neighbors and some of the land-owners were invited. You know all about
these festivities, of course. Something of the kind must be done every
year, and my dear father never forgot what he owed his people, and
always did his best to make them happy. On this occasion the idea came
into my head that it would be something of a novelty if I arranged a
dance of the young people with a May-pole and garlands, after one of the
Watteau paintings in our home; something that had never been done
before, but which, if done at all, must be carried out properly. So I
sent to Paris to get the costumes, the wide hats, petticoats, and
all--with the small clothes for the men--and started out to find my
characters. One of my maids had told me of this girl and, as she lived
nearest, I stopped at her house first. Well, the father came in and
blustered out a welcome; then the mother, with a curtsy and a smile,
wiped out the man's odious impression, thanking me for coming, and then
the girl appeared--the living counterpart of her mother except that the
fine strain of gentle blood had so softened and strengthened the
daughter's personality that she had blossomed into a lovely young person
without a trace of the peasant about her--just as any new grafting
improves both flower and fruit. I could not take my eyes from her, she
was so gentle and modest--her glance reaching mine timidly, the lids
trembling like a butterfly afraid to alight; oh, a very charming and
lovely creature--an astonishing creature, really, to be the daughter of
such a man. Before the visit was over I had determined to make her my
prima donna: she should lead the procession, and open the dance with
some gallant of her choice--a promise received with delight by the
family; the girl being particularly pleased, especially with the last
part of it, and so I left them, and kept on my rounds through the
village and outlying district.
"It was a lovely summer day--in June, if I remember--too late for
May-poles, but I didn't care--and long before the hour arrived our lawn
was thronged with peasants and their sons and daughters, and our stables
and paddocks crowded with their carts and vehicles. My father had
provided a tent where the young people should change their clothes, but
I took my little maid up into my own room, and my femme de chambre and I
dressed her at our leisure.
"It is astonishing what you find underneath the rough garments worn by
some of our peasants. I have often heard one of my friends--a figure
painter--express the same surprise over his models. What appears in
coarse cloth to be an ill-shaped arm turns out to be beautifully
modelled when bared to the overhead light of a studio. So it was with
this girl. She had the dearest, trimmest little figure, her shoulders
temptingly dimpled, her throat and neck with that exquisite modelling
only seen in a beautifully formed girl just bursting into womanhood. And
then, too, her hair--what a lot of it there was when it was all combed
out, and of so rich a brown, with a thread of gold here and there where
the light struck it; and, more than all, her deep sapphire-blue eyes.
Oh!--you cannot think how lovely they were; eyes that drank you all in
until you were lost in their depths--like a well holding and refreshing
you.
"So we dressed her up--leghorn hat, petticoats, tiny slippers on her
tiny feet--and they were tiny--even to her shepherdess crook--until she
looked as if she had just stepped out of one of Watteau's canvases.
"And you may be sure she had her innings! The young fellows went wild
over her, as well as the older ones--and even some of our own gentry
tried to make love to her--so I heard next day. When all was ready she
picked out her own partner, as I had promised she should, a straight,
well-built, honest-faced young peasant whom she called 'Henri'--a year
or two her senior, and whom I learned was the son of a poor farmer whose
land adjoined her father's, but whose flocks and herds consisted of but
one cow and a few pigs. In his pearl-gray short clothes and jacket,
slashed sleeves, and low-cut shoes he looked amazingly well, and I did
not blame her for her choice. Indeed she could not have done better,
perfectly matched as they were in their borrowed plumes.
"And now comes a curious thing: so puffed up was that big animal of a
father over the impression the girl had made, and so proud was he over
the offers he received shortly after for her hand--among them a fellow
herdsman twenty years her senior--that he immediately began to put on
airs of distinction. A man with such a daughter, he said to himself, was
also a man of weight and prominence in the community; he, therefore, had
certain duties to perform. This was his only child; moreover, was he not
rich, being the owner of more than a hundred head of cattle, and did he
not have money in the banks? Loyette--have I told you her name was
Loyette?--Loyette should marry no one of the young fellows about her--he
had other and higher views for her. What these views were nobody knew,
but one thing was certain, and that was that Henri, whom she loved with
all her heart, and who had danced with her around the May-pole, was
forbidden the house. The excuse was that his people were not of her
class; that they were poor, his father being.... Oh, the same stupid
story which has been told thousands of times and will continue to be
told as long as there are big, thick-necked fathers who lay down the law
with their sledge-hammer fists, and ambitious old gentlemen"--here she
cut her eye at Lemois--"who try to wheedle you with their flimsy
arguments--arguments which they would have thrown in your face had you
tried it on them when they themselves were young. The father forgot, of
course--just as they all forget--that she was precisely the same young
girl with precisely the same heart before the fête as she was after it;
that every rag on her back I had given her; that her triumph was purely
a matter of chance--my going first to his house and thus finding
her--and that on the very next day she had milked the cows and polished
the tins just as she had done since she was old enough to help her
mother.
"Again that old story was repeated: the mother begged and pleaded; the
girl drowned herself in tears, but the father stormed on. Poor Henri
continued to peep over the fence at Loyette when she went milking, or
met her clandestinely on the path behind the cow sheds, and everybody
was wretched for months trying to make water run uphill.
"Then Loyette confided in me. I had started to walk to the village and
she had seen me cross the broad road and had followed. Poor child!--I
can see her now, the tears streaming down her cheeks as she poured out
her heart: how she and Henri had always loved each other; how fine and
brave and truthful he was, and how kind and noble: she emptying her
heart of her most precious secret--the story of her first love--a story,
gentlemen"--here the marquise's voice dropped into tones of infinite
sweetness--"which the angels bend their ears to catch, for there is
nothing more holy nor more sublime.
"I listened, her hand in mine--we were about the same age and I could,
therefore, the better understand--her pretty blue eyes like wet violets
searching for my own--and when her story was all told, I comforted her
as best I could, telling her what I firmly believed--that no father with
a spark of tenderness in his heart could be obdurate for long and not to
worry--true love like hers always winning its way--whereupon she dried
her eyes, kissed my hand, and I left her.
"What happened I do not know, for I went to Paris shortly after and was
married myself, and did not return to my old home for some years. Then
one day, in the effort to pick up once more the threads of my old life,
there suddenly popped into my mind Loyette's love story. I sent at once
for one of the old servants who had lived with us since before I was
born.
"'And Loyette--the girl with the big ugly father--did he relent and did
she marry the young fellow she was in love with?'
"'No, madame,' she answered sadly, with a shake of the head; 'she
married the cattleman, Marceaux, and a sad mess they made of it, for he
was old enough then to be her father, and he is now half paralyzed, and
goes around in a chair on wheels, and there are no children--and
Loyette, who was so pretty and so happy, must follow him about like a
dog tied to a blind man, and she never laughs the whole livelong day.
That was her father's work--he made her do it, and now she must pay the
price.'
"'And what became of the pig of a father?' I had hated him before; I
loathed him now.
"'Dead; so is her mother.'
"'And the young fellow?'
"'He had to do his service, and was gone three years, and when he came
back it was too late.'
"'Well, but why did she give in?'
"'Don't they all have to give in at last? Did the husband not settle the
farm on her, and fifty head of cattle, and the pasturage and barns? Is
not that better for an only daughter than digging in the fields bending
over washing-boards all day and breaking your back hanging out the
clothes? How did she know he would be only a sick child in a chair on
wheels--and this a year after marriage?'
"'And what did the young fellow do?'
"'What could he do? It was all over when he came back. And now he never
laughs any more, and will look at none of the women--and it is a pity,
for he is prosperous and can well take care of a wife.'
"I had it all now, just as plain as day; they had tricked the girl into
a marriage; had maligned the young fellow in the same cowardly way, and
had embittered them both for life. It was the same old game; I had seen
it played a hundred times in different parts of the world. Often the
cards are stacked. Sometimes it is a jewel--or a handful of them--or
lands--or rank--or some other such make-believe. This trick is to be
expected in the great world where success in life is a game, and where
each gambler must look to the cards--but not here among our
peasantry"--and again she shot her glance at Lemois--"where a girl grows
up as innocent as a heifer, her nature expanding, her only ambition
being to find a true mate who will help her bear the burdens her station
lays upon her.
"I resolved to see her for myself. If I had been wrong in my
surmises--and it were true that so sweet and innocent a creature had of
her own free will married a man twenty years her senior when her heart
was wholly another's--I should lose faith in girl nature: and I have
looked into many young hearts in my time. That her father--big brute as
he was--would have dared force her into such an alliance without her
consent I did not believe, for the mother would then have risen up.
These Norman peasants fight for their children as a bear fights for her
cubs--women of the right kind--and she was one.
"My own father shrugged his shoulders when I sought his counsel, and
uttered the customary man-like remark: 'Better for her, I expect, than
hoeing beets. All she has to do now is to see him comfortably fixed in
his chair--a great blessing, come to think of it, for she can always
find him when she wants him.'
"This view of the case brought me no relief, and so the next day I
mounted my horse, took my groom, and learning that her cripple of a
husband had bought another and a larger farm a few kilometres away, rode
over to see her.
"I shall never forget what I found. Life presents some curious
spectacles, and the ironies of fate work out the unexpected. In front of
the low door of a Norman farm-house of the better class sat a
gray-haired, shrivelled man with a blanket across his knees--his face of
that dirty, ash-colored hue which denotes disease and constant pain. My
coming made some stir, for he had seen me making my way through the
orchard and had recognized my groom, and at his call the wife ran out to
welcome me. My young beauty was now a thin, utterly disheartened, and
worn-out woman who looked twice her age, and on whose face was stamped
the hall-mark of suffering and sorrow. The brown-gold hair, the white
teeth, and deep-blue eyes were there, but everything else was a wreck.
"When the horses were led away, and I had expressed my sympathy for the
cripple, I drew her inside the house, shut the door, and took a chair
beside her.
"'Now tell me the whole story--not your suffering, nor his--I see that
in your faces--but how it could all happen. The last time you talked to
me we were girls together--we are girls now.'
"'Madame la marquise,' she began, 'I----'
"'No, not madame la marquise,' I interrupted, taking her hand in mine;
'just one woman talking to another. Whose fault was it--yours or
Henri's?'
"'Neither. They lied about him; they said he would never come back;
then, when he did not write and no news came of him and I was wild and
crazy with grief, they told me more things of which I won't speak; and
one of the old women in the village, who wanted him for her
granddaughter, laughed and said the things were true and that she didn't
mind, and nobody else should; and then all the time my father was saying
I must marry the other'--and she pointed in the direction of the
cripple--'and he kept coming every day, and was kind and sympathetic,
and good to me I must say, and is now, and at last my heart was worn
out--and they took me to the church, and it was all over. And then the
next month Henri came back from Algiers, where he had been ill in the
hospital, and came straight here and sat down in that chair over there,
and looked about him, and then he said: "I would not have come home if I
had known how things were; I would rather have been shot. I cannot give
you all this"--and he pointed to the furniture--"and you did not want
them when we first loved each other."
"'And then he told me how many times he had written, and we hunted
through my father's chest which I had brought here with me--he had died
that year, and so had my dear mother--and there we found all Henri's
letters tied together with a string, and not one of them opened.'
"'What did you do?' I asked.
"'I went at once to my husband and told him everything. He burst into a
great rage; and the two had hard words, and then the next day he was out
in the field and the sun was very hot, and he was brought home, and has
been as you see him ever since.'
"'And where is Henri?'
"'He is here on the farm. When the doctor gave my husband no hope of
ever being well again, my husband sent for him and begged Henri's pardon
for what he had said, saying he wanted no one to hate him now that he
could not live; that all Henri had done was to love me as a man should
love a woman, and that, if I would be willing, Henri should take care of
the farm and keep it for me. This was four years ago, and Henri is still
here and my husband has never changed. When the weather is good, Henri
puts him in his chair, the one we bought in Rouen, and wheels him about
under the apple-trees, and every night he comes in and sits beside him
and goes over the accounts and tells him of the day's work. Then he goes
back home, six kilometres away, to his mother's, where he lives.'"
Madame la marquise paused and shook the ashes from her cigarette, her
head on one side, her eyes half-closed, a thoughtful, wholly absorbed
expression on her face. Lemois, who had listened to every word of the
strange narrative, his gaze fastened upon her, made no sound, nor did he
move.
"And now listen to the rest: Two years later the poor cripple passed
away and the next spring the two were married. The last time she came
to me she brought her child with her--a baby in arms--but the dazzling
light of young motherhood did not shine in her eyes--the baby had come,
and she was glad, but that was all. They are both alive to-day, sitting
in the twilight--their youth gone; robbed of the joy of making the first
nest, together--meeting life second-hand, as it were--content to be
alive and to be left alone.
"As for me, knowing the whole story, I had only a deep, bitter, intense
sense of outrage. I still have it whenever I think of her wrongs. God is
over all and pardons us almost every sin we commit--even without our
asking, I sometimes think--but the men and women who for pride's sake
rob a young girl of a true and honorable love have shut themselves out
of heaven."
X
IN WHICH WE ENTERTAIN A JAIL-BIRD
What effect madame's story had made upon Lemois became at once an
absorbing question. He had listened intently with deferential
inclination of the head, and when she had finished had risen from his
seat and thanked her calmly with evident sincerity, but whether he was
merely paying a tribute to her rare skill--and she told her story
extremely well, and with such rapid changes of tones and gestures that
every situation and character stood out in relief--or because he was
grateful for a new point of view in Mignon's case, was still a mystery
to us. While she was being bundled up by Herbert and Louis for her ride
home, Marc had delivered himself of the opinion that Mignon would have
her lover in the end; that nothing madame had ever tried to do had
failed when once she set her heart and mind to work, and that the banns
might as well be published at once. But, then, Marc would have begun to
set nets for larks and bought both toaster and broiler had the same idol
of his imagination predicted an immediate fall of the skies. That his
inamorata was twenty years his senior made no difference to the
distinguished impressionist; that Marc was twenty years her junior made
not the slightest difference to madame--nor did Marc himself, for that
matter. All good men were comrades to her--and Marc was one: further she
never went. Her rule of life was freedom of thought and action, and
absolute deference to her whims, however daring and foolish.
Nor did the marquise herself enlighten us further as to what she thought
of Mignon's love affairs or Lemois' narrow matrimonial views. She had
become suddenly intent on having the smashed villa pulled uphill and set
on its legs again, with Marc as adviser and Le Blanc's friend, The
Architect, as director-in-chief--an appointment which blew into thin air
that gentleman's determination to put into dramatic form the new
Robinson Crusoe of which Herbert had told us, with Goringe, the
explorer, as star, the lady remarking sententiously that she had
definite reasons for the restoration and wanted the work to begin at
once and to continue with all possible speed.
This last Le Blanc told us the next day when he returned in madame's
motor, bringing with him an old friend of his--a tall, sunburned,
grizzly bearded man of fifty, with overhanging eyebrows shading piercing
brown eyes, firm, well-buttressed nose, a mouth like a ruled line--so
straight was it--and a jaw which used up one-third of his face. When
they entered Herbert was standing with his back to the room. An instant
later the stranger had him firmly by the hand.
"I heard you were here, Herbert," he cried joyously, "but could hardly
believe it. By Jove! It's good to see you again! When was the last time,
old man?--Borneo, wasn't it?--in that old shack outside the town, and
those devils howling for all they were worth."
Introductions over, he dropped into a chair, took a pipe from his
pocket, and in a few minutes was as much a part of the coterie as if we
had known him all his life: his credentials of accomplishment, of pluck,
of self-sacrifice, of endurance and skill were accepted at sight; the
hearty welcome he gave Herbert, and the way his eyes shone with the joy
of meeting him, completing the last and most important requirement on
our list--good-fellowship. That he had lived outside the restrictions of
civilization was noticeable in his clothes, which were of an ancient cut
and looked as if they had just been pulled out of a trunk where they had
lain in creases for years, which was true, for during the past decade he
had been acting Engineer-in-Chief of one section of the great dam on the
Nile, and was now home on leave. He had, he told us, left London the
week before, had crossed with his car at Dieppe, and was making a run
down the coast by way of Trouville when he bumped into Le Blanc and,
hearing Herbert was within reach, had made bold to drop in upon us.
When Mignon and Leà had cleared the table, dinner being over, and the
coffee had been served--and somehow the real talk always began after the
coffee--for then Lemois was with us--Herbert looked at The Engineer long
and searchingly, a covetous light growing in his eyes--the look of a
housed sailor sniffing the brine on a comrade's reefer just in from the
sea--and said dryly:
"Are you glad to get home?"
"Yes and no. My liver had begun to give out and they sent me to England
for a few months, but I shall have to go back, I'm afraid, before my
time is up. Gets on my nerves here--too much sand on the axles--too much
friction and noise--such a lot of people, too, chasing bubbles. Seems
queer when you've been away from it as long as I have. How do you stand
it, old man?"
Herbert tapped the table-cloth absently with the handle of his knife and
remarked slowly:
"I don't stand it. I lie down and let it roll over me. If I ever thought
about it at all I'd lose my grip. Sometimes a longing to be again in the
jungle sweeps over me--to feel its dangers--its security--its
genuineness and freedom from all shams, if you will"--and a strange
haunting look settled in his eyes.
"But you always used to dream of getting home; I've lain awake by the
hour and heard you talk."
"Yes, I know," he answered rousing himself, "it was a battle even in
those days. I would think about it and then decide to stay a year or two
longer; and then the hunger for home would come upon me again and I'd
begin to shape things so I could get back to England. Sometimes it took
a year to decide--sometimes two or three--for you can't get rid of that
kind of a nightmare in a minute."
"You were different from me, Herbert," remarked Le Blanc. "You went to
the wilds because you loved them; I went because they locked the front
and back gates on me. I suppose I deserved it, for nobody got much sleep
when I was twenty. But it sounds funny to have you say it would take you
two years to make up your mind whether you'd come home or not. It
wouldn't have taken me five seconds."
"Sometimes it didn't take that long," and a quick laugh escaped
Herbert's lips as if to conceal his serious mood. "Those things depend
on how you feel and what has started your thinking apparatus to working.
I walked out of a kraal in Australia one summer's night when the
home-hunger was on me and never stopped until I reached Sydney--the last
hundred miles barefoot. You must have known about it, for I met you
right after"--and he turned to The Engineer, who nodded in an amused
way. "That was before we struck Borneo, if I remember?"
"Why barefooted, Herbert?" asked Louis, hitching his chair the closer.
"Because the soles and heels were gone and the uppers were all that were
left."
"Tell them about it, Herbert," remarked The Engineer with a smile,
pulling away at his pipe.
"Oh, if you would, Monsieur Herbert! I tried to tell Monsieur High-Muck
about it the night you arrived, but Monsieur Louis' horn put it out of
my head. It is better that he hears it from you"--and the old man's lip
quivered, his face lighting up with admiration. Herbert was his
high-priest in matters of this kind.
"There is really nothing to tell," returned Herbert. "I was tending
cattle for a herdsman at the time up in the hills--I and a friend of
mine. We had both run away from our ships and were trying the rolling
country for a change, when one of those irresistible, overwhelming
attacks of homesickness seized me, and without caring a picayune what
became of me, I turned short on my tracks and struck out for the coast.
A man does that sort of thing sometimes. I had no money and only the
clothes on my back, but I knew the railroad was some forty miles away,
and that when I reached it I could work my passage into civilization and
from there on to London.
"The weather was warm and I slept in a cow shack when I found one, and
in the bushes when they got scarce. Finally I reached the railroad. I
had never tried stealing a ride, sleeping on the trucks, hiding in
freight cars, and being put off time and again until the next town was
reached--I had never tried it because it had never been necessary, and
then I hated that sort of thing. But I had no objection to asking for a
lift, telling the agent or conductor the whole story, and I did it
regularly at every station I passed on foot, only to get the customary
oath or jeering laugh. After I had walked about sixty miles I came upon
a water station known as Merton, with a goods train standing by. This
time I asked for a ride on the tender. The engineer met my request with
a vacant stare--never taking his pipe from his mouth. The fireman was a
different sort of man. He not only listened to my story, but handed me
part of the contents of his dinner pail wrapped up in a newspaper--which
I was glad to get, and told him so. Before the train had gone fifty
yards she was side-tracked for orders--which gave me another chance to
get at the fireman. 'I may lose my job if I do,' he said, 'but I've been
up against it myself; come around a little later; it'll be dark soon
and something may turn up.'