suits him. And the old man, how happy he looks!"

The farmer sat close to his recovered son. Halfway down the last
street, bordered by an elm hedge shedding its leaves on the road, the
old man plunged his big hand into his pocket and nudged Driot's elbow
to call attention to the two choice cigars he held between finger and
thumb.

"With pleasure," responded the young man, and taking one he lit it,
somewhat slackening the mare's pace as he did so, then, after a few
puffs, as the gorse-covered slopes, golden with blossom, the stony
fields, the crown-topped elms, came in sight, bringing with them the
sweetness of old familiar scenes, Driot, hitherto somewhat silent and
abashed by the attention they had excited, began:

"And all the home-folks, father, how are they?"

A deep furrow lined the farmer's brow. Toussaint Lumineau turned a
little in his seat and looked away towards the landscape, distressed
at having to tell the trouble, and still more by the fear of what his
handsome Driot would think about it.

"My poor boy," he said, "we have only Mathurin and Rousille at home
now."

"And Francois, where is he?"

"Only fancy! Ah! you little think what I am going to tell you. A
fortnight ago yesterday he left La Fromentiere to work on the railway
at La Roche. Eleonore went with him. It seems that she was to keep a
coffee shop. Can you believe it?"

"You sent them away from home?" asked the young man, removing the
cigar from his mouth and looking straight at his father. "They are not
such fools as to have left you for any other reason!"

The words gave the old father a thrill of joy. His Driot understood
him; his Driot was at one with him. Returning the frank gaze, he
answered:

"No; they are a couple of idlers, who want to make money without doing
anything for it ... ungrateful, both of them, leaving their old father
... and then you know that Francois loves pleasure. Since he served
his time he has always had a hankering after town life."

"I know; and I know that town has its attractions," returned Andre,
touching up La Rousse with the point of the whip; "but to grease the
wheels of a railway carriage, or serve out drink! Well, everyone goes
his own way in this world. All the better for them if they succeed.
But I cannot tell you what the fact of Francois' going is to me. I was
so looking forward to our farm-life together."

He remained bending forward awhile as if only intent on the twitching
of the mare's delicate ears, then asked in his caressing voice:

"Things are going badly with us then, father?"

"They have been somewhat, my boy. But they won't now that you are
home."

Andre made no direct reply, nor did he say anything at all just then.
He was scanning the horizon for a slate-covered clock tower and
certain tree-tops not yet distinguishable in the distance; his heart
was already in the old home.

"At any rate," said he, "Rousille is left to us. She had grown a
pretty girl when I was last home on leave, very taking, and with a
will of her own! You cannot imagine how often I used to think of her
when I was out in Africa, and try to sketch her portrait from memory.
Is she as jolly as ever?"

"She is not bad," replied the farmer.

"And a good girl, I hope? She is not the sort to turn herself into a
barmaid."

"No, certainly not."

The good-looking young soldier slackened the mare's pace, partly
because they had reached a turn in the road where there was a steep
descent, partly that he might the better see, at the foot of the
sloping ground, the Marais of La Vendee opening out like a gulf. He
had only been home once before in his three years of service; with
growing emotion he gazed upon the groups of poplars and tiny red roofs
standing out from the waste of marshland; his eyes roved from one to
the other; his lips trembled as he named the farms one by one; all
other emotion was silenced in that of coming home again.

"Paree-du-Mont!" he exclaimed. "What has become of the eldest Ertus?"

"Nothing much; he is in the Customs."

"And Guerineau of la Pinconniere, who was in the 32nd line regiment?"

"Oh, he went off like Francois; is conductor on the tramway to
Nantes."

"And Dominique Perrocheau of Levrelles?"

The farmer shrugged his shoulders with annoyance, for, in
truth, it was aggravating to be obliged constantly to answer
"Gone--left--deserted the Marais." However he had to say:

"You heard, doubtless, that he gained his gold stripes at the end of
his first leave; then he obtained further promotion, and was given
some post, I don't know where, as Government clerk. A set of stupid
fellows, all of them--not worth much, my Driot!"

"Ah, now I see Terre d'Aymont," cried Driot. "It seems nearer than it
used to be; I can distinguish their wind-mill. Tell me, father, there
were two of my playfellows there, sons of Massonneau le Glorieux, one
older, the other younger than me. What are they doing?"

Radiant, Toussaint Lumineau made reply:

"Both on the farm. The eldest exempted his brother. They are fine
fellows who do not mind hard work; you will see them to-morrow at mass
in Sallertaine."

With a light, happy laugh the young soldier said:

"Ah, by-the-bye, one must get into the way of attending mass again, I
suppose. In the army devotion did not trouble us much. Sundays were
rather a favourite day for our chiefs to hold reviews ... they don't
look at things as you do. But you see, father, I will soon accustom
myself to going to mass again--even to high mass--it is not that that
will be the difficulty."

"What then, my lad?"

They were both silent for a moment. Another turn in the road had
revealed La Fromentiere on their left. With a simultaneous movement
father and son had risen and were standing almost upright, one hand on
the front of the carriage, contemplating the property, La Rousse
trotting along, unheeded by the driver.

A great, tender rush of feeling, cruel withal, paled Andre's face. The
land was welcoming a son of its soil; all the scattered recollections
of his childhood awoke and called aloud to him; there was not a
hillock that did not greet him, not a furze-bush, not a lopped elm but
had a friendly look for him. But one and all, too, recalled the
brother and sister he would find there no more.

Without turning his eyes from La Fromentiere Driot replied, after a
silence, and without naming those of whom he was thinking:

"I will go and see them at La Roche ... of course I will ... but
brotherhood is not altogether the same when one has broken from the
old place...."

An instant later he was holding Rousille, who had run out into the
courtyard to meet him, high in his arms, looking her full in the face,
into the very depth of her eyes, with the gaze of a brother whose
military experience has made him somewhat suspicious of maidenly
virtue; but seeing that her eyes met his in all frankness, but with
something of a sad expression, he kissed her, and set her down on
terra firma again.

"Always the same, little sister! That's good; but a little sorry at
having lost Lionore, eh?"

"You can see that?"

"Ah well! But I have come now. We will try to get on without them,
won't we?"

"And I?" put in a thick voice.

The soldier left Rousille, and hastened to Mathurin who was coming
towards them; dragging his limbs after him.

"Do not hurry, old man! I must do the running for both; I have sound
legs."

Stooping over his crutches, and stroking his elder brother's tawny
head, Andre could find no words of comfort. Coming fresh from a
military centre where all was young, active, alert, he could not hide
the distress and a certain feeling of horror with which Mathurin's
infirmity inspired him. However, compelled by the other's anxious
look, which seemed to ask, "What do you think of me?--you who come
back, judge--can I live?" he hastened to say:

"My poor old man, I am so glad to find you like this. So you have not
got any worse?"

With a shrug of the shoulders, the cripple angrily pushed him away.

"I am much better," he returned. "You will see. I walk more easily. I
can stand as firmly as I did three years ago, when I thought I was
getting well ... and, for a beginning, I am going with you to mass at
Sallertaine to-morrow."

To avoid answering, the young soldier turned to meet his father, who,
having unharnessed La Rousse, was coming towards them, with happy,
smiling face, having eyes only for his Driot come home to him again.
The men, one following the other, turned towards the house, and went
in; but on this happy day it was the farmer who held back, and the
returned son who went first. Alert, interested as on a first visit,
rejoiced to be made the object of the eyes and ears of the others, he
did not sit down but wandered from room to room, the blue and red
uniform an unfamiliar sight in this home of the toilers of the field.

To amuse his auditors he made the old walls ring again with words of
command; knocked up against corners to feel the strength of the
massive stones; opened the cupboard, cut himself a slice of bread, and
tasted it, with a, "Better than the bread of Algiers, my friends. This
is Rousille's baking, eh? It is excellent; we shall have a good
farmer's wife in her."

Followed everywhere by his father, Mathurin, and Marie-Rose, he went
from the house into the stables and barns.

"I do not know these oxen," said he.

"No, my boy, I bought them last winter at Beauvoir fair."

"Well, I'll bet that I can tell their names from their faces. This
dun-coloured one, that does not look great shakes, is Noblet, and his
companion, the little tawny one, is Matelot?"

"Right," answered his father.

"As for the others, our old ones, they have not changed much, save to
put on more horn and muscle. The plough ought to work well drawn by
them. Good day, Paladin; good day, Cavalier!"

The good creatures lying in the straw, hearing the young voice that
called to them, thrust out their heads, and with their thoughtful eyes
followed the young master.

A little further, stooping down, he took up a handful of green forage.

"Fine maize for the time of year," he said. "This must have come from
our high land; from La Cailleterie?"

"No."

"From Jobiniere then, where not a grain is lost. Here's a good
specimen!"

The father was ready to join in praise of his oxen, his fields,
everything, so happy was he that the last of his sons, after three
years' absence, still loved the ground.

But the handsome young soldier laughed more than he felt inclined to
do, to hide the sad thoughts that would come during his round, and
when in the shed affected not to see the traps for blackbirds, made by
Francois the preceding winter. In the threshing floor, seeing a bundle
of faded grass lying on the neatly made hayrick, he bent towards
Rousille, and murmured:

"Did Francois gather that? Ah, it pains me more than I could have
believed, Rousille, not to find Francois here. It quite changes La
Fromentiere for me."

But the father heard nothing of this. He only saw that his son was
home again, and the future of La Fromentiere assured. When they had
re-entered the general sitting-room, Lumineau passed his hand over the
blue tunic of the Chasseur d'Afrique, saying:

"I like you in this, but I bet anything that you will not be sorry to
lay aside your soldier's toggery."

"All right, father," returned Andre, laughing at the unwitting affront
to his uniform, and his father's indirect mode of inviting him to
change to civilian dress. "I am not got up in Sallertaine guise; I'll
go and change."

From the bottom of the chest in the end room, beside the bed where he
was to sleep, Andre took the carefully folded work-day suit, laid
there by him the day he left. He took great pains with the waxing of
his moustache, and adjusting the brim of his hat, adorned his
button-hole with a sprig of jasmine; then going the length of the
house, opened the kitchen door, and there, framed against the old
walls, his slim figure clad in cloth suit, was seen the handsomest
young Vendeen of the Marais. Bronzed and fair-haired, his joyous face
reflected the happiness of the others.

"Ah, Driot," exclaimed the farmer merrily, "now you are quite yourself
again! You were my son before, but not so completely my very own as
now," then added: "Now come, and we will drink to your health, and
that you may stay at La Fromentiere; for I am ageing fast, and you
shall take my place."

Mathurin, sitting at table beside his father, became very gloomy. When
the glasses were filled, he raised his with the others, but did not
clink it against that of Andre.




CHAPTER VIII.

IN THE PLACE DE L'EGLISE.


The bells rang out the close of High Mass; choir boys chanted the _Deo
gratias_.

As in its early days, when in the last years of the twelfth century it
was erected on the summit of the Isle of Sallertaine, the little
church, now yellow with age and growth of lichen and wild-flower,
witnessed the crowd of worshippers, dressed in the same fashions as
then, pour out from the same doors in the same order and collect in
the same groups in the same Place.

The first to be seen were the farm-labourers and farmers' sons, who
came out by the east door from the transept where they had heard mass,
and who, passing round the choir, grouped themselves on the other
side, where the young girls would presently emerge. Two by two they
appeared between the pillars of the west porch with eyes lowered to
the tips of their sabots. They were well aware that their rosy cheeks,
smoothly braided hair beneath the pyramid of muslin, the embroidered
stockings peeping under the short petticoat, the manner in which they
walked with hands demurely crossed over the moire aprons, made them
the cynosure of all eyes. This retired bearing only lasted for some
twenty paces; soon the girls had formed themselves into a group close
by the Michelonnes' house, at a short distance from that of the
younger men. And now in their turn they waited. Eyes grey, blue,
brown, very much on the alert; eyes sparkling with life; eyes in which
lived a remembrance. Laughing lips, telling of the mere joy of living;
the chirping as of a flock of birds greeting one another. Following
them came the farmers and their wives; widows, distinguishable by the
band of velvet in front of their coifs; older men, men of position;
these all issuing from the nave, among them many a grave face still
under the influence of devotion, in which like walking saints they
seemed wholly absorbed. Many tall, finely set up men there were, with
calm, fresh complexioned faces closely shaven, save for a thin line of
whisker. All wore the same costume of black cloth coat with straight
collar, trousers with flaps, raised on the ankle by a fold in the
cloth, blue or green belt extending half way up the waistcoat, round
felt hat bound with velvet. They joined the younger men, swelling the
groups that shouldered each other, forming by this time a dark swaying
mass reaching to the last buttress of the choir.

The matrons, on the contrary, making a passage for themselves through
the crowd, went their way, looking in their plaited skirts like
ornamental round towers. From their calm eyes, and the brief smile
with which they exchanged greetings with a town acquaintance, it was
plain to see that, having outgrown the follies and illusions of youth,
each had settled down to her store of domestic happiness, joy, or
sorrow that a green patch in the Marais had reserved for her. They
talked with other farmers' wives, were joined by one or other for the
homeward way, and thus accompanied, dignified and worthy, they
directed their steps towards the plain, or to the various boating
stages.

Despite their departure, the gathering in the Place grew denser and
denser. It was the place of Sunday meeting where for centuries past
the dwellers of the marshes, prisoners of the canal-bound land, had
been wont to assemble. To them attendance at mass was alike a
religious duty and an occasion of social gathering. Before wending
their way back to their farms, not a man, even the gravest and most
considered among them, would have failed to pass an hour in a wine
shop chatting with his friends over a bottle of muscadet and a game of
cards, _luette_ particularly, a game imported from Spain in ancient
times. Already innkeepers were standing at their doors at the foot of
the Place, sounds of merriment and laughter were to be heard from
within, and the stock-phrases of _luette_ players, "Your turn." "My
turn." "I play a horse." "I take merienne."

Meanwhile there was more than ordinary animation among the girls
stationed behind the groups of men. They were scanning all the church
doors, whence were now issuing good women, tellers of rosaries, who
had lingered long over their devotions.

"He is coming out," exclaimed tall Aimee Massonneau, the daughter of
farmer Glorieux, of Terre-Aymont. "Did you see him, that poor Mathurin
Lumineau? He insisted upon coming to mass. I am sure he might have got
dispensation!"

"Yes," returned the little auburn-haired daughter of Malabrit, "it is
six years since he came to Sallertaine."

"Six years--really?"

"Yes, I remember. It was the year my sister was married."

"And why do you think he came?" asked Victoire Guerineau, of La
Pinconniere, a sharp-tongued pretty girl, with a complexion like a
wild rose. "For he must have shown some spirit to manage it."

"To stand by his father," said a voice; "the old man had been so
saddened by the going of Eleonore and Francois."

"To show himself with his brother Andre," put in another. "He's a
good-looking fellow is Andre Lumineau! I should not mind----"

Victoire Guerineau and the others broke into a peal of laughter.

"You are quite out of it. It's for Felicite Gauvrit he came!"

"Oh, oh!" exclaimed those in front.

"How ill-natured you are! If she were to hear you."

And several turned towards the Michelonnes' doorstep, near to which,
amid a little throng, stood Mathurin's former fiancee.

Suddenly a murmur ran through the crowd.

"There he is. Poor fellow! How difficult it is for him to walk."

And under the pointed arch of a low doorway, one half of which only
was open, a deformed figure was seen struggling to force a passage
through the narrow aperture, one hand holding a crutch clutched hold
of a pillar outside, by which the poor man strove to drag himself
through, but he had only succeeded in freeing one shoulder. With head
thrown back, there was an expression of agony upon the face which
attested the violence of the effort, and the strength of will that
would not give in. Mathurin Lumineau seemed on the point of
suffocation; he looked at no one in the throng of people whose gaze
was riveted upon him; his eyes on a higher level than those of the
spectators were fixed upon the blue vault of heaven with an expression
of anguish that re-acted upon them.

Conversation was interrupted; voices began to murmur,

"Oh, help him! He is suffocating!"

Some of the men made a movement to go to his assistance; at that
moment, from the gloom of the interior, his father asked:

"Shall I help you out, Mathurin? You cannot squeeze through there. Let
me help you."

In a low voice, inaudible to those without, but with terrible energy,
Mathurin answered:

"Don't touch me. Confound it! Don't touch me. I will get out by
myself."

At length the man forced his huge bust through the door, and with a
tremendous effort steadied himself, stroked his tawny beard and
settled his hat on his head. Then with the aid of his crutches,
standing as upright as he could, Mathurin looked straight before him,
and advanced towards the group of men, which opened out silently at
his approach. No one ventured to address him, it was so long since he
had been among them, the old habit of familiarity seemed lost; but the
attention of all was concentrated upon their former comrade, and no
one noticed that his old father with Andre and Marie-Rose were
following close behind him.

The cripple had soon reached the spot where the girls were standing.
They fell apart even more quickly than the men had done, for they
guessed his intention; a lane opened between them reaching up to the
houses. At the far end of this living avenue, clad in black dresses
and white coifs, standing erect, quite alone, was seen Felicite
Gauvrit. She was the one he sought. She knew it; she had foreseen her
triumph. No sooner had she observed Mathurin Lumineau sitting on the
family bench in church, then she had said to herself: "He has come for
me. I will hide away by the Michelonnes' house, and he will follow
me." For she was gratified to have it seen that he still loved her,
the girl to whom, handsome though she was, no suitors came. The women
with whom she had been talking had prudently moved away; she stood
alone, under the Michelonnes' window, looking like a lay figure from
some museum in her costume of heavy stiff material, the braids of her
lustrous brown hair shining under the small coif, her dazzlingly white
complexion and uncovered throat. Erect, with arms pendant on either
side of the moire apron, she watched her former lover coming towards
her between the double row of inquisitive lookers-on. The many faces
bent upon the girl in nowise intimidated her. Perhaps in the suit and
cravat Mathurin was wearing she recognised the very ones he had worn
at the time of the accident; any way, she remained calm and unabashed,
her face even wore a slight smile. He drew nearer, leaning on his
crutches, his eyes fixed, not on the path, but on Felicite Gauvrit.
What the poor fellow wanted was to see her once again; to make her
understand that health was returning, that hope was awakening out of
his misery, that the heart of Mathurin Lumineau had never wavered.
All this his sad eyes told her as he drew near, offering in piteous
pleading the bodily and mental suffering he had endured to her who had
been their cause. But his strength was unequal to the effort, he grew
deadly white; and when the insolent beauty, the first to speak, said
calmly before all the throng:

"Good day, Mathurin," he could not answer. To have seen the smile on
those rosy lips, to be so near to her, and to hear her address him in
the same easy tones as if they had but parted the day before, was more
than he could bear.

He grew faint, leant heavily on his crutches, and slightly turned his
tawny head to Driot, who was behind him, as if to say: "Take me away,"
and the younger brother understanding the appeal, passed the suffering
man's arm under his and led him away, saying as he did so, to divert
the attention of the crowd:

"Good day to yourself, Felicite. It is an age since I have seen you.
You are not a bit altered."

"Nor are you," she retorted.

A few laughed; but among those assembled there were many who were
deeply touched, even disposed to tears. Some of the girls of
Sallertaine pitied the poor fellow so exhausted and confused, led away
on his brother's arm; they sorrowed that he could never enjoy that
love which each, in the recesses of her heart, hoped some day to share
with the yet unknown swain. One of them murmured:

"It is not only in body that he is afflicted, his mind, too, seems
gone, poor fellow!"

Many women, mothers going home with their children, walked more
sedately as they saw the group on the way to Chalons: old farmer
Toussaint, Andre and Mathurin, with Marie-Rose bringing up the rear.
They recalled with a shudder what a magnificent youth the poor cripple
once had been, and thought: Heaven send that no such calamity befall
our boys when they grow up!

Felicite Gauvrit began to be affected in her turn, but in a different
manner. The departure of the Lumineaus had turned attention away from
her. Some of the men surrounded the district crier, who was calling
out the list of lost articles and farms to be let; others repaired to
the inns. The girls collected in little companies to seek the homeward
way. Every minute five or six white coifs were to be seen bowing and
bending in farewell salute, separating from the others, and going off
to the right hand or the left. Felicite, left alone for some minutes,
joined one of the groups going west of Sallertaine, towards the high
Marais; she was received with some embarrassment, as one whom they did
not want to fall out with, yet who was somewhat compromising, and
whose company their mothers did not desire for them.

Young men drinking together in the inns called after her the slighting
remarks men make on girls for whom they have little respect. She did
not answer them back, but with her companions descended the hilly
road bordered with houses, and thence on to the open Marais in the
direction of Perrier.

At that time of the year, before autumn rains had set in, many of the
farms could be reached on foot without the aid of boats. A raised
path, rough and ill-kept, flanked by dykes on either side, led across
the meadows; grey-green grass covered the level plain until the
uniform tint dissolved in brownish hue in the distant horizon. Horses
grazing, stretched out their necks, and looked at the little group
clad in black and white, breaking the continuity of grey-green plain.
Ducks, at the sound of their footsteps, ran in among the rushes that
trembled on the edge. From time to time a shelving embankment branched
off the path, and one of the girls, separating from the group, would
make her way by it to some distant house, only marked by the customary
cluster of poplar-trees; and Felicite Gauvrit, roused for a moment
from her abstraction, would say "Good-bye," and then walk on silently
as before.

Soon she was left alone on the path that stretches to the sea. Then
slackening her pace, she gave herself up without restraint to her
thoughts. She was not happy at home. At sixty-five her father had
married again a woman of thirty of loose character, whom he had met at
Barre-de-Mont, and to whom in virtue of her youth he had made over the
most realisable part of his property. The young stepmother was not
kind to Felicite. One reproached the other with extravagance and
ruining the home. The eldest brother, in the Customs at Sables
d'Olonne, a gambler and hard drinker, was perpetually threatening the
old man with a summons for falsified accounts, and by thus
intimidating him drained still further the diminished capital of the
Gauvrits. The old family, once so respected in the Marais, was rapidly
declining, and this Felicite knew too well. The young men of
Sallertaine and the neighbouring parishes came readily enough to
dances at La Seuliere; they danced, drank, joked with her, but not one
of them offered to marry her. The impending ruin, the family
divisions, kept suitors away.

Yet another reason, more real, and one that appealed more strongly to
sentiment than any other, held back the sons of farmers, and even
farm-labourers from asking the hand of Felicite Gauvrit in marriage;
and this was the tie, binding only in honour, the debt of fidelity,
rendered even more sacred by misfortune, which public opinion
obstinately maintained as still existing between La Seuliere and La
Fromentiere. In everybody's opinion Felicite Gauvrit remained one of
the Lumineau household; a girl who had not the right to withdraw her
betrothal promise, and who was not to be sought in marriage by any
other while Mathurin was living. Some men even had a superstitious
dread of her; they would have been afraid to set up housekeeping with
a girl whose first love had met so unhappy a fate. All the advances
she had made had come to nought. Soured and embittered, in her rage
she had gone so far as to regret that the cripple had not been killed
on the spot. Had the poor wretch, who was scarcely to be called
living, died then and there, she would have recovered her liberty, the
past would have been quickly forgotten; while now, it was kept in
everyone's memory by the sight of the maimed man on crutches, hanging
about the farmstead of which he should have been master. She had found
that Death is sometimes long in claiming its victims. Then courage had
returned; in her astuteness Felicite had recognised that public
opinion holding her as belonging to the Lumineau family, by them only
could she realise her ambition: to go away from La Seuliere, escape
the domination of her stepmother, and become the mistress of a large
farm, with more means and freedom than ever she had possessed at home.
Never having loved her former betrothed, actuated only by vanity, as
is sometimes the case in country surroundings, she had said to
herself:

"I will bide my time. I will make them long the more for me by not
going to La Fromentiere. One day Mathurin will come to me, or will
call me to him. I am positive that he has not forgotten me. Stupid of
him; but it will help my ends. Thanks to him, I shall see them all
again; the old man who mistrusts me, the young men who will admire me
for my beauty. And I shall marry either Francois or Andre, and shall
be the mistress of a farm as I ought to be, and of the richest farm
in the whole parish."

Now Francois, whom she had tried to captivate, had gone away. But, on
the other hand, Mathurin had come to her; at the cost of terrible
fatigue and suffering he had dragged himself to Sallertaine to greet
her publicly; while Andre, before all the girls, had said: "It is an
age since I saw you. You are not a bit altered."

Felicite had gathered one of the yellow irises that grew so profusely
on the Marais. Half laughing she thought over her recent triumph, the
iris lightly held between her lips; her arms swinging as she walked
caused the full sleeves to rustle against the moire of her apron; her
smiling gaze was directed to the distant meadows. She was thinking
that Andre would make a handsome husband, better looking than ever
Mathurin had been; that, after all, he was one year younger than
herself, that he had engaging manners, and had not been wanting in
audacity either to have said: "You have not altered." And she went on
to think: "The first opportunity that offers, I will invite them to a
dance at home. I am sure that Andre will come."

Slowly she walked along the raised path in the burning rays of the
mid-day sun. Grasshoppers were chirping; every now and again the acrid
scent of fading rushes was in the air. Wholly absorbed in her
daydream, Felicite Gauvrit did not perceive that she had nearly
reached home. The white buildings of La Seuliere, standing out in the
meadow, came as an unwelcome surprise. At the same moment a doubt
crossed her mind, disturbing, unbidden ending to her dream. Suppose
Andre too were to go away? Or that Mathurin, elated as he was sure to
be by the least sign of remembrance, and made thereby more eager, more
jealous, were to guess what was in the wind?

Felicite had stopped in the middle of the bridge that led from the
path to the farm. The tall, supple young woman raised her arms above
her head, scowled impatiently, and snapped the stem of the yellow
iris, which fell prone into the dyke, then following it with her eyes
for a second, she looked at her own reflection in the water, and
smiled again. "I shall succeed," she said. And descending the slope of
the bridge she reached La Seuliere by the cross road.




CHAPTER IX.

THE CONSCRIPTS OF SALLERTAINE.


The afternoon of that autumn Sunday was marked by a deeper
peacefulness than usual. The air was warm, the light veiled, the wind,
which, rising with the tide, had outstripped it, sweeping over the
vast grassy plain, brought no sound of work in its train, no creak of
plough, no ring of hammer, spade, or axe. The bells alone were heard
answering each other from Sallertaine, Perrier, Saint Gervais, Chalons
with its new church, vast as a cathedral, and Seullans hidden among
the trees on the hill. Chimes for High Mass, ringing for Angelus, the
three strokes for vespers left the bells but little rest; far and near
they told out the familiar tones, understood for centuries past.
Adoration of the Holy One; forgetfulness of earth; pardon for sin;
union in prayer; equality of all men in the light of eternal promises.
The tones rang out into space and interlocked with a vibration, and
were as garlands flung from one belfry to another. Among the toilers
of the fields, cattle drivers, sowers, there were but few who did not
obey the summons. Along roads deserted all the week were to be seen
families hastening, passing and repassing one another, of those who
lived at the remotest portions of the parish; while those who lived
nearer took it more leisurely. On the canal, which, broadening at the
foot of the church, forms the quay of Sallertaine, boats were
constantly moving hither and thither.

Towards evening the bells had ceased; the frequenters of inn parlours
too had betaken themselves to their farms, lying peacefully in the
light of the setting sun. Universal silence reigned over the land.
Quiet as it was on working-days, at the close of the week it seemed
sunk in meditation and silence; dominical truce that had its great
significance, when weary souls refresh themselves, and whole families
unite in calm and meditation to review their living and their dead.

But to-day the quiet was to be of short duration.

Mathurin and Andre were lying under the shade of the elms that
afforded provisional shelter to the harrows and ploughs close by the
old stonework gateway. The cripple, leaning against the cross-bars of
a harrow, was resting after the fatigue and excitement of the morning.
Andre, from concern for him, had not gone into town again with his
father, but lying at full-length on the grass was reading the paper
aloud, pausing every now and then to make his comments on the news,
and, as a travelled man, to explain the whereabouts of places and
countries--Clermont Ferrand, India, Japan, the while twirling his
little fair moustache, a very youthful and ingenuous self-sufficiency
showing itself in his frank, merry face. At about four o'clock, to the
left of Sallertaine, was heard the sound of a bugle, coming apparently
from the open marsh between the parishes of Lumineau and Seullans.
Mathurin roused from the torpor into which he had sunk, looked at
Andre, who at the first sound of the bugle had let fall the paper, and
with uplifted face and straining ears was listening to the call.

"It is the cadets," said his brother, "they are out this afternoon.
Soon they will be leaving."

"They are playing the call of the 'Chasseurs d'Afrique,'" returned
Andre, a light in his eyes. "I recognise it. Is there anyone of our
old regiment in the Marais?"

"Yes, the son of a gooseherd in Fief; he served his time with the
Zouaves."

They were silent, both men listening to the bugling of the ex-Zouave,
their thoughts very different. Andre with eyes fixed on the distant
marshland was seeing in imagination a white town, with narrow streets,
and a troop of horsemen emerging from a crenulated gateway, its arches
echoing with the ring of their horses' hoofs.

Mathurin, watching the expression on his brother's face, thought: "His
heart is still with the regiment." For an instant his features
distended, his eyes dilated as those of a wild beast detecting its
prey, then he returned to his one idea.

"Driot," he exclaimed after a while, "you like that music?"

"I should think so."

"Do you regret the regiment?"

"No, that I don't. No one does."

"Then what was the attraction out there?"

The young man looked inquiringly into his brother's face as though to
say, why should he want to know, then answered:

"The country----Hark! that's the reveille now."

The sounds of the bugle, sharp, incisive, stopped. Now five or six
strong untrained voices struck up "Le chant du depart." Occasional
words reached the listeners where they lay. "Mourir pour la patrie ...
le plus beau ... d'envie." The rest was lost in space.

Meanwhile the sounds were approaching; the two brothers motionless
under the elms, each pursuing the train of thought evoked by the first
notes of the bugle, could hear the conscripts of Sallertaine coming up
the hill towards them.

Toussaint Lumineau, on his way home from vespers with his friend
Massonneau, heard them also. Massonneau, an old tenant farmer, tall
and thin, with skin as dark as a ripe ear of corn, the cartilages of
his neck standing out like the breast-bone of a fowl, had acquired his
name of "Le Glorieux" from a nervous twitch he had, which caused his
chin to jerk upwards at every instant; Lumineau and he were discussing
the latest events of La Fromentiere. The two men represented the age
and wisdom of the Marais; moreover, they could tell the names and
nicknames of every living soul at Sallertaine, their history and
parentage. As they reached the last houses of the town, both
simultaneously stopped and turned their faces windward.

"Do you hear, Glorieux?" exclaimed Lumineau. "They are bugling and
singing, poor boys! But the parents of those who are going may well
weep."

"Yes," returned Massonneau, with a twitch of the chin, "the parents
are to be pitied."

"I could name them, everyone, from only hearing their lad's voices,"
continued Lumineau. "You, good people of La Bounellerie, and you, of
Grand Paiement; you, of Juch-Pie; you, of Linotteries; and you, of
Belle-Blanche, I recognise your boys' voices. May it not do the same
work for them that it did for my Francois! They are going to the place
that changed my boy's heart--to the town that robbed me of him."

"As it robbed La Pinconniere," said his companion.

"And Leverells."

"And Paree-du-Mont."

The litany might have been prolonged; Massonneau hearing the voices at
the edge of the Marais broke in with:

"They are singing again," he said, "they are going up the hill to you,
Lumineau."

And in truth the young conscripts had begun the ascent towards La
Fromentiere; soon the bugle call, soon their voices, resounded over
the silent Marais, carried afar by the wind, like grains of seed
falling everywhere. And everywhere, without apparent reason, emotions
were stirred, old sorrows awoke, and the humble occupants of isolated
farms or remote villages listened with a tightening of the heart to
the tramp of the conscripts of Sallertaine.

As they reached the meadow-land of La Fromentiere, Mathurin, who had
been following the sounds, and with his marvellous sense of
observation had marked every step of their way, said to Andre:

"They have already halted at three farms. I think they must be
collecting for their class. You did not do that? For the last two
years they have started calling at all the houses where there is a
young girl of their own age, to ask her for a fowl as compensation for
having to serve. Rousille is drawn among the other girls. You should
catch a fowl to give them when they come."

"So I will," returned Andre, laughing and springing up with a bound.
"I'm off. What do they do with all the fowls?"

"Eat them. They get three or four farewell dinners out of them. Be
quick! they are coming!"

Andre disappeared within the courtyard. Soon could be heard his merry
laugh, and a rush in the direction of the barn, then the terrified
cries of the fowl he had evidently caught; and soon he reappeared
holding his prize by the legs, its round spotted wings, grey and
white, rising and falling on the grass as he walked. At the same
moment a blast on the bugle was heard at the foot of the dwarf
orchard; Mathurin half-raised himself upon the harrow, his hands
clasping the cross-bars, his arms extended, his shaggy head bent
forward, awaited the arrival of the troop, Andre standing beside him.
Opposite them, just at the opening of the road leading down to the
Marais, the setting sun, an enormous ball tinted orange by the mist,
filled the entire space between the two treeless banks.

In this sun-bathed glory three girls advanced, arm-in-arm, up the
ascent, the tallest in the middle; all were dressed in black with lace
coifs; the jet on their velvet kerchiefs sparkling in the light. As
they walked they rhythmically swayed their heads; they were girls from
Sallertaine, but the light was behind them, and only Mathurin could
recognise in the centre one Felicite Gauvrit. A few paces in the rear
came the bugler, a standard-bearer, and five young men walking
abreast, carrying either in their arms or suspended from a hempen cord
the fowls collected from the farmhouses. The procession advanced some
hundred yards along the road, then pulled up between the elms and the
ruined wall of La Fromentiere.

"Good day, brothers Lumineau!" said a voice.

There was a burst of laughter from the band, excited by their march
and the muscadet they had drunk on the way. The cripple's hands gave
way, he glanced up at Andre.

Felicite Gauvrit, without leaving hold of her companions, had advanced
slightly in front of them, and was gazing with a pleased expression at
the youngest Lumineau, who held out the grey fowl to her.

"You guessed then, Andre?" she said. "Ah, that's what it is to have to
do with intelligent boys. Here, Sosthene Pageot, come and take
Rousille's fowl."

A sturdy lad with ruddy face, and the stupefied air of one beginning
to feel the effects of drink, stepped out from among the others and
took the fowl. But from the mocking attitude of Andre, and his studied
silence, Felicite guessed that he was surprised to see a girl of her
position in such company, therefore she added carelessly:

"You may be satisfied that I do not range the Marais every day with
conscripts. My doing it to-day is out of kindness. My two friends
here, who belong to the class, were called upon to go the round to
collect; they are shy and dared not go alone, and so it must have been
given up, had I not come to the rescue." She expressed herself well,
with a certain refinement that came with the habit of reading.

"That would have been a pity!" said the young man coldly.

"Yes, would it not? The more so, that I am not often seen in your part
of the world."

She turned her head towards the windows of La Fromentiere, the
stables, the hayricks, sighed, then immediately remarked in a playful
tone:

"You will come to one of our dances, will you not, Andre? The
Maraichines hope so."

At this there were signs of approval to the right and left of her.

"Perhaps," replied Andre. "It is so long since I was at a dance in
Sallertaine; inclination may return."

She thanked him with a knowing wink; then for the first time seemed to
be aware of the presence of Mathurin, who was looking at her with an
air of mingled passion and grief.

A look of pity and embarrassment, not altogether feigned, came into
her face as she said:

"You understand, Mathurin, what I say to one I say to all in your
house.... If it were not too fatiguing for you?... I was glad to see
you at mass again this morning ... it shows that you are feeling
better...."

The cripple, only able to express himself clearly when he had time to
think over his words, stammered out:

"Thank you, Felicite ... you are very kind, Felicite," and he uttered
her name with a kind of adoration that seemed to touch two or three of
the conscripts, stupefied as they were.

"What was your regiment, Mathurin?" asked the standard-bearer.

"The third Cuirassiers."

"Bugler, a _fanfare_ of the Cuirassiers in honour of Mathurin
Lumineau! Forward, march!"

The three girls, the bugler, the standard-bearer, and the five young
men bringing up the rear, left the shade of the elms, and went on
their way towards Quatre-Moulins, raising clouds of dust crossed by
the slanting rays of the sun. The _fanfare_ shook the walls of the old
farmhouse.

When the last lace coif had disappeared among the furze-bushes and
willows that bordered the road, Mathurin said to his brother, who had
taken up the paper again and was absently reading:

"Would you believe it, Driot, this is the first time for six years
that she has been here!"

Andre replied, too abruptly:

"She did for you once, old man. Better take care that she does not do
it a second time."

With muttered words of anger Mathurin Lumineau picked up his crutches,
and moving away to a little distance, leant up against a tree. The two
brothers spoke no more to each other; both were absently gazing out
over the marshland, where the daylight was dying away. The sun was
rapidly sinking in the lowland, only a red crescent broken by shadows
remained of the fiery globe, against which some dark object in the
horizon, a willow, or a group of rushes, stood out like a crown of
thorns. It faded away; a fresh breeze rose on the hills; the sounds of
the bugle and of voices were no longer heard. Profound silence was
over the country, here and there in the grey distance was the glimmer
of a fire. Peace had returned; sorrows, one by one, were ending in
sleep or in prayer.

Old Lumineau coming back from the town saw his two sons standing
motionless among the trees wrapt in contemplation of the quiet scene,
and not knowing their thoughts, said brightly:

"A fine sight, our Marais, eh, boys? Now let us go in together; supper
will be waiting." Then as, in the darkness, Andre came first, he
added:

"How glad I am to have you home again from the regiment, my Driot!"




CHAPTER X.

THE UPROOTED VINEYARD.


Winter had come. La Fromentiere seemed peaceful and happy. Anyone
going over the fields and watching the men at work, would have had no
fear for the future of the farmstead. The new farm-hand did not excite
himself, as Toussaint Lumineau said, that is to say, he worked his
fourteen hours a day regularly, without uttering fourteen words. As
for Andre, he was the joy and pride of his father, who, on his part,
did not spare himself. Good labourer, good sower, an early riser,
careful of the animals and of everything else that came to his hand,
the young man seemed to prove that he had found his vocation, and was
determined to remain a farmer all his life.

And yet at the bottom of his affectionate, restless heart, there was a
growing sore. Andre could not accustom himself to Francois' absence.
He missed the friend of his young life, the companion without whom La
Fromentiere had never presented itself to his mind.

The week after his return home, Andre had gone to see Francois and
Eleonore at La Roche-sur-Yon. He had found them settled in a house in
the outskirts, already somewhat discontented: one inveighing against
the hardness of his employers; the other that customers did not come;
without any regrets, however, for what they had done, and quite
decided as to the advantages of living in a town, and being their own
masters. He had gone back without the least wish to follow their
example--more severe even than before against the renegades from the
old home life; but possessed of a fixed idea, he sought Francois in
everything. La Fromentiere that knew Francois no longer was to

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