“Do you dare to tell me, mademoiselle, that a man did not come under
your window and talk to you of marriage?”
Persecution had taught Pierrette the wariness of slaves; so she answered
bravely:--
“I don’t know what you mean,--”
“Who means?--your dog?” said Sylvie, sharply.
“I should have said ‘cousin,’” replied the girl, humbly.
“And didn’t you get up and go in your bare feet to the window?--which
will give you an illness; and serve you right, too. And perhaps you
didn’t talk to your lover, either?”
“No, cousin.”
“I know you have many faults, but I did not think you told lies. You
had better think this over, mademoiselle; you will have to explain this
affair to your cousin and to me, or your cousin will be obliged to take
severe measures.”
The old maid, exasperated by jealousy and curiosity, meant to frighten
the girl. Pierrette, like all those who suffer more than they have
strength to bear, kept silence. Silence is the only weapon by which such
victims can conquer; it baffles the Cossack charges of envy, the savage
skirmishings of suspicion; it does at times give victory, crushing and
complete,--for what is more complete than silence? it is absolute; it
is one of the attributes of infinity. Sylvie watched Pierrette narrowly.
The girl colored; but the color, instead of rising evenly, came out in
patches on her cheekbones, in burning and significant spots. A mother,
seeing that symptom of illness, would have changed her tone at once; she
would have taken the child on her lap and questioned her; in fact, she
would long ago have tenderly understood the signs of Pierrette’s pure
and perfect innocence; she would have seen her weakness and known that
the disturbance of the digestive organs and the other functions of the
body was about to affect the lungs. Those eloquent patches would have
warned her of an imminent danger. But an old maid, one in whom the
family instincts have never been awakened, to whom the needs of
childhood and the precautions required for adolescence were unknown, had
neither the indulgence nor the compassionate intelligence of a mother;
such sufferings as those of Pierrette, instead of softening her heart
only made it more callous.
“She blushes, she is guilty!” thought Sylvie.
Pierrette’s silence was thus interpreted to her injury.
“Pierrette,” continued Sylvie, “before your cousin comes down we must
have some talk together. Come,” she said, in a rather softer tone,
“shut the street door; if any one comes they will rung and we shall hear
them.”
In spite of the damp mist which was rising from the river, Sylvie took
Pierrette along the winding gravel path which led across the lawn to the
edge of the rock terrace,--a picturesque little quay, covered with iris
and aquatic plants. She now changed her tactics, thinking she might
catch Pierrette tripping by softness; the hyena became a cat.
“Pierrette,” she said, “you are no longer a child; you are nearly
fifteen, and it is not at all surprising that you should have a lover.”
“But, cousin,” said Pierrette, raising her eyes with angelic sweetness
to the cold, sour face of her cousin, “What is a lover?”
It would have been impossible for Sylvie to define a lover with truth
and decency to the girl’s mind. Instead of seeing in that question the
proof of adorable innocence, she considered it a piece of insincerity.
“A lover, Pierrette, is a man who loves us and wishes to marry us.”
“Ah,” said Pierrette, “when that happens in Brittany we call the young
man a suitor.”
“Well, remember that in owning your feelings for a man you do no wrong,
my dear. The wrong is in hiding them. Have you pleased some of the men
who visit here?”
“I don’t think so, cousin.”
“Do you love any of them?”
“No.”
“Certain?”
“Quite certain.”
“Look at me, Pierrette.”
Pierrette looked at Sylvie.
“A man called to you this morning in the square.”
Pierrette lowered her eyes.
“You went to your window, you opened it, and you spoke to him.”
“No cousin, I went to look out and I saw a peasant.”
“Pierrette, you have much improved since you made your first communion;
you have become pious and obedient, you love God and your relations; I
am satisfied with you. I don’t say this to puff you up with pride.”
The horrible creature had mistaken despondency, submission, the silence
of wretchedness, for virtues!
The sweetest of all consolations to suffering souls, to martyrs, to
artists, in the worst of that divine agony which hatred and envy force
upon them, is to meet with praise where they have hitherto found censure
and injustice. Pierrette raised her grateful eyes to her cousin, feeling
that she could almost forgive her for the sufferings she had caused.
“But if it is all hypocrisy, if I find you a serpent that I have warmed
in my bosom, you will be a wicked girl, an infamous creature!”
“I think I have nothing to reproach myself with,” said Pierrette, with
a painful revulsion of her heart at the sudden change from unexpected
praise to the tones of the hyena.
“You know that to lie is a mortal sin?”
“Yes, cousin.”
“Well, you are now under the eye of God,” said the old maid, with a
solemn gesture towards the sky; “swear to me that you did not know that
peasant.”
“I will not swear,” said Pierrette.
“Ha! he was no peasant, you little viper.”
Pierrette rushed away like a frightened fawn terrified at her tone.
Sylvie called her in a dreadful voice.
“The bell is ringing,” she answered.
“Artful wretch!” thought Sylvie. “She is depraved in mind; and now I am
certain the little adder has wound herself round the colonel. She has
heard us say he was a baron. To be a baroness! little fool! Ah! I’ll get
rid of her, I’ll apprentice her out, and soon too!”
Sylvie was so lost in thought that she did not notice her brother
coming down the path and bemoaning the injury the frost had done to his
dahlias.
“Sylvie! what are you thinking about? I thought you were looking at the
fish; sometimes they jump out of the water.”
“No,” said Sylvie.
“How did you sleep?” and he began to tell her about his own dreams.
“Don’t you think my skin is getting _tabid_?”--a word in the Rogron
vocabulary.
Ever since Rogron had been in love,--but let us not profane the
word,--ever since he had desired to marry Mademoiselle de Chargeboeuf,
he was very uneasy about himself and his health. At this moment
Pierrette came down the garden steps and called to them from a distance
that breakfast was ready. At sight of her cousin, Sylvie’s skin turned
green and yellow, her bile was in commotion. She looked at the floor of
the corridor and declared that Pierrette ought to rub it.
“I will rub it now if you wish,” said the little angel, not aware of the
injury such work may do to a young girl.
The dining-room was irreproachably in order. Sylvie sat down and
pretended all through breakfast to want this, that, and the other thing
which she would never have thought of in a quieter moment, and which she
now asked for only to make Pierrette rise again and again just as the
child was beginning to eat her food. But such mere teasing was not
enough; she wanted a subject on which to find fault, and was angry with
herself for not finding one. She scarcely answered her brother’s
silly remarks, yet she looked at him only; her eyes avoided Pierrette.
Pierrette was deeply conscious of all this. She brought the milk mixed
with cream for each cousin in a large silver goblet, after heating it
carefully in the _bain-marie_. The brother and sister poured in the
coffee made by Sylvie herself on the table. When Sylvie had carefully
prepared hers, she saw an atom of coffee-grounds floating on the
surface. On this the storm broke forth.
“What is the matter?” asked Rogron.
“The matter is that mademoiselle has put dust in my milk. Do you suppose
I am going to drink coffee with ashes in it? Well, I am not surprised;
no one can do two things at once. She wasn’t thinking of the milk! a
blackbird might have flown through the kitchen to-day and she wouldn’t
have seen it! how should she see the dust flying! and then it was my
coffee, ha! that didn’t signify!”
As she spoke she was laying on the side of her plate the coffee-grounds
that had run through the filter.
“But, cousin, that is coffee,” said Pierrette.
“Oh! then it is I who tell lies, is it?” cried Sylvie, looking at
Pierrette and blasting her with a fearful flash of anger from her eyes.
Organizations which have not been exhausted by powerful emotions often
have a vast amount of the vital fluid at their service. This phenomenon
of the extreme clearness of the eye in moments of anger was the more
marked in Mademoiselle Rogron because she had often exercised the power
of her eyes in her shop by opening them to their full extent for the
purpose of inspiring her dependents with salutary fear.
“You had better dare to give me the lie!” continued Sylvie; “you deserve
to be sent from the table to go and eat by yourself in the kitchen.”
“What’s the matter with you two?” cried Rogron, “you are as cross as
bears this morning.”
“Mademoiselle knows what I have against her,” said Sylvie. “I leave her
to make up her mind before speaking to you; for I mean to show her more
kindness than she deserves.”
Pierrette was looking out of the window to avoid her cousin’s eyes,
which frightened her.
“Look at her! she pays no more attention to what I am saying than if
I were that sugar-basin! And yet mademoiselle has a sharp ear; she can
hear and answer from the top of the house when some one talks to her
from below. She is perversity itself,--perversity, I say; and you
needn’t expect any good of her; do you hear me, Jerome?”
“What has she done wrong?” asked Rogron.
“At her age, too! to begin so young!” screamed the angry old maid.
Pierrette rose to clear the table and give herself something to do, for
she could hardly bear the scene any longer. Though such language was not
new to her, she had never been able to get used to it. Her cousin’s rage
seemed to accuse her of some crime. She imagined what her fury would
be if she came to know about Brigaut. Perhaps her cousin would have him
sent away, and she should lose him! All the many thoughts, the deep and
rapid thoughts of a slave came to her, and she resolved to keep absolute
silence about a circumstance in which her conscience told her there was
nothing wrong. But the cruel, bitter words she had been made to hear and
the wounding suspicion so shocked her that as she reached the kitchen
she was taken with a convulsion of the stomach and turned deadly sick.
She dared not complain; she was not sure that any one would help her.
When she returned to the dining-room she was white as a sheet, and,
saying she was not well, she started to go to bed, dragging herself up
step by step by the baluster and thinking that she was going to die.
“Poor Brigaut!” she thought.
“The girl is ill,” said Rogron.
“She ill! That’s only _shamming_,” replied Sylvie, in a loud voice that
Pierrette might hear. “She was well enough this morning, I can tell
you.”
This last blow struck Pierrette to the earth; she went to bed weeping
and praying to God to take her out of this world.