Part 46 (1/2)

From the time of her earliest infancy, she had been used to bare her shoulders to the lash, and take the stripes as food and wages; she had no more thought to resist them than the brave hound, who fears no foe on earth, has to resist his master's blows; the dull habits of a soulless bondage had been too strong on her to be lightly broken, and the resignation of the loyal beasts that were her comrades, had been the one virtue that she had seen to follow.

But now at length she had burst her bonds, and had claimed her freedom.

She had tasted the freshness of liberty, and the blood burned like fire in her face as she remembered the patience and the shame of the years of her slavery.

There was no mirror in her little room in the gabled eaves; all the mirror she had ever known had been that which she had shared with the water-lilies, when together she and they had leaned over the smooth dark surface of the mill-pond. But the moon streamed clearly through the one unshuttered window, a moon full and clear, and still cold; the springtide moon, from which the pale primroses borrow those tender hues of theirs, which never warm or grow deeper, however golden be the sun that may s.h.i.+ne.

Its clear colorless crescent went sailing past the little square lattice hole in the wall; ma.s.ses of gorgeous cloud, white and black, swept by in a fresh west wind; the fresh breath of a spring night chased away the heat and languor of the day; the smell of all the blossoms of the spring rose up from wood and orchard; the cool, drowsy murmuring of the mill-stream beneath was the only sound on the stillness, except when now and then there came the wild cry of a mating owl.

The moonbeams fell about her where she stood; and she looked down on her smooth skin, her glistening shoulders, her l.u.s.trous and abundant hair, on which the wavering light played and undulated. The most delicious gladness that a woman's life can know was in tumult in her, conflicting with the new and deadly sense of shame and ignorance. She learned that she was beautiful, at the same time that she awoke to the knowledge of her dumb, lifeless slavish inferiority to all other human things.

”Beautiful!” she muttered to herself, ”only as a poppy, as a snake, as a night-moth are beautiful--beautiful and without fragrance, or sweetness, or worth!”

And her heart was heavy, even amidst all its pleasure and triumph, heavy with a sense of utter ignorance and utter worthlessness.

The poppy was snapped asunder as a weed, the snake was shunned and cursed for his poison, the night-moth was killed because his nature had made him dwell in the darkness; none of the three might have any fault in truth in them; all of the three might have only the livery of evil, and no more; might be innocent, and ask only to breathe and live for a little brief s.p.a.ce in their world, which men called G.o.d's world. Yet were they condemned by men, and slain, being what they were, although G.o.d made them.

Even so she felt, without reasoning, had it been and would it be, with herself.

CHAPTER IV.

In the room below, the old Norman woman, who did not fear her taskmaster, unbarred the shutter to let the moon s.h.i.+ne in the room, and by its light put away her wheel and work, and cut a halved lettuce up upon a platter, with some dry bread, and ate them for her supper.

The old man knelt down before the leaden image, and joined his knotted hands, and prayed in a low, fierce, eager voice, while the heavy pendulum of the clock swung wearily to and fro.

The clock kept fitful and uncertain time; it had been so long imprisoned in the gloom there among the beams and cobwebs, and in this place life was so dull, so colorless, so torpid, that it seemed to have forgotten how time truly went, and to wake up now and then with a shudder of remembrance, in which its works ran madly down.

The old woman ended her supper, munching the lettuce-leaves thirstily in her toothless mouth, and not casting so much as a crumb of the crusts to the cat, who pitifully watched, and mutely implored, with great ravenous amber-circled eyes. Then she took her stick and crept out of the kitchen, her wooden shoes clacking loud on the bare red bricks.

”Prayer did little to keep holy the other one,” she muttered. ”Unless, indeed, the devil heard and answered.”

But Claudis Flamma for all that prayed on, entreating the mercy and guidance of Heaven, whilst the gore dripped from the dead rabbit, and the silent song-birds hung stiff upon the nail.

”Thou hast a good laborer,” said the old woman Pitchou, with curt significance, to her master, meeting him in the raw of the dawn of the morrow, as he drew the bolts from his house-door. ”Take heed that thou dost not drive her away, Flamma. One may beat a saddled mule safely, but hardly so a wolf's cub.”

She pa.s.sed out of the door as she spoke with mop and pail to wash down the paved court outside; but her words abode with her master.

He meddled no more with the wolf's cub.

When Folle-Farine came down the stairs in the crisp, cool, sweet-smelling spring morning that was breaking through the mists over the land and water, he motioned to her to break her fast with the cold porridge left from overnight, and looking at her from under his bent brows with a glance that had some apprehension underneath its anger, apportioned her a task for the early day with a few bitter words of command; but he molested her no further, nor referred ever so faintly to the scene of the past night.

She ate her poor and tasteless meal in silence, and set about her appointed labor without protest. So long as she should eat his bread, so long she said to herself would she serve him. Thus much the pride and honesty of her nature taught her was his due.

He watched her furtively under his s.h.a.ggy eyebrows. His instinct told him that this nameless, dumb, captive, desert animal, which he had bound as a beast of burden to his mill-wheels, had in some manner learned her strength, and would not long remain content to be thus yoked and driven.

He had blinded her with the blindness of ignorance, and goaded her with the goad of ignominy; but for all that, some way her bandaged eyes had sought and found the light, some way her numbed hide had thrilled and swerved beneath the barb.

”She also is a saint; let G.o.d take her!” said the old man to himself in savage irony, as he toiled among his mill-gear and his sacks.

His heart was ever sore and in agony because his G.o.d had cheated him, letting him hold as purest and holiest among women the daughter who had betrayed him. In his way he prayed still; but chiefly his prayer was a pa.s.sionate upbraiding, a cynical reproach. She--his beloved, his marvel, his choicest of maidens, his fairest and coldest of virgins--had escaped him and duped him, and been a thing of pa.s.sion and of foulness, of treachery and of l.u.s.t, all the while that he had wors.h.i.+ped her.