Lazarre Part 13

"Then you are not displeased with me?"

"I am more pleased with you every time I see you. Your advice is good. I cannot go in midwinter."

"Are you sure your cousin wanted you to make this journey?"

"The notary says so in this letter. Philippe died in the farm-house of one of our peasants, and the new masters could not refuse him burial in the church where De Ferriers have lain for hundreds of years. He was more fortunate than my father."

This interview with Madame de Ferrier in which I cut so poor a figure, singularly influenced me. It made me restless, as if something had entered my blood. In January the real spring begins, for then sap starts, and the lichens seem to quicken. I felt I was young, and rose up against lessons all day long and part of the night. I rushed in haste to the woods or the frozen lake, and wanted to do mighty deeds without knowing what to undertake. More than anything else I wanted friends of my own age. To see Doctor Chantry dozing and hear him grumbling, no longer remained endurable; for he reminded me that my glad days were due and I was not receiving them. Worse than that, instead of proving grateful for all his services, I became intolerant of his opinion.

"De Chaumont will marry her," he said when he heard of Madame de Ferrier's widowhood. "She will never be obliged to sue to the Bonapartes. The count is as fond of her as he is of his daughter."

"Must a woman marry a succession of fathers?"--I wanted to know.

My master pointed out that the count was a very well favored and youthful looking man. His marriage to Madame de Ferrier became even more distasteful. She and her poppet were complete by themselves. Wedding her to any one was casting indignity upon her.

Annabel de Chaumont was a countess and Madame de Ferrier was a marquise.

These names, I understood, meant that they were ladies to be served and protected. De Chaumont's daughter was served and protected, and as far as he was allowed to do so, he served and protected the daughter of his fellow countryman.

"But the pride of emigres," Doctor Chantry said, "was an old story in the De Chaumont household. There were some Saint-Michels who lived in a cabin, strictly on their own means, refusing the count's help, yet they had followed him to Le Rayville in Castorland. Madame de Ferrier lived where her husband had placed her, in a wing of De Chaumont's house, refusing to be waited on by anybody but Ernestine, paying what her keeping cost; when she was a welcome guest."

My master hobbled to see her. And I began to think about her day and night, as I had thought about my books; an isolated little girl in her early teens, mother and widow, facing a future like a dead wall, with daily narrowing fortunes. The seclusion in which she lived made her sacred like a religious person. I did not know what love was, and I never intended to dote, like my poor master. Before the end of January, however, such a change worked in me that I was as fierce for the vital world as I had been for the world of books.

VII

A trick of the eyes, a sweet turning of the mouth corners, the very color of the hair--some irresistible physical trait, may compel a preference in us that we cannot control; especially when we first notice these traits in a woman. My crying need grew to be the presence of Madame de Ferrier. It was youth calling to youth in that gorgeous winter desert.

Her windows were h.o.a.r-frost furred without and curtained within. Though I knew where they were I got nothing by tramping past and glancing up. I used to saunter through the corridor that led to her rooms, startled yet pleased if Ernestine came out on an errand. Then I would close my book and nod, and she would courtesy.

"Oh, by the way," I would turn to remark, "I was pa.s.sing, and thought I would knock and ask how Madame de Ferrier is to-day. But you can tell me."

When a.s.sured of Madame de Ferrier's health I would continue:

"And Paul--how is Paul?"

Paul carried himself marvelously. He was learning to walk. Ernestine believed the lie about knocking, and I felt bolder every time I told it.

The Indian part of me thought of going hunting and laying slaughtered game at their door. But it was a doubtful way of pleasing, and the bears hibernated, and the deer were perhaps a day's journey in the white wastes.

I used to sing in the clear sharp air when I took to the frozen lake and saw those heights around me. I look back upon that winter, across what befell me afterwards, as a time of perfect peace; before virgin snows melted, when the world was a white expanse of innocence.

Our weather-besieged manor was the center of it. Vaguely I knew there was life on the other side of great seas, and that New York, Boston, Philadelphia, Baltimore and New Orleans were cities in which men moved and had their being. My country, the United States, had bought from Napoleon Bonaparte a large western tract called Louisiana, which belonged to France. A new state named Ohio was the last added to the roll of commonwealths. Newspapers, which the Indian runner once or twice brought us from Albany, chronicled the doings of Aaron Burr, Vice-President of the United States, who had recently drawn much condemnation on himself by a brutal duel.

"Aaron Burr was here once," said my master.

"What is he like?" I inquired.

"A lady-killer."

"But he is next in dignity to the President."

Doctor Chantry sniffed.

"What is even the President of a federation like this, certain to fall to pieces some fine day!"

I felt offended; for my instinct was to weld people together and hold them so welded.

"If I were a president or a king," I told him, "and men conspired to break the state, instead of parleying I would hang them up like dogs."

"Would you?"

Despising the country in which he found himself, my master took no trouble to learn its politics. But since history had rubbed against us in the person of Jerome Bonaparte, I wanted to know what the world was doing.

"Colonel Burr had a pleasant gentleman with him at the manor," Doctor Chantry added. "His name was Harmon Blennerha.s.sett; a man of good English stock, though having a wild Irish strain, which is deplorable."

The best days of that swift winter were Sundays, when my master left off snapping, and stood up reverently in our dining-room to read his church service. Madame de Ferrier and Paul and Ernestine came from their apartment to join in the Protestant ritual; and I sat beside them so constantly that the Catholic priest who arrived at Easter to dress up the souls of the household, found me in a state of heresy.

I have always thought a woman needs a dark capping of hair, whatever her complexion, to emphasize her beauty. For light locks seem to fray out to nothing, and waste to air instead of fitly binding a lovely countenance.

Madame de Ferrier's hair was of exactly the right color. Her eyebrows were distinct dark lines, and the lashes were so dense that you noticed the curling rim they made around her gray eyes. Whether the gift of looking to your core is beauty or not, I can only say she had it. And I could not be sworn what her features were; such life and expression played over and changed them every moment.

As to her figure, it was just in its roundness and suppleness, and had a lightness of carriage that I have never seen equaled. There was charm in looking at without approaching her that might have satisfied me indefinitely, if De Chaumont had not come home.

Ernestine herself made the first breach in that sacred reserve. The old woman met me in the hall, courtesied, and pa.s.sed as usual. I turned behind the broad ribbons which hung down her back from cap to heels, and said:

"Oh, by the way, Ernestine, how is Madame de Ferrier? I was going to knock--"

And Ernestine courtesied again, and opened the door, standing aside for me to enter.

Madame de Ferrier sat on a bearskin before the hearth with Paul, who climbed over her and gave her juicy kisses. There was a deep wood fire, upheld by very tall andirons having cups in their tops, which afterwards I learned were called posset cups. She was laughing so that her white teeth showed, and she made me welcome like a playmate; remaining on the rug, and bidding Ernestine set a chair for me near the fire.

"It is very kind of you to spare me some time, monsieur," said Madame de Ferrier. She admonished Paul--"Don't choke your little mother."

I told her boldly that nothing but the dread of disturbing her kept me from knocking every day. We had always walked into the lodges without knocking, and I dwelt on this as one of my new accomplishments.

"I am not studying night and day," she answered. "Sophie Saint-Michel and her mother were my teachers, and they are gone now, one to heaven and the other to Castorland."

Remembering what Annabel de Chaumont said about holy Sophie I inquired if she had been religious.

"The Saint-Michels were better than religious; both mother and daughter were eternally patient with the poor count, whose troubles unsettled his reason. They had no dear old Ernestine, and were reduced to the hardest labor. I was a little child when we came to America, yet even then the spirit of the Saint-Michels seemed to me divine."

"I wish I could remember when I was a little child."

"Can you not recall anything?"

"I have a dim knowledge of objects."