Part 21 (2/2)
”Rousille, it is now four months since I have seen you, according to your desire. It was only at the fair at Pouzanges that, through a man from the Marais who came to buy wood, I heard that your brother Andre had come home, and that he was working on the land as the master of La Fromentiere likes those about him to work; so it will not be very long before I come back to see you.
Some evening I shall come, when the men are still out in the fields, and you, perhaps, are thinking of me as you boil the soup in the big room. I shall come round by the barn, and when you hear or see me, open the window, Rousille, and tell me with one of your little smiles, tell me that you still care for me. Then La Mere Nesmy will make the journey in the proper manner, and will ask your hand from your father, and if he says, Yes, by my baptism! I swear to you that I will bring you home to be my wife.
You are my one thought and desire; there is no one but you that I cherish in my heart of hearts. Take care of yourself. I greet you with my whole heart.
”JEAN NESMY.”
One by one, like the beads of a rosary being told, and that pa.s.s between the fingers of the devotee, the sentences of the letter pa.s.sed through the mind of Marie-Rose, and her eyes gazing intently on the landscape, saw only the image of Jean Nesmy. The young girl saw him in his coat with the horn b.u.t.tons, his high cheek-bones, his eager eyes that only laughed for her and for good work done, when at the close of day, his scythe slung on to his bare arm, he scanned the corn he had cut, and the sheaves he had tied standing upright in the stubble.
”Father no longer talks against him,” thought she. ”He even defended him once to Mathurin. As for me, he has never found me complain, nor refuse to do the work I had to do, and I think he is pleased with me for having done my best. If Andre were to settle down now, and to bring a wife to La Fromentiere, perhaps father would not refuse to let me marry. And I begin to think that Master Andre has his reasons for absenting himself on Sundays, and going off to Saint Jean, Perrier, and Saint Gervais, as he does....”
She smiled. Her eyes had taken the colour of the fresh straw that surrounded her. Far away, on the road to the meadows, she saw a fine strapping youth walking with swaying movement, carrying over one shoulder a pole to jump the d.y.k.es with.
”Driot,” she murmured. ”I will tease him about his Sunday walks.”
Soon she saw Andre come up the hill, skirt the dwarf orchard, then pa.s.s between the leafless hedges in the road. When he was at a little distance, she coughed to attract his attention. He looked up. His face which had worn an anxious expression cleared; instead of continuing his way to the courtyard of La Fromentiere, he jumped over into a small field that ran beside it, pa.s.sed the row of hives where the bees were sleeping their winter sleep, and stopped beside Rousille in the thres.h.i.+ng-floor, leaning on his pole. As he did so, he endeavoured to a.s.sume the half-bantering, half-protecting air he usually adopted towards his sister, thinking himself obliged to laugh with her as with a child.
”I was looking for you,” he said.
”Oh, you were looking for me very badly then. Your head was bent down.
I believe you were thinking of someone else than me.”
”Indeed!”
”Yes. Where do you come from with your pole, you roamer? Not from vespers?”
”No, from Saint Jean. The water is grand, and jolly cold. On the other side of Le Perrier there are inundations on both sides of the road.”
”You have been calling at the farms, I suppose. Did you stop at La Seuliere?”
”You do not know me one bit; do you think I should go against....”
He was about to say ”against the intrigues of Mathurin, who has returned to his former infatuation,” but he stopped short.
So happy herself that she did not notice his reticence, she resumed:
”To the Levrelles? No? Then to the mill of Moque-Souris, where there is that pretty little Marie Dieu-donnee, the prettiest miller's daughter between here and Beauvoir?”
”Still wrong.”
Trying to be grave, but without succeeding in hiding the joy that pervaded her whole soul, she resumed:
”You see, I want you so much to marry, Andre. And such a dear boy as you are, I think it would be easy. Indeed, you have no idea how greatly I wish it!”
Andre's face grew careworn again as before, and he said:
”On the contrary I know very well....”
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