"We are very thirsty," he said, "and madame is very tired. Can we not get something to drink?"
The peasant woman gave them an uneasy and cunning glance and then she made up her mind.
"As you are here, I will give you some," she said, going into the house, and almost immediately the child came out and brought two chairs, which she placed under an apple tree, and then the mother, in turn, brought out two bowls of foaming milk, which she gave to the visitors. She did not return to the house, however, but remained standing near them, as if to watch them and to find out for what purpose they had come there.
"You have come from Fecamp?" she said.
"Yes," Monsieur d"Apreval replied, "we are staying at Fecamp for the summer."
And then, after a short silence, he continued:
"Have you any fowls you could sell us every week?"
The woman hesitated for a moment and then replied:
"Yes, I think I have. I suppose you want young ones?"
"Yes, of course."
""What do you pay for them in the market?"
D"Apreval, who had not the least idea, turned to his companion:
"What are you paying for poultry in Fecamp, my dear lady?"
"Four francs and four francs fifty centimes," she said, her eyes full of tears, while the farmer"s wife, who was looking at her askance, asked in much surprise:
"Is the lady ill, as she is crying?"
He did not know what to say, and replied with some hesitation:
"No-no-but she lost her watch as we came along, a very handsome watch, and that troubles her. If anybody should find it, please let us know."
Mother Benedict did not reply, as she thought it a very equivocal sort of answer, but suddenly she exclaimed:
"Oh, here is my husband!"
She was the only one who had seen him, as she was facing the gate. D"Apreval started and Madame de Cadour nearly fell as she turned round suddenly on her chair.
A man bent nearly double, and out of breath, stood there, ten-yards from them, dragging a cow at the end of a rope. Without taking any notice of the visitors, he said:
"Confound it! What a brute!"
And he went past them and disappeared in the cow house.
Her tears had dried quickly as she sat there startled, without a word and with the one thought in her mind, that this was her son, and D"Apreval, whom the same thought had struck very unpleasantly, said in an agitated voice:
"Is this Monsieur Benedict?"
"Who told you his name?" the wife asked, still rather suspiciously.
"The blacksmith at the corner of the highroad," he replied, and then they were all silent, with their eyes fixed on the door of the cow house, which formed a sort of black hole in the wall of the building. Nothing could be seen inside, but they heard a vague noise, movements and footsteps and the sound of hoofs, which were deadened by the straw on the floor, and soon the man reappeared in the door, wiping his forehead, and came toward the house with long, slow strides. He pa.s.sed the strangers without seeming to notice them and said to his wife:
"Go and draw me a jug of cider; I am very thirsty."
Then he went back into the house, while his wife went into the cellar and left the two Parisians alone.
"Let us go, let us go, Henri," Madame de Cadour said, nearly distracted with grief, and so d"Apreval took her by the arm, helped her to rise, and sustaining her with all his strength, for he felt that she was nearly fainting, he led her out, after throwing five francs on one of the chairs.
As soon as they were outside the gate, she began to sob and said, shaking with grief:
"Oh! oh! is that what you have made of him?"
He was very pale and replied coldly:
"I did what I could. His farm is worth eighty thousand francs, and that is more than most of the sons of the middle cla.s.ses have."
They returned slowly, without speaking a word. She was still crying; the tears ran down her cheeks continually for a time, but by degrees they stopped, and they went back to Fecamp, where they found Monsieur de Cadour waiting dinner for them. As soon as he saw them, he began to laugh and exclaimed:
"So my wife has had a sunstroke, and I am very glad of it. I really think she has lost her head for some time past!"
Neither of them replied, and when the husband asked them, rubbing his hands:
"Well, I hope that, at least, you have had a pleasant walk?"
Monsieur d"Apreval replied:
"A delightful walk, I a.s.sure you; perfectly delightful."
THE MAISON TELLIER
They went there every evening about eleven o"clock, just as they would go to the club. Six or eight of them; always the same set, not fast men, but respectable tradesmen, and young men in government or some other employ, and they would drink their Chartreuse, and laugh with the girls, or else talk seriously with Madame Tellier, whom everybody respected, and then they would go home at twelve o"clock! The younger men would sometimes stay later.
It was a small, comfortable house painted yellow, at the corner of a street behind Saint Etienne"s Church, and from the windows one could see the docks full of ships being unloaded, the big salt marsh, and, rising beyond it, the Virgin"s Hill with its old gray chapel.
Madame Tellier, who came of a respectable family of peasant proprietors in the Department of the Eure, had taken up her profession, just as she would have become a milliner or dressmaker. The prejudice which is so violent and deeply rooted in large towns, does not exist in the country places in Normandy. The peasant says:
"It is a paying-business," and he sends his daughter to keep an establishment of this character just as he would send her to keep a girls" school.
She had inherited the house from an old uncle, to whom it had belonged. Monsieur and Madame Tellier, who had formerly been innkeepers near Yvetot, had immediately sold their house, as they thought that the business at Fecamp was more profitable, and they arrived one fine morning to a.s.sume the direction of the enterprise, which was declining on account of the absence of the proprietors. They were good people enough in their way, and soon made themselves liked by their staff and their neighbors.
Monsieur died of apoplexy two years later, for as the new place kept him in idleness and without any exercise, he had grown excessively stout, and his health had suffered. Since she had been a widow, all the frequenters of the establishment made much of her; but people said that, personally, she was quite virtuous, and even the girls in the house could not discover anything against her. She was tall, stout and affable, and her complexion, which had become pale in the dimness of her house, the shutters of which were scarcely ever opened, shone as if it had been varnished. She had a fringe of curly false hair, which gave her a juvenile look, that contrasted strongly with the ripeness of her figure. She was always smiling and cheerful, and was fond of a joke, but there was a shade of reserve about her, which her occupation had not quite made her lose. Coa.r.s.e words always shocked her, and when any young fellow who had been badly brought up called her establishment a hard name, she was angry and disgusted.
In a word, she had a refined mind, and although she treated her women as friends, yet she very frequently used to say that "she and they were not made of the same stuff."