Autumn Glory Part 31

"Father is hard pressed. He said the sooner the better."

"Holy Virgin! But I cannot start to-night. Still, look at the clock, Veronique, your eyes are better than mine."

The younger sister rising, trotted to the foot of the tall clock which stood between the beds, and with difficulty read the time from the copper-clock face.

"Too late, sister. The last tramway for Chalons has just pa.s.sed."

"Then," said Adelaide, "I will start to-morrow morning. I have good legs to carry me to Quatre-Moulins, and a good tongue to ask my way later from the shopkeepers at Chalons. I will go. All the way I shall be thinking of you, Rousille, and when I see La Mere Nesmy--you will say I am conceited--but I shall not be a bit embarra.s.sed, I will tell her of you, and I shall have plenty to tell. Why are you getting up, little one?"

"To go home, Aunt Michelonne."

The two old sisters laughing, cried simultaneously:

"No, that you are not indeed! You have told us nothing. What did your father say when he gave you permission? And what about Francois? And what does Mathurin think of it all? Stay, dearie, and tell us all about everything; and what is to be the message for Jean Nesmy?"

As when night falls over the fields partridges cl.u.s.ter together in a furrow, feather to feather, so the three women again grouped themselves, in close vicinity, in the corner of the shop. Words, looks, smiles, gestures, sometimes tears, all that bespeaks deep feeling, found utterance, and was re-echoed by the two auditors. A joyous murmur floated through the dwelling of the two old maids.

Adelaide was slightly fevered; Veronique, without wishing to confess it, was already nervous at the idea of being left alone. Time went on.

The neighbours, as they extinguished their lamps said: "Mademoiselles Michelonne are sitting up late to-night! Work seems plentiful in their trade!"

The town was sunk in darkness and silence under an icy rain when Rousille left her aunt's doorstep. On both sides the same words served for their parting. Adelaide said it first; Rousille repeated it. In one case it was a promise; in the other an expression of thanks.

"To-morrow morning!"

"To-morrow morning!"

CHAPTER XVII.

A FEBRUARY NIGHT.

When Rousille had crossed the courtyard and taken the road to Sallertaine, the farmer, having taken the pot off the fire, left the barn. He found the man sitting in the chimney-corner, pushing together the half-dead twigs that had fallen from the fire-dogs with the points of his sabots. At the far end of the room, Mathurin was moving restlessly about on his crutches, with crimsoned face, utterly unable to keep his nerves under control. He did not speak to his father, did not appear to have heard him enter. But after a minute, as the farmer, bending down, was speaking in a low voice to the man, he exclaimed violently:

"And Rousille, what had you to say to her that kept you so long in the barn?"

Before replying, Toussaint Lumineau followed with his eyes the movements of the unhappy young man, a prey to a species of madness produced by rage and pain, such as was too well known at La Fromentiere--since Andre's departure the paroxysms had become more frequent--and the father was moved to pity. Ignoring the insolence of the question, he said simply:

"Your sister will come back later, Mathurin. Where she has gone I have sent her."

"I am not to know where she is, then?" cried the cripple still more violently. "Everything is hidden from me here, and she is told all!"

At a sign from the farmer the man took out a couple of potatoes with his knife from the saucepan, slipped them into his coat pocket, cut a slice of bread from the loaf on the table, and carrying off his supper, went out into the yard.

The father and son were alone. Toussaint Lumineau, standing erect in the firelight, said:

"On the contrary, you are going to know all, Mathurin. Your brother Francois refuses to come home to us."

"I thought so."

The cripple had drawn back into a dark corner between the two beds, out of the range of the lamplight; there, as though on the watch for the words spoken, he listened; his trembling hands resting on the crutches shook the bed-curtains.

"La Fromentiere cannot go on as it is now," resumed the farmer. "I have bidden Rousille take a message to the Michelonnes. One or the other of the sisters, whether it be Adelaide or Veronique matters not, is to go to the Bocage to bring back Jean Nesmy."

"Ah! you are marrying Rousille?"

"Yes, my friend."

"To a dismissed farm-servant!"

"I am taking him back."

"A _Boquin_! A man not of these parts!"

"A good worker, Mathurin, and one who always loved our soil."

"And he is to live at La Fromentiere?"

"Of course. I need help. I need a son to stand by me."

Mathurin's tawny head was thrust out from darkness.

"And me," he cried, "what are you going to do with me?"

In his look was a concentrated reproach, all pent-up suffering and wrath of years.

"So I, the eldest, the rightful heir, am only to bear my suffering and submit to the will of others?"

"My son," replied his father gently, "you will continue to live with us as now; you will do what you can, and no one will expect more. No work will be undertaken here without your having first been consulted, that I promise you. The farmstead will be your home after my death as now."

"No. I will not be ordered about by a man who does not bear my name. A Lumineau, and a Lumineau only, must be master here!"

"It is the sorrow of my life, Mathurin, that this cannot be."

"I could have borne with Francois, even with Andre," continued the cripple, with equal vehemence, "but Rousille and her _Boquin_ shall never be the masters here. It is my home, and, I tell you, it is my turn!"

"But, my poor boy, you cannot take the management."

The serge curtains shook, and the unhappy man, suffocating with rage, made a few uncertain steps forward.

"I cannot tell what is good ploughing?" he gasped.

"Yes."

"I cannot buy a pair of oxen?"

"Yes."