JUST at the foot of the hill, where the bridge crossed the Blanche,
stood one of the oldest houses in Viger. It was built of massive
timbers. The roof curved and projected beyond the eaves, forming the top
of a narrow veranda. The whole house was painted a dazzling white except
the window-frames, which were green. There was a low stone fence between
the road and the garden, where a few simple flowers grew. Beyond the
fence was a row of Lombardy poplars, some of which had commenced to die
out. On the opposite side of the road was a marshy field, where by day
the marsh marigolds shone, and by night, the fire-flies. There were
places in this field where you could thrust down a long pole and not
touch bottom. In the fall a few musk-rats built a house there, in
remembrance of the time when it was a favorite wintering-ground. In the
spring the Blanche came up and flowed over it. Beyond that again the
hill curved round, with a scarped, yellowish slope.
In this house lived Adèle Desjardin with her two brothers, Charles and
Philippe. Their father was dead, and when he died there was hardly a
person in the whole parish who was sorry. They could remember him as a
tall, dark, forbidding-looking man, with long arms out of all proportion
to his body. He had inherited his fine farm from his father, and had
added to and improved it. He had always been prosperous, and was
considered the wealthiest man in the parish. He was inhospitable, and
became more taciturn and morose after his wife died. His pride was
excessive and kept him from associating with his neighbors, although he
was in no way above them. Very little was known about his manner of
life, and there was a mystery about his father’s death. For some time
the old man had not been seen about the place, when one day he came from
the city, dead, and in his coffin, which was thought strange. This gave
rise to all sorts of rumor and gossip; but the generally accredited
story was, that there was insanity in the family and that he had died
crazy.
However cold Isidore Desjardin was to his neighbors, no one could have
charged him with being unkind or harsh with his children, and as they
grew up he gave them all the advantages which it was possible for them
to have. Adèle went for a year to the Convent of the Sacre Cœur in the
city, and could play tunes on the piano when she came back; so that she
had to have a piano of her own, which was the first one ever heard in
Viger. She was a slight, angular girl, with a dark, thin face and black
hair and eyes. She looked like her father, and took after him in many
ways. Charles, the elder son, was like his grandfather, tall and
muscular, with a fine head and a handsome face. He was studious and read
a great deal, and was always talking to the curé about studying the law.
Philippe did not care about books; his father could never keep him at
school. He was short and thick-set and had merry eyes, set deep in his
head. “Some one must learn to look after things,” he said, and when his
father died he took sole charge of everything.
If the Desjardins were unsociable with others, they were happy among
themselves. Almost every evening during the winter, when the work was
done, they would light up the front room with candles, and Adèle would
play on the piano and sing. Charles would pace to and fro behind her,
and Philippe would thrust his feet far under the stove, that projected
from the next room through the partition, and fall fast asleep. Her
songs were mostly old French songs, and she could sing “Partant pour la
Syrie” and “La Marseillaise.” This last was a favorite with Charles; he
could not sing himself, but he accompanied the music by making wild
movements with his arms, tramping heavily up and down before the piano,
and shouting out so loudly as to wake Philippe, “Aux armes, citoyens!”
On fine summer evenings Philippe and Adèle would walk up and down the
road, watching the marsh fire-flies, and pausing on the bridge to hear
the fish jump in the pool, and the deep, vibrant croak of the distant
frogs. It was not always Philippe who walked there with Adèle; he
sometimes sat on the veranda and watched her walk with some one else. He
would have waking dreams, as he smoked, that the two figures moving
before him were himself and some one into whose eyes he was looking.
At last it came to be reality for him, and then he could not sit quietly
and watch the lovers; he would let his pipe go out, and stride
impatiently up and down the veranda. And on Sunday afternoons he would
harness his horse, dress himself carefully, and drive off with short
laughs, and twinklings of the eyes, and wavings of the hands. They were
evidently planning the future; and it seemed a distance of vague
happiness.
Charles kept on his wonted way; if they talked in the parlor, they could
hear him stirring upstairs; if they strolled in the road, they could see
his light in the window. Philippe humored his studious habits; he only
worked in the mornings; in the afternoons he read, history principally.
His favorite study was the “Life of Napoleon Buonaparte,” which seemed
to absorb him completely. He was growing more retired and preoccupied
every day,—lost in deep reveries, swallowed of ambitious dreams.
It had been a somewhat longer day than usual in the harvest-field, and
it was late when the last meal was ready. Philippe, as he called
Charles, from the foot of the stair, could hear him walking up and down,
seemingly reading out loud, and when he received no response to his
demand he went up the stairs. Pushing open the door, he saw his brother
striding up and down the room, with his hands clasped behind him and his
head bent, muttering to himself.
“Charles!” He seemed to collect himself, and looked up. “Come down to
supper!” They went downstairs together. Adèle and Philippe kept up a
conversation throughout the meal, but Charles hardly spoke. Suddenly he
pushed his plate away and stood upright, to his full height; a look of
calm, severe dignity came over his face.
“I!” said he; “I am the Great Napoleon!”
“Charles!” cried Adèle, “what is the matter?”
“The prosperity of the nation depends upon the execution of my plans.
Go!” said he, dismissing some imaginary person with an imperious
gesture.
They sat as if stunned, and between them stood this majestic figure with
outstretched hand. Then Charles turned away and commenced to pace the
room.
“It has come!” sobbed Adèle, as she sank on her knees beside the table.
“There is only one thing to do,” said Philippe, after some hours of
silence. “It is hard; but there is only one thing to do.” The room was
perfectly dark; he stood in the window, where he had seen the light die
out of the sky, and now in the marshy field he saw the fireflies gleam.
He knew that Adèle was in the dark somewhere beside him, for he could
hear her breathe. “We must cut ourselves off; we must be the last of our
race.” In those words, which in after years were often on his lips, he
seemed to find some comfort, and he continued to repeat them to himself.
Charles lay in bed in a sort of stupor for three days. On Sunday morning
he rose. The church bells were ringing. He met Philippe in the hall.
“Is this Sunday?” he asked.
“Yes.”
“Come here!” They went into the front room.
“This is Sunday, you say. The last thing I remember was you telling me
to go in—that was Wednesday. What has happened?” Philippe dropped his
head in his hands.
“Tell me, Philippe, what has happened?”
“I cannot.”
“I must know, Philippe; where have I been?”
“On Wednesday night,” said he, as if the words were choking him, “you
said, ‘I am the Great Napoleon!’ Then you said something about the
nation, and you have not spoken since.”
Charles dropped on his knees beside the table against which Philippe was
leaning. He hid his face in his arms. Philippe, reaching across, thrust
his fingers into his brother’s brown hair. The warm grasp came as an
answer to all Charles’s unasked questions; he knew that, whatever might
happen, his brother would guard him.
For a month or two he lay wavering between two worlds; but when he saw
the first snow, and lost sight of the brown earth, he at once commenced
to order supplies, to write despatches, and to make preparations for the
gigantic expedition which was to end in the overthrow of the Emperor of
all the Russias. And the snow continues to bring him this activity;
during the summer, he is engaged, with no very definite operations, in
the field, but when winter comes he always prepares for the invasion of
Russia. With the exception of certain days of dejection and trouble,
which Adèle calls the Waterloo days, in the summer he is triumphant with
perpetual victory. On a little bare hill, about a mile from the house,
from which you can get an extensive view of the sloping country, he
watches the movements of the enemy. The blasts at the distant quarries
sound in his ears like the roar of guns. Beside him the old gray horse,
that Philippe has set apart for his service, crops the grass or stands
for hours patiently. Down in the shallow valley the Blanche runs,
glistening; the mowers sway and bend; on the horizon shafts of smoke
rise, little clouds break away from the masses and drop their quiet
shadows on the fields. And through his glass Charles watches the moving
shadows, the shafts of smoke, and the swaying mowers, watches the
distant hills fringed with beech-groves. He despatches his aides-de-camp
with important orders, or rides down the slope to oversee the fording of
the Blanche. Half-frightened village boys hide in the long grass to hear
him go muttering by. In the autumn he comes sadly up out of the valley,
leading his horse, the rein through his arm and his hands in his
coat-sleeves. The sleet dashes against him, and the wind rushes and
screams around him, as he ascends the little knoll. But whatever the
weather, Philippe waits in the road for him and helps him dismount.
There is something heroic in his short figure.
“Sire, my brother!” he says;—“Sire let us go in!”
“Is the King of Rome better?”
“Yes.”
“And the Empress?”
“She is well.”
Only once has a gleam of light pierced these mists. It was in the year
when, as Adèle said, he had had two Waterloos and had taken to his bed
in consequence. One evening Adèle brought him a bowl of gruel. He stared
like a child awakened from sleep when she carried in the lamp. She
approached the bed, and he started up.
“Adèle!” he said, hoarsely, and pulling her face down, kissed her lips.
For a moment she had hope, but with the next week came winter; and he
commenced his annual preparations for the invasion of Russia.
THE WOOING OF MONSIEUR
CUERRIER.
IT had been one of those days that go astray in the year, and carry
the genius of their own month into the alien ground of another. This one
had mistaken the last month of spring for the last month of summer, and
had lighted a May day with an August sun. The tender foliage of the
trees threw almost transparent shadows, and the leaves seemed to burn
with a green liquid fire in the windless air. Toward noon the damp
fields commenced to exhale a moist haze that spread, gauze-like, across
the woods. Growing things seemed to shrink from this heavy burden of
sun, and if one could have forgotten that there were yet trilliums in
the woods, he might have expected summer sounds on the summer air. After
the sun had set the atmosphere hung dense, falling into darkness without
a movement, and when night had come the sultry air was broken by flashes
of pale light, that played fitfully and without direction. People sat on
their door-steps for air, or paced the walks languidly. It was not a
usual thing for Monsieur Cuerrier to go out after nightfall; his shop
was a general rendezvous, and the news and the gossip of the
neighborhood came to him without his search. But something had been
troubling him all day, and at last, when his evening mail was closed, he
put on his boots and went out. He sauntered down the street in his shirt
sleeves, with his fingers in his vest pockets. His face did not lose its
gravity until he had seated himself opposite his friend Alexis Girouard,
and put a pipe between his teeth. Then he looked over the candle which
stood between them, and something gleamed in his eye; he nursed his
elbow and surveyed his friend. Alexis Girouard was a small man, with
brown side-whiskers; his face was so round, and the movements of his
person so rapid, that he looked like a squirrel whose cheeks are
distended with nuts. By occupation he was a buyer of butter and eggs,
and went about the country in a calash, driving his bargains. This
shrewd fellow, whom no one could get the better of at trade, was ruled
by his maiden sister with a rod of iron. He even enjoyed the friendship
of Cuerrier by sufferance; their interviews were carried on almost
clandestinely, with the figure of the terrible Diana always imminent.
When a sufficient cloud of smoke was spread around the room, Cuerrier
asked, “Where is she?” Alexis darted a glance in the direction of the
village, removing his pipe and pointing to the same quarter; then he
heaved a relieved sigh, and commenced smoking again.
“So you are sure she’s out?” said Cuerrier.
Alexis looked uneasy. “No,” he answered, “I can’t be sure she’s out.”
Cuerrier burst into a hearty laugh. Alexis stepped to the door and
listened; when he came back and sat down, Cuerrier said, without looking
at him, “Look here, Alexis, I’m going to get married.”
His companion started so that he knocked some of the ashes from his
pipe, then with a nervous jump he snatched the candle and went into the
kitchen. Cuerrier, left in the dark, shook with silent laughter. Alexis
came back after making sure that Diana was not there, and before seating
himself he held the candle close to his friend’s face and surveyed him
shrewdly.
“So, are you not mad?”
“No, I’m not mad.”
Alexis sat down, very much troubled in mind. “You see I’m not young, and
the mother is getting old—see? Now, last week she fell down into the
kitchen.”
“Well, your getting married won’t prevent her falling into the kitchen.”
“It is not that so much, Alexis, my good friend, but if you had no one
to look after things—” here Alexis winced—“you would perhaps think of
it too.”
“But you are old—how old?”
Cuerrier took his pipe from his mouth and traced in the air what to
Alexis’s eyes looked like the figure fifty. Cuerrier offered him the
candle. “There is not a gray hair in my head.” Girouard took the light
and glanced down on his friend’s shock of brown hair so finely
disordered. He sat down satisfied.
“To whom now—tell me what charming girl is to be the postmistress of
Viger; is it the Madame Laroque?”
Cuerrier broke again into one of his valiant laughs.
“Guess again,” he cried, “you are near it. You’ll burn yourself next
time.”
“Not the second cousin—not possible—not Césarine Angers?”
Cuerrier, grown more sober, had made various signs of acquiescence.
“And what will your friend the widow say?”
“See here, Alexis, she’s—” he was going to say something
violent—“she’s one of the troubles.”
“Bah! Who’s afraid of her! If you had Diana to deal with, now.”
“Well, Alexis, my good friend, that is it. Could you not drop a little
hint to the widow some time? Something like this——” he was silent.
“Something like a dumb man, eh?”
“Paufh! I have no way with the women, you will make a little hint to the
widow.”
Just then there was a sound of footsteps on the walk. Alexis promptly
blew out the candle, grasped his friend by the arm, and hurried him
through the dark to the door. There he thrust his hat into his hand, and
saying in his ear, “Good-night—good luck,” bolted the door after him.
The night had changed its mood. A gentle breeze, laden with soft
moisture, blew from the dark woods; the mist was piled in a gray mass
along the horizon; and in spaces of sky as delicately blue as blanched
violets, small stars flashed clearly.
Cuerrier pursed up his lips and whistled the only tune he knew, one from
“La Fille de Madame Angot.” He was uneasy, too uneasy to follow the
intricacies of his tune, and he stopped whistling. He had told his
friend that he was going to marry, and had mentioned the lady’s name;
but what right had he to do that? “Old fool!” he said to himself. He
remembered his feuds with his love’s guardian, some of them of years’
standing; he thought of his age, he ran through the years he might
expect to live, and ended by calculating how much he was worth, valuing
his three farms in an instant. He felt proud after that, and Césarine
Angers did not seem quite so far off. He resolved, just before sleep
caught him, to open the campaign at once, with the help of Alexis
Girouard; but in the dream that followed he found himself successfully
wooing the widow, wooing her with sneers and gibes, and rehearsals of
the old quarrels that seemed to draw her smilingly toward him, as if
there was some malign influence at work translating his words into
irresistible phrases of endearment.
* * * * *
Monsieur Cuerrier commenced to wear a gallant blue waistcoat all dotted
with white spots, and a silk necktie with fringed ends. “You see I am in
the fashion now,” he explained to his friends. Villeblanc, the
superannuated hairdresser, eyed him critically and commenced to suspect
him. He blew a whistle of gratification when, one evening in mid-June,
he saw the shy Cuerrier drop a rose, full blown, at the feet of Césarine
Angers. His gratification was not unmixed when he saw Césarine pick it
up and carry it away, blushing delicately. Cuerrier tried to whistle “La
Fille de Madame Angot,” but his heart leaped into his throat, and his
lips curled into a nervous smile.
“So—so!” said Villeblanc. “So—so! I think I’ll curl my gentleman’s wig
for him.”
He was not unheedful of the beauty of Césarine. He spoke a word of
enigmatical warning to the widow. “You had better put off your weeds.
Are we not going to have a wedding?”
This seed fell upon ready ground, and bore an unexpected shoot. From
that day the widow wore her best cap on week days. Then along came the
good friend, Alexis Girouard, with his little hint. “My friend Cuerrier
wants to get married; he’s as shy as a bird, but don’t be hard on him.”
The plant blossomed at once. The widow shook her finger at her image in
the glass, took on all the colors of the rainbow, and dusted off a
guitar of her youth.
Cuerrier came in the evenings and sat awhile with the widow, and that
discreet second cousin, hiding her withered rose. Sometimes also with a
stunted farmer from near Viger, who wore shoe-packs and smelt of native
tobacco and oiled leather. This farmer was designed by the widow for
that rebel Césarine, who still resisted behind her barricade, now
strengthened by secret supplies of roses from an official of the
government itself.
“But it is high time to speak,” thought Cuerrier, and one night, when
there was not a hint of native tobacco in the air, he said:
“Madame Laroque, I am thinking now of what I would like to happen to me
before I grow an old man, and I think to be married would be a good
thing. If you make no objection, I would marry the beautiful Césarine
here.”
The widow gathered her bitter fruit. “Old beast!” she cried, stamping on
the guitar; “old enough to be her great-grandfather!”
She drove the bewildered postmaster out of the house, and locked
Césarine into her room. She let her come down to work, but watched her
like a cat. Forty times a day she cried out, “The old scoundrel!” and
sometimes she would break a silence with a laugh of high mockery, that
ended with the phrase, “The idea!” that was like the knot to a
whip-lash. She even derided Cuerrier from her chamber window if he dared
to walk the street. The postmaster bore it; he pursed up his lips to
whistle, and said, “Wait.” He also went to see his friend Alexis. “I
have a plan, Alexis,” he said, “if Diana were only out of the road.” But
Diana was in the road, she was in league with the widow. “Fancy!” she
cried, fiercely, “what is to become of us when old men behave so. Why,
the next thing I know, Alexis—_Alexis_ will want to get married.”
Whatever Cuerrier’s plan was, he got no chance to impart it. Diana was
always in the road, and reported everything to the widow; she, in turn,
watched Césarine. But one night, when Alexis was supposed to be away, he
appeared suddenly in Cuerrier’s presence. He had come back unexpectedly,
and had not gone home first. The plan was imparted to him. “But to bring
the calash out of the yard at half-past twelve at night without Diana
hearing, never—never—she has ears like a watch-dog.” But he pledged
himself to try. The widow saw him depart, and she and Diana expected a
_coup d’état_. Madame Laroque turned the key on Césarine, and fed her on
bread and water; Diana locked her brother’s door every night, when she
knew he was in bed, much to Alexis’s perplexity.
The lane that separated the widow’s house from Cuerrier’s was just nine
feet wide. The postmaster had reason to know that; Madame Laroque had
fought him for years, saying that he had built on her land. At last they
had got a surveyor from the city, who measured it with his chain. The
widow flew at him. He shrugged his shoulders. “The Almighty made this
nine feet,” he said, “you cannot turn the world upside down.”
“Nine feet,” said Cuerrier to himself, “nine feet, and two are eleven.”
With that length in his head he walked over to the carpenter’s. That
evening he contemplated a two-inch plank eleven feet long in his
kitchen. The same evening Alexis was deep in dissimulation. He was
holding up an image of garrulous innocence to Diana, who glared at it
suspiciously.
The postmaster bored a small hole through the plank about two inches
from one end, through this he ran the end of a long rope and knotted it
firmly. Then he carried the plank upstairs into a small room over the
store. Opposite the window of this room there was a window in Madame
Laroque’s house.
“Good-night, sweet dreams,” cried Alexis to Diana, as, cold with
excitement, he staggered upstairs. He made all the movements of
undressing, but he did not undress; then he gradually quieted down and
sat shivering near the window. In a short time Diana crept up and locked
his door. It took him an hour to gain courage enough to throw his boots
out of the window; he followed them, slipping down the post of the
veranda. He crept cautiously into the stable; his horse was ready
harnessed and he led her out, quaking lest she should whinny. The calash
was farther back in the yard than usual; to drive out he would have to
pass Diana’s window. Just as he took the reins in his hand the horse
gave a loud, fretful neigh; he struck her with the whip, but she would
not stir. He struck her again, and, as she bounded past the window it
was raised, and something white appeared. Alexis, glancing over his
shoulder, gave a hoarse shout, to relieve his excitement; he had seen
the head of the chaste Diana.
Cuerrier let down the top window-sash about two inches, then he raised
the lower sash almost to its full height, and passed the end of the rope
from the outside through the upper aperture into the room, and tied it
to a nail. Then he pushed the plank out of the window, and let it drop
until it swung by the rope; then he lifted it up hand over hand till the
end rested on the sill. Adjusting it so as to leave a good four inches
to rest on the opposite ledge, he lowered away his rope until the end of
the plank reached the opposite side, and there was a strong bridge from
Madame Laroque’s house to his own. He took a stout pole and tapped
gently on the window. Césarine was stretched on her bed, sleeping
lightly. The tapping woke her; she rose on her elbow; the sound came
again; she went to the window and raised a corner of the curtain.
Cuerrier flashed his lantern across the glass. Césarine put up the
window quietly. She heard Cuerrier calling her assuringly. She crept out
on the plank, and put the window down. Then she stood up, and, aided by
the stout pole, which the postmaster held firmly, she was soon across
the abyss. The plank was pulled in, the window shut down, and all trace
of the exploit had vanished.
At sunrise, pausing after the ascent of a hill, they looked back, and
Césarine thought she saw, like a little silver point in the rosy light,
the steeple of the far St. Joseph’s, and below them, from a hollow
filled with mist, concealing the houses, rose the tower and dome of the
parish church of St. Valérie.
A week after, when the farmer from near Viger came into the post-office
for his mail, bearing the familiar odor of native tobacco, the new
postmistress of Viger, setting the tips of her fingers on the counter,
and leaning on her pretty wrists until four dimples appeared on the back
of each of her hands, said, “I have nothing for you.”
The rage of Madame Laroque was less than her curiosity to know how
Césarine had effected her escape. She made friends with her, and wore a
cheerful face, but Césarine was silent. “Tell her ‘birds fly,’” said
Cuerrier. Exasperated, at last, the widow commenced a petty revenge. She
cooked a favorite dinner of Cuerrier’s, and left her kitchen windows
open to fill his house with the odor. But, early that morning, the
postmaster had gone off to St. Valérie to draw up a lease, and had taken
his wife with him. About noon he had stopped to water his horse, and had
climbed out of his calash to pluck some asters; Césarine decked her hat
with them, and sang a light song—she had learned the air from “La Fille
de Madame Angot.”