"Quaint old town of toil and traffic."
Longfellow.
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"You might tell us something, Madame Angelin, since you know so much!"
"Yes, indeed. What is the good of knowing if you keep it to yourself?"
cried a younger woman, impatiently, placing, as she spoke, her basket of
herbs and vegetables upon the broad stone edge of the fountain around
which a little group had gathered.
"Was it a fit?"
"Has Monsieur Deshoulieres gone to him?"
"Is he dead?"
"What becomes of her?"
"Holy Virgin! will the town have to bury him?"
The individual upon whom this volley of shrill questions was directed
was a small, thin, pungent-faced Frenchwoman, who had just filled her
pitcher at the fountain, and stood with hands clasped over her waist,
and with ineffable satisfaction in her twinkling black eyes, looking
upon the excited questioners who crowded round her. It is not given to
everybody to know more than their neighbours, nor, as Veuve Angelin
shrewdly reflected, is it a privilege to be lightly parted with. There
was something very enchanting in the eager attention with which her
information was awaited, and she looked round upon them all with a
patronising benignity, which was, to say the least, irritating. The May
sun was shining brightly over old pointed roofs; the tiny streams
running out of three grim carved heads in the stone fountain danced and
sparkled in its light; the horse-chestnuts stiffly standing round the
little "Place" threw deep shadows on the glaring stones; from one side
sounded the soft wash of an unseen river; old, dilapidated houses were
jumbled together, irrespective of height and size; behind the women, the
town with its clustering houses rose abruptly on the side of a steep
hill, crowned by the lovely spires of the Cathedral; and before them,
only hidden from sight by the buildings of a straggling suburb,
stretched the monotonous plains and sunny cornfields of the granary of
France.
Veuve Angelin smiled indulgently and shook her head. "You young people
think too much of gossip," she said.
"So they do, Marie, so they do," responded an old woman, pushing her
yellow, wizened face through the shoulders of those in front of her.
"In our day things arranged themselves differently: the world was not
the magpie's nest it is now. The young minded their elders, and
conducted themselves sagely, instead of chattering and idling and
going--the saints know whither!"
Veuve Angelin drew herself up. She was by no means pleased with this
ally. "All that may have been in your day, Nannon," she said
spitefully, "but my time was very much the same as this time.
Grandfather Owl always thinks the days grow darker."
"Hear her!" cried the old woman, shrilly. "Has she forgotten the
cherry-trees we used to shake together, the--"
One of the younger of the group interrupted her unceremoniously, "Ta,
ta, Nannon, never mind that now! Tell us, Madame Angelin, whether it is
all true which they say about the poor old gentleman and the beautiful
young demoiselle. _Ciel_! there is the clock striking noon, and I
should have been back from market an hour ago. Quick! we all die of
curiosity;" and she caught some water in the palm of her hand and
sprinkled it over the drooping herbs in her basket, while the others
pressed round more eagerly than ever.
But Veuve Angelin's temper had been roused by Nannon's reminiscences.
"I am going," she said crossly. "No one shall ever accuse me of
gossiping. Monsieur's breakfast has to be prepared by the time he
returns from the Cygne, and with this monster of a pitcher to carry up
the hill, just because the _fille_ who fetches the water is ill--"
"Let me carry your pitcher, Madame Angelin!"
"I will take it to the very door. _Peste_, it is hard if one can't do
so much for one's friends."
"Yes, yes, Fanchon will carry it like a bird. And so Monsieur is
absolutely at the hotel?"
"Bon jour, mesdames," said old Nannon, laughing shrilly. "No one cares
to help me with my basket, I suppose? It is heavy, too: it contains the
clean clothes of my sister's girl, Toinette, a good, hard-working girl
she is, and _fille_ at the Cygne, as you know.--What, Fanchon, my child,
you would carry it! How admirable you are with your attentions to a
poor old woman like me! I was wrong, Madame Angelin, I acknowledge it,
in my estimate of your generation."
There was a hesitating movement among the women: they had forgotten
Toinette, and with such a link it was possible that Nannon might be the
best newsmonger after all. Veuve Angelin noticed the movement, and it
filled her with dismay.
"I saw it myself, I tell you," she cried loudly, plunging at once into
the heart of her subject. "I saw them come out of the Cygne, the old
monsieur and the young lady, and walk up and down, up and down, under
the trees before the door, and then just, just as they came towards
me--"
She stopped. The women pressed closer. Fanchon was drawn back, and
listened enthralled; old Nannon, whose temper was not so sharp as her
words, chuckled under her breath, and said, "She has started at last."
Veuve Angelin looked round and went on in triumph, nodding her little
head, and throwing out her hands.
"It is as I have told you. They were close by me, those two, and
turning round to enter the hotel again, when, in one second--his foot
slipped, and he came down on the pavement with his head against the
steps. Imagine my feelings!"
A buzz of sympathy responded to this appeal. In the character of an
eye-witness, madame almost became a heroine. Fanchon timidly
inquired,--
"He is old?"
"He looked half dead before."
"And he is hurt?"
"Hurt! Of what then do you conceive our skulls to be composed? of
granite--iron--india-rubber? _Tenez_, I heard it crack, I tell you; and
after that there is not much to be said."
"No, assuredly."
"Madame has reason."
Veuve Angelin looked proudly at Nannon: Nannon laughed.
"Since the monsieur is dead, it is strange that Monsieur Deshoulieres
should trouble himself to pass the morning with him," she said.
"And why?" demanded Mere Angelin, reddening with anger. "Is it
likely,--I put the question to you all, mesdames,--is it likely that
she--she!--should be a better judge of what is strange in the
proceedings of Monsieur Deshoulieres than I who have lived in his
service for nearly fifteen months?"
There was a murmur in the negative, but it was not very decided. These
doubts had the effect of weakening the general confidence.
"Certainly, madame should know," said her stanchest adherent.
"Nevertheless," persisted Nannon, "you may rest assured that an hour ago
he was not dead, and that Monsieur Deshoulieres was doing his utmost
that he should not die."
"Not dead! But I tell you I heard his skull crack!"
"How can you answer that, Nannon?"
"His skull? Bah! I was in the house at the time, and helped to carry
him upstairs. M. Deshoulieres came while I was there."
There was a general exclamation, old Nannon was surrounded. Here was
one who had been more than an eye-witness, an actual actor in the event
which was agitating Charville. Fanchon caught up her basket again,
another seized her umbrella, she was the centre of the group which moved
away, questioning as they went, towards the upper town. Veuve Angelin
would have been left behind, bitter and friendless, to drag her heavy
pitcher as best she might up the steep hill, and to moralise upon the
fleeting charms of popularity, if old Nannon, generous in the moment of
victory, had not desired one of her followers to assist her.
The hot sun streamed down upon the narrow, ill-paved streets; little
gutters trickled crookedly through their middle; the women toiled slowly
up, keeping under the shade of gaunt, picturesque houses, all
irregularly built, high and low, gabled and carved, delightfully
artistic in their very defiance of proportion. Rough steps led up to
the houses, great projecting blocks of stone ran along their front, with
pots of bright flowers resting upon them: everywhere there were windows,
up in the roofs, down in quaint unexpected corners,--clothes hung out of
them, here and there long strings of peascods. Strange little stone
workshops were built up by themselves in the street, so small that the
workmen looked too big for them: every thing was shelving, dirty,
picturesque. The people sat outside their houses, tight-capped children
played about, the sun fell on them, on the gay flowers, the green
peascods,--somehow or other from everywhere bright bits of colour
flashed out gorgeously. Nannon, with her poor, weather-beaten face, and
her shoulders broadened with labour, walked sturdily on in her blue
stuff gown, a little shawl crossed under an enormously wide black
waistband, a plain white cap pulled forward on her forehead, and
slanting upwards behind,--gesticulating and talking in her high, shrill,
unmodulated voice. Fanchon, by right of her basket, kept close beside
her; last of all marched Veuve Angelin, half-curious and
half-contemptuous.
There is no news like one's own news.