"Wait until Madame Giraud is invited to visit the Boulevard
Malesherbes," she said. "We have not heard that this has happened yet."
"She would' not go if she were, at least not to remain. Her heart has
grown to the old place she bore her children in, and she has herself
said to me most sensibly: 'Laure is young, and will learn easily the
ways of the great world; I am old, and cannot; I am better at home among
my neighbors.' Doubtless, however, In course of time she will pay Madame
Legrand a visit at her home in Paris, or at the château which Monsieur
Legrand of course possesses, as the rich and aristocratic always do."
"Doubtless!" said Annot, grimly; "doubtless."
Honest Jeanne Tallot passed the sneer by, and went on with stout gravity
of demeanor:--
"There is only one thing for which I somewhat blamed Mère Giraud, and
that is that I think she has scarcely done her duty toward Valentin. He
disappointed her by being an ugly lad instead of a pretty girl, and she
had not patience with him. Laure was the favorite. Whatever Laure did
was right, and it was not so with the other, though I myself know that
Valentin was a good lad, and tender-hearted."
"Once," put in a white cap, "I saw her beat him severely because he fell
with the little girl in his arms and scratched her cheek, and it was
not his fault. His foot slipped upon a stone. He was carrying the child
carefully and tenderly enough. You are right in calling him a good lad,
neighbor Tallot. He was a good lad,--Valentin Giraud,--and fond of his
mother, notwithstanding that she was not fond of him."
"Yes," added her companion; "but it is a truth that he was a great
contrast to the girl. _Mon Dieu!_ his long limbs and awkward body, his
great sad eyes and ugly face! While Laure,--was she not tall and slender
and white, like a lily in a garden? And her voice was like the ringing
of silver, and her eyes so soft and large. As an infant, she reminded
one of the little Jésu as one sees him in the churches. No wonder that
Mère Giraud fretted at the difference between the two. And Valentin was
her first, and what mother does not look for great things in her first?
We cannot help feeling that something must come of one's own charms if
one has any, and Mère Giraud was a handsome bride. An ugly bantling
seems to offer one a sort of insult, particularly at first, when one is
young and vain."
"There was no more beautiful young girl than Laure Giraud at sixteen,"
said Jeanne Tallot.
"And none more useless," said Annot loudly. "Give me a young girl who
is industrious and honest. My Margot is better provided for than Laure
Giraud was before her marriage; but her hands are not white, nor is her
waist but a span around. She has too much work to do. She is not a tall,
white, swaying creature who is too good to churn and tend the creatures
who give her food. I have heard it said that Laure would have worked
if her mother had permitted it, but I don't believe it. She had not a
working look. Mademoiselle Laure was too good for the labor of humble
people; she must go to Paris and learn a fine, delicate trade."
"But good came of it," put in Jeanne Tallot, "It proved all the better
for her."
"Let her mother thank the Virgin, then," cried Annot, contemptuously.
"It might not have proved the better; 'it might have proved the worse;
evil might have come of it instead of good. Who among us has not heard
of such things? Did not Marie Gautier go to Paris too?"
"Ah, poor little one, indeed!" sighed the white caps.
"And in two years," added Annot, "_her_ mother died of a broken heart."
"But," said cheerful Jeanne, somewhat dryly, "Laure's mother is not dead
yet, so let us congratulate ourselves that to go to Paris has brought
luck to one of our number at least, and let us deal charitably with Mere
Giraud, who certainly means well, and is only naturally proud of her
daughter's grandeur. For my part, I can afford to rejoice with her."
She rolled up her stout stocking into a ball, and stuck her needles
through it, nodding at the three women.
"I promised I would drop in and spend a few minutes with her this
morning," she said; "so I will bid you good-day," and she stepped across
the threshold and trudged off in the sunshine, her wooden shoes sounding
bravely on the path.
It was only a little place,--St. Croix, as we shall call it for want of
a better name,--a little village of one street, and of many vines,
and roses, and orchards, and of much gossip. Simple people inhabited
it,--simple, ignorant folk, who knew one another, and discussed one
another's faults and grape-crops with equal frankness, worked hard,
lived frugally, confessed regularly, and slept well. Devout people, and
ignorant, who believed that the little shrines they erected in their
vineyards brought blessings upon their grapes, and who knew nothing of
the great world beyond, and spoke of Paris with awe, and even a shade
of doubt. Living the same lives generation after generation, tilling the
same crops, and praying before the same stone altar in the small, quaint
church, it is not to be wondered at that when a change occurred to any
one of their number, it was regarded as a sort of social era. There
were those in St. Croix who had known Mère Giraud's grandfather, a
slow-spoken, kindly old peasant, who had drunk his _vin ordinaire_, and
smoked his pipe with the poorest; and there was not one who did not
well know Mère Giraud herself, and who had not watched the growth of the
little Laure, who had bloomed into a beauty not unlike the beauty of the
white Provence roses which climbed over and around her mother's cottage
door. "Mère Giraud's little daughter," she had been called, even after
she grew into the wonderfully tall and wonderfully fair creature she
became before she left the village, accompanying her brother Valentin to
Paris.
"_Ma foi!_" said the men, "but she is truly a beauty, Mère Giraud's
little daughter!"
"She should be well looked to," said the wiseacres,--"Mère Giraud's
little daughter."
"There is one we must always give way before," said the best-natured
among the girls, "and that one is Mère Giraud's little daughter."
The old _Curé_ the parish took interest in her, and gave her lessons,
and, as Mère Giraud would have held her strictly to them, even if she
had not been tractable and studious by nature, she was better educated
and more gently trained than her companions. The fact was, however, that
she had not many companions. Some element in her grace and beauty
seemed to separate her from the rest of her class. Village sports and
festivities had little attraction for her, and, upon the whole, she
seemed out of place among them. Her stature, her fair, still face, and
her slow, quiet movements, suggested rather embarrassingly to the humble
feasters the presence of some young princess far above them.
"_Pouf!_" said a sharp-tongued belle one day, "I have no patience with
her. She is so tall, this Laure, that one must be forever looking up to
her, and I, for one, do not care to be forever looking up."
The hint of refined pride in her demeanor was Mère Giraud's greatest
glory.
"She is not like the rest, my Laure," she would say to her son. "One can
see it in the way in which she holds her head'. She has the quiet, grave
air of a great personage."
There were many who wondered that Valentin showed no jealousy or
distaste at hearing his sister's praises sounded so frequently to his
own detriment. There was no praise for him. The poor, fond mother's
heart was too full of Laure. Her son had been a bitter disappointment
to her, and, to her mind, was fitted for nothing but to make himself
an adoring slave to his sister's beauty; and this, the gentle,
generous fellow certainly was. He was always ready to serve her; always
affectionate, always faithful; and Mère Giraud, who was blind to, or
careless of, all his loving, constant labor for her own comfort, deigned
to see that he did his duty toward Laure.
"He has at least the sense to appreciate her as far as he is able," she
said.
So when Valentin, who had a talent for engraving, was discovered by some
one who understood his genius, and could make use of it, and was offered
a place in the great, gay city, Mère Giraud formed an ambitious plan. He
should take Laure and find her a position also; she had the fingers of a
fair magician, and could embroider marvelously. So she trusted Laure to
him, and the two bade farewell to St. Croix and departed together. A
month passed, and then there came a letter containing good news.
Valentin was doing well, and Laure also. She had found a place in a
great family where she was to embroider and wait upon a young lady. They
were rich people, and were kind, and paid her well, and she was happy.
"When they first saw her, they were astonished," wrote the simple,
tender Valentin. "I went with her to present herself. My employer had
recommended her. There is a son who is past his youth, and who has
evidently seen the world. He is aristocratic and fair, and slightly
bald, but extremely handsome still. He sat holding a newspaper in his
long, white fingers, and when we entered, he raised his eyes above it
and looked at Laure, and I heard him exclaim under his breath, '_Mon
Dieu!_ as if her beauty fairly startled him."
When the _Curé_, to whom the proud mother showed the letter, read this
part, he did not seem as rejoiced as Mère Giraud had expected. On the
contrary, he looked a little grave, and rubbed his forehead.
"Ah, ah!" he said; "there lies the danger."
"Danger!" exclaimed Mère Giraud, starting.
He turned, and regarded her with a rather hesitant air, as if he were
at once puzzled and fearful,--puzzled by her simplicity, and fearful of
grieving her unnecessarily.
"Valentin is a good lad," he said. "Valentin will be watchful,--though
perhaps he is too good to suspect evil."
Mère Giraud put her hand to her heart.
"You are not afraid?" she said, quite proudly, beginning at last to
comprehend. "You are not afraid of evil to Laure?"
"No, no, no," he answered; "surely not."
He said no more then, but he always asked to see the letters, and read
them with great care, sometimes over and over again. They came very
regularly for six or seven months, and then there was a gap of a few
weeks, and then came a strange, almost incomprehensible, letter from
Valentin, containing news which almost caused Mère Giraud's heart to
burst with joy and gratitude. Laure was married, and had made such a
marriage as could scarcely have been dreamed of. A rich aristocrat, who
had visited her employers, had fallen in love with her, and married her.
He had no family to restrain him, and her beauty had won him completely
from the first hour. He had carried her away with him to make a
prolonged tour. The family with whom she had lived had been lavish
in their gifts and kindness, but they had left Paris also and were
voyaging. The name of Laure's bridegroom was Legrand, and there came
messages from Laure, and inclosed was a handsome present of money.
Mère Giraud was overwhelmed with joy. Before three hours had passed, all
St Croix knew the marvelous news. She went from house to house showing
the letter and the money, and it was not until night that she cooled
down sufficiently to labor through a long epistle to Valentin.
It was a year before Laure returned to Paris, and during that time
she wrote but seldom; but Valentin wrote often, and answered all his
mother's questions, though not as fluently, nor with so many words as
she often wished. Laure was rich, and beautiful as ever; her husband
adored her, and showered gifts and luxuries upon her; she had equipages
and jewels; she wore velvet and satin and lace every day; she was a
great lady, and had a house like a palace. Laure herself did not say so
much. In her secret heart, Mère Giraud often longed for more, but she
was a discreet and farseeing woman.
"What would you?" she said. "She must drive out in her equipage, and she
must dress and receive great people, and I am not so blind a mother as
not to see that she will have many things to learn. She has not time to
write long letters,--and see how she cares for me,--money, see you, by
every letter, and a silk dress and lace cap she herself has chosen in
the Boulevard Capucines. And I must care for myself, and furnish the
cottage prettily, and keep a servant. Her wealth and great fortune have
not rendered her undutiful,--my Laure."
So she talked of Madame Legrand, and so all St. Croix talked of Madame
Legrand, and some, of course, were envious and prophesied that the end
had not come yet, and Mère Giraud would find herself forgotten some fine
day; and others rejoiced with her, and congratulated themselves that
they knew so aristocratic a person as Madame Legrand.
Jeanne Tallot was of those who sympathized with her in all
warm-heartedness and candor.
With her knitting in her hand ready for action, and with friendly
unceremoniousness, she presented herself at the cottage door one
morning, nodding and speaking before she had crossed the threshold.
"Good-day, neighbor Giraud. Any letters from Laure this morning?"
Mère Giraud, who sat before the window under the swinging cage of her
bird, looked up with an air a little more serious than usual.
"Ah!" she said, "I am glad it is you, Jeanne. I have been wishing to see
you."
Jeanne seated herself, smiling.
"Then," said she, "it is well I came."
But immediately she noticed the absent look of her friend, and commented
upon it.
"You do not look at your best this morning," she said. "How does it
occur?"
"I am thinking," said Mère Giraud with some importance of manner,--"I am
thinking of going to Paris."
"To Paris!"
"I am anxious," shaking her head seriously. "I had last night a bad
dream. I wish to see Laure."
Then she turned and looked at Jeanne almost wistfully.
"It is a long time since I have seen her," she said.
"Yes," answered Jeanne in a little doubt; "but Paris is a long way off."
"Yes," said Mère Giraud; "but it appears that all at once I realize how
long it is since I have seen my child. I am getting old, you see. I was
not very young when she was born, and, as one grows older, one becomes
more uneasy and obstinate in one's fancies. This morning I feel that
I must see my Laure. My heart yearns for her, and"--hastily--"she will
undoubtedly be rejoiced to see me. She has often said that she wished
she might lay her head upon my breast again."
It seemed that she was resolved upon the journey. She was in a singular,
uneasy mood, and restless beyond measure. She who had never been twenty
miles from St. Croix had made up her mind to leave it at once and
confront all the terrors of a journey to Paris,--for there were terrors
in such a journey to the mind of a simple peasant who had so far
traveled but in one groove. She would not even wait to consult _Monsieur
le Curé_, who was unfortunately absent. Jeanne discovered to her
astonishment that she had already made her small preparations, had
packed her best garments in a little wooden box, laying the silk gown
and lace cap at the top that they might be in readiness.
"I will not interfere at all, and I shall not remain long," she said.
"Only long enough to see my Laure, and spend a few days with her
quietly. It is not Paris I care for, or the great sights; it is that I
must see my child."
St. Croix was fairly bewildered at the news it heard the next day. Mère
Giraud had gone to Paris to visit Madame Legrand--had actually gone,
sending her little servant home, and shutting up her small, trim
cottage.
"Let us hope that Madame Legrand will receive her as she expects to be
received," said Annot. "For my part I should have preferred to remain
in St. Croix. Only yesterday Jeanne Tallot told us that she had no
intention of going."
"She will see wonderful things," said the more simple and amiable. "It
is possible that she may be invited to the Tuileries, and without doubt
she will drive to the Bois de Boulogne in Madame Legrand's carriage,
with servants in livery to attend her. My uncle's sister's son, who is a
_valet de place_ in a great family, tells us that the aristocracy
drive up and down the Champs Éllysées every afternoon, and the sight is
magnificent."
But Mère Giraud did not look forward to such splendors as these. "I
shall see my Laure as a great lady," she said to herself. "I shall hold
her white hands and kiss her cheeks."
The roar of vehicles, and the rush and crowd and bustle bewildered her;
the brightness and the rolling wheels dazzled her old eyes, but she held
herself bravely. People to whom she spoke smiled at her _patois_ and her
innocent questions, but she did not care.
She found a _fiacre_ which took her to her destination; and when, after
she had paid the driver, he left her, she entered the wide doors with
a beating heart, the blood rising on her cheek, and glowing through the
withered skin.
"Madame Legrand," she said a little proudly to the _concierge_, and the
woman stared at her as she led her up the staircase. She was so eager
that she scarcely saw the beauty around her,--the thick, soft carpets,
the carved balustrades, the superb lamps. But when they stopped before a
door she touched the _concierge_ upon the arm.
"Do not say my name," she said. "I am her mother."
The woman stared at her more than ever.
"It is not my place to announce you," she said. "I only came up because
I thought you would not find the way."
She could not have told why it was or how it happened, but when at last
she was ushered into the _salon_ a strange sense of oppression fell upon
her. The room was long and lofty, and so shadowed by the heavy curtains
falling across the windows that it was almost dark.
For a few seconds she saw nobody, and then all at once some one rose
from a reclining chair at the farther end of the apartment and advanced
a few steps toward her--a tall and stately figure, moving slowly.
"Who?"--she heard a cold, soft voice say, and then came a sharp cry, and
Laurel white hands were thrown out in a strange, desperate gesture, and
she stopped and stood like a statue of stone. "Mother--mother--mother!"
she repeated again and again, as if some indescribable pain shook her.
If she had been beautiful before, now she was more beautiful still. She
was even taller than ever,--she was like a queen. Her long robe was of
delicate gray velvet, and her hair and throat and wrists were bound with
pearls and gold. She was so lovely and so stately that for a moment Mère
Giraud was half awed, but the next it was as if her strong mother heart
broke loose.
"My Laure!" she cried out. "Yes, it is I, my child--it is I, Laure;" and
she almost fell upon her knees as she embraced her, trembling for very
ecstasy.
But Laure scarcely spoke. She was white and cold, and at last she gasped
forth three words.
"Where is Valentin?"
But Mère Giraud did not know. It was not Valentin she cared to see.
Valentin could wait, since she had, her Laure. She sat down beside her
in one of the velvet chairs, and she held the fair hand in her own. It
was covered with jewels, but she did not notice them; her affection only
told her that it was cold and tremulous.
"You are not well, Laure?" she said. "It was well that my dream warned
me to come. Something is wrong."
"I am quite well," said Laure. "I do not suffer at all."
She was so silent that if Mère Giraud had not had so much to say she
would have been troubled \ as it was, however, she was content to pour
forth her affectionate speeches one after another without waiting to be
answered.
"Where is Monsieur Legrand?" she ventured at last.
"He is," said Laure, in a hesitant voice,--"he is in Normandy."
"Shall I not see him?" asked Mère Giraud.
"I am afraid not, unless your visit is a long one. He will be absent for
some months."
She did not speak with any warmth. It was as if she did not care to
speak of him at all,--as if the mention of him even embarrassed her a
little.
Mère Giraud felt a secret misgiving.
"I shall not stay long," she said; "but I could not remain away. I
wished so eagerly to see you, and know that you were happy. You are
happy, my Laure?"
Laure turned toward her and gave her a long look--a look which seemed
unconsciously to ask her a question.
"Happy!" she answered slowly and deliberately, "I suppose so. Yes."
Mère Giraud caressed her hand again and again. "Yes," she said, "it must
be so. The good are always happy; and you, my Laure, have always been
dutiful and virtuous, and consequently you are rewarded. You have never
caused me a grief, and now, thank the good God you are prosperous." She
looked at her almost adoringly, and at last touched the soft thick gray
velvet of her drapery with reverence. "Do you wear such things as this
every day?" she asked.
"Yes," Laure answered, "every day."
"Ah!" sighed the happy mother. "How Monsieur Legrand must adore you!"
At length she found time to ask a few questions concerning Valentin.
"I know that he is well and as prosperous as one could expect him to
be; but I hope"--bridling a little with great seriousness--"I hope he
conducts himself in such a manner as to cause you no embarrassment,
though naturally you do not see him often."
"No," was the answer,--they did not see him often.
"Well, well," began Mère Giraud, becoming lenient in her great
happiness, "he is not a bad lad--Valentin. He means well"--
But here she stopped,--Laure checked her with a swift, impassioned
movement.
"He is what we cannot understand," she said in a hushed, strained voice.
"He is a saint. He has no thought for himself. His whole life is a
sacrifice. It is not I you should adore--it is Valentin."
"Valentin!" echoed Mère Giraud.
It quite bewildered her, the mere thought of adoring Valentin.
"My child," she said when she recovered herself, "it is your good heart
which says this."
The same night Valentin came. Laure went out into the antechamber to
meet him, and each stood and looked at the other with pale face and
anguished eyes. Valentin's eyes were hollow and sunken as if with some
great sorrow, and his large awkward frame seemed wasted. But there was
no reproach mingled with the indescribable sadness of his gaze.
"Your note came to me," he said. "Our mother "--
"She is in there," said Laure in a low, hurried, shaken voice, and she
pointed to the _salon_. "She has come to embrace me,--to make sure
that I am happy. Ah, my God!" and she covered her deathly face with her
hands.
Valentin did not approach her. He could only stand still and look on.
One thought filled his mind.
"We have no time to weep, Laure," he said gently. "We must go on as we
have begun. Give me your hand."
This was all, and then the two went in together, Laure's hand upon her
brother's arm.
It was a marvelous life Mère Giraud lived during the next few days.
Certainly she could not complain that she was not treated with deference
and affection. She wore the silk dress every day; she sat at the
wonderful table, and a liveried servant stood behind her chair; she
drove here and there in a luxurious carriage; she herself, in fact,
lived the life of an aristocrat and a great lady. Better than all the
rest, she found her Laure as gracious and dutiful as her fond heart
could have wished. She spent every hour with her; she showed her all her
grandeurs of jewelry and _toilette_; she was not ashamed of her mother,
untutored and simple as she might be.
"Only she is very pale and quiet," she remarked to Valentin once; "even
paler and more quiet than I should have expected. But then we know that
the rich and aristocratic are always somewhat reserved. It is only the
peasantry and provincials who are talkative and florid. It is natural
that Laure should have gained the manner of the great world."
But her happiness, poor soul, did not last long, and yet the blow God
sent was a kindly one.
One morning as they went out to their carriage Laure stopped to speak to
a woman who crouched upon the edge of the pavement with a child in her
arms. She bent down and touched the little one with her hand, and Mère
Giraud, looking on, thought of pictures she had seen of the Blessed
Virgin, and of lovely saints healing the sick.
"What is the matter?" asked Laure.
The woman looked down at the child and shivered.
"I do not know," she answered hoarsely. "Only we are ill, and God has
forsaken us. We have not tasted food for two days."
Laure took something from her purse and laid it silently in the child's
small, fevered hand. The woman burst into tears.
"Madame," she said, "it is a twenty-franc piece."
"Yes," said Laure gently. "When it is spent come to me again," and she
went to her carriage.
"My child," said Mère Giraud, "it is you who are a saint. The good God
did wisely in showering blessings upon you."
A few days longer she was happy, and then she awakened from her sleep
one night, and found Laure standing at her bedside looking down at her
and shuddering. She started up with an exclamation of terror.
"_Mon Dieu!_" she said. "What is it?"
She was answered in a voice she had never heard before,--Laure's, but
hoarse and shaken. Laure had fallen upon her knees, and grasped the
bedclothes, hiding her face in the folds.
"I am ill," she answered in this strange, changed tone. "I am--I am cold
and burning--I am--dying."
In an instant Mère Giraud stood upon the floor holding her already
insensible form in her arm'. She was obliged to lay her upon the floor
while she rang the bell to alarm the servants. She sent for Valentin
and a doctor. The doctor, arriving, regarded the beautiful face with
manifest surprise and alarm. It was no longer pale, but darkly flushed,
and the stamp of terrible pain was upon it.
"She has been exposed to infection," he said. "This is surely the case.
It is a malignant fever."
Then Mère Giraud thought of the poor mother and child.
"O my God!" she prayed, "do not let her die a martyr."
But the next day there was not a servant left in the house; but Valentin
was there, and there had come a Sister of Mercy. When she came, Valentin
met her, and led her into the _salon_. They remained together for half
an hour, and then came out and went to the sick-room, and there were
traces of tears upon the Sister's face. She was a patient, tender
creature, who did her work well, and she listened with untiring
gentleness to Mère Giraud's passionate plaints.
"So beautiful, so young, so beloved," cried the poor mother; "and
Monsieur absent in Normandy, though it is impossible to say where! And
if death should come before his return, who could confront him with the
truth? So beautiful, so happy, so adored!"
And Laure lay upon the bed, sometimes wildly delirious, sometimes a
dreadful statue of stone,--unhearing, unseeing, unmoving,--death without
death's rest,--life in death's bonds of iron.
But while Mère Giraud wept, Valentin had no tears. He was faithful,
untiring, but silent even at the worst.
"One would think he had no heart," said Mère Giraud; "but men are often
so,--ready to work, but cold and dumb. Ah! it is only a mother who bears
the deepest grief."
She fought passionately enough for a hope at first, but it was forced
from her grasp in the end. Death had entered the house and spoken to her
in the changed voice which had summoned her from her sleep.
"Madame," said the doctor one evening as they stood over the bed while
the sun went down, "I have done all that is possible. She will not see
the sun set again. She may not see it rise."
Mère Giraud fell upon her knees beside the bed, crossing herself and
weeping.
"She will die," she said, "a blessed martyr. She will die the death of a
saint."
That very night--only a few hours later--there came to them a
friend,--one they had not for one moment even hoped to see,--a gentle,
grave old man, in a thin, well-worn black robe,--the _Curé_ of St.
Croix.
Him Valentin met also, and when the two saw each other, there were
barriers that fell away in their first interchange of looks.
"My son," said the old man, holding out his hands, "tell me the truth."