"Make haste and drink up your coffee," she said as she placed the cup on the table. "Denis is waiting to take us to Les Peuples. I have to go over there on business."
Jeanne was so excited that she thought she would have fainted, and, as she dressed herself with trembling fingers, she could hardly believe she was going to see her dear home once more.
Overhead was a bright, blue sky, and, as they went along, Denis"s pony would every now and then break into a gallop. When they reached Etouvent, Jeanne could hardly breathe, her heart beat so quickly, and when she saw the brick pillars beside the chateau gate, she exclaimed, "Oh," two or three times in a low voice, as if she were in the presence of something which stirred her very soul, and she could not help herself.
They put up the horse at the Couillards" farm, and, when Rosalie and her son went to attend to their business, the farmer asked Jeanne if she would like to go over the chateau, as the owner was away, and gave her the key.
She went off alone, and when she found herself opposite the old manor she stood still to look at it. The outside had not been touched since she had left. All the shutters were closed, and the sunbeams were dancing on the gray walls of the big, weather-beaten building. A little piece of wood fell on her dress, she looked up and saw that it had fallen from the plane tree, and she went up to the big tree and stroked its pale, smooth bark as if it had been alive. Her foot touched a piece of rotten wood lying in the gra.s.s; it was the last fragment of the seat on which she had so often sat with her loved ones--the seat which had been put up the very day of Julien"s first visit to the chateau.
Then she went to the hall-door. She had some difficulty in opening it as the key was rusty and would not turn, but at last the lock gave way, and the door itself only required a slight push before it swung back. The first thing Jeanne did was to run up to her own room. It had been hung with a light paper and she hardly knew it again, but when she opened one of the windows and looked out, she was moved almost to tears as she saw again the scene she loved so well--the thicket, the elms, the common, and the sea covered with brown sails which, at this distance, looked as if they were motionless.
Then she went all over the big, empty house. She stopped to look at a little hole in the plaster which the baron had made with his cane, for he used to make a few thrusts at the wall whenever he pa.s.sed this spot, in memory of the fencing bouts he had had in his youth. In her mother"s bedroom she found a small gold-headed pin stuck in the wall behind the door, in a dark corner near the bed. She had stuck it there a long while ago (she remembered it now), and had looked everywhere for it since, but it had never been found; and she kissed it and took it with her as a priceless relic.
She went into every room, recognizing the almost invisible spots and marks on the hangings which had not been changed and again noting the odd forms and faces which the imagination so often traces in the designs of the furniture coverings, the carvings of mantelpieces and the shadows on soiled ceilings. She walked through the vast, silent chateau as noiselessly as if she were in a cemetery; all her life was interred there.
She went down to the drawing-room. The closed shutters made it very dark, and it was a few moments before she could distinguish anything; then, as her eyes became accustomed to the darkness, she gradually made out the tapestry with the big, white birds on it. Two armchairs stood before the fireplace, looking as if they had just been vacated, and the very smell of the room--a smell that had always been peculiar to it, as each human being has his, a smell which could be perceived at once, and yet was vague like all the faint perfumes of old rooms--brought the memories crowding to Jeanne"s mind.
Her breath came quickly as she stood with her eyes fixed on the two chairs, inhaling this perfume of the past; and, all at once, in a sudden hallucination occasioned by her thoughts, she fancied she saw--she did see--her father and mother with their feet on the fender as she had so often seen them before. She drew back in terror, stumbling against the door-frame, and clung to it for support, still keeping her eyes fixed on the armchairs. The vision disappeared and for some minutes she stood horror-stricken; then she slowly regained possession of herself and turned to fly, afraid that she was going mad. Her eyes fell on the wainscoting against which she was leaning and she saw Poulet"s ladder.
There were all the faint marks traced on the wall at unequal intervals and the figures which had been cut with a penknife to indicate the month, and the child"s age and growth. In some places there was the baron"s big writing, in others her own, in others again Aunt Lison"s, which was a little shaky. She could see the boy standing there now, with his fair hair, and his little forehead pressed against the wall to have his height measured, while the baron exclaimed: "Jeanne, he has grown half an inch in six weeks," and she began to kiss the wainscoting in a frenzy of love for the very wood.
Then she heard Rosalie"s voice outside, calling: "Madame Jeanne! Madame Jeanne! lunch is waiting," and she went out with her head in a whirl.
She felt unable to understand anything that was said to her. She ate what was placed before her, listened to what was being said without realizing the sense of the words, answered the farmers" wives when they inquired after her health, pa.s.sively received their kisses and kissed the cheeks which were offered to her, and then got into the chaise again.
When she could no longer see the high roof of the chateau through the trees, something within her seemed to break, and she felt that she had just said good-bye to her old home for ever.
They went straight back to Batteville, and as she was going indoors Jeanne saw something white under the door; it was a letter which the postman had slipped there during their absence. She at once recognized Paul"s handwriting and tore open the envelope in an agony of anxiety. He wrote:
"My Dear Mother: I have not written before because I did not want to bring you to Paris on a fruitless errand, for I have always been meaning to come and see you myself. At the present moment I am in great trouble and difficulty. My wife gave birth to a little girl three days ago, and now she is dying and I have not a penny. I do not know what to do with the child; the doorkeeper is trying to nourish it with a feeding-bottle as best she can, but I fear I shall lose it. Could not you take it? I cannot send it to a wet nurse as I have not any money, and I do not know which way to turn.
Pray answer by return post.
"Your loving son,
"Paul."
Jeanne dropped on a chair with hardly enough strength left to call Rosalie. The maid came and they read the letter over again together, and then sat looking at each other in silence.
"I"ll go and fetch the child myself, madame," said Rosalie at last. "We can"t leave it to die."
"Very well, my girl, go," answered Jeanne.
"Put on your hat, madame," said the maid, after a pause, "and we will go and see the lawyer at G.o.derville. If that woman is going to die, M. Paul must marry her for the sake of the child."
Jeanne put on her hat without a word. Her heart was overflowing with joy, but she would not have allowed anyone to see it for the world, for it was one of those detestable joys in which people can revel in their hearts, but of which they are all the same ashamed; her son"s mistress was going to die.
The lawyer gave Rosalie detailed instructions which the servant made him repeat two or three times; then, when she was sure she knew exactly what to do, she said:
"Don"t you fear; I"ll see it"s all right now." And she started for Paris that very night.
Jeanne pa.s.sed two days in such an agony of mind that she could fix her thoughts on nothing. The third morning she received a line from Rosalie merely saying she was coming back by that evening"s train; nothing more; and in the afternoon, about three o"clock, Jeanne sent round to a neighbor to ask him if he would drive her to the Beuzeville railway station to meet her servant.
She stood on the platform looking down the rails (which seemed to get closer together right away as far off as she could see), and turning every now and then to look at the clock. Ten minutes more--five minutes--two--and at last the train was due, though as yet she could see no signs of it. Then, all at once, she saw a cloud of white smoke, and underneath it a black speck which got rapidly larger and larger. The big engine came into the station, snorting and slackening its speed, and Jeanne looked eagerly into every window as the carriages went past her.
The doors opened and several people got out--peasants in blouses, farmers" wives with baskets on their arms, a few _bourgeois_ in soft hats--and at last Rosalie appeared, carrying what looked like a bundle of linen in her arms. Jeanne would have stepped forward to meet her, but all strength seemed to have left her legs and she feared she would fall if she moved. The maid saw her and came up in her ordinary, calm way.
"Good-day, madame; here I am again, though I"ve had some bother to get along."
"Well?" gasped Jeanne.
"Well," answered Rosalie, "she died last night. They were married and here"s the baby," and she held out the child which could not be seen for its wraps. Jeanne mechanically took it, and they left the station and got into the carriage which was waiting.
"M. Paul is coming directly after the funeral. I suppose he"ll be here to-morrow, by this train."
"Paul--" murmured Jeanne, and then stopped without saying anything more.
The sun was sinking towards the horizon, bathing in a glow of light the green fields which were flecked here and there with golden colewort flowers or blood-red poppies, and over the quiet country fell an infinite peace.
The peasant who was driving the chaise kept clicking his tongue to urge on his horse which trotted swiftly along, and Jeanne looked straight up into the sky which the circling flight of the swallows seemed to cut asunder.
All at once she became conscious of a soft warmth which was making itself felt through her skirts; it was the heat from the tiny being sleeping on her knees, and it moved her strangely. She suddenly drew back the covering from the child she had not yet seen, that she might look at her son"s daughter; as the light fell on its face the little creature opened its blue eyes, and moved its lips, and then Jeanne hugged it closely to her, and, raising it in her arms, began to cover it with pa.s.sionate kisses.
"Come, come, Madame Jeanne, have done," said Rosalie, in sharp, though good-tempered tones; "you"ll make the child cry."
Then she added, as if in reply to her own thoughts:
"After all, life is never so jolly or so miserable as people seem to think."
HAUTOT SENIOR
AND
HAUTOT JUNIOR
PART I
In front of the building, half farm-house, half manor-house, one of those rural habitations of a mixed character which were all but seigneurial, and which are at the present time occupied by large cultivators, the dogs lashed beside the apple-trees in the orchard near the house, kept barking and howling at the sight of the shooting-bags carried by the gamekeepers and the boys. In the s.p.a.cious dining-room kitchen, Hautot Senior and Hautot Junior, M. Bermont, the tax-collector, and M. Mondaru, the notary were taking a pick and drinking a gla.s.s before going out to shoot, for it was the opening day.
Hautot Senior, proud of all his possessions, talked boastfully beforehand of the game which his guests were going to find on his lands.
He was a big Norman, one of those powerful, sanguineous, bony men, who lift wagon-loads of apples on their shoulders. Half-peasant, half-gentleman, rich, respected, influential, invested with authority he made his son Cesar go as far as the third form at school, so that he might be an educated man, and there he had brought his studies to a stop for fear of his becoming a fine gentleman and paying no attention to the land.
Cesar Hautot, almost as tall as his father, but thinner, was a good son, docile, content with everything, full of admiration, respect, and deference, for the wishes and opinions of his sire.
M. Bermont, the tax-collector, a stout little man, who showed on his red cheeks a thin network of violet veins resembling the tributaries and the winding courses of rivers on maps, asked:
"And hares--are there any hares on it?"