ROUSILLE'S LOVE DREAM.
Sunday afternoon had become Rousille's hour for solitude. She could
only go to vespers when the farm-servant was left in charge of the
house; and he had stipulated that he should go once a fortnight to
Saint Jean-de-Mont to his sister, a deaf-mute. Mathurin, who formerly
had not left La Fromentiere, now never missed attending High Mass at
Sallertaine, where he met Felicite Gauvrit, greeted her for the most
part without speaking, in order not to vex his father, watched her as
she moved about the Place, then sat down at one of the inn tables to
luette. As for Andre, he seemed just now to like to be away from La
Fromentiere as much as possible, and on Sundays would be off as early
as he could to the villages on the sea coast, where he sought out old
sailors and travellers who could tell him of the countries where
fortunes were to be made.
Rousille knew nothing of the attraction that led her brother so far
afield. One day she affectionately reproached him with leaving her so
much alone. At first he had laughed, then suddenly had grown serious
and said:
"Don't reproach me with leaving you so much alone, Rousille. Perhaps
you will reap the benefit of my tramps one of these days; I am acting
in your interests."
Thus on the fourth Sunday in January La Fromentiere was in charge of
Rousille. But Rousille did not find time hang heavy on her hands; she
had taken refuge in the threshing-floor at the back of the farm, and
was sitting at the foot of a great heap of straw, her face turned
towards the Marais, visible through a break in the hedge. She would
have been frozen in the north wind that was blowing, had not the straw
all about her kept in the warmth like a nest. Leaning her head back
against it, she had buried her elbows in the soft depths of some loose
straw that had been forked out from the compact mass and not yet taken
away.
The air was so clear that she could see away to the clock tower of
Perrier, to the most remote farmsteads of the Marais, and even to the
ruddy streaks, but rarely visible, of the pine-grown downs that
bordered the sea more than three leagues distant. She was looking
before her, but her mind was travelling beyond her father's meadows,
beyond the great Marais, beyond the horizon--for Jean Nesmy had
written to her. Rousille had the letter in her pocket--was feeling it
with the tips of her fingers. Since morning she had known it by
heart, had said it over to herself many a time, that letter of Jean
Nesmy; the smile it called forth did not leave her lips, save to light
up her eyes. All care was driven away, forgotten. Little Rousille was
still loved by someone; the letter testified to it. It said:
"Le Chateau, Parish des Chatelliers,
"January 25th.
"MY DEAR FRIEND,
"We are all in good health, and I hope it is the same with you,
though one is never sure when so far away. I have hired myself as
labourer in a farm on the back of a hill as you leave the moor of
Nouzillac, about which I have told you. In fine weather one can
see six clock towers round about, and I think that but for the
Mount of Saint Michel one might see the trees of the Marais where
you are. Despite that, I see you always before my eyes. On
Saturdays I generally go home to La Mere Nesmy, and so does my
brother next in age to myself, who also has hired himself to one
of the farmers of La Flocelliere. We talk of you at mother's, and
I often say that I am not as happy as I was before I knew you, or
as I should be if they all at home knew you. At any rate, they
know your name! My sister Noemi and the little ones, when they
come along the road to meet me on Saturday evenings, always call
out to make me laugh: 'Any news of Rousille?' But Mother Nesmy
will not believe that you care for me, because we are too poor.
If only she saw you, she would understand that it is for life.
And I spend my time on Sundays telling her all about La
Fromentiere.
"Rousille, it is now four months since I have seen you, according
to your desire. It was only at the fair at Pouzanges that,
through a man from the Marais who came to buy wood, I heard that
your brother Andre had come home, and that he was working on the
land as the master of La Fromentiere likes those about him to
work; so it will not be very long before I come back to see you.
Some evening I shall come, when the men are still out in the
fields, and you, perhaps, are thinking of me as you boil the soup
in the big room. I shall come round by the barn, and when you
hear or see me, open the window, Rousille, and tell me with one
of your little smiles, tell me that you still care for me. Then
La Mere Nesmy will make the journey in the proper manner, and
will ask your hand from your father, and if he says, Yes, by my
baptism! I swear to you that I will bring you home to be my wife.
You are my one thought and desire; there is no one but you that I
cherish in my heart of hearts. Take care of yourself. I greet you
with my whole heart.
"JEAN NESMY."
One by one, like the beads of a rosary being told, and that pass
between the fingers of the devotee, the sentences of the letter
passed through the mind of Marie-Rose, and her eyes gazing intently on
the landscape, saw only the image of Jean Nesmy. The young girl saw
him in his coat with the horn buttons, his high cheek-bones, his eager
eyes that only laughed for her and for good work done, when at the
close of day, his scythe slung on to his bare arm, he scanned the corn
he had cut, and the sheaves he had tied standing upright in the
stubble.
"Father no longer talks against him," thought she. "He even defended
him once to Mathurin. As for me, he has never found me complain, nor
refuse to do the work I had to do, and I think he is pleased with me
for having done my best. If Andre were to settle down now, and to
bring a wife to La Fromentiere, perhaps father would not refuse to let
me marry. And I begin to think that Master Andre has his reasons for
absenting himself on Sundays, and going off to Saint Jean, Perrier,
and Saint Gervais, as he does...."
She smiled. Her eyes had taken the colour of the fresh straw that
surrounded her. Far away, on the road to the meadows, she saw a fine
strapping youth walking with swaying movement, carrying over one
shoulder a pole to jump the dykes with.
"Driot," she murmured. "I will tease him about his Sunday walks."
Soon she saw Andre come up the hill, skirt the dwarf orchard, then
pass between the leafless hedges in the road. When he was at a little
distance, she coughed to attract his attention. He looked up. His face
which had worn an anxious expression cleared; instead of continuing
his way to the courtyard of La Fromentiere, he jumped over into a
small field that ran beside it, passed the row of hives where the bees
were sleeping their winter sleep, and stopped beside Rousille in the
threshing-floor, leaning on his pole. As he did so, he endeavoured to
assume the half-bantering, half-protecting air he usually adopted
towards his sister, thinking himself obliged to laugh with her as with
a child.
"I was looking for you," he said.
"Oh, you were looking for me very badly then. Your head was bent down.
I believe you were thinking of someone else than me."
"Indeed!"
"Yes. Where do you come from with your pole, you roamer? Not from
vespers?"
"No, from Saint Jean. The water is grand, and jolly cold. On the other
side of Le Perrier there are inundations on both sides of the road."
"You have been calling at the farms, I suppose. Did you stop at La
Seuliere?"
"You do not know me one bit; do you think I should go against...."
He was about to say "against the intrigues of Mathurin, who has
returned to his former infatuation," but he stopped short.
So happy herself that she did not notice his reticence, she resumed:
"To the Levrelles? No? Then to the mill of Moque-Souris, where there
is that pretty little Marie Dieu-donnee, the prettiest miller's
daughter between here and Beauvoir?"
"Still wrong."
Trying to be grave, but without succeeding in hiding the joy that
pervaded her whole soul, she resumed:
"You see, I want you so much to marry, Andre. And such a dear boy as
you are, I think it would be easy. Indeed, you have no idea how
greatly I wish it!"
Andre's face grew careworn again as before, and he said:
"On the contrary I know very well...."
"No. You always think of me as a child. But I am twenty, Driot. I know
when others are unhappy. You, for instance, are grieving over our
Francois; you miss him even more than father does. If you were to
marry, you would forget your sorrow a little. Settled down at La
Fromentiere, married to a girl you love, your thoughts would no longer
be brooding over the past as now."
"And above all," put in Andre, "there would be a housekeeper here, and
little Rousille could marry her faithful swain."
Pressing herself back against the rick with a girlish movement of
shoulders, head, and arms, Rousille raised herself and knelt forward
the better to reach her pocket. Bending over the aperture hidden
amongst the innumerable folds of her dress, she extracted the letter
and gently held up the square of paper to her brother, raising it to
the level of her head and following it with her eyes as she did so.
"I would show it to no one but you, Andre ... read my letter ... I
want to prove that I have confidence in you. And then you will
understand how light it makes one's heart to receive such a dear
letter, so light that one feels like air. It will make you want to
receive such an one yourself."
Andre took the letter without showing the slightest impatience, and
without a word of thanks. But as he read, he grew moved, not with
jealousy of such love, but with pity for the girl, who was dreaming
her dream of happiness between two misfortunes.
For he had definitely decided to leave the farmstead and La Vendee.
Some tidings, in a measure foreseen, dreaded for some time past, very
serious for La Fromentiere, had caused him to come to a decision that
very afternoon. He had returned home, sorrow stricken, weighing all
the pain he was about to cause; and now coming upon this joy, this
hope of Rousille's, those eyes that persisted in smiling at life, that
flower of the ruined farmstead, the feeling came over him that he must
spare the child, at least, that one evening, and not tell her at once
all he knew.
Having read the letter he slowly folded it, and gave it back to
Rousille, who, impatient for an appreciative comment, her whole soul
in her eyes, her lips breaking into a smile, asked:
"Do you think that father would consent, if you were to marry, and if
you spoke for my Jean?"
"Would you go to live in the Bocage, Rousille?"
"I should have to on account of Mathurin, who would never suffer us
near him."
She was surprised at the manner in which Andre looked at her, so
gravely and so tenderly. Taking her hand in both of his, her hand
which still held the letter, he said:
"No, little Rousille, I will not speak for you. But I will shortly do
something else, of which I cannot tell you now, and which will avail
you. The day I do it, your marriage will be assured, unless father
breaks up everything.... And it will not be at the Bocage that you
will make your home, but at La Fromentiere, in our mother's place--the
dear mother with whom we were so happy in the days of our childhood.
Put your faith in what I say, and do not worry about Mathurin."
Letting go her hand, which fell to her side, he added:
"I have an idea that you, at least, will be happy, Rousille."
She opened her lips to speak; he made her a sign that he would say no
more. All the same Rousille asked hurriedly, seeing him move away:
"One thing only, Andre, tell me only one thing. Promise me that you
will always till the ground, for father would be so grieved...."
And he answered:
"I promise you, I will."
Rousille watched him as he went round the corner, and on into the
courtyard. What was the matter with him? What meant those mysterious
words? Why had he spoken the last so sadly? For a moment she wondered;
but the trouble was evanescent. Scarce had solitude returned about
her, than Rousille heard again the words of her love-letter singing
their soft refrain to her. They came into her heart, one by one, like
transparent waves, each opening out in its turn and covering the
shore. "It cannot be a very important secret," thought she, "since
Driot will continue to till the ground, that will make father happy,
and I shall be happy too."
She recalled the smile that had passed over her brother's face, and
thought: "It is nothing," and peace, entire, unquestioning, returned
to her.
In the twilight of that winter afternoon on the borders of the Marais
of Sallertaine, for one short hour there was a girl who smiled at
life, and deemed that bad times were past and gone. She was still
smiling, still sheltered in her retreat amid the straw, when Andre
accosted his father, coming in from the Sunday tour of inspection,
with:
"Everything is certainly going to the bad, father."
The farmer, his head full of the promise of hay and wheat harvests he
had just been examining, answered contentedly:
"No, everything is coming up well. The spring crop of oats is
promising; what is going to the bad?"
"I heard at Saint Jean-de-Mont that there is to be a sale of the
furniture at the Chateau, father!"
For a moment Toussaint Lumineau could not take it in.
"Yes, all the furniture," repeated Andre. "It is advertised in the
papers. See, if you don't believe me, here's the list. Everything is
to be sold."
He drew a paper from his pocket, and pointed with his finger to an
advertisement, from which the old farmer laboriously read:
"On Sunday, February 20th, Maitre Oulry, notary at Chalons, will
proceed to sell the furniture of the Chateau de la Fromentiere. There
will be sold: the entire drawing-room and dining-room furniture, old
tapestries, oak chests, pictures, beds, tables, china and glass,
wines, guns, contents of the library, wardrobes, etc."
"Well?" exclaimed Andre.
"Oh," returned his father, "who would have foretold this eight years
ago? Have they become poor, then, in Paris?" He fell into silence, not
willing to judge his master too hardly.
"It is ruin," said Andre. "After the furniture, they will be for
selling the land, and us with it!"
The head of La Fromentiere, the successor of so many farmers under the
same masters, was standing in the middle of the room; he raised his
weary eyes until they rested upon the little copper crucifix hanging
at the head of his bed, then let them fall again in sign of
acceptance.
"It will be a great misfortune," he said, "but it will not hinder our
working!"
And he went out, perhaps to shed tears.