It was washing day, and Josephine and madame were hanging out the linen
in the orchard. A pair of Papa Lorellard’s blue linen trousers flaunted
it in the sunlight between the two white sheets; and a red petticoat
completed the tricolour. From the schoolhouse across the lane came a
murmur of children’s voices. Old Lorellard’s geese gaggled in the
meadow.
“The colonel is in love with Claire,” said Josephine to her mother.
Madame Lorellard was pegging up a pair of lace-edged pillow slips.
“It is understandable,” quoth the old lady; “I have seen it for days.”
“It is a pity,” said the daughter.
“Why a pity? I do not think that any harm will come of it.”
Josephine grimaced.
“No; they are both too strong, and monsieur is not like other officers.
But it is a pity.”
“Well?”
“That he is married. He would have married Claire.”
“Ma chérie, what a romancer you are!”
“I am not, Maman. And Claire wants him.”
Madame Lorellard’s kind blue eyes grew sharp and questioning.
“Has she told you?”
“Would Claire tell me, or anybody? But she wants him as she has never
wanted a man, and he—he is hers—body and soul. They are in heaven, and
in hell, Maman.”
“How do you know?”
“I have sharp eyes and a heart. My dear Maman, I am a woman, a vain one,
a talkative one, but I love Claire. I am handsome, yes, and I have black
eyes, and a mouth that troubles most men, but this man is different; he
has fallen down at little Claire’s feet. He could not help it, I think.
These things just happen.”
Madame Lorellard went on hanging up her linen. Her ruddy face looked
impressive, untroubled, the face of an old woman who was not easily
shaken. Her blue eyes were proud.
“Yes, it is a pity,” she said, “and yet I clap him on the shoulder for
it. A man of sense, a good man, so merry, and so courteous. He will not
do her any harm.”
“But she will suffer,” said Josephine; “Claire is not like the vain,
light-hearted ones.”
“But it is a triumph,” said the old Frenchwoman; “such a man and an
English colonel, a good soldier. Let her look at it in that way.”
“Claire cares nothing for triumphs. She wants the man—the one man, and
his children.”
“Bless the girl,” said Madame Lorellard, “but if he had married her we
might have lost her. Is not that something?”
“You are growing old, Maman,” said her daughter.
Even the children at the school were aware of a change in Mademoiselle
Claire Vignard, or “la petite mère,” as they called her. She looked sad,
so sad at times; the class noticed it when it should have been absorbed
in its sums. There were moments when “la petite mère” was strangely
inattentive, and she could be caught gazing out of the window at the
white road and the beech trees and the great clouds and the blue sky.
She was like a child whose heart was not in her lessons, and who wanted
to be away somewhere; the class understood that quite well, but the
reason of it was beyond the understanding of the class. Claire had
always been so vital, so smiling, so shrewd, so calm, so full of
interest in her teaching, a little mother who had persuaded the lazy
ones to take trouble. Half the small boys were in love with her. She was
so much prettier, so much more charming than Mademoiselles Epinard and
Fleury, those two rather thin women who were so ready to scold.
And then came that morning when Mademoiselle Claire Vignard worked out a
sum incorrectly on the blackboard, and did not notice it. But Monsieur
Moreau, the schoolmaster, who happened to come into the room, noticed it
and was shocked.
Such a thing had never happened before in Claire’s career.
“Mademoiselle Vignard! It is incorrect!”
“Which, monsieur?”
“The example on the blackboard.”
The class maintained a grave silence. Claire, faintly flushed, had left
her chair and was looking at the chalked figures on the board. Then she
took a duster and a stick of chalk and made the proper corrections.
“I am sorry, monsieur.”