During the course of his short journey from the wood-skirt to the
inhospitable hostelry of his former acquaintance, Ned could have
thought himself conscious of an atmosphere vaguely unfamiliar to his
recollections of Méricourt. These were not at fault, he felt
convinced, because of climatic changes; because of an aspect of
seasonable reinvigoration in a place that he had last seen sunk in
lethargy; because of an increase in the number of people he saw moving
in the street even. They recognised themselves astray, rather, over a
spirit of demure gravity--a chosen tribe smugness of expression, so to
speak--that seemed to inform with pharisaic _minauderie_ the faces of
many of those he passed by; and even he fancied he could
distinguish--in the absence of this self-important mien--strangers (of
whom there were not a few) from those that were native to the hamlet.
There seemed, in short, an air of wandering expectancy abroad--almost
as if the unregarded village, committed hitherto to a serene
isolation, were become suddenly a field for prospectors, ready to
“exploit” anything from a three-legged calf to a _sainte nitouche_.
Conversing couples hushed their voices as he went by, their eyes
stealthily scanning him as one that had ventured without justification
within a consecrated sanctuary. A berline stood drawn up by the
green-side, its occupants, two fashionable ladies from Liége,
converted from the latest fashion in hats to the last in emotionalism.
The blacksmith, in his little shop under the walnut-tree, familiarly
rallied his Creator from stentorian lungs as he clanked upon his
anvil. Across the _Place_ the ineffective Curé was to be seen
escorting a party towards the church; and, over all--visitors and
inhabitants--went the sweet laugh of May blowing abroad the scent of
woods and blossoms.
Ned turned into the “Landlust,” feeling somehow that his dream of rest
was resolved into a droll. Nor, once within, was he to be agreeably
disillusioned in this respect. The Van Roon seemed to positively
resent his recursion--to regard him in the light of an insistent
patient returning, on trifling provocation, to a hospital from which
he had been discharged as cured.
“What! you again!” she cried sourly. “One would think moogsieur had no
object in life but to canvass the favour of Méricourt.”
Ned, the yet imperturbable, answered with unruffled gallantry--
“Indeed, in all the course of my travels I have never seen anything to
admire so much as madame in the conduct of her business. Whichever way
I have looked since my departure, it was always she that filled my
perspective.”
“If that is the same as your stomach,” said madame rudely, “you will
have found me hard of digestion.”
“At least I am hungry now.”
“That is a pity. You shall pick Lenten fare in the ‘Landlust’ in these
days.”
“Is it not rather a question of payment, madame?”
“No, it is not,” she snapped out viciously. “Moogsieur imposes his
custom on me. He may take or refuse; what do I care, then! We have
nowadays other things to think of than to pamper the gross appetites
of worldlings.”
“A thousand pardons! Is not that a strange confession from an
inn-keeper?”
“You may think so if you like. It makes no difference. To charge an
egg with the price of a full meal--where one is willing to pay it--it
simplifies matters, does it not? Anyhow, to be served by one of the
elect (it is I that speak to you)--that is a privilege your betters
appreciate at its value.”
“Well,” said Ned, “I am at sea, and I have a mariner’s appetite. Give
me what you will, madame.”
She accepted him, as once before, with a sort of surly mistrust. A
former unregenerate friend of his, she said, was seated in the common
kitchen. He had best join this person while his meal was preparing.
Thither, much marvelling over all he had heard and been witness of,
Ned consequently bent his steps. He had not expected much of the
“Landlust,” but this exceeded his devoutest hopes. It had the effect
also of arousing in him something of a wicked mood of indocility.
Entering the long room, the first object to meet his eyes was the
sizar of Liége University. The little round man sat at the table, a
glass of _eau sucrée_ by his elbow, a pipe held languidly between his
teeth. An expression of profound melancholy was settled on his
features. He looked as forlorn as a tropic monkey cuddling itself in
an east wind. At the sight of Mr Murk he started, and half rose to his
feet.
“The devil!” he muttered; and added--not so inconsequently as it
appeared--“You are welcome to Méricourt, monsieur.”
Ned laughed.
“Is it so bad as that?” said he, “and has he become such a stranger
here in these months?”
The other beckoned his old enemy quite eagerly to a seat.
“You have not heard, monsieur? It is improbable, without doubt; yet
Méricourt is at the present moment the centre of much reverent
attraction.”
“Is it? You shall tell me about it, Little Boppard. Yet you yourself
are reprobate, I hear; and you will have your debauch of sugar and
water.”
In reply, the poor body whispered, in quite a chap-fallen and
deprecating manner--
“I am of nature a thirsty soul, monsieur. I must take my smoke, like
the Turk, through bubbles of liquid. What then! this is not my choice;
but it is expected of us in these days of spiritual elevation to drink
at the Fountain of Life or not at all.”
“There are different interpretations as to the character of the
Fountain. Each is a schism to all others, no doubt. Mine, I confess,
is not of sweet water.”
Ned spoke, and rapped peremptorily on the table. M. Boppard’s little
eyes, glinting with prospicience, took an expression of nervous
admiration of this daring alien.
“Ah, monsieur!” he cried in fearful enthusiasm, “do not go too far.
This is not the joyous ‘Landlust’ of your former knowledge; the type
of extravagant hospitality; the club of excellent fellowship. Things
have happened since you were here. Now we drink _eau sucrée_, or,
worse still, the clear water of regeneration itself. Cordials and
cordiality are dreams of the past.”
His voice broke on a falling key. A scared look came over his face.
The cow-like girl had opened the door and stood on the threshold
mutely waiting.
“A bottle of _maçon_,” said Ned, and, giving his order, saw with the
tail of his eye the student’s countenance change.
“A half bottle,” he corrected himself, “and also a double dose of
cognac.”
The girl stood as stolid on end as a pocket of hops.
“Do you hear?” said Ned.
She blinked and lifted her eyelids. A sort of drowsy exaltation
appeared in these days the very accent to her large inertia--its
self-justification, in fact, before some visionary consistory of
saints.
“Do you hear?” said Ned again, with particular emphasis.
“It is not permitted to get tipsy in the ‘Landlust,’” said she, like
one talking in her sleep.
Ned jumped to his feet quite violently.
“Take my order,” he shouted, “or I’ll come and kiss every woman in the
house, beginning with Madame van Roon!”
She vanished, suddenly terrified, in a whisk of skirts, and the door
clapped behind her. The young gentleman laughed and resumed his seat.
“So, Méricourt has found grace?” said he; “and grace is not
necessarily to be gracious, it seems. Yet, you still come here! And
why, M. Boppard?”
The student shook his head. His face had grown much happier in a
certain prospect.
“Why do I, monsieur? Can I say? Of a truth it ceases to be the place
of my affections; yet--I do not know. The bird will visit and revisit
its robbed nest; will sit on the familiar twig and call up, perhaps, a
vision of the little blue eggs in the moss. I have been content here.
I cling, doubtless, to the old illusions that are vanished.”
“Amongst which is the Club of Nature’s Gentry?”
“Hush!”
The wine was brought in as he spoke. For what reason soever, Ned’s
argument had prevailed. Probably decorum would not risk a scene
dangerous to its reputation.
“Hush!” murmured the sizar, twinkling and portentous in one, when they
were left alone again. “It is vanished, as monsieur says. It ceased,
morally and practically, with the disappearance of M. de St Denys.”
“Whither has he gone, then?”
“It is supposed to Paris; and may the curse of God follow him!”
Ned paused in the act of drinking.
“What do you say, M. Boppard?”
“He was a liar, monsieur. He used us to his purpose and, when that was
accomplished, he flung us aside.”
“And his purpose?”
The sizar dropped his voice to a whisper.
“Our queen, monsieur,” he said, “our queen, that represented to us the
beautiful ideal of all our most passionate aspirations! He seemed to
avow in his attitude towards her the sincerity of his code of
honourable socialism. He lied to us all. He converted her nobility to
the uses of a common intrigue; and from the consequences of his crime
he fled like a coward, and left her to bear the curses of her people
and the sneers of the community.”
“Yes?” said Ned; and he took a long draught, for he was thirsty.
Indeed, he had foreseen all this.
The student’s eyes filled with tears.
“She was much to us--to me, this Mademoiselle Lambertine,” he said
pitifully. “If there were mercy in the world, she should have been
allowed to bury her dishonour with her dead child in the church
yonder.”
Ned reached across and patted his companion’s arm.
“You are a very amiable little Boppard,” he said.
“Monsieur,” answered the student, “for whatever you may observe in me
that is better than the commonplace, she is responsible.”
“It shall go to her credit some day, be assured. And now, what is this
other matter? It is not only the fall of its idol, the discovery of
monseigneur’s baseness, that has sobered the community of Méricourt?”
“By no means.”
The student pulled at his pipe vehemently. Coaxing it from the sulking
mood, his expression relaxed, and he breathed forth jets of smoke that
he dissipated with his hand.
“By no means,” said he. “The moral debility that ensued, however, may
have rendered us (I will not say it did) peculiarly susceptible to the
complaint of godliness. At any rate, monsieur, we were chosen for a
high honour, and----”
He paused, sighed, and shook his head pathetically.
“It is true, then, that the virgin revealed herself to the
lodge-keeper?” said Ned. And he added: “Boppard, my Boppard! I believe
you are not, in spite of all, weaned from the fleshpots!”
The student smiled foolishly and a little anxiously.
“Let me tell you how it began, monsieur,” said he. “The bitter scandal
of monseigneur and--and of our poor demoiselle was yet hot in women’s
mouths (ah, monsieur, what secret gratification will it not give them,
that fall of an envied sister!), when an interest of a different kind
withdrew these cankers from feeding on their rose. Baptiste, the
little brother of Nicette Legrand, disappeared, and has never been
heard of since.”
“The child! But, who----?”
“Monsieur, it was the Cagots stole him.”
“Did they confess to it?”
“Confess! the pariahs, the accursed! It is not in nature that wretches
so vile should incriminate themselves. But there had been evidence of
them in the neighbourhood; one, indeed, had been employed by
Draçon--whose farm abuts on the lower grounds of the chateau--to roof
a shed with tiles. This Cagot Nicette had seen upon many occasions
covertly regarding the child--conversing with him even, and doubtless,
with devilish astuteness, corrupting his mind. Two days after the job
was completed and the man disappeared, the unhappy infant was nowhere
to be found. They sought him far and wide. Nicette was
prostrate--inconsolable. She had been foremost in the denunciation of
Théroigne. Now, she herself, desolated, defrauded of him to whom she
had been as a mother--well, God must judge, monsieur. At last the
strange gloating of that sinister creature recurred to her, and she
spoke of it. With oaths of frenzy, the villagers armed themselves and
broke into the woods, where the miscreants were known to sojourn.
Their camp was deserted. They were fled none knew whither; and none to
this day has set eyes on them or the little Legrand.”
“Or questioned, I’ll swear, the unconscionable flimsiness of such
evidence. And Nicette, M. Boppard?”
“She wandered like a ghost; in the woods--always in the woods, as if
she maddened to somewhere find, hidden under the fern and moss, the
mutilated body of her little _fanfan_. You recall, monsieur, the old
eaten tree, the despoiled Samson of the forest, that held the moon in
its withered arms on a memorable night of jest and revel? _Mon Dieu_!
but the ravishing times!”
“The tree, my Boppard? Of a surety I remember the tree.”
“It became the nucleus, monsieur--the clearing in which it stands the
headquarters, as it were, of her operations of search. There appeared
no reason for this, but surely a divine intuition compelled her. At
all periods she haunted the spot. Oftentimes was she to be secretly
observed kneeling and praying there in an ecstasy of emotion. To the
Blessed Virgin she directed her petitions. ‘Restore to me,’ she wept,
‘my darling Baptiste, and I swear to dedicate myself, for evermore a
maid, to thy service!’ One day, by preconcerted plan, a body of
villagers, armed with billhooks and axes, with the Curé at their
head, surprised her at her post. ‘It is not for nothing, we are
convinced,’ said the good father, ‘that you are led to frequent these
thickets. Hence we will not proceed until we have laid bare the ground
to the limit of ten perches, and, by the grace of God, revealed the
mystery!’”
“Well, M. Boppard?”
“Now, monsieur, was confessed the wonder. At the priest’s words, the
girl leapt to her feet. Her eyes, it is said by those that were there,
burned like the lamp before the little altar of Our Lady of Succour.
Her face was as white as _cardamines_--transparent, spiritual, like a
phantom’s against the dark leaves. ‘You must do nothing,’ she
said--‘nothing--nothing. Here but now, at the foot of the tree, the
Blessed Virgin revealed herself to me as I kneeled and wept. Her heel
was on the head of a serpent, whose every scale, different in colour
to the next, was a gleaming agate; and in her hand she held a purple
globe that was liquid and did not break, but round whose surface
travelled without ceasing the firmament of white worlds in miniature.
“Nicette,” she said, in a voice that seemed to have gathered the
sweetness of all the sainted dead, “weep and search no more, my child;
for some day thy brother shall be restored to thee. I, the Mother of
Christ, promise thee this!”’”
“Boppard,” said Ned quietly, “is the description yours or Mademoiselle
Legrand’s?”
“It is as I heard it, monsieur. I have not wittingly intruded myself.”
“Yet you are a poet.”
“But this is prose I speak.”
“True: the prose of a nimble imagination. And, moreover, you are a
student and a philosopher; and you believe this thing?”
Boppard nodded his deprecatory poll.
“Perhaps because I am also a poet, as monsieur says.”
“It is probable. And Nicette is a poet; which is why she walks, as I
understand, in the odour of sanctity.”
“I do not comprehend, monsieur.”
“Why should you wish to? This vision, this revelation--it has proved
profitable to Méricourt?”
“Again, I do not comprehend monsieur.”
With the words on his lips, he pricked his ears to a murmuring sound
that came subdued through the closed lattice. He rose and,
instinctively reverential, tip-toed to the window. Ned followed him.
Across the sunny green, her eyes turned to the ground, her hands
clasped to her mouth, her whole manner significant of a wrapt
introspection, passed M. de St Denys’ little pale lodge-keeper; and,
as she went on her way, men bowed as at the passing of the Host;
children caught at their mothers’ skirts and looked from covert,
wonder-eyed; the fashionable ladies scuttled from their berline and
knelt in the dust, and snatched at and kissed the hem of the
_dévote’s_ garment. She paid no heed, but glided on decorously, and
vanished from Ned’s field of observation.
“She is a poet,” repeated that young man calmly.
The student crossed himself.
“She is a priestess, monsieur,” said he. “She reads in the breviary of
her white soul such mysteries as man has never guessed at.”
“That I can quite understand; and it will be an auspicious day for
Méricourt when they start to build a commemorative chapel.”
“It is even now discussed. Already they have the sacred tree fenced
in, and the ground about it consecrated. Already the spot is an object
of pilgrimage to the pious.”
“As once to the Club of Nature’s Gentry--the ravishing club, oh, my
poor Boppard! Alas, the whirligig of time! But, one thing I should
like to know: to what did Mademoiselle Legrand look for a livelihood
when her master ran away?”
“Doubtless to God, monsieur. And now, the faithful shower gifts at her
feet.”