Willan Blaycke had led a singularly pure life. He was of a reticent and partly phlegmatic nature; though he looked so like his father, he resembled him little in temperament. This calmness of nature, added to a deep-seated pride, had stood him in stead of firmly rooted principles of virtue, and had carried him safe through all the temptations of his unprotected and lonely youth. He had the air and bearing, and had had in most things the experience, of a man of the world; and yet he was as ignorant of the wily ways of a wily woman as if he had never been out of the wilderness. Victorine"s tears smote on him poignantly.
"Thou poor child!" he said most kindly, "do not weep. Thou hast done no harm. I bear no ill will to thine aunt, and never did; and if I had, thou wouldst have disarmed it. This inn seems to me no place for a young maiden like thee."
Victorine glanced cautiously around her, and whispered: "It were ungrateful in me to say as much; but oh, sir, if thou didst but know how I wish myself back in the convent! I like not the ways of this place; and I fear so much the men who are often here. When thou didst speak at first I did think thou wert like them; but now I perceive that thou art quite different. Thou seemest to me like the men of whom Sister Clarice did tell me." Victorine stopped, called up a blush to her cheeks, and said: "But I must not stay talking with thee. My aunt will be looking for me."
"Stay," said Willan. "What did the Sister Clarice tell thee of men? I thought not that nuns conversed on such matters."
"Oh!" replied Victorine, innocently, "it was different with the Sister Clarice. She was a n.o.ble lady who had been betrothed, and her betrothed died; and it was because there were none left so n.o.ble and so good as he, she said, that she had taken the veil and would die in the convent.
She did talk to me whole nights about this young lord whom she was to have wed, and she did think often that she saw his face look down through the roof of the cell."
Clever Victorine! She had invented this tale on the spur of the instant.
She could not have done better if she had plotted long to devise a method of flattering Willan Blaycke. It is strange how like inspiration are the impulses of artful women at times. It would seem wellnigh certain that they must be prompted by malicious fiends wishing to lure men on to destruction in the surest way.
Victorine had talked with Willan perhaps five minutes. In that s.p.a.ce of time she had persuaded him of four things, all false,--that she was an innocent, guileless girl; that she had been seized with a sudden and reverential admiration for him; that she had no greater desire in life than to be back again in the safe shelter of the convent; and that her aunt Jeanne had never said an ill-word of him.
"Victorine! Victorine!" called a sharp loud voice,--the voice of Jeanne,--who would have bitten her tongue out rather than have broken in on this interview, if she had only known. "Victorine, where art thou loitering?"
"Oh, for heaven"s sake, sir, do not thou tell my grandfather that I have talked with thee!" cried Victorine, in feigned terror. "Here I am, aunt; I will be there in one second," she cried aloud, and ran hastily down the storeroom. At the door she stopped, hesitated, turned back, and going towards the window said wistfully: "Thou hast never been here before all these three months. I suppose thou travellest this way very seldom."
The full moon shone on Victorine"s face as she said this. Her expression was like that of a wistful little child. Willan Blaycke did not quite know what he was doing. He reached his hand across the window-sill towards Victorine; she did not extend hers. "I will come again sooner,"
he said. "Wilt thou not shake hands?"
Victorine advanced, hesitated, advanced again; it was inimitably done.
"The next time, if I know thee better, I might dare," she whispered, and fled like a deer.
"Where hast thou been?" said Jeanne, angrily. "The supper dishes are yet all to wash."
Victorine danced gayly around the kitchen floor. "Talking with the son of thy husband," she said. "He seems to me much cleverer than a magpie."
Jeanne burst out laughing. "Thou witch!" she said, secretly well pleased. "But where didst thou fall upon him? Thou hast not been in the bar-room?"
"Nay, he fell upon me, the rather," replied Victorine, artlessly, "as I was resting me at the window of the long storeroom. He heard me singing, and came there."
"Did he praise thy voice?" asked Jeanne. "He is a brave singer himself."
"Is he?" said Victorine, eagerly. "He did not tell me that. He said my voice was like the voice of a wild bird. And there be birds and birds again, I was minded to tell him, and not all birds make music; but he seemed to me not one to take jests readily."
"So," said Jeanne; "that he is not. Leaves he early in the morning?"
"I think so," replied Victorine. "He did not tell me, but I heard the elder man say to Benoit to have the horses ready at earliest light."
"Thou must serve them again in the morning," said Jeanne. "It will be but the once more."
"Nay," answered Victorine, "I will not."
Something in the girl"s tone arrested her aunt"s attention. "And why?"
she said sharply, looking scrutinizingly at her.
Victorine returned the gaze with one as steady. It was as well, she thought, that there should be an understanding between her aunt and herself soon as late.
"Because he will come again the sooner, Aunt Jeanne, if he sees me no more after to-night." And Victorine gave a little mocking nod with her head, turned towards the dresser piled high with dishes, and began to make a great clatter washing them.
Jeanne was silent. She did not know how to take this.
Victorine glanced up at her mischievously, and laughed aloud. "Better a grape for me than two figs for thee. Dost know the old proverb, Aunt Jeanne? Thou hadst thy figs; I will e"en pluck the grape."
"Bah, child! thou talkest wildly," said Jeanne; "I know not what thou "rt at."
But she did know very well; only she did not choose to seem to understand. However, as she thought matters over later in the evening, in the solitude of her own room, one thing was clear to her, and that was that it would probably be safe to trust Mademoiselle Victorine to row her own boat; and Jeanne said as much to her father when he inquired of her how matters had sped.
In spite of Victorine"s refusal to serve at the breakfast, she had not the least idea of letting Willan go away in the morning without being reminded of her presence. She was up before light, dressed in a pretty pink and white flowered gown, which set off her black hair and eyes well, and made her look as if she were related to an apple-blossom. She watched and listened till she heard the sound of voices and the horses"
feet in the courtyard below; then throwing open her cas.e.m.e.nt she leaned out and began to water her flowers on the stairway roof. At the first sound Willan Blaycke looked up and saw her. It was as pretty a picture as a man need wish to see, and Willan gazed his fill at it. The window was so high up in the air that the girl might well be supposed not to see anything which was going on in the courtyard; indeed, she never once looked that way, but went on daintily watering plant after plant, picking off dead leaves, crumpling them up in her fingers and throwing them down as if she were alone in the place; singing, too, softly in a low tone s.n.a.t.c.hes of a song, the words of which went floating away tantalizingly over Willan"s head, in spite of all his efforts to hear.
It was a great tribute to Victorine"s powers as an actress that it never once crossed Willan"s mind that she could possibly know he was looking at her all this time. It was equally a token of another man"s estimate of her, that when old Benoit, hearing the singing, looked up and saw her watering her flowers at this unexampled hour, he said under his breath, "Diable!" and then glancing at the face of Willan, who stood gazing up at the window utterly unconscious of the old ostler"s presence, said "Diable!" again, but this time with a broad and amused smile.
III.
The fountain leaps as if its nearest goal Were sky, and shines as if its life were light.
No crystal prism flashes on our sight Such radiant splendor of the rainbow"s whole Of color. Who would dream the fountain stole Its tints, and if the sun no more were bright Would instant fade to its own pallid white?
Who dream that never higher than the dole Of its own source, its stream may rise?
Thus we See often hearts of men that by love"s glow Are sudden lighted, lifted till they show All semblances of true n.o.bility; The pa.s.sion spent, they tire of purity, And sink again to their own levels low!
The next time Willan Blaycke came to the Golden Pear he did not see Victorine. This was by no device of hers, though if she had considered beforehand she could not better have helped on the impression she had made on him than by letting him go away disappointed, having come hoping to see her. She was away on a visit at the home of Pierre Gaspard the miller, whose eldest daughter Annette was Victorine"s one friend in the parish. There was an eldest son, also, Pierre second, on whom Mademoiselle Victorine had cast observant glances, and had already thought to herself that "if nothing else turned up--but there was time enough yet." Not so thought Pierre, who was madly in love with Victorine, and was so put about by her cold and capricious ways with him that he was fast coming to be good for nothing in the mill or on the farm. But he is of no consequence in this account of the career of Mademoiselle, only this,--that if it had not been for him she had not probably been away from the Golden Pear on the occasion of Willan Blaycke"s second visit. Pierre had not shown himself at the inn for some weeks, and Victorine was uneasy about him. Spite of her plans about a much finer bird in the bush, she was by no means minded to lose the bird she had in hand. She was too clear-sighted a young lady not to perceive that it would be no bad thing to be ultimately Mistress Gaspard of the mill,--no bad thing if she could not do better, of which she was as yet far from sure. So she had inveigled her aunt into taking the notion into her head that she needed change, and the two had ridden over to Gaspard"s for a three days" visit, the very day before Willan arrived.
"I warrant me he was set aback when I did tell him as he alighted that I feared me he would not be well served just at present, as there was no woman about the house," said Victor, chuckling as he told Jeanne the story. "He did give a little start,--not so little but that I saw it well, though he fetched himself up with his pride in a trice, and said loftily: "I have no doubt all will be sufficient; it is but a bite of supper and a bed that I require. I must go on at daybreak," But Benoit saw him all the evening pacing back and forth under the pear-tree, and many times looking up at the shut cas.e.m.e.nt of the window where he had seen Victorine standing on the morning when he was last here."
"Did he ask aught about her?" said Jeanne.
"Bah!" said Victor, contemptuously. "Dost take him for a fool? He will be farther gone than he is yet, ere he will let either thee or me see that the girl is aught to him."
"I wish he had found her here," said Jeanne. "It was an ill bit of luck that took her away; and that Pierre, he is like to go mad about her, since these three days under one roof. I knew not he was so daft, or I had not taken her there."
"She were well wed to Pierre Gaspard," said Victor; "mated with one"s own degree is best mated, after all. What shall we say if the lad come asking her hand? He will not ask twice, I can tell you that of a Gaspard."
"Trust the girl to keep him from asking till she be ready to say him yea or nay," replied Jeanne. "I know not wherever the child hath learnt such ways with men; surely in the convent she saw none but priests."
"And are not priests men?" sneered Victor, with an evil laugh. "Faith, and I think there is nought which other men teach which they do not teach better!"
"Fie, father! thou shouldst not speak ill of the clergy; it is bad luck," said Jeanne. Jeanne was far honester of nature than either her father or her child; she was not entirely without reverence, and as far as she could, without too much inconvenience, kept good faith with her religion.
When Victorine heard that Willan Blaycke had been at the inn in their absence, she shrugged her pretty shoulders, and said, laughingly, "Eh, but that is good!"
"Why sayest thou so?" replied Jeanne. "I say it is ill."
"And I say it is good," retorted Victorine; and not another word could Jeanne get out of her on the matter.