HEREIN IS EXPLAINED HOW AND WHY BARON MICHEL
DECIDED TO GO TO NANTES.
We have mentioned already, incidentally, that Michel had left the
farmhouse; but we did not dwell sufficiently on this caper, nor on the
circumstances that accompanied it.
For the first time in his life Michel acted slyly and even showed
duplicity. Under the shock of emotion produced by Petit-Pierre's
speech to the marquis, and by the vanishing (through Mary's unexpected
declaration) of all the hopes he had been cherishing so complacently,
he was utterly crushed down and annihilated. Fully aware that the
fancy Bertha had so liberally shown for him separated him from her
sister far more than any aversion on the sister's part, he reproached
himself for having encouraged that fancy by his silence and his
foolish timidity. But there was no use scolding himself now; he knew
that in the depths of his soul he had not the necessary strength to
cut short a misunderstanding which fatally interfered with an
affection that was dearer to him than life itself. There was not in
his nature resolution enough to bring the matter to a frank,
categorical explanation; he felt it to be impossible to say to that
handsome girl, to whom he had perhaps owed his life a few hours
earlier, "Mademoiselle, it is not you whom I love."
During all that evening, although occasions to open his heart honestly
to Bertha were not lacking,--for she, very uneasy about a wound which
if given to herself she would hardly have noticed, persisted in
dressing it,--Michel remained passive in a situation the difficulties
of which increased every moment. He tried to speak to Mary; but Mary
took as much pains to prevent this as he did to accomplish it, and he
renounced the idea, which he indulged for a moment, of making her his
intermediary. Besides, those fatal words, 'I do not love you,' sounded
in his ears like a funeral knell.
He profited by a moment when no one, not even Bertha, had an eye upon
him to retire, or rather to flee to his own room. There he flung
himself on the straw bed which Bertha with her own white hands had
prepared for him; but he soon got up, his head on fire, his heart more
and more convulsed, to bathe his burning face in water and bind a wet
towel round his head. This done, he profited by his sleeplessness to
search for some method of release.
After an actual travail of imagination which lasted nearly an hour an
idea came to him. It was this,--that he might have courage to write
what he could not say. This, Michel felt, was the highest point his
strength of character could reach. But in order to get any good out of
such a letter he felt he could not be present in the house when Bertha
received it and read the revelation of his secret thoughts; for not
only do timid persons dread being made to suffer, but they also dread
making others suffer.
The result of Michel's reflections was that he would leave the
farmhouse; but not for long, be it understood; for he intended, as
soon as the position was plainly defined and the ground cleared, to
return and take his place beside the sister he really loved. The
Marquis de Souday would surely not refuse him the hand of Mary, since
he had given him that of Bertha, as soon as he was made aware that it
was Mary and not Bertha whom he loved. The father could have no
possible reason for refusal.
Much encouraged by this prospect, Michel rose and with profound
ingratitude cast off the towel to which he owed (thanks to the quiet
its cool refreshment had restored to his brain), the good idea he was
now intent on putting into execution. He went down to the yard of the
farmhouse and began to lift the bars at the stable entrance. But just
as he had lifted and pushed back the first of these bars and was
beginning on the second, he saw, under a shed, a bale of straw, and
out of that bale of straw came a head which he recognized as that of
Jean Oullier.
"The devil!" said the latter in his gruffest tone; "you are pretty
early this morning, Monsieur Michel."
At that instant two o'clock rang from the steeple of a neighboring
village.
"Have you any errand to do?" asked Jean Oullier.
"No," replied the baron, for he fancied that the Vendéan's eye could
penetrate into the deepest recesses of his soul,--"no; but I have a
dreadful headache, and I thought the night air might still it."
"I warn you that we have sentinels all around us, and if you have not
the password you may be roughly used."
"I!"
"Damn it! you as well as others. Ten steps from here you'll find out
you are not the master of this house."
"But that password,--do you know it, Monsieur Jean?"
"Of course."
"Then tell me."
Jean Oullier shook his head.
"That's the Marquis de Souday's affair. Go up to his room; tell him
you want to go away, and in order to do so you must have the password.
He'll give it to you,--that is, if he thinks proper to do so."
Michel took good care to do nothing of the kind, and he remained
standing where he was, with his hand on the bar. As for Jean Oullier,
he again buried himself in the straw.
After a while Michel, wholly discomfited, went and sat down on an
overturned trough, which formed a kind of seat at the inner gate of
the farmyard. There he had leisure to continue his meditations; but
although the pile of straw did not move again, Michel fancied that an
aperture was made in its thickest part, and that in the depths of that
cavity he could see something glitter, which was, doubtless, the eye
of Jean Oullier. And alas! he knew there was no chance of eluding the
eye of that watch-dog.
Luckily, as we have said, meditation was on this occasion singularly
useful to the young baron. The question now was how to find a pretext
to get away from Banl[oe]uvre in a proper manner. Michel was still
seeking that pretext when the first rays of the rising sun began to
light up the horizon and gild the thatch of the cottage-roof and color
with its opal tints the panes of the narrow windows.
Little by little life was renewed around Michel. The cattle lowed for
their food; the sheep, impatient for the fields, bleated and poked
their gray-white muzzles through the bars of their pen; the hens
fluttered down from their perches and stretched their wings and
clucked on the manure heap; the pigeons came out of the cote and flew
to the roof, to coo their hymn of love eternal; while the ducks, more
prosaic, stood in a long line by the farmyard gate and filled the air
with discordant noises,--noises which, in all probability, expressed
their surprise at finding that gate closed when they were in such a
hurry to go and dabble in the pond.
At the sound of these various noises, forming the matutinal concert of
a well-managed farm, a window just above the bench on which Michel was
sitting opened softly, and Petit-Pierre's head appeared within it. She
did not, however, see Michel; her eyes were turned to heaven, and she
seemed entirely absorbed either by inward thought or by the glorious
spectacle the dawn presented to her. Any eye--above all, that of a
princess unaccustomed to watch the rising of the sun--would have been
dazzled by the jets of flame which the king of day was sending along
the plain, where they sparkled like thousands of precious stones upon
the wet and quivering leaves of the forest-trees and the dewy herbage
of the fields; presently an invisible hand softly raised the veil of
vapor from the valley, disclosing, one by one, like a modest virgin,
its beauty, grace, and splendor.
Petit-Pierre gave herself up to the contemplation of this scene for
several minutes. Then, resting her head on her hand, she murmured
sadly:--
"Alas! bare as this poor cottage is, those who live in it are more
fortunate than I."
These words struck the young baron's brain like a magic wand and
elicited the idea, or rather the pretext, he had been vainly searching
for the last two hours. He kept quite still against the wall, to which
he had clung when the window opened, and he did not move until a sound
told him the window was shut and he could leave his station without
being seen.
He went straight to the shed.
"Monsieur," he said to Jean Oullier, "Petit-Pierre opened his
window--"
"So I saw," said the Vendéan.
"He spoke; did you hear what he said?"
"It did not concern me, and therefore I did not listen."
"Being nearer to him, I heard what he said, without intending to
listen."
"Well?"
"Well, our guest thinks this house unpleasant and inconvenient; it
lacks many things which are a necessity to a person of his
aristocratic habits. Couldn't you--I giving you the money, of
course--couldn't you procure some of these necessary things?"
"Where, I should like to know?"
"Why, in the nearest town or village,--Légé or Machecoul."
Jean Oullier shook his head.
"Impossible," he said.
"Why so?" asked Michel.
"Because if I were to buy articles of luxury just now in either of
those places, where not a gesture of certain persons is unobserved, I
should awaken dangerous suspicion."
"Couldn't you go as far as Nantes?"
"No," said Jean Oullier, curtly; "the lesson I got at Montaigu has
taught me prudence, and I shall not leave my post. But," he continued,
in a slightly ironical tone, "you who want the fresh air to cure your
headache,--why don't you go to Nantes?"
Seeing his scheme thus crowned with success, Michel blushed to the
whites of his eyes; and yet he trembled, now that it came to putting
it into execution.
"Perhaps you are right," he stammered; "but I am afraid, too."
"Pooh! a brave man like you ought to have no fear," said Jean Oullier,
emerging from the straw, and shaking it off as he walked toward the
gate, leaving the young man time to reflect.
"But--" said Michel.
"What?" asked Jean Oullier, impatiently.
"Will you undertake to explain the reasons of my departure to Monsieur
le marquis, and present my excuses to--"
"Mademoiselle Bertha?" said Jean Oullier, sarcastically. "Yes; don't
trouble yourself."
"I shall be back to-morrow," said Michel, as he passed through the
gate.
"Don't hurry; take your time, Monsieur le baron. If not to-morrow, the
next day will do." So saying, he closed the heavy gate behind the
young man.
The sound of the gate barricaded against him gave a painful shock to
Michel's heart. At that moment he thought less of the difficulties he
was seeking to escape than of his total separation from the one he
loved. It seemed to him that the worm-eaten gate was an iron barrier
which he should ever find in future between the gentle form of Mary
and himself.
So, instead of starting on his way, he again sat down, this time by
the roadside, and wept. There was a moment when, if he had not feared
Jean Oullier's sarcasms (inexperienced as he was, he could not be
ignorant of the man's malevolence), he would have rapped on the gate
and asked for re-admittance to see once more his tender Mary; but an
inward impulse of--we were about to say false shame; let us rather
say--true shame withheld him, and he at last departed, without very
well knowing whither he went.
He was, however, on the road to Légé, and before long the sound of
wheels made him turn his head. He then saw the diligence which ran
from Sables-d'Olonne to Nantes coming toward him. Michel felt that his
strength, lessened by the loss of blood, though his wound was slight,
would not enable him to walk much farther. The sight of the vehicle
brought him to a resolution. He stopped it, got into one of the
compartments, and reached Nantes a few hours later.
But when he got there all the melancholy of his situation came over
him. Habituated from childhood to live the life of others, to obey a
will that was not his own, and still maintained in that mental
servitude by the very substitution that had just taken place within
him,--having, as we may say, changed masters by abandoning his mother
to follow the woman whom he loved,--liberty was to him so novel that
he did not feel its charm, whereas his solitude and isolation were
unbearable to him.
For hearts that are deeply wounded there is no such cruel solitude as
that of a city; and the larger and more populous it is, the greater
the solitude. Isolation in the midst of a crowd, the nearness of the
joy and the heedlessness of those they meet, contrasting with the
sadness and anxiety in their own minds, become unendurable to them. So
it was now with Michel. Finding himself, almost without the action of
his own will, on the road to Nantes, he hoped to find there some
distraction to his anxious grief; on the contrary, he found it far
more keen and agonizing, Mary's image followed him; he seemed to see
her in every woman he met, and his heart dissolved into bitter regrets
and impotent desires.
In this condition of mind he presently turned back to the inn at which
the coach had stopped, where he shut himself up in a room and again
began to weep. He thought of returning instantly to Banl[oe]uvre,
flinging himself at Petit-Pierre's feet, and asking her to be his
mediator between the two sisters. He blamed himself for not having
done so that morning, and for weakly yielding to the fear of wounding
Bertha's pride.
This current of ideas brought him naturally back to the object, or
rather the pretext, of his journey,--that is, the articles of luxury
he had proposed to purchase. Those purchases once made,--to serve as a
legitimate reason for his absence,--he would write the terrible letter
which was, in truth, the one only and true cause of his flight to
Nantes.
Presently he decided that he had better begin by writing that letter.
This resolution taken, he did not lose a moment in carrying it out. He
seated himself at the table and composed the following letter, on
which fell as many tears from his eyes as words from his pen:--
MADEMOISELLE,--I ought to be the happiest of men, and yet my heart is
broken, and I ask myself whether death were not more tolerable than
the suffering I endure.
What will you think of me, what will you say when this letter tells
you that which I can no longer conceal without being utterly unworthy
of your goodness to me? I need the memory of that goodness, the
certainty of the grandeur and generosity of your soul, but, above all,
I need the thought that it is the being you love best in the world who
separates us, before I can summon courage to take this step.
Mademoiselle, I love your sister Mary; I love her with all the power
of my heart; I love her so that I do not wish to live--I cannot live
without her! I love her so much that at this moment, when I am guilty
toward you of what a less noble character than yours might perhaps
consider a cruel wrong, I stretch to you my supplicating hands and
say: Let me hope that I may obtain the right to love you as a brother
loves a sister!
It was not until this letter was folded and sealed that Michel thought
of how it might be made to reach Bertha. No one in Nantes could be
sent with it; the danger was too great either for a faithful
messenger, or for themselves if the messenger were treacherous. The
only means he could think of was to return to the country and find
some peasant in the neighborhood of Machecoul on whose fidelity he
could rely, and wait himself in the forest for the reply on which his
future hung. This was the plan on which he decided.
He spent the remainder of the evening in making the different
purchases for the comfort of Petit-Pierre, which he packed in a
valise, putting off till the next morning the buying of a horse,--an
acquisition which was necessary to him in future if he was, as he
hoped, to continue the campaign he had already begun.
The next day, about nine o'clock in the morning, Michel, mounted on an
excellent Norman beast, with his valise behind him, was preparing to
start on his way back to the Retz region.