instant she thought it was an old clerk, whom Jim sometimes employed
to carry messages. Then she saw that it was Alec--coming straight
towards her. Her first impulse was to escape from him; but noticing
that his gaze was fixed on the ground, she retreated behind an angle
of the window, and stood watching him.... Poor Alec! He was going away
on a sea-voyage for his health, so Jim had heard it said in the town;
and she formed a hasty resolve to be very kind to the poor fellow. Yet
her vanity felt a prick of pique, as she noticed that his gait was
grown more gaunt, more ungainly than ever; and she resented that his
haggard face, his stubbly beard, which, when he lay ill, had signified
tense tragedy, should now seem simply uncouth. Still, she awaited his
appearance excitedly; anticipating a renewed proof of his touching,
dog-like devotion to her, and with a fresh thrill of unconscious
gratitude to him for having supplied that scene to which she could look
back with secret, sentimental pride.
The maid let him into the room. As he advanced towards her, she saw
him brush his forehead with his hand impatiently, as if to rid his
brain of an importunate thought. He took her outstretched hand: the
forced cheeriness of her phrase of greeting died away, as she felt his
gaze searching her face.
“Let us sit down,” he said abruptly.
“I’m all right again, now,” he began with a brisk, level laugh; and it
occurred to her that perhaps the illness had affected his mind.
“I’m so glad of that,” she stammered in reply; “so very glad.... And
you’re going away, aren’t you, for a long sea voyage? That will do you
ever so much good----”
But before she had finished speaking, he was kneeling on the carpet
before her, pouring out incoherent phrases. Bewildered, she gazed at
him, only noticing the clumsy breadth of his shoulders.
“Listen to me, Ethel, listen,” he was saying. “Everything is
ready--I’ve given it all up--my living--the Church. I can’t bear it any
longer--life without you, I mean.... You are everything to me--I only
want you--I care for nothing else now. I am going away to Australia.
You will come with me, Ethel--you said you loved me.... We love one
another--come with me--let us start life afresh. I can’t go on living
without you ... I thought it would be easy for you to come; I see now
that perhaps it’s difficult. You have your home: I see that.... But
have trust in me--I will make it up to you. Together we will start
afresh--make a new home--a new life. I will give you every moment; I
will be your slave.... Listen to me, Ethel; let us go away. Everything
is ready--I’ve got money--I’ve arranged everything. We can go up to
London to-morrow. The steamer starts on Thursday.”
The sound of his voice ceased. She was staring at the door, filled with
dread lest it should open, and the maid should see him kneeling on the
carpet.
“Don’t,” she exclaimed, grasping his coat. “Get up, quick.”
He rose, awkwardly she thought, and stood before her.
“We were so happy together once, dear--do you remember--in the first
days, when you promised yourself to me? And now I know that in your
heart you still care for me. You said so. Say you will come--say you
will trust me--you will start to-morrow. If you can’t come so soon
I will wait, wait till you can come,” he added, and she felt the
trembling touch of his hands on hers, and his breath beating on her
face.
“Don’t, please,” and she pushed back his hands. “Some one might see.”
“What does it matter, my darling? We are going to belong to one another
for always. I am going to wait for you, darling--to be your slave--to
give up every moment of my life to you.... It’s the thought of you
that’s made me live, dear.... You brought me back to life, that day you
came.... I’ve thought of nothing but you since. I’ve been arranging it
all----”
“It’s impossible,” she interrupted.
“No, dear, it’s not impossible,” he pleaded.
“You’ve resigned your living--left the Church?” she asked incredulously.
“Yes, everything,” he answered proudly.
“And all because you cared so for me?”
“I can’t begin to live again without you. I would suffer eternal
punishment gladly to win you.... You will trust yourself to me darling;
say you will trust me.”
“Of course, Alec, I trust you. But you’ve no right to----”
“Oh! because you’re married, and it’s a sin, and I’m a clergyman. But
I’m a man first. And for you I’ve given it all up--everything. You
don’t understand my love for you.”
“Yes, yes, I do,” she answered quickly, alarmed by the earnestness of
his passion, yet remembering vaguely that she had read of such things
in books.
“You will come to-morrow, darling--you will have trust in me?”
“You are mad, Alec. You don’t know what you are saying. It would be
absurd.”
“It’s because you don’t understand how I love you, that you say that,”
he broke out fiercely. “You can’t understand--you can’t understand.
“Yes, I can,” she protested, instinctively eager to vie with his
display of emotion.
“Then say you will come--promise it, promise it,” he cried; and his
features were all distorted by suspense.
But at this climax of his insistance, she lost consciousness of her own
attitude. She seemed suddenly to see all that clumsiness which had made
her refuse him before.
“It’s altogether ridiculous,” she answered shortly.
He recoiled from her: he seemed to stiffen a little all over; and she
felt rising impatience at his grotesque denseness in persisting.
“You say it’s altogether ridiculous?” he repeated after her slowly.
“Yes, of course it’s ridiculous,” she repeated with uneasy emphasis.
“I’m very sorry you should mind--feel it so--but it isn’t my fault.”
“Why did you say then that before God you loved me, when you came that
day?” he burst out with concentrated bitterness.
“Because I thought you were dying.” The bald statement of the truth
sprang to her lips--a spontaneous, irresistible betrayal.
“I see--I see,” he muttered. His hands clenched till the knuckles
showed white.
“I’m very sorry,” she added lamely. Her tone was gentler, for his dumb
suffering moved her sensibilities. In her agitation, the crudity of her
avowal had slipped her notice.
“That’s no use,” he answered wearily.
“Alec, don’t be angry with me. Can’t we be friends? Don’t you see
yourself now that it was mad, absurd?” she argued, eager to reinstate
herself in his eyes. Then, as he made no answer, “Let us be friends,
Alec, and you will go back to Scarsdale, when you are well and strong.
You will give up nothing for my sake. I should not wish that, you know,
Alec.”
“Yes,” he assented mechanically, “I shall go back.”
“I shall always think of this morning,” she continued, growing
sentimentally remorseful as the sensation of rising relief pervaded
her. “And you will soon forget all about it,” she added, with a
cheeriness of tone that rang false; and paused, awaiting his answer.
“And I shall forget all about it,” he repeated after her.
To mask her disappointment, she assumed a silly, nervous gaiety.
“And I shall keep it quite secret that you were so naughty as to ask me
to run away with you. I sha’n’t even tell Jim.”
He nodded stupidly.
With a thin, empty smile on her face, she was debating how best to part
with him, when, of a sudden, he rose, and, without a word, walked out
of the room.
He strode away across the lawn, and, as she watched his retreating
figure, she felt for him a shallow compassion, not unmingled with
contempt.
George Meredith
By Morton Fullerton
DEEPEST and keenest of our time who pace
The variant by-paths of the uncertain heart
In undiscerned mysterious ways apart,
Thou huntest on the Assyrian monster’s trace:
That sweeping-pinioned Thing--with human face,
Poor Man, with wings hoof-weighted lest they start
To try the breeze above this human mart,
In heights pre-occupied of a god-like race.
Among the stammering sophists of the age
Thy words are absolute, thy vision true;
No hand but thine is found to fit the gage
The Titan, Shakespeare, to a whole world threw.
Till thou hadst boldly to his challenge sprung,
No rival had he in our English tongue.
A Sunset
By William Hyde
[Illustration]
Jeanne-Marie
By Leila Macdonald
I
JEANNE-MARIE lived alone in the white cottage at the far end of the
village street.
It was a long narrow street of tall houses, stretching each side of
the white shining road, for two hundred yards or more. A street that
was cool and shadeful even in the shadeless summer days, when the sun
burned most hotly, when the broad roads dazzled between their avenues
of plane-tree and poplar, and the mountains disappeared from the
horizon in the blue haze of heat.
From her little garden Jeanne-Marie liked to look at the mountains each
morning, and, when for two or three days following they were not to be
seen, she would shake her head reproachfully, as at the failing of old
friends.
“My boys, Jeanne-Marie is only thirty-seven,” Bourdet the innkeeper
said to his companions, as they sat, one May afternoon, smoking under
the chestnut-trees in front of the café. They all looked up as he
spoke, and watched Jeanne-Marie, as she walked slowly past them to her
cottage.
“Bourdet has been paying court,” said Leguillon, the fat, red-faced
butcher, with a chuckle, as he puffed at his long pipe. “You see, he
is anxious we should think her of an age suitable, before he tells us
the betrothals are arranged.”
“For my part I should give many congratulations,” said the village
postman and tobacconist, gruffly. “Jeanne-Marie is worth any of our
girls of the village, with their bright dresses and silly giggles.”
Bourdet laughed. “You shall come to the wedding, my friends,” he said,
with a wink and a nod of the head to the retreating figure; “and since
our friend Minaud there finds the girls so distasteful, he shall wait
till our babies are old enough, and be betrothed to one of them.”
The postmaster laughed with the rest. “But seriously,” he said,
“Bourdet will pardon me if I tell him our Jeanne-Marie is a good deal
past the thirties.”
Laurent, the good-looking young farmer, who stood leaning against the
tree round which their chairs were gathered, answered him gravely.
“Wait, _beau-père_, till you see her on Sunday coming from Mass on M.
Bourdet’s arm; the cap that hides the grey knot of hair at the back of
the head is neat and bright--oh! so bright--pink or blue for choice,
and if M. Bourdet chances to compliment the colour of the stockings--he
is gay, you know, always--the yellow face turns rosy and all the
wrinkles go.” And laughing maliciously at Bourdet, the young fellow
turned away homewards.
Bourdet looked grave. “’Tis your son-in-law that speaks like that,
Minaud,” he said, “otherwise I would say that in my day the young
fellows found it better to amuse themselves with the young girls than
to mock at the old ones.”
“You are right, my friend,” said Minaud. “’Tis the regiment that taught
Laurent this, and many other things. But it is a good boy, though with
a sharp tongue. To these young ones it seems all foolishness to be an
old girl.”
And the others nodded agreement.
So they sat, chatting, and drawing at their long pipes, while the
afternoon sun gleamed on the little gardens and on the closed green
shutters of the houses; and the slow, large oxen lumbered through the
village street, their yoked heads pressed well down, and their tails
flicking unceasingly at the swarm of flies.
Jeanne-Marie stood in her garden, blinking thoughtfully at the flowers,
while she shaded her eyes with her hand. On her bare head the sparse
brown hair was parted severely and neatly to each side, and the deep
southern eyes looked steadily out of the tanned and wrinkled face.
Her light cotton bodice fell away from the thin lines of her neck and
shoulders, and her sabots clicked harshly as she moved about the garden.
“At least the good God has given me a fine crab-apple bloom this year,”
Jeanne-Marie said, as she looked at the masses of rich blossom. On the
wall the monthly roses were flowering thickly, and the Guelder roses
bent their heads under the weight of their heavy bunches. “In six days
I shall have the peonies, and the white rose-bush in the corner is
coming soon,” said Jeanne-Marie contentedly.
II
It was four and a half years ago that Jeanne-Marie had come to the
white cottage next to the mill, with the communal school opposite. Till
that autumn day, when a pair of stout oxen had brought her goods to the
door, she had lived with her brother, who was _métayer_ to M. François,
the owner of the big villa a quarter of a mile beyond the village.
Her father had been _métayer_; and when he died, his son Firman--a
fine-looking young man, not long home from his service--had taken
his place. So the change at the _métairie_ had very little affected
Jeanne-Marie.
But she missed her father sorely every day at mid-day, when she
remembered that there was one less to cook for; that the tall, straight
old figure would not come in at the door, and that the black pudding
might remain uncooked for all Firman’s noticing; and Jeanne-Marie would
put the bouillon by the fire, and sit down and cry softly to herself.
They were very kind to her at the villa, and at night, when Firman
was at the café, she would take the stockings and the linen and darn
them in the kitchen, while she listened to the servants’ talk, and
suppressed her _patois_ as much as possible, for they were from the
North, and would not understand.
Two years after her father’s death, Jeanne-Marie began to notice that
Firman went no more to the café in the evening, and had always his
shirt clean, and his best black smocked cape for the market in the town
on Mondays, and for Mass on Sundays.
“It astonishes me,” she had said, when she was helping M.
François’ cook that day the château-folk had come to _déjeûner_,
unexpectedly--for Jeanne-Marie’s cooking was very good
indeed--“because, you understand, that is not his way at all. Now, if
it were Paul Puyoo or the young André, it would be quite ordinary; but
with Firman, I doubt with him it is a different thing.”
And Anna had nodded her black head sagely over the _omelette aux
fines herbes_ as she answered; “Jeanne-Marie, Firman wishes to marry;
Jeanne-Marie, for my own part, I say it’s that little fat blue-eyed
Suzanne from the _métairie_ on the hill.”
III
Suzanne looked very pretty the day she came home to Mr. François’
_métairie_, leaning on her husband’s arm; but Jeanne-Marie was not
there to see; she was sitting in the large chair in the kitchen of the
white cottage, and she was sobbing with her head in her hands. “And
indeed the blessed Virgin herself must have thought me crazy, to see me
sitting sobbing there, with the house in confusion, and not a thing to
cook with in the kitchen,” she said, shamefacedly, to Marthe Legrand
from the mill, when she came in, later, to help her. “You should have
remained,” Marthe answered, nodding at her pityingly. “You should have
remained, Jeanne-Marie; the old house is the old house, and the good
God never meant the wedding of the young ones to drive away the old
ones from the door.”
Jeanne-Marie drew in her breath at the words “old ones.” “But the book
says I am only thirty-four!” she told herself; and that night she
looked in the old Mass-book, to be sure if it could be true; and there
was the date set down very clearly, in the handwriting of Dubois, her
father’s oldest friend; for Jeanne-Marie’s father himself could neither
read nor write--he was, as he said with pride, of the old school,
“that kissed our sweethearts, and found that better than writing them
long scribbles on white paper, as the young ones do now; and thought
a chat with a friend on Sundays and holidays worth more than sitting
cramped up, reading the murders and the adulteries in the newspapers.”
So it was Dubois who wrote down the children’s births in the old Mass
book. Yes, there they were. Catherine first of all; poor Catherine,
who was so bright and pretty, and died that rainy winter when she was
just twelve years old. Then “Jeanne-Marie, née le 28 Novembre 1854,
à minuit,” and added, in the same handwriting, “On nous raconte qu’à
cette heure-la nous étions en train de gagner une grande bataille en
Russie! Que ça lui porte bonheur!” Eight years later: “Jacques Firman,
né le 12 Février à midi.” It all came back to Jeanne-Marie as she
read; that scene of his birth, when she was just eight years old. She
was sitting alone in the kitchen, crying, for they had told her her
mother was very ill, and had been ill all the night, and just as the
big clock was striking twelve she heard the voice of the neighbour
who had spent the night there, calling to her: “Jeanne-Marie, viens
vite, ta mère veut te voir”; and she had gone, timid and hesitating,
into the darkened room. The first thing she noticed was the large fire
blazing on the open hearth--she had never known her father and mother
have a fire before--and she wondered much whether it was being too cold
that had made her mother ill, as it had little Catherine. She looked
towards the bed and saw her mother lying there, her eyes closed, and
very pale--so pale that Jeanne-Marie was frightened and ran towards her
father; but he was smiling where he stood by the bed, and the child was
reassured. She saw him stoop and kiss his wife on the forehead, and
call her his “bonne petite femme,” and taking Jeanne-Marie by the hand
he showed her the _sage-femme_--the _sage-femme_ who had come the night
before to make her mother well--sitting near the fire with a white
bundle in her arms, and thanked the good God aloud that he had sent him
a fine boy at last. Old Dubois had come in gently, his béret in his
hand, as Jeanne-Marie’s father was speaking, and turning to the bed had
reiterated emphatically, “Tu as bien fait, chère dame, tu as bien fait.”
Jeanne-Marie sat silently going over it all in her mind. “Té,” she
murmured, “how quickly they all go; the father, the mother, old
Dubois, even Jeanne the _voisine_, is gone. I alone am left, and the
good God knows if there will be any to cry for me when my turn comes
to go.” She shut the old Mass-book, and put it carefully back on the
shelf, and she went to the old looking-glass and the tanned wrinkled
face met its reflection very calmly and patiently. “I think it was the
hard work in the fields when I was young,” she said; “certainly Marthe
was right. It is the face of an old woman, a face more worn than hers,
though she is beyond forty and has borne so many children.”
IV
Firman had urged his sister to stay on at the _métairie_ after his
marriage. “You should not go, it is not natural,” he said one evening
a few weeks before his wedding, while they were piling the small wood
in the shed. “The old house will not be the old house without you.
Suzanne wishes it also. _Parbleu!_ Is it the custom for the fathers
to turn their sons out, when they marry? Then, why should I let the
old sister go, now my time for marrying has come? Suzanne is a good
girl and pretty; and has never even looked at any young fellow in the
village--for I, as you know, am particular, and I like not the manners
in some villages, where a girl’s modesty is counted nothing--but blood
is worth the most, _ma foi_, as the old father used to say; and badly
must he think of me to see the old sister making room even for the
little Suzanne.”
But Jeanne-Marie shook her head. “I cannot well explain it, Firman,”
she said. “It’s not that your Suzanne comes unwelcome to me--no, the
good God knows it’s not that--but it would be so strange. I should
see the old mother’s shadow, at the table where you sat, and in the
bed where you lay. I might get foolish, and angry, Firman. So let me
go, and, when the little ones come, I shall be their grandmother, and
Suzanne will forgive me.”
That was four and a half years ago, and it was a very lonely four and
a half years at the white cottage. Even the cooking, when it was for
herself alone, became uninteresting, and the zest went out of it.
Jeanne-Marie, in her loneliness, hungered for the animal life that had
unconsciously formed a great part of her existence at the _métairie_.
Every springtime she would sit, sometimes for hours, in her garden,
watching the flocks of callow geese, as they wandered along the road in
front of the mill, pecking at the ground as they went, and uttering all
the time their little plaintive cries, that soothed her with its echo
of the old home. When the boys in their bérets, with their long poles
and their loud cries of “guà, guà,” drove the cows and the oxen home
from the fields at sunset, Jeanne-Marie would come out of her cottage,
and watch the patient, sleek beasts, as they dawdled along. And she
would think longingly of the evenings at the _métairie_, when she never
missed going out to see the oxen, as they lay contentedly on their
prickly bedding, moving their heavy jaws slowly up and down, too lazy
even to look up as she entered.
Firman loved his oxen, for they were well trained and strong, and did
good work; but Jeanne-Marie would have laughed in those days, had she
been told she loved the animals of the farm. “I remember,” she said to
Marthe of the mill one day, “how I said to the old father years ago:
‘When the children of M. François came to the _métairie_, it is--“Oh,
Jeanne-Marie, you will not kill that pretty little grey hen with the
feathered legs,” and “Oh! Jeanne-Marie, you must not drown so many
kittens this time”: but I say to them always: “My children, the rich
have their toys and have the time and money to make toys of their
animals; but to us poor folk they are the useful creatures God has
given us for food and work, and they are not playthings.”’ So I said
then; but now, ah, now Marthe, it is different. Do you remember how old
Dubois for ever quarrelled with young Baptiste, but when they wrote
from the regiment to tell him the boy was dead of fever, during the
great manœuvres, do you remember how the old father mourned, and lay
on his bed for a whole day, fasting? So it always is, Marthe. The cow
butts the calf with her horns, but when the calf is gone, the mother
moans for it all the day.”
Firman was too busy with his farm and his new family ties to come
much to see his sister, or to notice how rarely she came up to the
_métairie_ now. For Suzanne had never forgiven, and that was why
Jeanne-Marie walked up so seldom to M. François’s _métairie_.
Did not all the village say that it was Suzanne’s doing that Firman’s
sister left the farm on his marriage? That Suzanne’s jealousy had
driven Jeanne-Marie away? And when this came to the ears of Firman’s
wife, and the old folks shook their heads in her presence over the
strange doings of young couples now-a-days, the relief that the dreaded
division of supremacy with her husband’s sister was spared her, was
lost in anger against Jeanne-Marie, as the cause of this village
scandal. The jealousy that she had always felt for the “chère sœur,”
whom Firman loved and respected, leapt up within her. “People say he
loves his sister, and that it is I who part them; they shall see--yes,
they shall see.”
And bit by bit, with all a woman’s subtle diplomacy, she drew her
husband away from his sister’s affection, until in a year or two their
close intimacy had weakened to a gradually slackening friendship.
At night-time, when Firman’s passionate southern nature lay under the
thrall of his wife’s beauty, she would whisper to him in her soft
_patois_, “Love me well, my husband, for I have only you to love;
others are jealous of my happiness, and even Jeanne-Marie is envious of
your wife, and of the babe that is to come.”
And the hot Spanish blood, that his mother had given him, would leap to
Firman’s face as he took her in his arms, and swore that all he loved,
loved her; and those who angered her, he cared not for.
In the first year of their marriage, when Jeanne-Marie came almost
every day, Suzanne would show her with pride all the changes and
alterations in the old house. “See here, my sister,” she said to her
one day, only six months after the wedding, when she was taking her
over the house, “this room that was yours, we have dismantled for the
time; did it not seem a pity to keep an unused room all furnished, for
the sun to tarnish, and the damp to spoil?” And Jeanne-Marie, as she
looked round on the bare walls and the empty corners of the little
room, where she and Catherine had slept together in the old days,
answered quietly, “Quite true, Suzanne, quite true; it would be a great
pity.”
That night when she and Marthe sat together in the kitchen she told her
of the incident.