“Well, then,” said the rector, “come with me now. If there should come a time when you might return without doing injury, I will write to you, Denise; but perhaps this visit to your birthplace will stop the homesickness, and enable you to live over there without suffering — ”
“Oh! to leave this country, now so beautiful! What wonders Madame Graslin has done for it!” she exclaimed, pointing to the lake as it lay in the moonlight. “All this fine domain will belong to our dear Francis.”
“You shall not go away, Denise,” said Madame Graslin, who was standing at the stable door.
Jean-Francois Tascheron’s sister clasped her hands on seeing the spectre which addressed her. At that moment the pale Veronique, standing in the moonlight, was like a shade defined upon the darkness of the open door-way. Her eyes alone shone like stars.
“No, my child, you shall not leave the country you have come so far to see again; you shall be happy here, or God will refuse to help me; it is He, no doubt, who has brought you back.”
She took the astonished Denise by the hand, and led her away by a path toward the other shore of the lake, leaving her mother and the rector, who seated themselves on the bench.
“Let her do as she wishes,” said Madame Sauviat.
A few moments later Veronique returned alone, and was taken back to the chateau by her mother and Monsieur Bonnet. Doubtless she had formed some plan which required secrecy, for no one in the neighborhood either saw Denise or heard any mention of her.
Madame Graslin took to her bed that day and never but once left it again; she went from bad to worse daily, and seemed annoyed and thwarted that she could not rise, — trying to do so on several occasions, and expressing a desire to walk out into the park. A few days, however, after the scene we have just related, about the beginning of June, she made a violent effort, rose, dressed as if for a gala day, and begged Gerard to give her his arm, declaring that she was resolved to take a walk. She gathered up all her strength and expended it on this expedition, accomplishing her intention in a paroxysm of will which had, necessarily, a fatal reaction.
“Take me to the chalet, and alone,” she said to Gerard in a soft voice, looking at him with a sort of coquetry. “This is my last excursion; I dreamed last night the doctors arrived and captured me.”
“Do you want to see your woods?” asked Gerard.
“For the last time, yes,” she answered. “But what I really want,” she added, in a coaxing voice, “is to make you a singular proposition.”
She asked Gerard to embark with her in one of the boats on the second lake, to which she went on foot. When the young man, surprised at her intention, began to move the oars, she pointed to the hermitage as the object of her coming.
“My friend,” she said, after a long pause, during which she had been contemplating the sky and water, the hills and shores, “I have a strange request to make of you; but I think you are a man who would obey my wishes — ”
“In all things, sure that you can wish only what is good.”
“I wish to marry you,” she answered; “if you consent you will accomplish the wish of a dying woman, which is certain to secure your happiness.”
“I am too ugly,” said the engineer.
“The person to whom I refer is pretty; she is young, and wishes to live at Montegnac. If you will marry her you will help to soften my last hours. I will not dwell upon her virtues now; I only say her nature is a rare one; in the matter of grace and youth and beauty, one look will suffice; you are now about to see her at the hermitage. As we return home you must give me a serious yes or no.”
Hearing this confidence, Gerard unconsciously quickened his oars, which made Madame Graslin smile. Denise, who was living alone, away from all eyes, at the hermitage, recognized Madame Graslin and immediately opened the door. Veronique and Gerard entered. The poor girl could not help a blush as she met the eyes of the young man, who was greatly surprised at her beauty.
“I hope Madame Farrabesche has not let you want for anything?” said Veronique.
“Oh no! madame, see!” and she pointed to her breakfast.
“This is Monsieur Gerard, of whom I spoke to you,” went on Veronique. “He is to be my son’s guardian, and after my death you shall live together at the chateau until his majority.”
“Oh! madame, do not talk in that way!”
“My dear child, look at me!” replied Veronique, addressing Denise, in whose eyes the tears rose instantly. “She has just arrived from New York,” she added, by way of introduction to Gerard.
The engineer put several questions about the new world to the young woman, while Veronique, leaving them alone, went to look at the third and more distant lake of the Gabou. It was six o’clock as Veronique and Gerard returned in the boat toward the chalet.
“Well?” she said, looking at him.
“You have my promise.”
“Though you are, I know, without prejudices,” she went on, “I must not leave you ignorant of the reason why that poor girl, brought back here by homesickness, left the place originally.”
“A false step?”
“Oh, no!” said Veronique. “Should I offer her to you if that were so? She is the sister of a workman who died on the scaffold — ”
“Ah! Tascheron,” he said, “the murderer of old Pingret.”
“Yes, she is the sister of a murderer,” said Madame Graslin, in a bitter tone; “you are at liberty to take back your promise and — ”
She did not finish, and Gerard was obliged to carry her to the bench before the chalet, where she remained unconscious for some little time. When she opened her eyes Gerard was on his knees before her and he said instantly: —
“I will marry Denise.”
Madame Graslin took his head in both hands and kissed him on the forehead; then, seeing his surprise at so much gratitude, she pressed his hand and said:
“Before long you will know the secret of all this. Let us go back to the terrace, for it is late; I am very tired, but I must look my last on that dear plain.”
Though the day had been insupportably hot, the storms which during this year devastated parts of Europe and of France but respected the Limousin, had run their course in the basin of the Loire, and the atmosphere was singularly clear. The sky was so pure that the eye could seize the slightest details on the horizon. What language can render the delightful concert of busy sounds produced in the village by the return of the workers from the fields? Such a scene, to be rightly given, needs a great landscape artist and also a great painter of the human face. Is there not, by the bye, in the lassitude of Nature and that of man a curious affinity which is difficult to grasp? The depressing heat of a dog-day and the rarification of the air give to the least sound made by human beings all its signification. The women seated on their doorsteps and waiting for their husbands (who often bring back the children) gossip with each other while still at work. The roofs are casting up the lines of smoke which tell of the evening meal, the gayest among the peasantry; after which, they sleep. All actions express the tranquil cheerful thoughts of those whose day’s work is over. Songs are heard very different in character from those of the morning; in this the peasants imitate the birds, whose warbling at night is totally unlike their notes at dawn. All nature sings a hymn to rest, as it sang a hymn of joy to the coming sun. The slightest movements of living beings seem tinted then with the soft, harmonious colors of the sunset cast upon the landscape and lending even to the dusty roadways a placid air. If any dared deny the influence of this hour, the loveliest of the day, the flowers would protest and intoxicate his senses with their penetrating perfumes, which then exhale and mingle with the tender hum of insects and the amorous note of birds.
The brooks which threaded the plain beyond the village were veiled in fleecy vapor. In the great meadows through which the high-road ran, — bordered with poplars, acacias, and ailanthus, wisely intermingled and already giving shade, — enormous and justly celebrated herds of cattle were scatte
red here and there, some still grazing, others ruminating. Men, women, and children were ending their day’s work in the hay-field, the most picturesque of all the country toils. The night air, freshened by distant storms, brought on its wings the satisfying odors of the newly cut grass or the finished hay. Every feature of this beautiful panorama could be seen perfectly; those who feared a coming storm were finishing in haste the hay-stacks, while others followed with their pitchforks to fill the carts as they were driven along the rows. Others in the distance were still mowing, or turning the long lines of fallen grass to dry it, or hastening to pile it into cocks. The joyous laugh of the merry workers mingling with the shouts of the children tumbling each other in the hay, rose on the air. The eye could distinguish the pink, red, or blue petticoats, the kerchiefs, and the bare legs and arms of the women, all wearing broad-brimmed hats of a coarse straw, and the shirts and trousers of the men, the latter almost invariably white. The last rays of the sun were filtering through the long lines of poplars planted beside the trenches which divided the plain into meadows of unequal size, and caressing the groups of horses and carts, men, women, children, and cattle. The cattlemen and the shepherd-girls were beginning to collect their flocks to the sound of rustic horns.
The scene was noisy, yet silent, — a paradoxical statement, which will surprise only those to whom the character of country life is still unknown. From all sides came the carts, laden with fragrant fodder. There was something, I know not what, of torpor in the scene. Veronique walked slowly and silently between Gerard and the rector, who had joined her on the terrace.
Through the openings made by the rural lanes running down below the terrace to the main street of Montegnac Gerard and Monsieur Bonnet could see the faces of men, women, and children turned toward them; watching more particularly, no doubt, for Madame Graslin. How much of tenderness and gratitude was expressed on those faces! How many benedictions followed Veronique’s footsteps! With what reverent attention were the three benefactors of a whole community regarded! Man was adding a hymn of gratitude to the other chants of evening.
While Madame Graslin walked on with her eyes fastened on the long, magnificent green pastures, her most cherished creation, the priest and the mayor did not take their eyes from the groups below, whose expression it was impossible to misinterpret; pain, sadness, and regret, mingled with hope, were plainly on all those faces. No one in Montegnac or its neighborhood was ignorant that Monsieur Roubaud had gone to Paris to bring the best physician science afforded, or that the benefactress of the whole district was in the last stages of a fatal illness. In all the markets through a circumference of thirty miles the peasants asked those of Montegnac, —
“How is your good woman now?”
The great vision of death hovered over the land, and dominated that rural picture. Afar, in the fields, more than one reaper sharpening his scythe, more than one young girl, her arms resting on her fork, more than one farmer stacking his hay, seeing Madame Graslin, stood mute and thoughtful, examining that noble woman, the blessing of the Correze, seeking some favorable sign or merely looking to admire her, impelled by a feeling that arrested their work.
“She is out walking; therefore she must be better.”
These simple words were on every lip.
Madame Graslin’s mother, seated on the iron bench which Veronique had formerly placed at the end of the terrace, studied every movement of her daughter; she watched her step in walking, and a few tears rolled from her eyes. Aware of the secret efforts of that superhuman courage, she knew that Veronique at that moment was suffering the tortures of a horrible agony, and only maintained herself erect by the exercise of her heroic will. The tears — they seemed almost red — which forced their way from those aged eyes, and furrowed that wrinkled face, the parchment of which seemed incapable of softening under any emotion, excited those of young Graslin, whom Monsieur Ruffin had between his knees.
“What is the matter, my boy?” said the tutor, anxiously.
“My grandmother is crying,” he answered.
Monsieur Ruffin, whose eyes were on Madame Graslin as she came toward them, now looked at Madame Sauviat, and was powerfully struck by the aspect of that old head, like that of a Roman matron, petrified with grief and moistened with tears.
“Madame, why did you not prevent her from coming out?” said the tutor to the old mother, august and sacred in her silent grief.
As Veronique advanced majestically with her naturally fine and graceful step, Madame Sauviat, driven by despair at the thought of surviving her daughter, allowed the secret of many things that awakened curiosity to escape her.
“How can she walk like that,” she cried, “wearing a horrible horsehair shirt, which pricks into her skin perpetually?”
The words horrified the young man, who was not insensible to the exquisite grace of Veronique’s movements; he shuddered as he thought of the constant and terrific struggle of the soul to maintain its empire thus over the body.
“She has worn it thirteen years, — ever since she ceased to nurse the boy,” said the old woman. “She has done miracles here, but if her whole life were known they ought to canonize her. Since she came to Montegnac no one has ever seen her eat, and do you know why? Aline serves her three times a day a piece of dry bread, and vegetables boiled in water, without salt, on a common plate of red earth like those they feed the dogs on. Yes, that’s how the woman lives who has given new life to this whole canton. She kneels to say her prayers on the edge of that hair-shirt. She says she could not have that smiling air you know she always has unless she practised these austerities. I tell you this,” added the old woman, sinking her voice, “so that you may repeat it to the doctor that Monsieur Roubaud has gone to fetch. If they could prevent my daughter from continuing these penances, perhaps they might still save her, though death has laid its hand upon her head. See for yourself! Ah! I must be strong indeed to have borne so many things these fifteen years.”
The old woman took her grandson’s hand and passed it over her forehead and cheeks as if the child’s touch shed a healing balm there; then she kissed it with an affection the secret of which belongs to grandmothers as much as it belongs to mothers.
Veronique was now only a few feet from the bench, in company with Clousier, the rector, and Gerard. Illuminated by the glow of the setting sun, she shone with a dreadful beauty. Her yellow forehead, furrowed with long wrinkles massed one above the other like layers of clouds, revealed a fixed thought in the midst of inward troubles. Her face, devoid of all color, entirely white with the dead, greenish whiteness of plants without light, was thin, though not withered, and bore the signs of terrible physical sufferings produced by mental anguish. She fought her soul with her body, and vice versa. She was so completely destroyed that she no more resembled herself than an old woman resembles her portrait as a girl. The ardent expression of her eyes declared the despotic empire exercised by a devout will over a body reduced to what religion requires it to be. In this woman the soul dragged the flesh as the Achilles of profane story dragged Hector; for fifteen years she dragged it victoriously along the stony paths of life around the celestial Jerusalem she hoped to enter, not by a vile deception, but with acclamation. No solitary that ever lived in the dry and arid deserts of Africa was ever more master of his senses than was Veronique in her magnificent chateau, among the soft, voluptuous scenery of that opulent land, beneath the protecting mantle of that rich forest, whence science, the heir of Moses’ wand, had called forth plenty, prosperity, and happiness for a whole region. She contemplated the results of twelve years’ patience, a work which might have made the fame of many a superior man, with a gentle modesty such as Pontorno has painted in the sublime face of his “Christian Chastity caressing the Celestial Unicorn.” The mistress of the manor, whose silence was respected by her companions when they saw that her eyes were roving over those vast plains, once arid, and now fertile by her will, walked on, her arms folded, with a distant look, as if to some far horizon, on
her face.
XX. THE LAST STRUGGLE
Suddenly she stopped, a few feet from her mother, who looked at her as the mother of Christ must have looked at her son upon the cross. She raised her hand, and pointing to the spot where the road to Montegnac branched from the highway, she said, smiling: —
“See that carriage with the post-horses; Monsieur Roubaud is returning to us. We shall now know how many hours I have to live.”
“Hours?” said Gerard.
“Did I not tell you I was taking my last walk?” she replied. “I have come here to see for the last time this glorious scene in all its splendor!” She pointed first to the village where the whole population seemed to be collected in the church square, and then to the beautiful meadows glowing in the last rays of the setting sun. “Ah!” she said, “let me see the benediction of God in the strange atmospheric condition to which we owe the safety of our harvest. Around us, on all sides, tempests, hail, lightning, have struck incessantly and pitilessly. The common people think thus, why not I? I do so need to see in this a happy augury for what awaits me after death!”
Works of Honore De Balzac Page 1063