Terrified, she asked:

"Was that long ago?"

"A quarter of an hour."

"Which way did he go?"

Jean Nesmy pointed in the direction of the mainland, and to the wooden heights further away.

"To the grounds of the Chateau, I believe. He jumped the fence some hundred yards from here."

"Thanks and good-bye, Jean. I must go."

But he, taking her hand, grew very grave in his turn.

"Yes," he replied, "I know quite well--but myself--soon you will have me no longer. To-morrow I am going home to the Bocage; and I came back to ask you one thing, Rousille. What shall I say to my mother to-morrow when she asks me, 'Is it really true that she loves you?

What word of plighted troth did she give you when you parted? My poor Jean, when true-hearted girls see their sweethearts going away from them they say some word that is as binding as a betrothal ring, something to comfort him in absence. What did she of La Fromentiere say to you?' If you have said no word, she will not believe me!"

The dim solitude enveloping them threw their shadows faintly on the grey gra.s.s. Rousille, her sweetheart's glowing eyes fixed upon her, answered sadly:

"Do not come back until Driot is well settled at home. Some months hence, in mid-winter, if our neighbours who frequent your markets tell you that he is working like a true farmer, that he is to be seen at fairs and gatherings, above all, that he is courting a girl at Sallertaine, then come back and speak to father. My father will not hear of a _Boquin_ for son-in-law; but if I will have no other husband than you--if Andre speaks for me, who can tell? Father spoke well of you after you went."

"Really, Rousille? What did he say?"

"No, not now. I must be going. Good-bye."

He raised his hat with a natural courtesy that sat well upon him; nor did he seek to detain her longer.

Already Rousille, turning her back upon Sallertaine, was running across the meadow; she had reached the last bushes that border the Marais, her cloak fluttering in the mist. For more than a minute after she had disappeared beyond the fence Jean Nesmy remained motionless, on the same spot, where the words she had spoken were still ringing in his ears. Then slowly, as one learning by heart who looks not about him, he took his way towards Sallertaine and on from thence to Chalons. His heart sang with joy as he repeated to himself: "In mid-winter, if our neighbours who frequent your markets tell you that he is working like a true farmer, come back...."

The one thing he saw on the road to Chalons was that the topmost leaves of the willows were already turning yellow, and that the branches were growing leafless.

Rousille, through a gap in the fence, had made her way into a stubble field, thence through a narrow belt of wood. Then finding that she was in the gravel walk of an avenue, she paused, terrified by the solitude, and seized by the instinctive respect for the seigniorial domain, where even then her people ventured but rarely, from fear of displeasing the Marquis. She was in the outskirts of the park. On all sides, lit by the peaceful light of the moon, were sloping lawns, broken now by groups of forest-trees forming islands of black shade, now disappearing in the blue mist of distance. Sometimes in light, sometimes in shadow, Rousille followed the path, her eyes on the watch, her heart beating wildly. She was seeking marks of footsteps on the gravel; straining to see objects amid the dense thickets. Was that her father over there, that dark form through the wood? No, it was but the pile of a fence overgrown with brambles. Everywhere thorn-bushes, roots, dead branches impeded the moss-grown paths. How neglect had grown with years! The master absent, all was deserted, gone to waste.

As she pursued her way, Rousille began to realise more keenly her sorrow at her brother's and sister's flight. They too, perhaps, would never come back to their home; fear in her gave place to grief.

Suddenly, the path winding round a clump of cedars, she found herself in front of the Chateau, with its huge main building flanked by towers and pointed roofs, on which the weather-c.o.c.ks that once told the direction of the wind were now motionless with rust. Night owls were silently chasing each other round the gables; the windows were shut, the ground-floor secured with shutters strongly battened.

Anxious as she was, the young girl could not but stop for a moment to look at the melancholy pile, stained by winter rains, already as grey as any ruin; and as she stood there on the broad carriage-drive, her ear detected a distant murmur of words.

"It is father," she thought without a moment's hesitation.

He was sitting some hundred yards away from the Chateau, on a bench that Rousille knew well, placed in the half-bend of a group of birches, and called by the country people the bench of the Marquise.

Bent double, his head resting on his hands, the old man was looking at the Chateau and down the avenues that sloped towards the Marais. Under the shadow of the birches Rousille drew nearer to him, and as she came closer, she began to distinguish the words he was saying, like a refrain: "Monsieur le Marquis! Monsieur le Marquis!" And as she hastened over the soft turf which deadened her footsteps, Rousille had the horrible dread that her father was mad. No, it was not that, but grief, fatigue, and hunger, of which he was unconscious, had excited his brain. Finding neither help nor support anywhere, in his despair instinct and habit had brought him to the door of the Chateau, where so often before he had come in sure hope of relief. He had lost all knowledge of time, and only continued to address his lament, "Monsieur le Marquis! Monsieur le Marquis!" to the ears of the master too distant to pay heed. The girl, throwing back the hood of her cloak, said softly so as not to startle him:

"Father, it is Rousille. I have been looking for you for an hour.

Father, it is late--come!"

The old farmer shuddered, looking at her with absent eyes that saw not present objects.

"Only think," he said, "the Marquis is not here, Rousille. My house is going to ruin, and he is not here to defend me. He should come back when I am in trouble, should he not?"

"Of course, father, but he does not know of it; he is far away, in Paris."

"The others, the people of Sallertaine, they can do nothing for us because they are humble folks like ourselves, who have no authority beyond their farms. I have been to the Mayor, to Guerineau, to de la Pinconniere, le Glorieux, de la Terre-Aymont. They sent me away with empty words. But the Marquis, Rousille, when he comes back--when he knows all! Perhaps to-morrow?"

"Perhaps."

"Then he will not leave me alone in my grief. He will help me; he will give me back Francois--eh, child? will he not give me back Francois?"

His voice was raised; the shrill words struck against the walls of the Chateau, that sent them echoing back in softened accents to the avenues, the lawns, until they were lost in the forest. The still, pure night listened as they died away, as it listened to the rustle of insects in the thickets.

Rousille, seeing her father in so great distress, sat down beside him, and talked to him for a while, trying to inspire a hope which she did not feel. And, possibly, a calming influence, a consoling power emanated from her, for when she said: "There is Mathurin at home, father, waiting for you," of his own accord he rose, and took his daughter's arm. For a long while he looked into the face of his pretty little Rousille, so pale with emotion and fatigue.

"True," he replied, "there is Mathurin. We must go."

And together they pa.s.sed in front of the Chateau, turned into the avenue leading towards the servants' offices, and thence into the fields belonging to the farm. As they neared La Fromentiere, Rousille felt that the farmer was gradually recovering his self-control, and when they were in the courtyard, with a rush of pity for the cripple, Rousille said:

"Father, Mathurin is very unhappy too. Do not talk much to him of your distress."

Hereupon the farmer, whose courage and clear reasoning had revived, pa.s.sed his hand over his eyes, and preceding Rousille, pushed open the door of the house-place, where his crippled son lay stretched deep in thought, beside the nearly burnt-out candle.

"Mathurin, my son," he said, "do not worry overmuch ... they have gone, but our Driot will soon be home again!"

CHAPTER VII.

DRIOT'S RETURN.

"Our Driot is coming." For a fortnight La Fromentiere lived on these words. Work had been resumed the day after the trouble. A farm-labourer, hired by Lumineau at Saint Jean-de-Mont, a tall, lean man, with thighs as flat as his cheeks, replaced Jean Nesmy, and slept in the room beyond the stable. Marie-Rose did, single-handed, the work before shared by both sisters: housekeeping, cooking, dairy-work, and bread-making. She rose earlier and went to bed later. Under her coif she ever had some wise idea in her little head which prevented her from thinking of the past; and in all her movements was displayed that silent activity that the farmer had loved in his old Luminette.

Mathurin had of himself offered to look after the "birds," that is to say, the stock of half-wild turkeys and geese bred at La Fromentiere.

Carrying a sack fastened across his shoulders, he would drag himself down every morning to the edge of the first ca.n.a.l of the Marais, where, at a part that widened out, were fastened the two boats belonging to La Fromentiere. In the shallow water he would scatter his supply of corn or buck-wheat, and from across the meadows drakes with blue-tinted wings, ducks, grey, with a double notch cut on the right side of their beaks to mark them as belonging to Lumineau, would hurry and dive for their food. For hours Mathurin would find amus.e.m.e.nt in watching them, then, lowering himself gently into one of the boats, seated or kneeling, would try to recover the sure and rapid stroke which at one time had made him famous among the puntsmen of the Marais.

Toussaint Lumineau delighted to see him managing his boat near the farm, thus distracting his mind, as he thought, from the ever present regret. He would say: "The lad is regaining his old pleasure in punting. It can but be good for him and for us all." But to Mathurin, to Rousille, to his man, to the pa.s.sers-by, sometimes even to his oxen, often when alone to himself, he would talk of the son so soon to be home again among them. Help was coming; youth and joy were returning to sorrow-stricken La Fromentiere. At table nothing else was talked about:

"Only twelve days; only ten; only seven. I will drive to Chalons to meet him," said Lumineau.

"And I will make him some porridge," said Rousille, "he used to be so fond of it before he joined his regiment."

"And I" said Mathurin, "will go in the punt with him the first time he looks up his friends."

"How much there will be to hear!" exclaimed Rousille. "When he was home on furlough he had an endless store of tales to tell. As for me, I shall have no time to listen to them. I shall have to send him to you, Mathurin. And what a change it will make in the house to have a chatterbox among us." Then she added, with the grave air of one entrusted with the household purse: "One change we must make, father, and that will be to buy a paper on Sunday. He will not like to go without one; our Andre is sure to want to know the news."

"He is young," said the father, as if to excuse him.

And all Andre's predilections, every recollection connected with him, all the hopes that centred in his return were incessantly recapitulated by one and the other in the living-room of La Fromentiere, where the caress of such discourses must have ascended more than once to the smoke-stained rafters.