Barbara in Brittany Part 8

But neither Jean nor Barbara was capable of saying a word, and though the fishermen were urgently a.s.suring the girl that she was not safe yet, that they must go round the rocks to the gate on the other side, she remained sitting doubled up on a rock, feeling that her breath would never come into her body again.

"Let her rest a moment," suggested one wiser than the rest. "She cannot move till she breathes. There is yet time enough. Loosen her collar, and let her breathe."

The sea was gurgling at the foot of the rocks when Barbara regained her breath sufficiently to move, and she was glad enough to have strong arms to help her on her way.

Jean and his father reached the gate first, and, therefore, Mademoiselle Therese had already exhausted a little of her energy before Barbara appeared. But she was about to fling herself in tears upon the girl's neck when a bystander interposed.

"Let her breathe," he said. "Let her go to the inn and get nourishment." And Barbara, the centre of an eager, excited French crowd, was thankful, indeed, to shelter herself within Madame Poulard's hospitable walls.

"We will probably have to stay here a week till she recovers"--Mademoiselle Therese had a sympathetic audience--"she is of delicate const.i.tution;" and the good lady was perhaps a little disappointed when Barbara declared herself perfectly able to go home in the afternoon as had been arranged.

"What should prevent us?" she asked, when after a rest and something to eat she came down to the terrace. "It was only a long race, and a fright which I quite deserved."

"Yes, indeed, a fright!" and the Frenchwoman threw up her hands. "Such fear as I felt when I came out to see the tide and saw you fleeing before it. Your aunt!--Your mother!--My charge! Such visions fleeted before my eyes. But _never, never, never_ will I trust you with Jean any more," and she cast a vengeful look at the widower and his son, who were seated a little farther off.

"But it wasn't his fault at all," the girl explained. "On the contrary, I proposed it, and he joined me out of kindness. He pulled me along, too, over the sand. Oh, indeed, you must not be angry with Jean."

"It was very deceptive of him not to tell me--or his father. Then we could both have come with you--or explained to you that the tide rose early to-day. We heard it was to come early when you were out last night. They say," she went on, shaking her head, "if it had been an equinoctial tide, that neither of you would have escaped--there would have been no shadow of a hope for either--you would both have been drowned out there in the damp, wet sand."

Mademoiselle Therese showing signs of weeping again, Barbara hastened to comfort her, a.s.suring her that she would never again go out alone to see St. Michel from that side, which she thought was a perfectly safe promise to make. But her companion shook her head mournfully, declaring that it would be a very long time before she brought any of her pupils to Mont St. Michel again.

"They might really get caught next time," she said, and Barbara knew it was no good to point out that probably there would never be another pupil who was quite so silly as she had been.

"Nevertheless," the girl said to herself, looking back at the grand, gray pile from the train, "except for the fright I gave them, it was worth it all--worth it all, dear St. Michel, to see you from out there." And Jean, looking pensively out of the window, was thinking that since it was safely over, the adventure was one which any youth might be proud to tell to his companions, and which few were fortunate or brave enough to have experienced.

CHAPTER IX.

MADEMOISELLE VIRe.

"The Loires' chief virtues are their friends," Barbara had written home, and it was always a surprise to her to find that they knew so many nice people. A few days after the adventurous visit to Mont St.

Michel she made the acquaintance of one whom she learned to love dearly, and about whom there hung a halo of romance that charmed the girl.

"Her story is known to me," Mademoiselle Therese explained on the way to her house, "and I will tell it you--in confidence, of course." She paused a moment to impress Barbara and to arrange her thoughts, for she dearly loved a romantic tale, and would add garnishing by the way if she did not consider it had enough.

"She is the daughter of a professor," she began presently. "They used to live in Rouen--gray, beautiful, many-churched Rouen." The lady glanced sideways at her companion to see if her rhetoric were impressive enough, and Barbara waited gravely for her to continue, though wondering if mademoiselle had ever read _The Lady of Shalott_.

"An officer in one of the regiments stationed in the quaint old town,"

pursued mademoiselle, "saw the professor's fair young daughter, and fell rapturously in love with her. Whereupon they became betrothed."

Barbara frowned a little. The setting of the story was too ornate, and seemed almost barbarous.

"And then?" she asked impatiently.

"Then--ah, then!" sighed the story-teller, who thought she was making a great impression--"then the sorrow came. As soon as his family knew, they were grievously angry, furiously wrathful, because she had no _dot_; and when she heard of their fury and wrath she n.o.bly refused to marry him until he gained their consent. 'Never,' she cried" (and it was obvious that here mademoiselle was relying on her own invention), "'never will I marry thee against thy parents' wish.'"

She paused, and drew a long breath before proceeding. "A short time after this, the regiment of her lover was ordered out to India, in which pestiferous country he took a malicious fever and expired. She has no relatives left now, though so frail and delicate, but lives with an old maid in a very small domicile. She is cultivated to an extreme, and is so fond of music that, though her house is too small to admit of the pianoforte entering by the door, she had it introduced by the window of the _salon_, which had to be unbricked--the window, I mean.

She has, moreover, three violins--one of which belonged to her ever-to-be-lamented fiance--and, though she is too frail to stand, she will sit, when her health permits, and make music for hours together."

Mademoiselle Therese uttered the last words on the threshold of the house, and Barbara did not know whether to laugh or to cry at such a story being told in such a way. The door was opened by the old maid, Jeannette, who wore a quaint mob cap and spotless ap.r.o.n, and who followed the visitors into the room, and, having introduced them to her mistress, seated herself in one corner and took up her knitting as "company," Mademoiselle Therese whispered to Barbara.

The latter thought she had never before seen such a charming old lady as Mademoiselle Vire, who now rose to greet them, and she wondered how any one who had known her in the "many-churched Rouen days" could have parted from her.

She talked for a little while to Mademoiselle Therese, then turned gently to Barbara.

"Do you play, mademoiselle?"

"A little," the girl returned hesitatingly; "not enough, I'm afraid, to give great pleasure."

But Mademoiselle Vire rose with flushed cheeks.

"Ah! then, will you do me the kindness to play some accompaniments?

That is one of the few things my good Jeannette cannot do for me," and almost before Barbara realised it she was sitting on a high-backed chair before the piano in the little _salon_, while Mademoiselle Vire sought eagerly for her music.

The room was so small that, with Mademoiselle Therese and the maid Jeannette--who seemed to be expected to follow her mistress--there seemed hardly room to move in it, and Barbara was all the more nervous by the nearness of her audience.

It certainly was rather anxious work, for though the little lady was charmingly courteous, she would not allow a pa.s.sage played wrongly to go without correction. "I think we were not quite together there--were we?" she would say. "May we play it through again?" and Barbara would blush up to her hair, for she knew the violinist had played _her_ part perfectly. She enjoyed it, though, in spite of her nervousness, and was sorry when it was time to go.

"You will come again, I hope?" her hostess asked. "You have given me a happy time." Then turning eagerly to Jeannette, she added, "Did I play well to-day, Jeannette?"

The quaint old maid rose at once from her seat at the door, and came across the room to put her mistress's cap straight.

"Madame played better than I have ever heard her," she replied.

Barbara had been so pleased with everything that she went again a few days later by herself, and this time was led into the garden, which, like the house, was very small, but full of roses and other sweet-smelling things. Madame--for Barbara noticed that most people seemed to call her so--was busy watering her flowers, and had on big gloves and an ap.r.o.n. When she saw the girl coming, she came forward to welcome her, saying, with a deprecatory movement towards her ap.r.o.n--

"But this ap.r.o.n!--These gloves! Had I known it was you, mademoiselle, I should have changed them and made myself seemly. Why did you not warn me, Jeannette?"

"Madame should not work in the garden and heat herself," the old woman said doggedly; "she should let me do that."

But madame laughed gaily.

"Oh, but my flowers know when I water them, and could not bear to have me leave them altogether to others." Then, in explanation to her visitor, "It is an old quarrel between Jeannette and me. Is it not, my friend? Now I am hot and thirsty. Will you bring us some of your good wine, Jeannette?"

They were sitting in a little bower almost covered with roses, and Barbara felt as if she must be in a pretty dream, when the maid came back bearing two slender-stemmed wine-gla.s.ses and a musty bottle covered with cobwebs.

"It is very old indeed," madame explained.

"Jeannette and I made it, when we were young, from the walnuts in our garden in Rouen."

Having filled both gla.s.ses, she raised her own, and said, with a graceful bow, "Your health, mademoiselle," and after taking a sip she turned to Jeannette, repeating, "Your health, Jeannette." Whereupon the old woman curtsied wonderfully low considering her stiff knees.

Barbara did not like the wine very much, but she would have drunk several gla.s.ses to please her hostess, though, fortunately, she was not asked to do so. They had a long talk, and the old lady related many interesting tales about the life in Rouen and in Paris, where she had often been, so that the time sped all too quickly for the girl. When she got home she found two visitors, who were sitting under the trees in the garden waiting to have tea. One was an English girl of about fourteen, whom Barbara thought looked both unhappy and sulky. The other was one of the ladies whose school she was at.

"This is Alice Meynell," Mademoiselle Therese said with some fervour, "and, Alice, _this_ is a fellow-countrywoman of your own." But the introduction did not seem to make the girl any happier, and she hardly spoke all tea-time, though Marie did her best to carry on a conversation. When she had returned to work with Mademoiselle Loire, the business of entertainment fell to Barbara, who proposed a walk round the garden.