"But thy tongue is the tongue of an imbecile," said Victor, following him into the stable.
"Ay, that it is, sir," replied Benoit, humbly. "I had like to have bitten it off before I had finished speaking; but no harm came."
"Not this time," replied Victor; "but the next thou might not be so well let off. The girl has a sharper wit than she shows ordinarily. She hath learned too well the ways of convents. I trust her not wholly, Benoit.
Keep thy eyes open, Benoit. We"ll not have her go the ways of her mother if it can be helped." And the worldly and immoral old grandfather turned on his heel with a wicked laugh.
Benoit had never seen young Willan Blaycke, but he knew him at his first glance.
"The son!" he muttered under his breath, as he saw him alight. "Is he to be lodged here? I doubt." And Benoit looked about for Victor, who was nowhere to be seen. Slowly and with a surly face he came forward to take the horses.
"What"re you about, old man? Wear you shoes of lead? Take our horses, and see you to it they are well rubbed down before they have aught to eat or drink. We have ridden more than ten leagues since the noon,"
cried the elder of the two travellers.
"And ought to have ridden more," said the younger in an undertone. It was, as Jeanne had said, a sore thing to Willan Blaycke to be forced to seek a night"s shelter in the Golden Pear.
"Tut, tut!" said the other, "what odds! It is a whimsey, a weakness of yours, boy. What"s the woman to you?"
Victor Dubois, who had come up now, heard these words, and his swarthy cheek was a shade darker. Benoit, who had lingered till he should receive a second order from the master of the inn as to the strangers"
horses, exchanged a quick glance with Victor, while he said in a respectful tone, "Two horses, sir, for the night." The glance said, "I know who the man is; shall we keep him?"
"Ay, Benoit," Victor answered; "see that Jean gives them a good rubbing at once. They have been hard ridden, poor beasts!" While Victor was speaking these words his eyes said to Benoit, "Bah! It is even so; but we dare not do otherwise than treat him fair."
"Will you be pleased to walk in, gentlemen; and what shall I have the honor of serving for your supper?" he continued. "We have some young pigeons, if your worships would like them, fat as partridges, and still a bottle or two left of our last autumn"s cider."
"By all means, landlord, by all means, let us have them, roasted on a spit, man,--do you hear?--roasted on a spit, and let your cook lard them well with fat bacon; there is no bird so fat but a larding doth help it for my eating," said the elder man, rubbing his hands and laughing more and more cheerily as his companion looked each moment more and more glum.
"No, I"ll not go in," said Willan, as Victor threw open the door into the bar-room. "It suits me better to sit here under the trees until supper is ready." And he threw himself down at the foot of the great pear-tree. He feared to see Jeanne sitting in the bar, as she had threatened. The ground was showered thick with the soft white petals of the blossoms, which were now past their prime. Willan picked up a handful of them and tossed them idly in the air. As he did so, a shower of others came down on his face, thick, fast; they half blinded him for a moment. He sprung to his feet and looked up. It was like looking into a snowy cloud. He saw nothing. "Some bird flying through," he thought, and lay down again.
"Ah! luck for the bees, The flowers are in flower; Luck for the bees in spring.
Ah me, but the flowers, they die in an hour; No summer is fair as the spring.
Ah! luck for the bees; The honey in flowers Is highest when they are on wing!"
came in a gay Provencal melody from the pear-tree above Willan"s head, and another shower of white petals fell on his face.
"Good G.o.d!" said Willan Blaycke, under his breath, "what witchcraft is going on here? what girl"s voice is that?" And he sprang again to his feet.
The voice died slowly away; the singer was moving farther off,--
"Ah! woe for the bees, The flowers are dead; No summer is fair as the spring.
Ah me, but the honey is thick in the comb; "Tis a long time now since spring.
Ah, woe for the bees That honey is sweet, Is sweeter than anything!"
"Sweeter than anything,--sweeter than anything!" the voice, grown faint now, repeated this refrain over and over, as the syllables of sound died away.
It was Victorine going very slowly down the staircase from her room into Jeanne"s. And it was Victorine who had accidentally brushed the pear-tree boughs as she watered her plants on the roof of the outside stairway. She did not see Willan lying on the ground underneath, and she did not think that Willan might be hearing her song; and yet was her head full of Willan Blaycke as she went down the staircase, and not a little did she quake at the thought of seeing him below.
Jeanne had come breathless to her room, crying, "Victorine! Victorine!
That son of my husband"s of whom we were talking, young Willan Blaycke, is at the door,--he, and an old man with him; and they must perforce stay here all night. Now, it would be a shame I could in no wise bear to stand and serve him at supper. Wilt thou not do it in my stead? there are but the two." And the wily Jeanne pretended to be greatly distressed, as she sank into a chair and went on: "In truth, I do not believe I can look on his face at all. I will keep my room till he have gone his way,--the villain, the upstart, that I may thank for all my trouble! Oh, it brings it all back again, to see his face!" And Jeanne actually brought a tear or two into her wily eyes.
The no less wily Victorine tossed her head and replied: "Indeed, then, and the waiting on him is no more to my liking than to thine own, Aunt Jeanne! I did greatly desire to see his face, to see what manner of man he could be that would turn his father"s widow out of her house; but I think Benoit may hand the gentleman his wine, not I." And Victorine sauntered saucily to the window and looked out.
"A plague on all their tempers!" thought Jeanne, impatiently. Her plans seemed to be thwarted when she least expected it. For a few moments she was silent, revolving in her mind the wisdom of taking Victorine into her counsels, and confiding to her the motive she had for wishing her to be seen by Willan Blaycke. But she dreaded lest this might defeat her object by making the girl self-conscious. Jeanne was perplexed; and in her perplexity her face took on an expression as if she were grieved.
Victorine, who was much dismayed by her aunt"s seeming acquiescence in her refusal to serve the supper, exclaimed now,--
"Nay, nay, Aunt Jeanne, do not look grieved. I will indeed go down and serve the supper, if thou takest it so to heart. The man is nothing to me, that I need fear to see him."
"Thou art a good girl," replied Jeanne, much relieved, and little dreaming how she had been gulled by Mademoiselle Victorine,--"thou art a good girl, and thou shalt have my lavender-colored paduasoy gown if thou wilt lay thyself out to see that all is at its best, both in the bedrooms and for the supper. I would have Willan Blaycke perceive that one may live as well outside of his house as in it. And, Victorine," she added, with an attempt at indifference in her tone, "wear thy white gown thou hadst on last Sunday. It pleased me better than any gown thou hast worn this year,--that, and thy black silk ap.r.o.n with the red lace; they become thee."
So Victorine had arrayed herself in the white gown; it was of linen quaintly woven, with a tiny star thrown up in the pattern, and shone like damask. The ap.r.o.n was of heavy black silk, trimmed all around with crimson lace, and crimson lace on the pockets. A crimson rose in Victorine"s black hair and crimson ribbons at her throat and on her sleeves completed the toilet. It was ravishing; and n.o.body knew it better than Mademoiselle Victorine herself, who had toiled many an hour in the convent making the crimson lace for the precise purpose of tr.i.m.m.i.n.g a black ap.r.o.n with it, if ever she escaped from the convent, and who had chosen out of fifty rose-bushes at the last Parish Fair the one whose blossoms matched her crimson lace. There is a picture still to be seen of Victorine in this costume; and many a handsome young girl, having copied the costume exactly for a fancy ball, has looked from the picture to herself and from herself to the picture, and gone to the ball dissatisfied, thinking in her heart,--
"After all, I don"t look half as well in it as that French girl did."
As Victorine came leisurely down the stairs, half singing, half chanting, her little song, Jeanne looked at her in admiration.
"Well, and if either of the men have an eye for a pretty girl clad in attire that becomes her, they can look at thee, my Victorine. That black ap.r.o.n will go well with the lavender paduasoy also."
"That it will, Aunt Jeanne," answered Victorine, her face glowing with pleasure. "I can never thank thee enough. I did not think ever to have the paduasoy for my own."
"All my gowns are for thee," said Jeanne, in a voice of great tenderness. "I shall presently take to the wearing of black; it better suits my years. Thou canst be young; it is enough. I am an old woman."
Victorine bent over and kissed her aunt, and whispered: "Fie on thee, Aunt Jeanne! The Father Hennepin does not think thee an old woman; neither Pierre Gaspard from the mill. I hear the men when they are talking under my window of thee. Thou knowest thou mightest wed any day if thou hadst the mind."
Jeanne shook her head. "That I have not, then," she said. "I keep the name of Willan Blaycke for all that of any man hereabouts which can be offered to me. Thou art the one to wed, not I. But far off be that day,"
she added hastily; "thou art young for it yet."
"Ay," replied the artful young maiden, "that am I, and I think I will be old before any man make a drudge of me. I like my freedom better. And now will I go down and serve thy stepson,--the handsome magpie, the reader of books." And with a mocking laugh Victorine bounded down the staircase and went into the kitchen. Her grandfather was running about there in great confusion, from dresser to fireplace, to table, to pantry, back and forth, breathless and red in the face. The pigeons were sputtering before the fire, and the odor of the frying bacon filled the place.
"Diable! Girl, out of this!" he cried; "this is no place for thee. Go to thine aunt."
"She did bid me come and serve the supper for the strangers," replied Victorine. "She herself will not come down."
"Go to the devil! Thou shalt not, and it is I that say it," shouted Victor; and Victorine, terrified, fled back to Jeanne, and reported her grandfather"s words.
Poor Jeanne was at her wit"s end now. "Why said he that?" she asked.
"I know not," replied Victorine, demurely. "He was in one of his great rages, and I do think that the pigeons are fast burning, by the smell."
"Bah!" cried Jeanne, in disgust. "Is this a house to live in, where one cannot be let down from one"s chamber except in sight of the highway?
Run, Victorine! Look over and see if the strangers be in sight. I must go down to the kitchen. I would a witch were at hand with a broom or a tail of a mare. I"d mount and down the chimney, I warrant me!"
Laughing heartily, Victorine ran to reconnoitre. "There is none in sight," she cried. "Thou canst come down. A man is asleep under the pear-tree, but I think not he is one of them."
Jeanne ran quickly down the stairs, followed by Victorine, who, as she entered the kitchen again, took up her position in one corner, and stood leaning against the wall, tapping her pretty little black slippers with their crimson bows impatiently on the floor. Jeanne drew her father to one side, and whispered in his ear. He retorted angrily, in a louder tone. Not a look or tone was lost on Victorine. Presently the old man, shrugging his shoulders, went back to the pigeons, and began to turn the spit, muttering to himself in French. Jeanne had conquered.
"Thy grandfather is in a rage," she said to Victorine, "because we must give meat and drink to the man who has treated me so ill; that is why he did not wish thee to serve. But I have persuaded him that it is needful that we do all we can to keep Willan Blaycke well disposed to us. He might withhold from me all my money if he so chose; and he is rich, and we are but poor people. We could not find any redress. So do thou take care and treat him as if thou hadst never heard aught against him from me. It will lie with thee, child, to see that he goes not away angered; for thy grandfather is in a mood when the saints themselves could not hold his tongue if he have a mind to speak. Keep thou out of his sight till supper be ready. I stay here till all is done."
Between the kitchen and the common living-room, which was also the dining-room, was a long dark pa.s.sage-way, at one end of which was a small storeroom. Here Victorine took refuge, to wait till her aunt should call her to serve the supper. The window of this storeroom was wide open. The shutter had fallen off the hinges several days before, and Benoit had forgotten to put it up. Victorine seated herself on a cider cask close to the window, and leaning her head against the wall began to sing again in a low tone. She had a habit of singing at all times, and often hardly knew that she sang at all. The Provencal melody was still running in her head.
"Ah! luck for the bees, The flowers are in flower; Luck for the bees in spring.