by George Sand
At the other end of the room, a young man dressed in black sat carelessly on a couch and gazed at Athénaïs without speaking. But his features did not express that effusive, childish delight which every one of the girl’s movements betrayed. At times indeed a faint expression of irony and compassion seemed to raise the corners of his large, thin-lipped, mobile mouth.
Monsieur Lhéry, or Père Lhéry, as he was still called from habit by the peasants whose companion and equal he had been for many years, was placidly warming his white-stockinged shins at the fire of fagots which burned on the hearth at all seasons, as the custom is in the country. He was a most worthy man, still hale and hearty, and he wore striped short-clothes, a flowered waistcoat, a long coat and a queue. The queue is a priceless vestige of the past, which is rapidly vanishing on French soil. Berri having suffered less than any other province from the inroads of civilization, that style of head-dress still prevails there among a few loyal adherents in the class of half-bourgeois, half-rustic farmers. In their youth it was the first step toward aristocratic habits, and they would consider that they were going backward to-day, if they should deprive their heads of that social distinction. Monsieur Lhéry had protected his against the satirical assaults of his daughter, and it was perhaps the only subject upon which Athénaïs’s doting father had refused to accede to her wishes during her whole life.
“Come, come, mamma !” said Athénaïs, fastening the golden clasp of her black belt, “ haven’t you finished feeding your ducks ? Aren’t you dressed yet ? Why, we shall never get started !”
“Patience, patience, my girl!” said Mère Lhéry, distributing the food among her fowls with noble impartiality; “I shall have all the time I need to fix myself while they’re hitching Mignon to the wagon. Ah! bless my soul, my child, I don’t need all the time you do ! I am no longer young; and when I was, I didn’t have the time nor the means to make myself pretty as you do. I didn’t spend two hours over my dressing, I tell you !”
“Are you reproaching me now ?” said Athénaïs with a pout.
“No, my girl, no,” replied the old woman. “Enjoy yourself, make yourself fine, my child ; you are rich, make the most of your father and mother’s hard work. We are too old to enjoy it now. And then, when you’ve got into the habit of being poor, you can’t get out of it. I might have servants to wait on me for my money, but it’s impossible ; the old habit is too strong for me, and I must do everything in the house with my own hands. But you play the great lady, my girl; you were brought up for that; it’s what your father intended; you’re not made for any ploughboy, and the husband you get will be glad enough to find you with white hands, eh?”
As Madame Lhéry finished wiping her kettle and delivering this affectionate rather than sensible harangue, she made a grimace at the young man by way of a smile. He pretended not to notice it, and Père Lhéry, who was gazing at his shoe buckles in the state of vacuous stupidity so sweet to the peasant in his hours of repose, lifted his half-closed eyes to his future son-in-law, as if to share his satisfaction. But the future son-in-law in order to escape those mute attentions, rose, changed his seat, and finally said to Madame Lhéry:
“Shall I go to get the carriage ready, aunt ?”
“Go, my boy, go if you will. I shan’t keep you waiting.”
The nephew was about to leave the room when a fifth person entered, who, in manner and in costume, presented a striking contrast to the occupants of the farmhouse.
II
She was a small, slender woman, who seemed, at first glance, to be about twenty-five years of age ; but, upon a closer view, one might credit her with thirty years and not be too liberal to her. Her slight and well proportioned figure still had the grace of youth; but her face, which was both distinguished and pretty, bore the marks of grief, which is even more blasting in its effects than the lapse of years. Her careless attire, her undressed hair, her tranquil manner, were sufficiently indicative of her purpose not to attend the fête. But, in the diminutive size of her slipper, in the modest and graceful arrangement of her gray dress, in the whiteness of her neck, in her firm and elastic step, there was more genuine aristocracy than in all Athénaïs’s finery. And yet this imposing personage, at whose entrance all the others rose respectfully, bore no other name among her hosts at the farm than that of Mademoiselle Louise.
She offered her hand affectionately to Madame Lhéry, kissed her daughter on the forehead, and bestowed a friendly smile on the young man.
“Well,” said Père Lhéry, “have you had a nice long walk this morning, my dear young lady ?”
“Guess where I really dared to go ?” replied Mademoiselle Louise, seating herself familiarly beside him.
“Not to the château, I hope?” said the nephew, hastily.
“To the château, just so, Bénédict,” she replied.
“How imprudent!” exclaimed Athénaïs, suspending for a moment the operation of crimping her curly locks, and curiously drawing near.
“Why so?” rejoined Louise; “didn’t you tell me that all the servants had been changed except poor nurse ? And she certainly would not have betrayed me if I had happened to meet her.”
“But you might have met madame.”
“At six o’clock In the morning ? Madame stays in bed until noon.”
“So you rose before dawn, did you ?” said Bénédict. “Indeed, I thought that I heard you open the garden door.”
“But there’s mademoiselle!” exclaimed Madame Lhéry; “they say she’s a very early riser, and very active. Suppose you had met her ?”
“Ah ! if I only could !” said Louise, excitedly ; “ I shall have no rest till I have seen her face, and heard the sound of her voice. You know her, Athénaïs ; do tell me again that she is pretty and sweet and resembles her father!”
“There is someone here whom she resembles much more,” replied Athénaïs, looking at Louise; “which is as much as to say that she is sweet and pretty.”
Bénédict’s face brightened and his eyes rested kindly on his fiancée.
“But listen,” said Athénaïs to Louise, “if you’re so anxious to see Mademoiselle Valentine, you should come to the fête with us ; you can keep out of sight in Cousin Simonne’s house on the square, and from there you will certainly see the ladies, for Mademoiselle Valentine assured me they would come.”
“That is impossible, my dear love,” Louise replied; “ I could not alight from the carriage without being recognized or suspected. Besides, there is only one person in that family whom I want to see ; the presence of the, others would spoil the pleasure I anticipate in seeing her. But we have talked enough about my plans ; let us talk of yours, Athénaïs. I should judge that you propose to crush the whole province by such a display of bloom and beauty !”
The young farmer-maid blushed with delight and kissed Louise with a warmth which demonstrated clearly enough the artless satisfaction she felt in being admired.
“I am going to get my hat,” she said; “you’ll help me to put it on, won’t you ?”
And she hurriedly ascended the wooden staircase leading to her chamber.
Meanwhile Mère Lhéry left the room by another door to go to change her dress ; her husband took a pitchfork and went to give his instructions for the day to the herdsman.
Thereupon Bénédict, being left alone with Louise, drew closer to her and said in a low tone :
“You spoil Athénaïs like all the rest. You are the only one who has any right to talk to her, and you do not condescend to do it.”
“Why, what cause of reproach have you against the poor child ?” said Louise, in amazement. “O Bénédict, you are very hard to suit !”
“That is what everybody tells me, even you, mademoiselle, who are so well able to understand what I suffer from this young woman’s character and absurdities !”
“Absurdities ?” repeated Louise. “Can it be that you are not in love with her ?”
Bénédict did not answer, but after a moment of silent embarrassm
ent, he said:
“You must agree that her costume is extravagant today. The idea of dancing in the sun and dust in a ball dress, satin slippers, a cashmere shawl and feathers! Not only is such finery out of place, but I consider it in execrable taste. At her age, a young woman ought to think first of simplicity and to know how to embellish herself at small expense.”
“Is it Athénaïs’s fault if she has been brought up so ? How much you make of trifles! Give your attention rather to pleasing her and obtaining supreme influence over her mind and heart; then you may be sure that your wishes will be laws to her. But you think only of thwarting her and contradicting her, and she so petted, so like a queen in her family ! Remember how kind and how sensitive her heart is.”
“Her heart, her heart! no doubt she has a good heart; but her intellect is so limited ! her kindness of heart is all native, all born of the soil, like the plants which grow well or ill without understanding the reason. How I detest her coquetry ! I shall have to give her my arm, walk her about and exhibit her at this fête, listen to the idiotic admiration of some and the idiotic disparagement of others ! What a bore ! I wish it were over !”
“What an extraordinary disposition! Do you know, Bénédict, I can’t understand you. How many men in your place would take the greatest pride in being seen in public with the prettiest girl and the richest heiress in our whole district, in arousing the envy of twenty discarded rivals, in being able to say that you are her fiancé? Instead of that, you think of nothing but indulging in bitter criticism of some trivial failings, common to all young women of her class, whose education is not in harmony with their birth. You consider it a crime on her part to submit to the consequences of her parents’ vanity—a most harmless sort of vanity after all, and something of which you should be the last to complain.”
“I know it,” he rejoined hastily, “I know all that you are going to say. They owed me nothing and they have given me everything. They took me in, the son of their brother, a peasant like themselves, but a poor peasant—me, a penniless orphan. They gave me a home, adopted me, and instead of putting me at the plough, to which I was apparently destined by the laws of society, they sent me to Paris at their expense ; they gave me an education, they transformed me into a bourgeois, a student, a wit, and they also intend their daughter for me, their rich, lovely and vain daughter. They have reserved her for me, they offer her to me! Oh ! undoubtedly they are very fond of me, these simple-hearted and generous kindred of mine ! but their blind affection has gone astray, and all the good they have sought to do me has changed into evil. Cursed be the passion for aspiring to a higher place than one can reach !”
Bénédict stamped on the floor; Louise looked at him with a pained but stern expression.
“Is this the way you talked yesterday, when you returned from the hunt, to that ignorant, shallow-brained young nobleman, who denied the benefits of education and wanted to arrest the progress of the inferior ranks of society ? What excellent arguments you had at hand to defend the propagation of knowledge, and the theory that all men should be free to grow and succeed ! Bénédict, this fickle, irresolute, disappointed mind of yours, this mind which scrutinizes and depreciates everything, surprises me and grieves me. I am afraid that in you the good seed is changing to tares ; I am afraid that you are much below your education, or much above it, which would be no less a misfortune.”
“Louise, Louise!” said Bénédict in an altered voice, seizing the young woman’s hand.
He gazed at her earnestly and with moist eyes; Louise blushed and turned her eyes away with a displeased air. Bénédict dropped her hand and began to pace the floor excitedly and angrily ; then he returned to her and made an effort to become calm once more.
“You are too indulgent,” he said to her; “ you have lived longer than I, and yet I think that you are much younger. You have the experience of your sentiments, which are noble and generous, but you have not studied the hearts of others, you have no suspicion of their deformities and pettiness ; you attach no importance to the imperfections of others, perhaps you do not even see them ! Ah ! mademoiselle, mademoiselle ! you are a very indulgent and a very dangerous guide.”
“These are singular reproaches,” said Louise with forced gayety. “Whose mentor have I assumed to be ? Have I not always told you, on the contrary, that I was no better fitted to guide others than to guide myself ? I lack experience, you say ? Oh! I do not complain of that, I promise you !”
Tears rolled down Louise’s cheeks. There was a moment’s silence, during which Bénédict again approached and stood beside her, deeply moved and trembling. Trying to conceal her melancholy, Louise continued :
“But you are right; I have lived too much within myself to observe others thoroughly. I have wasted too much time in suffering; my life has been ill employed.”
Louise discovered that Bénédict was weeping. She was afraid of the young man’s excessive sensitiveness, and, pointing to the courtyard, she motioned to him to go to assist his uncle, who was himself harnessing a stout Poitou nag to the family conveyance. But Bénédict did not grasp her meaning.
“Louise !” he said ardently ; “ Louise !” he repeated in a lower tone. “It is a pretty name,” he continued, “ so simple and so sweet! and you bear that name, while my cousin, who is so well fitted to milk cows and watch sheep, is named Athénaïs! I have another cousin named Zoraïde, and she has just named her little brat Adhémar ! The nobles are perfectly justified in despising our absurd foibles ; they are shocking ! don’t you think so ? Here’s a spinning-wheel, my good aunt’s spinning-wheel; who supplies it with flax ? who turns it patiently in her absence ? Not Athénaïs. Oh ! no! she would think that she debased herself if she touched a spindle ; she would be afraid of going down again into the social condition from which she came if she should learn to do any useful work. No, no; she knows how to embroider, play the guitar, paint flowers and dance; but you, mademoiselle, who were born in opulence, know how to spin ; you are sweet, humble and industrious. I hear footsteps overhead. She is coming; she had forgotten herself before her mirror, I doubt not!”
“Bénédict! do go to get your hat,” cried Athénaïs from the top of the staircase.
“Pray, go !” said Louise in an undertone, seeing that Bénédict did not stir.
“Curse the fête !” he replied in the same tone. “I must go, so be it; but as soon as I have deposited my fair cousin on the greensward, I shall take pains to have my foot trodden on and return to the farm. Will you be here, Mademoiselle Louise ?”
“No, monsieur, I shall not be here,” she replied dryly.
Bénédict’s faced flushed with indignation. He made ready to go. Madame Lhéry reappeared in a less gorgeous but even more absurd costume than her daughter’s. The satin and lace served admirably to set off the coppery tinge of her sunburned face, her strongly accentuated features and her plebeian gait. Athénaïs passed a quarter of an hour arranging her skirts, with much ill-humor, on the back seat of the carriage, reproving her mother for rumpling her sleeves by taking up too much room beside her, and regretting in her heart that the folly of her parents had not reached a point of procuring a calèche.
Père Lhéry held his hat on his knees, in order not to expose it to the risk of accident from the jolting of the vehicle by keeping it on his head. Bénédict mounted the front seat, and, as he took the reins, ventured to cast a last glance at Louise ; but he encountered such a cold, stern expression in her eyes, that he lowered his own, bit his lips, and angrily lashed the horse. Mignon started off at a gallop, and, as she struck the deep mud holes in the road, imparted to the vehicle a series of violent shocks, most disastrous to the hats of the two ladies and to Athénaïs’s temper.
III
But, after a few rods, the mare, being ill adapted by nature for racing, slackened her pace ; Bénédict’s irascible mood passed away, giving place to shame and remorse ; and Père Lhéry slept soundly.
They followed one of the little grass-grown roads c
alled in village parlance traînes; a road so narrow that the narrow carriage touched the branches of the trees on both sides, and that Athénaïs was able to pluck a large bunch of hawthorn by passing her arm, encased in a white glove, through the side window. There are no words to describe the freshness and charm of those little tortuous paths which wind capriciously in and out under the never-failing arbors of foliage, revealing at each turn fresh depths of shadow, ever greener and more mysterious. When the noonday sun burns even to its roots the tall, dense grass of the fields, when the insects buzz noisily and the quail amorously clucks in the furrows, coolness and silence seem to take refuge in the traînes. You may walk an hour there without hearing other sounds than the flight of a blackbird alarmed by your approach, or the leap of a little green frog, gleaming like an emerald, who was sleeping in his cabin of interlaced rushes. Even yonder ditch contains a whole world of inhabitants, a whole forest of plants; its limpid water flows noiselessly over the clay, casting off its impurities, and kisses gently the watercress, balsam and hepatica on the banks; the water-moss, the long grasses called water ribbons, the hairy, hanging aquatic mosses, quiver incessantly in its silent little eddies ; the yellow wagtail runs along the sand with a mischievous yet timid air ; the clematis and the honeysuckle shade it with leafy arbors where the nightingale hides his nest. In spring it is all flowers and fragrance ; in autumn, purple sloes cover the twigs which turn white first of all in April ; the red haw, of which the thrushes are so fond, replaces the hawthorn flower, and the bramble bushes, all covered with bits of fleece left by the sheep in passing through, are tinged with purple by small wild berries pleasant to the taste.