want to make your dear Mère Janille cry too? Oh! Monsieur Antoine would
be very pleased to see you with your eyes all red when he comes home! He
would be quite capable of crying too, the dear man! Come, you haven't
walked enough to-day, my child; fasten up your wool and we'll go and
feed the hens. It will amuse you to see the pretty partridges your
little Blanche has just hatched."
Emile heard the motherly kiss from Janille which closed this speech, and
as the two women would surely find him at the door, he stepped back and
coughed slightly to warn them of his presence.
"Someone in the courtyard!" cried Gilberte. "I am so happy; I am sure
it's father!"
And she ran eagerly to meet Emile, so fast, that when she found herself
face to face with him on the threshold, she almost fell into his arms.
But great as her confusion was when she discovered her mistake, it was
less than Emile's; for, in her innocence, she threw it off with a hearty
laugh, while the young man lost his self-possession altogether at the
bare idea that he had been very near receiving an embrace which was not
intended for him.
Gilberte was so lovely with her eyes still moist with tears and her
rippling, childish laugh, that he was dazzled as it were, and ceased to
wonder whether it was honest Antoine, the lovely ruins or the fair
Gilberte that he had been in such haste to see once more.
"Well, well," said Janille, "you almost frightened us; but you are
welcome, Monsieur Emile, as our master says; Monsieur Antoine will
return before long. Meanwhile you must have something cool to drink. I
will go to the cellar and draw some wine."
Emile remonstrated, and said, holding her back by the sleeve:
"If you go to the cellar, I will go with you; not to drink your wine,
but to see the cellar itself, which you said is so interesting, so dark
and deep."
"You mustn't go now," said Janille; "it's too cold there and you are too
warm. Yes, you are warm! you're as red as a strawberry. You go and rest
a bit, and then, while we are waiting for Monsieur Antoine, we'll show
you the cellars, the underground vaults and the whole château, which
you haven't examined very thoroughly yet, although it's well worth
while. Ah! there are people who come a long way to see it; it's a little
bit tiresome to us, and my girl goes to her room and reads while they
are here; but Monsieur Antoine says that we can't refuse to admit them,
especially travellers who have come a long way, and that, when you're
the owner of a curious and interesting piece of property, you haven't
any right to prevent other people from enjoying it."
Janille attributed to her master the argument she had put into his mind
and his mouth. The fact is that she collected a considerable amount from
exhibiting the ruins, which she employed, like everything belonging to
her, in secretly adding to the comfort of the family.
Emile, eagerly accepting whatever they chose to offer him, consented to
take a glass of water, and as Janille ran to fill her pitcher at the
fountain, he was left alone with Mademoiselle de Châteaubrun.
XV
THE STAIRCASE
While a practised rake may congratulate himself upon the unhoped-for
accident which procures him a tête-à-tête with the object of his
pursuit, a pure-hearted young man, who is sincerely in love, is more
likely to be confused, almost terrified, when such good fortune comes to
him for the first time.
So it was with Emile Cardonnet: the respect that Mademoiselle de
Châteaubrun inspired was so profound that he feared to raise his eyes
to hers at that moment, lest he should show himself in any degree
unworthy of the confidence reposed in him.
Gilberte, even more naïve than he, did not feel the same embarrassment.
The thought that Emile could abuse, even by a careless word, her
isolation and her inexperience, found no place in a mind so noble and
innocent as hers, and her sacred ignorance preserved her from any
suspicion of that sort. So she was the first to break the silence, and
her voice, as by enchantment, brought tranquillity to the young
visitor's agitated breast. There are voices so sympathetic and so
penetrating, that to hear them pronounce two or three trivial words is
enough to fill one with affection for the persons whose characters they
describe, even before one sees them. Gilberte's voice was of this
number. On hearing her speak or laugh or sing, you felt that there had
never been in her mind an evil or unkind thought.
The thing that moves and charms us in the song of birds is not so much
the melody, opposed to all our musical conventions, or the extraordinary
power of their flexible organs, as a certain accent of primitive
innocence, of which nothing in the language of men can convey an idea.
It seemed, on listening to Gilberte, that the same comparison could be
aptly applied to her, and that the most indifferent things acquired, on
passing between her lips, a meaning much deeper than that which they
expressed by themselves.
"We saw our friend Jean this morning," she said; "he came at daybreak
and carried away all my father's tools, in order to do his first day's
work; for he has found work already, and we have strong hopes that there
will be no lack of it. He told us all that you did and tried to do for
him last evening, and I assure you, monsieur, that, for all the pride
and perhaps roughness of his refusal, he is as grateful as he ought to
be."
"What I have been able to do for him amounts to so little that I am
ashamed to speak of it," said Emile. "I am especially grieved that he
allows his obstinacy to deprive him of a certainty of employment, for it
seems to me that his position is still very precarious. To begin a life
of toil, at sixty, and to have neither a house, nor clothes, nor even
the necessary tools, is a terrifying prospect, is it not, mademoiselle?"
"Still, I am not terrified," replied Gilberte. "Brought up as I have
been in uncertainty, and living from day to day, as it were, perhaps I
have myself fallen into the habit of looking upon poverty with that same
happy indifference. Either I am naturally of that disposition, or Jean's
heedlessness reassures me; it is certain that none of us felt the least
uneasiness in the congratulations we exchanged this morning. It takes so
little to satisfy Jean! He is as sober and as healthy as a wild man. He
has never been better than during these two months that he has lived in
the woods, walking all day and sleeping most of the time in the open
air. He declares that his sight has grown keener, that his youth has
returned again, and that, if the summer would last all the time, he
would never need to come back to the village to live. But in the bottom
of his heart he has an invincible affection for his native place, and
furthermore he would not be satisfied to be idle long. We urged him this
morning to settle down here with us, and to live as we do, without
thought for the morrow.
"'There is room enough here and plenty of material for you to build
yourself a house,' said my father. 'I have all the stone you need and
enough old trees for your frame, and I'll help you to put it up as you
helped me with mine.'
"But Jean wouldn't listen to that.
"'Very good,' said he, 'but what in heaven's name should I do to kill
time when you have set me up as a country gentleman? I can't live on my
income, and I don't propose to be a burden to you during the thirty
years that I still have to live, it may be. Even if you were rich enough
to support me, I should die of ennui. It's all right for you, Monsieur
Antoine, you were brought up to do nothing. Although you're no sluggard
and you have proved it--it costs you nothing to resume the habit of
living like a _monsieur_; but there's no more hunting and coursing for
me; pray, am I to sit with folded arms? I should go mad at the end of
the first week.'"
"So," said Emile, thinking of his father's theory of incessant toil and
no repose in old age, "so Jean will never feel the longing to be free,
although he makes so many sacrifices to his alleged freedom?"
"Why, are freedom and idleness the same thing?" said Gilberte, in a tone
of surprise. "I think not. Jean is passionately fond of work, and all
his freedom consists in choosing the work that pleases him; when he
works to gratify his inclination and his natural inventiveness, he works
with all the more ardor."
"Yes, mademoiselle, you are right," said Emile, with sudden melancholy,
"and that is the whole secret. Man is born to work always, but to work
according to his aptitudes and in proportion to the enjoyment he derives
from it! Ah! if only I were a skilful carpenter! with what joy I would
go and work with Jean Jappeloup, for the benefit of such a wise and
unselfish man!"
"Well, well, monsieur," said Janille, as she returned to the room,
ostentatiously balancing her earthenware pitcher on her head, to display
her strength, "you talk just like Monsieur Antoine. If you'll believe
it, he wanted to go to Gargilesse this morning with Jean and work with
him as a journeyman, as he used to do! Poor dear man! his kind heart
carried him to that length.
"'You helped me to earn my living long enough,' he said; 'now I propose
to help you earn yours. You refuse to share my table and my house;
accept at least the price of my work, as I don't need it.'"
"And Monsieur Antoine would have done as he said. At his age and with
his rank, he would go and hammer away like a deaf man on those great
blocks of wood!"
"Why did you prevent him, Mère Janille? Why did Jean obstinately
refuse? My father's health would have been no worse for it, and it would
be consistent with all the noble impulses of his life. Ah! why cannot I
too wield an axe and serve my apprenticeship to the man who supported my
father so long, while I, knowing nothing about our means of existence,
learned to sing and draw to please you. Really, women are good for
nothing in this world!"
"What's that! what's that! women good for nothing!" cried Janille; "very
good, let us both start out, climb up on the roofs, square timber and
drive nails. Upon my word I could do better at it than you, old and
small as I am; but meanwhile, your papa, who's about as clever with his
hands as a frog with his tail, will spin our flax and Jean will iron our
caps."
"You are right, mother," replied Gilberte; "my wheel is loaded and I
have done nothing to-day. If we make haste we shall have cloth enough to
make clothes for Jean before next winter. I am going to work and make up
for lost time; but it's true none the less that you are an aristocrat,
not to want my father to be a workman again when he pleases."
"Let me tell you the truth then," said Janille, with a solemn,
confidential air. "Monsieur Antoine never succeeded in being a good
workman. He had more courage than skill, and my only reason for letting
him work was to prevent him from getting depressed and discouraged. Ask
Jean if he didn't have to work twice as hard to mend Monsieur's
mistakes, as he would have done if he'd been working alone. But Monsieur
always seemed to be doing a lot of work, so the customers were satisfied
and he was well paid. But it's true all the same that I was never easy
in my mind in those days and that I don't sigh for them. I always
shuddered for fear Monsieur Antoine would hit his arm or his leg instead
of a timber, or would fall off his ladder when, in his absent-minded
way, he would sit down on the rung as if he were by his own fireside."
"You frighten me, Janille," said Gilberte. "Oh! if that is the case, you
did well to disgust him, by your joking, with the idea of working again,
and in that, as in everything else, you are our Providence!"
Mademoiselle de Châteaubrun spoke even more truly than she knew.
Janille had been the good angel of Antoine de Châteaubrun's existence.
Without her prudence, her motherly domination and her shrewd judgment,
that excellent man would not have passed through the slough of poverty
without deteriorating a little morally. At all events he would not have
retained his external dignity as well as the generous purity of his
instincts. He would often have sinned by too great resignation and
self-abandonment. Being naturally inclined to effusiveness and
prodigality, he would have become intemperate; he would have acquired as
many faults of the common people as of their good qualities, and perhaps
he would have ended by meriting in some degree the disdain which fools
and vainglorious parvenus felt justified in entertaining for him, even
as it was.
But, thanks to Janille, who, without thwarting him openly, had always
maintained the equilibrium and instilled moderation, he had emerged from
the test with honor and had not ceased to deserve the esteem and respect
of judicious people.
The sound of Gilberte's spinning-wheel interrupted the conversation, or
at least made it less coherent. She was unwilling to interrupt her work
again until her task was completed; and yet she seemed to display more
ardor than the apparent motive of her activity called for. She urged
Emile not to subject himself to the tedium of listening to that
monotonous clattering, but to go with Janille and explore the ruins;
but, as Janille also wanted to finish her spinning, Gilberte
unconsciously worked even faster than before, in order to finish as soon
as she, and to be one of the party.
"I am ashamed of my inaction," said Emile, who dared not gaze too fondly
at the young spinstress's lovely arms or watch her motions too closely,
for fear of attracting Janille's sharp little eyes; "haven't you some
work to give me?"
"What can you do?" queried Gilberte with a smile.
"Whatever Sylvain Charasson can do, I flatter myself," he replied.
"I might send you to water my lettuce," said Janille, laughing outright,
"but that would deprive us of your company. Suppose you wind up the
clock, which seems to have stopped?"
"Oh! it stopped three days ago," said Gilberte, "and I haven't been able
to make it go. I think there's something broken."
"Ah! that's the job for me," cried Emile; "I have studied mechanics a
little--unwillingly, to be sure--and I don't believe that this cuckoo
affair is very complicated."
"And suppose you break my clock altogether?" said Janille.
"Oh! let him break it if it amuses him," said Gilberte, with a
good-natured air in which he could detect her father's easy-going
heedlessness.
"I ask the privilege of breaking it, if that is its destiny," said
Emile, "provided that I may be permitted to replace it."
"All right!" said Janille, "if it turns out so, I want one just like it,
no finer and no larger; this one suits us: it strikes clear and yet
doesn't deafen us."
Emile set to work; he took the little German clock apart, and, having
examined it, found nothing more to do than remove a little dust from the
interior. Leaning over the table near Gilberte he carefully cleaned and
readjusted the rough machinery, exchanging with the two women an
occasional remark of a playful turn, which led to a pleasant sort of
familiarity between them.
It is commonly said that people become expansive and confidential while
eating together; but intimacy comes more readily and naturally to those
who work together. All three of them felt it; and when they had finished
their various tasks they were almost members of the same family.
"You're right at home at that business," said Janille, when she saw that
her clock was going; "you would almost do for a clockmaker. Now let's go
for a walk; I will go first and light my lantern to take you into the
cellars."
"Monsieur," said Gilberte, when Janille had left the room, "you said
just now that you expected to dine with Monsieur de Boisguilbault. May I
not ask you what sort of impression that gentleman made upon you?"
"I should have difficulty in defining it," replied Emile. "It is a
mixture of repulsion and sympathy, so strange that I feel that I must
see him again, examine him closely and then reflect further, before
attempting to interpret so odd a character. Don't you know him,
mademoiselle, and can you not assist me to understand him?"
"I do not know him at all; I have seen him only once or twice in my
life, although we live very near him; and, because of what I had heard
about him, I was very anxious to see him; but he was riding on the same
road with my father and myself, and the instant that he caught sight of
us, he spurred his horse, bowed to us without looking at us, apparently
without knowing who we were, and was out of sight in a moment: you would
have said he was trying to hide in the dust that his horse's feet kicked
up."
"Has Monsieur de Châteaubrun no relations with him, although he is so
near a neighbor?"
"Oh! that's a very strange thing," said Gilberte, lowering her voice
confidentially, "but I may speak to you about it, Monsieur Emile,
because it seems to me that you may be able to solve the mystery. My
father was very intimate with Monsieur de Boisguilbault in his younger
days. I know that much, although he never speaks of him, and Janille
avoids answering me when I question her; but Jean, who knows no more
than I do about the cause of their rupture, has often told me that he
can remember a time when they were inseparable. That is what has always
made me think that Monsieur de Boisguilbault is neither so proud nor so
cold as he seems; for my father with his good humor and vivacity could
never have been on warm terms with a haughty disposition and a cold
heart. I must tell you too that I have overheard some conversation about
him between my father and Janille, when they thought that I was not
listening. My father said that the only irreparable misfortune of his
life was the loss of Monsieur de Boisguilbault's friendship, that he
should never be consoled for it, and that he would not hesitate to
sacrifice an eye or an arm or a leg to recover it. Janille called his
lamentations nonsense and advised him not to make the slightest step
toward reconciliation because she knew the man well and he would never
forget the affair that had made the trouble between them.
"'Very well,' said my father, 'I would prefer to have an explanation, to
submit to his reproaches; I would rather have fought a duel with him,
when we were of almost equal strength, than have to endure this
implacable silence and frigid persistence which cuts me to the heart.
No, Janille, no, I shall never be reconciled to it, and if I die without
shaking hands with him, I shall regret that I ever lived.'
"Janille tried to divert his mind, and she succeeded, for my father is
impressionable and too affectionate to be willing to depress others with
his melancholy. But you, Monsieur Emile, who love your parents so
dearly, will understand that this secret grief of my father's has
weighed heavily on my heart ever since I discovered it. So that I can
think of nothing that I would not undertake to relieve him from it. For
a whole year I have been thinking about it constantly, and twenty times
I have dreamed that I went to Boisguilbault, threw myself at that
unforgiving man's feet and said to him:
"'My father is the best of men and your most faithful friend. His
virtues have made him happy in spite of his ill-fortune; he has but one
sorrow, but it is a deep one and you can dispel it with a word.'
"But he repulsed me and turned me out of his house in a rage. I woke in
deadly terror, and one night when I called his name, Janille got up and
took me in her arms and said:
"'Why do you think about that wretched man? he has no power over you and
he wouldn't dare attack your father.'
"From that I saw that Janille hated him; but whenever she happens to say
a word against him, my father warmly defends him. What is there between
them? Almost nothing, perhaps. A puerile sensitiveness, a dispute about
hunting, so Jean Jappeloup declares. If that were certain, wouldn't it
be possible to reconcile them? My father dreams of Monsieur de
Boisguilbault too, and sometimes, when he dozes in his chair after
supper, he mutters his name in a tone of profound distress. Monsieur
Emile, I appeal to your generosity and prudence to induce Monsieur de
Boisguilbault to speak, if possible. I have always intended to grasp the
first opportunity that presented itself to reconcile two men who have
been so closely attached to each other, and if Jean had been fully taken
back into the marquis's favor, I should have hoped great things from his
boldness and his natural shrewdness. But he too is the victim of a
strange caprice on Monsieur de Boisguilbault's part, and I can think of
nobody but you who can help me."
"You cannot doubt that will be my most constant endeavor henceforth,"
said Emile, with fervor. And as he heard Janille returning, her little
clogs clattering on the flagstones, he stood on a chair as if to adjust
the clock, but really to hide the blissful confusion born of Gilberte's
confidence.
Gilberte also was moved. She had made a great effort to summon courage
to open her heart to a young man whom she hardly knew; and she was not
so childish or so countrified that she did not realize that she had gone
beyond conventional propriety.
The loyal creature was distressed at the thought that she had a secret
from Janille; but she took comfort in the purity of her intentions, and
it was impossible to believe Emile capable of taking advantage of her.
For the first time in her life the instinctive craft of her sex guided
her action when the housekeeper returned. She felt that her face was on
fire, and she stooped to pick up a needle which she had purposely
dropped.
Thus Janille's penetration was routed by two children who were far from
adroit in all other respects, and they set forth gayly to explore the
subterranean regions.
The passage directly beneath the square pavilion led to a steep
staircase which descended to a terrifying depth in the solid rock.
Janille went first, at a deliberate gait, with the composure due to her
frequent exercise of the functions of _cicerone_ with visitors. Emile
followed her, to feel the way for Gilberte, who was neither awkward nor
timid, but for whose safety Janille was constantly alarmed.
"Take care, my dear," she said at every step. "Hold her if she falls,
Monsieur Emile. Mademoiselle is absent-minded like her dear father: it
runs in the family. They're a pair of children who would have killed
themselves a hundred times over if I had not always had my eye on them."
Emile was happy to be able to share Janille's task. He pushed the
rubbish aside, and, as the staircase became more and more dilapidated
and difficult, he deemed himself justified in offering his hand, which
was declined at first, but afterward accepted as necessary.
Who can describe the violence and ecstasy of a first love in an ardent
heart? Emile trembled so when he took Gilberte's hand in his that he
could no longer talk and joke with Janille nor reply to Gilberte, who
continued to jest at first, but gradually became more and more agitated
until she could think of nothing to say.
They descended in this way only ten or twelve steps, but meanwhile time
ceased to move for Emile; and when he passed the whole of the following
night trying to review the emotions of that moment, it seemed to him
that it had lasted a century.
His past life appeared thenceforth like a dream, and his personality was
transformed. When he recalled his childhood, the years at school, the
tedium or the pleasure of study, he was no longer the passive, fettered
creature he had hitherto felt himself to be; it was Gilberte's lover who
lived through those years, thenceforth radiant, enlightened with a new
light. He saw himself as a mere child, then as an active, impetuous
school-boy, and, finally, as a dreamy, earnest student; and those
various personages, who had seemed to him to differ like the phases of
his life, became in his eyes a single being, a privileged being, who
moved triumphantly forward toward the bright daylight where Gilberte's
hand was to be placed in his.
The underground staircase led to the base of the rocky hill which was
crowned by the Château. It was a means of exit in case of a siege, and
Janille was not sparing of encomiums upon that difficult and scientific
piece of work.
Although she lived on terms of absolute equality with her masters, and
would not have waived the privilege at any price, so thoroughly
convinced was she of her rights, the little woman none the less had some
strangely persistent feudal ideas; and, by dint of identifying herself
with the ruins of Châteaubrun, she had reached the point of admiring
everything in their past history, of which she had, to tell the truth, a
very confused idea. Perhaps, too, she thought it her duty, to humble the
pride of the wealthy bourgeoisie by vaunting loudly before Emile the
ancient might of Gilberte's ancestors.