left your furniture there, since it was yours?”
“How was it? But because little Catherine had slept in the old bed, and
sat in the old chairs, and how could I take them away from the room?”
“Better that than let Suzanne break them up for firewood,” Marthe
replied shortly.
When little Henri was born, a year after the marriage, Suzanne would
not let Jeanne-Marie be at the _métairie_, and she sent Firman down
beforehand to tell her that she feared the excitement of her presence.
Jeanne-Marie knew she was disliked and distrusted; but this blow fell
very heavily: though she raised her head proudly and looked her brother
full in the face when he stammered out his wife’s wishes.
“For the sake of our name, and what they will say in the village, I am
sorry for this,” she said; and Firman went without a word.
But when he was gone Jeanne-Marie’s pride broke down, and in the
darkness of the evening she gathered her shawl round her, and crept up
to the _métairie_ door.
Hour after hour she sat there, not heeding the cold or the damp, her
head buried in her hands, her body rocked backwards and forwards. “I
pray for Firman’s child,” she muttered without ceasing. “O dear Virgin!
O blessed Virgin! I pray for my brother’s child.” And when at length
an infant’s feeble cry pierced through the darkness, Jeanne-Marie rose
and tottered home, saying to herself contentedly, “The good God himself
tells me that all is well.”
Perhaps the pangs of maternity quickened the capabilities for
compassion in Suzanne’s peasant mind. She sent for Jeanne-Marie two
days later, and watched her with silent wonder, but without a sneer, as
she knelt weeping and trembling before the small new bundle of humanity.
From that day little Henri was the idol of Jeanne-Marie’s heart. All
the sane instincts of wifehood and motherhood, shut up irrevocably
within the prison of her maiden life, found vent in her devotion to
her brother’s child. The natural impulses, so long denied freedom, of
whose existence and force she was not even aware, avenged their long
suppression in this worship of Firman’s boy.
To watch the growth of the childish being, the unveiling of his
physical comeliness, and the gradual awakening of his perceptions,
became the interest and fascination of her life. Every morning at
eleven o’clock, when the cottage showed within the open door all white
and shining after her energetic scrubbings, she would put on a clean
bodice, and a fresh pink handkerchief for the little coil of hair at
the back of her head, and sit ready and impatient, knitting away the
time, till one o’clock struck, and she could start for the farm.
She would always arrive at the same hour, when the _métairie_ dinner
was finished, and Suzanne’s fretful complaints: “Jeanne-Marie, you are
so proud, you will not come for the dinner or stay for the supper,” met
only a smile and a deprecating shake of the head.
On her arrival, if Suzanne were in a good temper, she would surrender
Henri to her, and Jeanne-Marie’s hour of heaven reached her. If it were
cold, she would sit in the kitchen, crooning snatches of old tunes, or
chattering soft nothings in _patois_ to the sleeping child. If fine,
she would wander round the garden with him in her arms, sometimes as
far as the road, where a chance passer’s exclamation of “Oh, le beau
bébé!” would flush her face with pleasure.
If Suzanne’s temper chanced to be ruffled, if Firman had displeased
her, or if the fitful jealousy that sprang up at times against her
_belle-sœur_, happened to be roused, she would insist that little Henri
was tired, and must not be moved; and Jeanne-Marie would sit for hours
sadly watching the cot, in which the child lay, not daring to touch him
or comfort him, even when he moaned and moved his arms restlessly in
his sleep.
So her life went on till Henri was about a year old, when Suzanne’s
gradually increasing exasperation reached an ungovernable pitch. To
her jealous imagination it had seemed for some time that the boy clung
more to her sister than to her, and one day things reached a climax.
Jeanne-Marie had arrived with a toy bought for three sous from a
travelling pedlar, and the child had screamed, and cried, because his
mother, alleging that he was tired, refused to allow Jeanne-Marie to
take him or show him the toy. The boy screamed louder and louder, and
Jeanne-Marie sat, silent and troubled, in her corner. Even Firman,
who was yoking his oxen in the yard, came in hurriedly, hearing the
noise, and finding nothing wrong, pleaded with his wife. “Mais, voyons,
Suzanne,” he began, persuasively, “if le petit wants to see his toy, la
tante may show it him, n’est ce pas?” And Suzanne, unable to bear it
any longer, almost threw her child into Jeanne-Marie’s lap, bursting
out, “Take him, then, and draw my baby’s love from me, as you please.
I want no child who hates his mother.” And sobbing loudly, she rushed
out. Firman followed her, his handsome face puckered with perplexity,
and Jeanne-Marie and the baby were left alone. She bent low down over
the deep Spanish eyes that were so like her own, and, while her tears
dropped on his face, she held him to her feverishly. “Adieu,” she
whispered, “adieu, petit Henri. La tante must not come to see him any
more, and Henri must be a good boy and love his mother.” And with one
long look at the child’s eyes fixed on her so wonderingly, Jeanne-Marie
rose softly and left the farm.
From that day started the great conflict between her love and her
pride. Though, to her simple nature, the jealousy of a woman who seemed
to her to have in abundance everything that made life worth living,
was utterly incomprehensible, she said to herself over and over as she
went home, that such a scene as that should never happen again. And as
she lay in her narrow bed that night, and made her resolution for the
future, she seemed to feel the very fibres of her heart break within
her.
Firman came down next day to beg his sister to behave as if nothing had
happened. “You are pale and your face is all drawn, _chère sœur_,” he
told her reproachfully; “but you must not take the things like that. If
poor Suzanne were herself and well, she would never have spoken as she
did.” But Jeanne-Marie smiled at him.
“If I am pale, Firman, it is not for worrying over Suzanne. Tell her
from me, I have been selfish all this time. I will not be so again.
When she can spare the little Henri, she shall send him to play here
with me, by Anna.” Anna was Suzanne’s sixteen-year-old sister, who
lived almost entirely at the _métairie_ since her sister’s marriage.
“And every Sunday afternoon I will come up, and will sit with him in
the garden as I used to do. Tell this to Suzanne, with my love.”
And Firman told her; and mingled with the relief that Suzanne felt,
that the face and figure which had become like a nightmare to her
strained nerves, would appear only once a week at the farm, was
gratitude that her sister had taken things so well. “Anna shall take
him every other day,” she observed to Firman, “she shall see I am
not jealous; it was the pain that took me suddenly yesterday, while
you were speaking. For that matter, in the afternoon there is always
much for me to do, and little Henri can very well go with Anna to the
cottage.”
And no doubt she meant to keep her promise, but she was occupied mind
and body with other things. The second baby would be born in a month,
and in the afternoons, when she sat, languid and tired, she liked to
have her sister Anna by her, and Henri playing by her side.
And after little Catherine was born, there was much for Anna to do.
“I could not well spare her if I would,” Suzanne would say to herself;
“what with two babies and me so long in getting on my feet this time.”
And Jeanne-Marie put on the clean white bodice every day before her
dinner, and sat in the little garden with her eyes fixed on the turning
in the white road that led to M. François’s _métairie_, but it was not
more than one day a week that Anna would come in sight, with little
Henri in her arms. The other days Jeanne-Marie would sit, shading her
eyes and watching, till long after the hour when she could expect them
to appear.
At first, after the quarrel, she had believed in Suzanne’s reiterated
assurances that “Anna would come every other day or so,” and many were
the wasted afternoons of disappointment that she courted in her little
garden. Sometimes she would rise to her feet, and a sudden impulse to
go up to the farm, not a mile away, if only to kiss _le petit_ and come
home again, laid hold of her; but the memory of Suzanne’s cold looks of
surprise, and the “Is anything wrong, Jeanne-Marie?” that would meet
her, was sufficient to force her into her chair again with a little
hopeless sigh. “When the calf is gone, the mother mourns for it all
the day,” Marthe said grimly, when she surprised her one day watching
the white turning. But Jeanne-Marie answered her miserably: “Ah, but I
never butt at my calf, and they have taken it from me all the same.”
There was great rejoicing in the cottage the day that Anna’s white
blouse and large green umbrella came in sight, and the three sat in
the kitchen together: Anna eating smilingly the cakes and biscuits
that grateful Jeanne-Marie made specially for her, and Henri crawling
happily on the floor. “He said ‘Maman’ to Suzanne yesterday,” Anna
would announce, as Jeanne-Marie hurried to meet her at the gate; or,
“Firman says he heard him say ‘Menou,’ when the white cat ran across
the yard this morning.” And many were the attempts to induce Henri to
make these utterances again. “Je t’aime, je t’aime,” Jeanne-Marie would
murmur to him, as she kissed him again and again, and the little boy
would look up at her with his dark eyes, and smile encouragingly.
All too quickly the time would go, and all too soon would come Anna’s
glance at the clock, and the dreaded words: “Suzanne will make herself
angry; we must go.”
And as Jeanne-Marie watched them disappear along the white road, the
clouds of her loneliness would gather round her again.
The Sunday afternoons at the farm were looked forward to through all
the week. There was little Catherine to admire, and in the summer days
there was the orchard, where Henri loved to play, and where he and his
aunt would sit together all the afternoon. If Suzanne were in a good
temper, she would bring Catherine out in her arms, and the children
would tumble about together in the long grass.
And so the time wore on, and as Henri grew in mind and body, and was
able to prattle and run about the fields, Jeanne-Marie hungered for him
with a love more absorbing than ever.
Two years had passed since Catherine’s birth, and for the last year
Anna would often bring her, when she came down to Jeanne-Marie’s
cottage. The one day a week had dropped gradually to every ten days;
it was sometimes only every fortnight that one or both children would
appear, and the days that little Henri came were marked white days on
the simple calendar of Jeanne-Marie’s heart.
V
Now, as Jeanne-Marie stood in her garden this hot May afternoon, and
shaded her eyes, as she gazed at the broad white road, her face was
troubled, and there was a drawn line of apprehension round the corners
of her mouth. For lately Suzanne’s jealous temper had flamed up again,
and this alert jealousy boded evil days for Jeanne-Marie.
Several times within the last two months, little Henri--now going on
for four years old--had come toddling down to the cottage by himself,
to his aunt’s unbounded amazement and delight. “Maman is at market,”
he explained with dignity the first time, in answer to the wondering
queries. “Papa yoked the oxen to the big cart after dinner, and they
went; Anna is talking all the afternoon to Pierre Puyoo in the road;
and Henri was alone. So Henri came; Henri loves his aunt, and would
like some biscuits.” Great was the content of that hour in the cottage,
when Jeanne-Marie sat in the big arm-chair, and the boy prattled and
ate his biscuits on her knee. Anna’s hard young smile, that scorned
emotion, was always a _gêne_ to this harmony of old and young; also,
there was no need to glance anxiously at the clock; for the oxen take
two hours to get home from the market, and who leaves the town till
late in the afternoon? “Anna will miss _le petit_,” Jeanne-Marie
suggested the first time; but he answered proudly: “She will think _le
petit_ takes care of the geese in the meadow; do I not have charge of
all the geese many afternoons? And when I am six years old, papa has
promised I may guard the cows, and bring them home to milk at sundown,
as André Puyoo and Georges Vidal do, each day. Also, why cannot Henri
come to see _la tante_ when he likes?”
But nevertheless, the second and third occasions of these happy visits,
always on market-days, Jeanne-Marie became uneasy. Did Suzanne know
of the boy’s absences? Were those fitful jealousies she now displayed
almost every Sunday, the result of her knowledge? And if she did
not know, would there not be a burst of rage when she heard? Should
Jeanne-Marie risk this joy by telling her of its existence, and
asking her permission for its continuance? How well the hard tones of
Suzanne’s voice, framing each plausible objection, came to her mind,
as she thought. No, she could not do it. Let the child come, and go on
coming every market-day, for as long as he could. She would say no word
to encourage his keeping it secret from his mother; he would tell her
one day, if he had not told her already, and then, if anger there was,
surely the simple words, “May not your child visit his aunt alone?”
must bring peace again.
So Jeanne-Marie reasoned away her fears. But now, as she stood in her
garden, her lips were trembling with anxiety.
Last Sunday she had been too ill to go up to the farm. A sudden
agonising breathlessness, together with great dizziness, had forced
her to bed, and Marthe’s boy had gone up with the message. But neither
that day nor the next, which was market-day, nor any following day,
had Suzanne, or Anna, or little Henri come to see her. And to-day was
Saturday. And she realised wearily that to-morrow she could not get to
the farm; she felt too ill and feeble. “My heart aches,” she said to
Marthe each day, “my heart aches.”
The afternoon waned slowly, and the little group at the café increased
in numbers, as the men sauntered through the village at sundown. The
women stood at their doors, laughing and chatting with one another.
M. le Curé passed down the street, smiling at the children. From the
meadows came the cows and oxen, driven slowly along, their bells
beating low harmonies as they went. The festive air of evening after
a hot day touched all the tiny town. And Jeanne-Marie stood in her
garden, waiting.
Suddenly, while she watched, her heart bounded within her, and a spasm
of sudden pain drove the colour from her face, for she recognised
the figure that was passing from the white turning into the broad
road. Suzanne--Suzanne, who had not been near her cottage for a
year--Suzanne, alone. She pressed her two hands under her left breast,
and moved forward to the gate. She felt now she had known it for long.
All the suspense of many days had given way to a dull certainty: little
Henri was ill, was dying perhaps, and Suzanne had come with the news.
Jeanne-Marie had her hand on the latch to let her through; but she
stood outside the gate, and said hoarsely, “I will not come in.” Her
face was flushed, there was no cap over her coil of brown hair, and
she had on the dark dress she never wore except at the farm. All this
Jeanne-Marie noticed mechanically, while that suffocating hurry at her
heart seemed to eat away her energy and her power of speech.
But Suzanne was going to speak. The colour flamed into her face, and
her teeth ground together, as if to force down the violence of her
feeling, and then she spoke: “Jeanne-Marie, you have done your work
well. We knew you loved our boy. You were careful always to show us
how far greater was your love for him than ours. And as you could not
well turn him against me before my eyes, you waited--_ma foi_, how well
you did it!--you waited till I was well away, and then, you taught
him to sneak down to see you, and sneak home again before my return.
_Mon Dieu!_ it was a worthy son to us you wished to make of him. But
it could not be, Jeanne-Marie. Your good God, you love so well, would
not have it and so;”--there came a sob in her voice that she choked
down, and Jeanne-Marie’s face went a shade greyer as she listened--“it
happened that I was long at the market last week, and you, knowing this
would be so, because it was a big market, brought him home late, when
the fever was springing from the marshes--it was Marguerite Vallée saw
him and came and told me--and now these four days he has lain with
fever, and the officier de santé tells us there grows something in his
throat that may kill him in four days.”
The hard tones left her voice in the last phrase. A shadow of the love
she persuaded herself she felt for Henri sprang up, and choked her
anger. She forgot Jeanne-Marie for the moment, and saw only the little
figure tossing with fever and delirium, and pity for her own sorrow
filled her eyes with tears. She was surprised at the calm cruelty of
her own words. Looking up curiously to see how her sister would take
it, she started, for Jeanne-Marie’s face seemed suddenly to have grown
old and grey. She was struggling breathlessly to speak, and when her
voice came, it sounded far off, and weak like the voice of a sick child:
“You know well that in your anger you have lied to me. Henri may be
ill--and dying; it is not I who have made him so. You shall listen
to me now, though I will not keep you here long; for the hand that
struck my mother suddenly through the heart, struck me while you were
speaking. You have kept me all these days in suspense, and now you have
given the blow. Be satisfied, Suzanne.”
She paused, and the sound of her heavy breathing struck Suzanne’s
frightened senses like the knell of a doom.
“Listen to me. Henri came to me of his own will, and never did I
persuade him or suggest to him to come. Never did he go home later
than four o’clock; there was nothing done in secret; neither I, nor
any in the village, thought it a crime he came to visit me. Often I
have seen him keeping the geese in the long grass of the meadows at
six, at seven o’clock. Seek the fever there--not on the village road
before the sunset. As the good God hears me, never have I stood between
that boy and his mother. Gradually you took from me every privilege
my affection knew; but I said nothing. Ah, I loved him dearly; I was
content to wait. But all that is over. If God grants me life--but He is
good, and I think He knows my suffering all these years--I swear before
Him your house shall be to me a house of strangers, Henri the child of
strangers, and my brother’s face unknown to me. Never shall my father’s
daughter hear again what I have heard from you to-day. All these years
you have played upon my heart. You have watched the suffering; you have
known how each word seemed so innocent, but stabbed so deep. You have
seen your child wind himself round my heart, and every day, every hour,
you have struggled to pluck him from me. Now, I tell you I tear your
children from my heart; you have killed not only my body, but my love.
Go, and leave me for ever, or by my father, I will curse you where you
stand.”
She tottered forward, and with one horrified look at the agony of her
menacing face, Suzanne turned and ran.
And Jeanne-Marie fell all her length on the garden soil.
VI
The miller’s boy saw her there, when he came past a few minutes later,
and not daring to touch her, ran to the mill for help. Marthe and her
husband came immediately and carried her into the cottage. At first,
they thought she was dead, her face was so grey and sunken; but she
came to herself, as they laid her on the bed, and shook her head
faintly when Marthe suggested fetching the officier de santé.
As soon as she could speak she whispered: “No, Marthe, it is the
illness of the heart that killed my mother. The doctor told her she
might have lived to be old, with much care, and if no great trouble
or excitement had come to her; but, you see, I was much troubled just
now, and so it has come earlier. Do not send for any doctor; he could
but call it by the long name they called it when my mother died, and
trouble one with vain touches and questions.”
So Marthe helped her to undress, and to get to bed quickly. The
breathlessness and the pain had gone for a time, though she was very
feeble, and could scarcely stand on her feet. But it was the grey look
of her face that frightened Marthe, and her strained quietness. No
questions could get out of her the story of the afternoon.
“Suzanne came to tell me little Henri was ill,” was all she would say;
but Marthe only shook her head, and made her own deductions.
Jeanne-Marie would not hear of her staying with her for the night, and
leaving her young children alone, and so it was settled the miller’s
boy should sleep below in the kitchen, and if Jeanne-Marie felt ill in
the night, she would call to him, and he would fetch Marthe immediately.
Also, Marthe promised to call at the house of M. le Curé on her way
home. He would be out late, since he had started only an hour ago to
take the Host to old Goupé, who lay dying four kilometres away; but she
would leave a message, and certainly, when he returned, however late,
he would come round. It was nine o’clock before Marthe would leave, and
even then she stopped reluctantly at the door, with a last look at the
thin figure propped up on her pillows. “Let me stay, Jeanne-Marie,” she
said; “you are so pale, and yet your eyes burn. I do not like to think
of the long night and you sitting here.”
“It is easier than when I lie down, which brings the breathlessness.
Do not worry yourself, Marthe, I shall sleep perhaps, and if I need
anything, I have but to call to Jean below. Good-night, and thank you,
Marthe.”
The little house was very quiet. Jean had been asleep on his chair this
hour past, and not a sound came from the slumbering village. There was
no blind to the window of the bedroom, and Jeanne-Marie watched the
moon, as it escaped slowly from the unwilling clouds, and threw its
light on to the foot of the narrow bed.
For a long while she lay there, without moving, while through all her
troubled, confused thoughts ran like an under-current the dull pain
that wrenched at her heart. It seemed to take the coherency from her
thinking, and to be the one unquiet factor in the calm that had come
over her. She was surprised, herself, at this strange fatigue that had
swept away even her suffering. She thought of little Henri and his
illness without a pang. He seemed, like some far-off person she had
read about, or heard of, long ago.
She thought to herself, vaguely, that she must be dying, since she
seemed to have lost all feeling.