But Mathurin, striking the table with his fist, said, as he turned his peevish face towards his father:

"Do you believe they are thinking of us? I tell you, no, unless it is about Midsummer. I'll wager that the keeper just now asked you again for the rent? The beggar only has that one word in his mouth."

Toussaint Lumineau leant back on the bench, thought for a moment, then said in a low voice:

"You are right. Only one never can tell if the master really did order him to speak as he did, Mathurin. He often invents words!"

"Yes, yes. And what did you answer?"

"That I would pay at Michaelmas."

"With what?"

A few minutes before the two girls had gone into the kitchen, to the left of the house-place, and thence came in the sound of running water and the was.h.i.+ng of dishes. Every evening, at this hour, the men were left to themselves; it was the time when they discussed matters of interest. Already, in the previous year, the farmer had borrowed from his eldest son the larger portion of the money that he had inherited from his mother. He could therefore only hope for help from the younger; but of that he had so little doubt that, speaking in a low voice to avoid being overheard by his daughters, he said:

"I was thinking that Francois would help."

Francois, roused from his sleepiness by the foregoing talk, answered hastily:

"No, no. Do not count on me. It cannot be done...." He had not the courage to look his father in the face as he spoke, but fixed his gaze on the ground like a schoolboy.

His father was not angry, he only replied gently:

"I would have repaid you, Francois, as I shall repay your brother. One year is not like another. Good times will come back to us." And he waited, looking at the thick tawny hair and bull neck of his eldest son that scarcely rose above the table. But Francois must have already made up his mind, and that very decidedly, for in a half-smothered voice he made answer:

"Father, I cannot; nor can Eleonore. Our money is our own, is it not?

and each of us is free to use it as he or she pleases? Ours is already invested. What does it matter to us if the Marquis does have to wait a year for his money? You say he is so rich."

"What matter to us, Francois?" Then, and not till then, the father's voice rose and became authoritative. He did not put himself into a pa.s.sion, he rather felt hurt as though not recognising his own flesh and blood; it was as if, all suddenly, there had dawned upon him without his understanding it the wide gulf that existed between the feelings of the present generation and the past, and he said:

"What you say is not to my taste, Francois Lumineau. For my part, I consider it a duty to pay what I owe--the family at the Chateau have never done me a wrong. I and your mother, and Mathurin, who have known them better than you, have always respected them; do you understand?

They are perfectly justified in spending their wealth as it seems them best; that is a matter that does not concern us.... Not pay? And do you know that they could turn us out of La Fromentiere?"

"Bah!" returned Francois. "And what does it matter whether we are here or elsewhere? as far as farming goes, it does not pay so mighty well anywhere."

Treacherously, without seeing the old man's pallor, struck to the heart, he thus seceded from La Fromentiere. The sound of was.h.i.+ng of dishes was heard no more in the adjacent kitchen, the girls were listening.

The farmer made no reply; but, rising, he drew himself up to his full height, pa.s.sed before his son, his intimidated son, who watched him from the corner of his eye, and flung open the door that led into the courtyard. A rush of air, the scent of leaves, the breath of green fields, came into the heated room redolent of food. Francois, hastening to make off, sidled along the wall, pa.s.sed through the kitchen, exchanging a few words with Eleonore as he went, and going through the girls' bedchamber went out into the night.

It was the farmer's custom every night to cross his threshold and breathe the fresh air before going to rest; to-night as usual he walked out to the middle of the courtyard to judge of the weather for the morrow. Some light clouds were gliding away towards the west, rear-guard of a bank of more extended clouds deep down in the horizon.

Swept on by the wind to the neighbouring coast they formed themselves into transparent islands, separating abysses of deep-blue sky studded with stars. With the leisurely movement of a laden vessel the wind bore on towards the ever-changing sea the kiss of earth, the scent and thrill of vegetation, the scattered seeds, the germs entangled in the dust failing hither and thither in mysterious rain-showers, the voice of innumerable insects that sing in the gra.s.ses, and have no other witness than the winds.

There was a sense of content, a series of waves, as it were, of calm and fecundity following one upon the other, which should spread abroad in many a sea-solitude the scent of the harvests of France.

And the farmer, drinking in the air wherein floated the essence of his beloved Vendee, felt that love-thrill within him which, unable to express, he experienced for it to the very marrow of his bones.

"How is it with these young people," he thought, "that they can he indifferent to the farmstead? I have been young in my day, but it would have taken a good deal to make me leave La Fromentiere. Perhaps they find it dull; the house is not like it was in my dear wife's time; I do not know how to keep them together as she did." And he thought of la mere Lumineau, the good, saving housewife, haughty towards strangers, loving to her own, who, with a word in the right place, could always so quietly influence and control her boys, and check the rivalry of her girls. Around him the stables, the barns, the huge hayrick glistened in the moonlight.

A distant shot resounded from the Marais. Toussaint heard it, and his thoughts turned at once to the man shooting. At the same instant a voice behind him exclaimed:

"There's another plover down for Rousille!"

"That's enough, Mathurin!" said his father, who, without looking back, had recognised the speaker. "Do not be telling tales, which you know irritate me, against your sister. I am troubled to-night, my boy, troubled enough about Francois."

The crutches striking on the gravel came nearer, and the farmer felt the s.h.a.ggy head touch his shoulder as the cripple straightened himself.

"I am only speaking the truth, father," he said in a low voice, "these are no tales. It makes my blood boil to see this _Boquin_ making love to my sister in order to get hold of our money, and play the master here. A fellow who has not a halfpenny to bless himself with! There is no time to be lost, if he is to be brought to his senses."

"Do you really believe," asked the father, bending down a little to him, "that a girl like Rousille would listen to my hired labourer?

Does she care anything for him, Mathurin?"

It was a weakness of Toussaint Lumineau to lend too ready ear to the judgment and strictures of his eldest son. Even now that all hope had been abandoned of seeing him his successor; after all the many proofs experienced of the violence and malevolence of the cripple, he still retained predominant influence over the father.

"Father, they are lovers!" As a whispered breath the words came to the father's ear.

Rage at the happiness of others had distorted the younger man's features. Toussaint Lumineau looked down at the face raised to his, so white in the moonlight, and was struck by the air of suffering it wore.

"If you watched them as I do," continued his son, "you would see that though they never speak to each other indoors, outside they always contrive to meet. I have often caught them talking and laughing together like acknowledged lovers. You do not know that Jean Nesmy; he is audacity itself. He lets you think that he likes shooting, and I do not say but what he may, but he does not carry his love for it to that extent, I'll be bound. Is it only for his own pleasure that he is off to the far end of the Marais to shoot plovers; only for his own pleasure that he risks malarial fever fis.h.i.+ng for eels; that he spends whole nights out after being hard at work all day? No, I tell you, it is for Rousille, for Rousille, for Rousille!" His voice had risen, it could be heard from within the house.

"I will be on the watch, my boy," returned his father soothingly, "do not you worry yourself."

"Ah, if I were you, I would go at dawn to-morrow along the road to the Marais, and if I caught them together...."

"Enough!" exclaimed his father, "you do yourself no good by so much talking, Mathurin. Here is Eleonore coming to help you in."

Eleonore had come, as usual, to help Mathurin up the steps, and unlace his boots. No sooner did she touch his arm than turning, he went in with her. The sound of crutches and of footsteps died away; the father was alone again.

"Come," he thought aloud, "if this be true, I will not suffer the laugh to last long against me in the Marais!" He drew in a deep breath of pure air, as though it were a b.u.mper of wine, then to make sure that Rousille had not gone out again, he entered the house by the door in the middle, which was that of his daughter's bedchamber. All was dark within; a ray of moonlight fell across the well-waxed wardrobes furnis.h.i.+ng the sides of the room--wardrobes always kept in perfect order by Eleonore and Rousille. The farmer felt his way round the huge walnut wood one which had formed his mother's dowry, had crossed the room, and was making his way out into the kitchen communicating with the large living-room where he and Mathurin slept, when behind him, in the angle of a bed, a shadowy form arose:

"Father!"

He stopped.

"Is it you, Rousille? Are you not in bed?"

"No, I was waiting for you. I wanted to say something to you." They were separated by the length of the room; the darkness was too great for them to see each other. "As Francois cannot give you his money, I have been thinking that I will give you mine."

"You are not afraid then that I shall not repay you?" the farmer asked harshly.

The girlish voice, as if discouraged by this reception, and checked in its enthusiasm, replied timidly:

"I will go to-morrow to fetch it ... the Michelonne's nephew has it.... I will, indeed, and you shall have it the day after to-morrow."

If a tear rolled down his cheeks, the farmer was unaware of it; he pa.s.sed on into his own room.

Some minutes later, when Eleonore came into the room, a lighted candle in her hand, Marie-Rose was no longer beside her bed, but was standing before the open windows looking out on to the courtyard.

The farmhouse stood upon an eminence, and from this window there was a view over the low wall, and through the arched gateway to the slopes beyond, and even across the sedge-covered Marais.