The south wind's secret, when it blows,
Oh, what man knows?
How did it turn the rose's bud
Into a rose?
What went before, no garden shows;
Only the rose!
What hour the bitter north wind blows,
The south wind knows.
Why did it turn the rose's bud
Into a rose?
Alas, to-day the garden shows
A dying rose!
Jeanne had not to wait long. It was only a few days after this
conversation with Victorine,--the big pear-tree was still snowy-white
with bloom, and the tireless bees still buzzed thick among its
boughs,--when Jeanne, standing in the doorway at sunset, saw two riders
approaching the inn. At her first glance she recognized Willan Blaycke.
Jeanne's mind moved quickly. In the twinkling of an eye she had sprung
back into the bar-room, and said to her father,--
"Father, father, be quick! Here comes Willan Blaycke riding; and
another, an old man, with him. Thou must tend the bar; for hand so much
as a glass of gin to that man will I never. I shut myself up till he is
gone."
"Nay, nay, Jeanne," replied Victor; "I'll turn him from my door. He's to
get no lodging under this roof, he nor his,--I promise you that." And
Victor was bustling angrily to the door.
This did not suit Mistress Jeanne at all. In great dismay inwardly, but
outwardly with slow and smooth-spoken accents, as if reflecting
discreetly, she replied, "He might do me great mischief if he were
angered, father. All the moneys go through his hand. I think it is safer
to speak him fair. He hath the devil's own temper if he be opposed in
the smallest thing. It has cost him sore enough, I'll be bound, to find
himself here at sundown, and beholden to thee for shelter; it is none of
his will to come, I know that well enough. Speak him fair, father, speak
him fair; it is a silly fowl that pecks at the hand which holds corn. I
will hide myself till he is away, though, for I misgive me that I should
be like to fly out at him."
"But, Jeanne--" persisted Victor. But Jeanne was gone.
"Speak him fair, father; take no note that aught is amiss," she called
back from the upper stair, from which she was vanishing into her
chamber. "I will send Victorine to wait at the supper. He hath never
seen her, and need not to know that she is of our kin at all,"
"Humph!" muttered Victor. "Small doubt to whom the girl is kin, if a man
have eyes in his head." And he would have argued the point longer with
Jeanne, but he had no time left, for the riders had already turned into
the courtyard, and were giving their horses in charge to the
white-headed ostler Benoit. Benoit had served in the Golden Pear for a
quarter of a century. He had served Victor Dubois's father in Normandy,
had come with his young master to America, and was nominally his servant
still. But if things had gone by their right names at the Golden Pear,
old Benoit would not have been called servant for many a year back. Not
a secret in that household which Benoit had not shared; not a plot he
had not helped on. At Jeanne's marriage he was the only witness except
Father Hennepin; and there were some who recollected still with what
extraordinary chuckles of laughter Benoit had walked away from the
chapel after that ceremony had been completed. To the young Victorine
Benoit had been devoted ever since her coming to the inn. Whenever she
appeared in sight the old man came to gaze on her, and stood lingering
and admiring as long as she remained.
"Thou art far handsomer than thy mother ever was," he had said to her
one morning soon after her arrival.
"Oh, didst thou know my mother, then, when she was young?" cried
Victorine. "She is not handsome now, though she is newly wed; when she
came to see me in the convent, I thought her very ugly. When didst thou
know her, Benoit?"
Benoit was very red in the face, and began to toss straw vigorously as
he looked away from Victorine and answered: "It was but once that I had
sight of her, when Master Jean brought her here after they were married.
Thou dost not favor her in the least. Thou art like Master Jean."
"And the saints know that that last is the holy truth, whatever the
rest may be," thought Benoit, as he bustled about the courtyard.
"But thy tongue is the tongue of an imbecile," said Victor, following
him into the stable.
"Ay, that it is, sir," replied Benoit, humbly. "I had like to have
bitten it off before I had finished speaking; but no harm came."
"Not this time," replied Victor; "but the next thou might not be so well
let off. The girl has a sharper wit than she shows ordinarily. She hath
learned too well the ways of convents. I trust her not wholly, Benoit.
Keep thy eyes open, Benoit. We'll not have her go the ways of her mother
if it can be helped." And the worldly and immoral old grandfather turned
on his heel with a wicked laugh.
Benoit had never seen young Willan Blaycke, but he knew him at his first
glance.
"The son!" he muttered under his breath, as he saw him alight. "Is he to
be lodged here? I doubt." And Benoit looked about for Victor, who was
nowhere to be seen. Slowly and with a surly face he came forward to
take the horses.
"What're you about, old man? Wear you shoes of lead? Take our horses,
and see you to it they are well rubbed down before they have aught to
eat or drink. We have ridden more than ten leagues since the noon,"
cried the elder of the two travellers.
"And ought to have ridden more," said the younger in an undertone. It
was, as Jeanne had said, a sore thing to Willan Blaycke to be forced to
seek a night's shelter in the Golden Pear.
"Tut, tut!" said the other, "what odds! It is a whimsey, a weakness of
yours, boy. What's the woman to you?"
Victor Dubois, who had come up now, heard these words, and his swarthy
cheek was a shade darker. Benoit, who had lingered till he should
receive a second order from the master of the inn as to the strangers'
horses, exchanged a quick glance with Victor, while he said in a
respectful tone, "Two horses, sir, for the night." The glance said, "I
know who the man is; shall we keep him?"
"Ay, Benoit," Victor answered; "see that Jean gives them a good rubbing
at once. They have been hard ridden, poor beasts!" While Victor was
speaking these words his eyes said to Benoit, "Bah! It is even so; but
we dare not do otherwise than treat him fair."
"Will you be pleased to walk in, gentlemen; and what shall I have the
honor of serving for your supper?" he continued. "We have some young
pigeons, if your worships would like them, fat as partridges, and still
a bottle or two left of our last autumn's cider."
"By all means, landlord, by all means, let us have them, roasted on a
spit, man,--do you hear?--roasted on a spit, and let your cook lard them
well with fat bacon; there is no bird so fat but a larding doth help it
for my eating," said the elder man, rubbing his hands and laughing more
and more cheerily as his companion looked each moment more and more
glum.
"No, I'll not go in," said Willan, as Victor threw open the door into
the bar-room. "It suits me better to sit here under the trees until
supper is ready." And he threw himself down at the foot of the great
pear-tree. He feared to see Jeanne sitting in the bar, as she had
threatened. The ground was showered thick with the soft white petals of
the blossoms, which were now past their prime. Willan picked up a
handful of them and tossed them idly in the air. As he did so, a shower
of others came down on his face, thick, fast; they half blinded him for
a moment. He sprung to his feet and looked up. It was like looking into
a snowy cloud. He saw nothing. "Some bird flying through," he thought,
and lay down again.
"Ah! luck for the bees,
The flowers are in flower;
Luck for the bees in spring.
Ah me, but the flowers, they die in an hour;
No summer is fair as the spring.
Ah! luck for the bees;
The honey in flowers
Is highest when they are on wing!"
came in a gay Provençal melody from the pear-tree above Willan's head,
and another shower of white petals fell on his face.
"Good God!" said Willan Blaycke, under his breath, "what witchcraft is
going on here? what girl's voice is that?" And he sprang again to his
feet.