Part 22 (1/2)
”No. You always think of me as a child. But I am twenty, Driot. I know when others are unhappy. You, for instance, are grieving over our Francois; you miss him even more than father does. If you were to marry, you would forget your sorrow a little. Settled down at La Fromentiere, married to a girl you love, your thoughts would no longer be brooding over the past as now.”
”And above all,” put in Andre, ”there would be a housekeeper here, and little Rousille could marry her faithful swain.”
Pressing herself back against the rick with a girlish movement of shoulders, head, and arms, Rousille raised herself and knelt forward the better to reach her pocket. Bending over the aperture hidden amongst the innumerable folds of her dress, she extracted the letter and gently held up the square of paper to her brother, raising it to the level of her head and following it with her eyes as she did so.
”I would show it to no one but you, Andre ... read my letter ... I want to prove that I have confidence in you. And then you will understand how light it makes one's heart to receive such a dear letter, so light that one feels like air. It will make you want to receive such an one yourself.”
Andre took the letter without showing the slightest impatience, and without a word of thanks. But as he read, he grew moved, not with jealousy of such love, but with pity for the girl, who was dreaming her dream of happiness between two misfortunes.
For he had definitely decided to leave the farmstead and La Vendee.
Some tidings, in a measure foreseen, dreaded for some time past, very serious for La Fromentiere, had caused him to come to a decision that very afternoon. He had returned home, sorrow stricken, weighing all the pain he was about to cause; and now coming upon this joy, this hope of Rousille's, those eyes that persisted in smiling at life, that flower of the ruined farmstead, the feeling came over him that he must spare the child, at least, that one evening, and not tell her at once all he knew.
Having read the letter he slowly folded it, and gave it back to Rousille, who, impatient for an appreciative comment, her whole soul in her eyes, her lips breaking into a smile, asked:
”Do you think that father would consent, if you were to marry, and if you spoke for my Jean?”
”Would you go to live in the Bocage, Rousille?”
”I should have to on account of Mathurin, who would never suffer us near him.”
She was surprised at the manner in which Andre looked at her, so gravely and so tenderly. Taking her hand in both of his, her hand which still held the letter, he said:
”No, little Rousille, I will not speak for you. But I will shortly do something else, of which I cannot tell you now, and which will avail you. The day I do it, your marriage will be a.s.sured, unless father breaks up everything.... And it will not be at the Bocage that you will make your home, but at La Fromentiere, in our mother's place--the dear mother with whom we were so happy in the days of our childhood.
Put your faith in what I say, and do not worry about Mathurin.”
Letting go her hand, which fell to her side, he added:
”I have an idea that you, at least, will be happy, Rousille.”
She opened her lips to speak; he made her a sign that he would say no more. All the same Rousille asked hurriedly, seeing him move away:
”One thing only, Andre, tell me only one thing. Promise me that you will always till the ground, for father would be so grieved....”
And he answered:
”I promise you, I will.”
Rousille watched him as he went round the corner, and on into the courtyard. What was the matter with him? What meant those mysterious words? Why had he spoken the last so sadly? For a moment she wondered; but the trouble was evanescent. Scarce had solitude returned about her, than Rousille heard again the words of her love-letter singing their soft refrain to her. They came into her heart, one by one, like transparent waves, each opening out in its turn and covering the sh.o.r.e. ”It cannot be a very important secret,” thought she, ”since Driot will continue to till the ground, that will make father happy, and I shall be happy too.”
She recalled the smile that had pa.s.sed over her brother's face, and thought: ”It is nothing,” and peace, entire, unquestioning, returned to her.
In the twilight of that winter afternoon on the borders of the Marais of Sallertaine, for one short hour there was a girl who smiled at life, and deemed that bad times were past and gone. She was still smiling, still sheltered in her retreat amid the straw, when Andre accosted his father, coming in from the Sunday tour of inspection, with:
”Everything is certainly going to the bad, father.”
The farmer, his head full of the promise of hay and wheat harvests he had just been examining, answered contentedly: