My Little Lady Part 27

"Of plenty of people," replied Jeanne-Marie. "Soeur Lucie, and Soeur Francoise, and numbers of others."

"Ah! yes; but I don't mean in the convent!--any one out of the convent, I mean? Did I talk of--Monsieur Horace?"

"Sometimes," said Jeanne-Marie, counting her st.i.tches composedly.

"What did I say about him?" asked Madelon, anxiously. "Please will you tell me? I can't remember, you know."

Jeanne-Marie looked at her for a moment, and then said, rather bluntly,--

"Nothing that anybody could understand. You called to him, and then you told him not to come; that was all, and not common sense either."

"Ah, that is all right," said Madelon, satisfied; her secret at least was safe, and never, never, should it be revealed till she had accomplished her task. As she once more mentally recorded this little vow, she looked at Jeanne-Marie, who was still sitting by her bedside knitting.

"Jeanne-Marie," she said in her tired, feeble little voice, and putting out one of her small thin hands, "you are very, very good to me; I can't think how any one can be so kind as you are; I shall love you all my life. What would have become of me if you had not found me and taken such care of me?"

"What will become of you if you don't leave off talking, and do as the doctor bids you?" said Jeanne-Marie, stopping her little speech; "he said you were to be quite quiet, and here have you been chattering this half-hour; now I am going to get your dinner."

As she became stronger, Madelon would sometimes have long conversations with Jeanne-Marie--in which she would tell her much about her past life, of her father, of how happy she had been as a little child, of how miserable she had been in the convent, and of how she had hated the life there. But more often she would lie still for hours, almost perfectly silent, thinking, brooding over something--Jeanne-Marie would wonder what. Madelon never told her; she had begun to love and cling to the woman, almost the only friend she had in the world, but not even in her would she confide; she had made the resolution to tell no one of her plans and hopes, to trust no one, lest her purpose should in any way be frustrated; and she kept to it, though at the cost of some pain and trouble, so natural is it to seek for help and sympathy.

Madelon's fixed idea had returned to her with redoubled force since her illness. Her one failure had only added intensity to her purpose since her first sense of discouragement had pa.s.sed away; there was something in the child's nature that refused to acknowledge defeat as such, and she was only eager to begin again. Our poor little Madelon, with her strange experiences and inexperiences, her untutored faiths and instincts, shaking off all rule, ignorant of all conventionalities, only bent, amidst difficulties, and obstacles, and delays, on steadily working towards one fixed and well-defined end--surely, tried by any of the received laws of polite society, concerning correct, well-educated young ladies of thirteen, she would be found sadly wanting. Shall we blame her? or shall we not rather, with a kindly compa.s.sion, try for a while to understand from what point of view she had learnt to look at life, and to arrive at some comprehension of, and sympathy with her.

In the meantime, though it was evident she could do nothing till she was well again, an old perplexity was beginning to trouble Madelon; what was she to do without money? Once, a strange chance--which, with a touch of convent superst.i.tion that had been grafted on her mind, she was half disposed to look upon as miraculous--had provided the requisite sum, but the most sanguine hopes could hardly point to the repet.i.tion of such a miracle or chance, and during long hours, when Jeanne-Marie was attending to her customers below, or sitting at her side, knitting, Madelon's brain was for ever working on this old problem that had proved so hard before, when she sat thinking it out in the convent cell. But at any rate she was free here; she might come and go without scaling walls, or fear of pursuing nuns; and then could she not earn some money?

The thought was an inspiration to Madelon--yes, when she was strong and well enough, she would work day and night till she had gained it. If she were only well.

It was about this time that Jeanne-Marie perceived a change in her patient, hitherto so still and resigned, a certain uneasy restlessness and longing to be up and about again.

"Jeanne-Marie, do you think I shall soon be well?" she would ask again and again; "do you think the doctor will soon let me get up?"

"You will never be well if you toss about like that," Jeanne- Marie said grimly, one evening; "lie still, and I will tell you some stories."

She sat down by her, and, as she knitted, told her one story after another, fairy-tales for the most part, old stories that Madelon knew by heart from her early studies in the German picture-books and similar works. But Jeanne-Marie told them well, and somehow they seemed invested with a new interest for Madelon, as she half unconsciously contrasted her own experiences with those of the heroes and heroines, and found in their adventures some far-fetched parallel to her own. But then their experiences were so much wider and more varied in that old charmed, sunny, fairy life; the knot of their difficulties was so readily cut, by a simple reference to some Fortunatus' purse, or the arrival in the very nick of time of some friendly fairy. Madelon did not draw the parallel quite far enough, or it might have occurred to her that benevolence did not become wholly extinct with the disappearance of fairies, and that friendly interference is not quite unknown even in these more prosaic days. The Fortunatus' purse, it is true, might awake a sense of comparison, but who could have looked at Jeanne-Marie's homely features, and have dreamed of her in connexion with a fairy? In truth, it requires a larger and deeper experience than any that Madelon could have acquired, or reasoned out, to recognise how much of the charm of these tales of our childhood can be traced to the eternal truths that lie hidden in them, or to perceive that the shining fairy concealed beneath the frequent guise of some crabbed old woman, is no mere freak of fancy, but the symbol of a reality, less exceptional perhaps amongst us poor mortals, than amongst the fairies themselves, who, finding their presence no longer needed, vanished from our earth so many centuries ago.

It was the next morning, that, after the doctor's visit was over, Jeanne-Marie returned to the bedroom, with the air of having tidings to impart.

"You will be satisfied now, I hope," she said, as she met the gaze of the restless brown eyes. "M. le Docteur says you may get up for an hour this afternoon."

"Does he?" cried Madelon, eagerly; "then he thinks I am better--that I shall soon be well."

"Of course you are better," said Jeanne-Marie--"you are getting stronger every day; you will soon be quite well again."

"And how soon shall I be able to go out?--to go on a journey, for instance?"

"You are, then, very anxious to get away?" asked Jeanne-Marie.

"But yes," said Madelon navely, "I must go as soon as possible."

"Ah, well," said the woman, stifling a sigh, "that is only natural; but there is no hurry, you will not be able to go yet."

"No," said Madelon, sadly, "I shall not be able to go yet."

She did not remark Jeanne-Marie's sad voice, nor the unwonted tears that filled her eyes; the woman felt half heart-broken at what she imagined to be her charge's indifference. Madelon was not indifferent or ungrateful, but her mind was filled just then with her one idea, and she had no room for any other; it wrought in her what seemed a supreme selfishness, and yet she had no thought of self in the matter.

She lay quite still for a few minutes, her pale little face glowing with her renewed hopes. Then she said,--

"Jeanne-Marie, would you mind putting out my things where I can see them?--my frock and all. Then I shall believe I am to get up."

Jeanne-Marie acquiesced silently. Madelon's scanty wardrobe had all been mended and put in order, and now it was spread out before her; but somehow the sight of the old black silk frock brought a sudden chill with it; the very last time she had put it on had been on the morning of the day she had escaped from the convent. Since then what had she not gone through! what disappointment, terror, sickness nearly to death! Might she not indeed have been dead by this time, or a prisoner for ever within the convent walls, had it not been for Jeanne-Marie? Her eyes filled with tears at the thought.

She longed to tell Jeanne-Marie once more how much she loved her; but the woman had left the room, and Madelon could only lie patiently, and think of all she was going to do, when she should be well again.

CHAPTER XV.

A Summer with Jeanne-Marie.

At the back of Jeanne-Marie's house lay the garden, sheltered by the steep rocky hill that rose just beyond. All through the long summer evenings the voices of the men, as they sat smoking and drinking in its vine-covered arbours, might be heard; but during the day it was comparatively deserted, and Jeanne-Marie had no difficulty in finding a quiet, shady corner where Madelon might sit as long as she pleased without being disturbed. An outside wooden staircase led from her room to the garden below, so that she could come and go without pa.s.sing through the lower rooms of the house; and we may be sure that it was considered a golden day by both her and Jeanne-Marie, when she first made this little expedition. The child, still almost too weak to stand or walk, was carried by her strong, kind hostess down the flight of steps, and once more found herself under the blue heavens, with a world of sweet summer sights and sounds around her, as she lay on her little improvised couch amongst the flowers and sweet-smelling herbs.

"There," said Jeanne-Marie, contemplating her with much satisfaction, "now you have nothing to do but to get well again as fast as you can."

"Ah, I shall soon be well now!" cried Madelon, joyfully. The colour came into her pale cheeks, her eyes shone with a new light. Mists, and rain, and darkness seemed to have fled from her life, and in their place a full tide of summer sunshine, in which the birds sang gladly, and the flowers seemed to spring up and open unconsciously, was crowning and glorifying the day.

That she had nothing to do but to get well, was not at all Madelon's idea, however. A few evenings later, as she lay awake in her bed, watching Jeanne-Marie moving about in the twilight, arranging things for the night, she said,--

"Jeanne-Marie, I want to earn some money."

"Some money, little one! What is that for?"

"Ah, that I cannot tell you; but I want some, very much--thirty francs at least. See here, I have been thinking--I can embroider--Soeur Lucie said I could do it almost as well as she could; do you think you could get me some to do? Ah, please help me. I should like to earn some money."

Two days afterwards, Jeanne-Marie produced two strips of cloth, such as are used for purposes of church decoration, with patterns and materials for embroidery.

"Is that the sort of thing?" she said. "If you could do these, you would get thirty francs for them, I daresay; I will see that they are disposed of."

"I will try," said Madelon. "Jeanne-Marie, how good you are to me!--whatever I want, you do for me!"

"That is nothing," said the woman, and went abruptly away to attend to her customers.

So, all the long summer days, Madelon sat through hot noontides in the shady garden below, through golden sunsets at the open window of her room above, st.i.tching with silks and gold and silver thread, till her weak little fingers ached, and the task seemed as if it would never be done. Down in the homely neglected little garden, all a sweet tangle of flowers and weeds, she would seat herself; the birds would twitter overhead, the bees would come humming round her amongst the unpruned vines and roses that clambered everywhere, while the embroidery pattern slowly grew beneath her fingers. She worked steadily and well, but she could not work very fast; and she wearied, oh! how she wearied of it sometimes; but she never wavered in her purpose. "It is for Monsieur Horace," she would say, and begin again with fresh zeal. Through the open window of the little kitchen, which looked upon the garden, she could see Jeanne-Marie coming and going, chopping herbs, sh.e.l.ling peas and beans; and sometimes, when Madelon was too tired of her work, she would gladly throw it down, that she might help in these employments. "May I make an omelette, Jeanne-Marie?"

she would say; "I know how to do it, if you will let me try."

And the sight of Madelon flitting about the kitchen, busy among the pots and pans, seemed to stir some long-forgotten emotion in Jeanne-Marie's sad heart--too long-forgotten to be learnt anew without pain, for her eyes would fill with tears as she watched her. The child never went into the village, or, indeed, stirred beyond the garden; that was all the world to her just now, peopled by Jeanne-Marie, her hopes, and her embroidery.

Is it most strange or most natural, one wonders, that there are times when one small nook of earth shuts out, as it were, the whole universe from our eyes, when one personal interest occupies us to the exclusion of the whole world of action, and progress, and speculation, and thought? Thrones may topple over, nationalities be effaced, revolutions in politics, in religion, in science be effected, and all pa.s.s unheeded while we sit counting our own private loss and gain in love or friendship, in grief or joy. Whilst Madelon has been wearying out her little heart and brain in the pursuit of her self- imposed task, the world has not been, and is not, standing still, we may be sure, and her small wheel of life is somehow kept in motion by the great revolving circle of events, however little she may think of, or heed them. Sebastopol has fallen in these last months, the Crimean war is at an end, and all the world that was discussing battles and sieges when Horace Graham last parted with Madelon one September afternoon, is talking of treaties and peace now, as the allied armies move homewards from the East. And--which indeed would have had more interest for Madelon could she have known it-- Graham himself, after more than two years' hard work, had been wounded in one of the last skirmishes; and with this wound, and the accompanying fever, had lain for weeks very near to death in the Scutari hospital, to be sent home at last, invalided to England. While Madelon had been slowly recovering from her fever in her little out-of-the-world refuge at Le Trooz, Graham had been gaining health and strength in a pleasant English home, with a sister to nurse and pet him, nephews and nieces to make much of him, and the rosiest cheeks and bluest eyes in the world to fall in love with, as he lay idly on the lawn through the summer days. It was at the house of his sister, who was married to a country doctor in Kent, that this double process of love-making and convalescence went on, with the greatest success and satisfaction to all parties; and it was Miss Maria Leslie, the ward of his brother-in-law, Dr. Vavasour, who was the owner of those bluest eyes and rosiest cheeks.

Meanwhile Madelon, st.i.tching, st.i.tching away at her work, thought vaguely of Monsieur Horace as being still in that far- off country from which he had last written to her, and wondered a little how soon a letter written to the English address he had given her would reach him. What would he say and think when he received it? And when, ah! when would she be able to write it? She worked on steadily, and yet it was already September when the last st.i.tch was put in, and she could give the work to Jeanne-Marie. A few days afterwards the woman put thirty francs into her hands.

"There is your money," she said; "now what are you going to do with it?"

"I am going away," answered Madelon.