It was a very rare thing indeed for discord to hold sway at the mas. Perfect harmony reigned habitually between Jaume Deydier, his daughter and the old servant who had loved and cared for her ever since Nicolette had been a tiny baby, laid in Margaï’s loving arms by the hands of the dying mother.
Jaume Deydier was, of course, master in his own house. In Provence, old traditions still prevail, and the principles of independence and equality bred by the Revolution had never penetrated into these mountain fastnesses, where primitive and patriarchal modes of life gave all the happiness and content that the women of the old country desired. That Nicolette had been indulged and petted both by her father and her old nurse, was only natural. The child was pretty, loving, lovable and motherless; the latter being the greater claim on her father’s indulgence. As for Margaï, she was Nicolette’s slave, even though she grumbled and scolded and imagined that she ruled the household and ordered the servants about at the mas, in exactly the same manner as old Madame ordered hers over at the château.
From which it may be gathered that on the whole it was Nicolette who usually had her way in the house. But for the last two days she had been going about with a listless, dispirited air, whilst Jaume Deydier did nothing but frown, and Margaï’s mutterings were as incessant as they were for the most part unintelligible.
“I cannot understand you, Mossou Deydier,” she said more than once to her master, “one would think you wanted to be rid of the child.”
“Don’t be a fool, Margaï,” was Deydier’s tart response. But Margaï was not to be silenced quite so readily. She had been fifty years in the service of the Deydiers, and had—as she oft and picturesquely put it—turned down Mossou Jaume’s breeches many a time when he sneaked into her larder and stole the jam she had just boiled, or the honey she had recently gathered from the hives. Oh, no! she was not going to be silenced—not like that.
“If the child loved him,” she went on arguing, “I would not say another word. But she has told you once and for all that she does not care for young Barnadou, and does not wish to marry.”
“Oh!” Jaume Deydier rejoined with a shrug of his wide shoulders, “girls always say that at first. She is not in love with any one else, I suppose!”
“God forbid!” Margaï exclaimed, so hastily that the wooden spoon wherewith she had been stirring the soup a moment ago fell out of her hand with a clatter.
“There, now!” she said tartly, “you quite upset me with your silly talk. Nicolette in love? With whom, I should like to know?”
“Well then,” Deydier retorted.
“Well then what?”
“Why should she refuse Ameyric? He loves her. He would suit me perfectly as a son-in-law. What has the child got against him?”
“But can’t you wait, Mossou Jaume?” Margaï would argue. “Can’t you wait? Why, the child is not yet nineteen.”
“My wife was seventeen when I married her,” Deydier retorted. “And I would like to see Nicolette tokened before the fêtes. I was affianced to my wife two days before Noël, we had the gros soupé at her parents’ house on Christmas Eve, and walked together to midnight Mass.”
“And two years later she was in her coffin,” Margaï muttered.
“What has that to do with it? Thou’rt a fool, Margaï.” Whereupon Margaï, feeling that in truth her last remark had been neither logical nor kind, reverted to her original argument: “One would think you wanted to be rid of the child, Mossou Jaume.”
And the whole matter would be gone through all over again from the beginning, and Jaume Deydier would lose his temper and say harsh things which he regretted as soon as they had crossed his lips, and Margaï would continue to argue and to exasperate him, until, luckily, Nicolette would come into the room and perch on her father’s knee, and smother further arguments by ruffling up his hair, or putting his necktie straight, or merely throwing her arms around his neck.
This all occurred two days before Christmas. There had been a fall of snow way up in the mountains, and Luberon wore a white cap upon his crest. The mistral had come once or twice tearing down the valley, and in the living-rooms at the mas huge fires of olive and eucalyptus burned in the hearths. Margaï had been very busy preparing the food for the gros soupé, the traditional banquet of Christmas Eve in old Provence, and which Jaume Deydier offered every year to forty of his chief employés. Nicolette now was also versed in the baking and roasting of the calènos, the fruits and cakes which would be distributed to all the men employed at the farm and to their families: and even Margaï was forced to admit that the Poumpo taillado—the national cake, baked with sugar and oil—was never so good as when Nicolette mixed it herself.
Of Ameyric Barnadou there was less and less talk as the festival drew nigh. Margaï and Nicolette were too busy to argue, and Jaume Deydier sat by his fireside in somewhat surly silence. He could not understand his own daughter. Ah ça! what did the child want? What had she to say against young Barnadou? Every girl had to marry some time, then why not Nicolette?
But he said nothing more for a day or two. His pet scheme that the fiançailles should be celebrated on Christmas Eve had been knocked on the head by Nicolette’s obstinacy, but Jaume hoped a great deal from the banquet, the calignaou, and above all, from the midnight Mass. Nicolette was very gentle and very sentimental, and Ameyric so very passionately in love. The boy would be a fool if he could not make the festivals, the procession, the flowers, the candles, the incense to be his helpmates in his wooing.
On Christmas Eve Jaume Deydier’s guests were assembled in the hall where the banquet was also laid: the more important overseers and workpeople of his olive oil and orange-flower water factories were there, some with their wives and children.
Jaume Deydier, in the beautiful bottle-green cloth coat which he had worn at his wedding, and which he wore once every year for the Christmas festival, his grey hair and his whiskers carefully brushed, his best paste buckles on his shoes, shook every one cordially by the hand; beside him Nicolette, in silk kirtle and lace fichu, smiled and chatted, proud to be the châtelaine of this beautiful home, the queen of this little kingdom amongst the mountains, the beneficent fairy to whom the whole country-side looked if help or comfort or material assistance was required. Around her pressed the men and the women and the children who had come to the feast. There was old Tiberge, the doyen of the staff over at Pertuis, whose age had ceased to be recorded, it had become fabulous: there was Thibaut, the chief overseer, with his young wife who had her youngest born by the hand. There was Zacharie, the chief clerk, who was tokened to Violante, the daughter of Laugier the cashier. They were all a big family together: had seen one another grow up, marry, have children, and their children had known one another from their cradles. Jaume Deydier amongst them was like the head of the family, and no seigneur over at the château had ever been so conscious of his own dignity. As for Nicolette, she was just the little fairy whom they had seen growing from a lovely child into an exquisite woman, their Nicolette, of whom every girl was proud, and with whom every lad was in love.
The noise in the hall soon became deafening. They are neither a cold nor a reserved race, these warm-hearted children of sunny Provence. They carry their hearts on their sleeves: they talk at the top of their voices, and when they laugh they shake the old rafters of their mountain homes with the noise. And Christmas Eve was the day of all days. They all loved the gifts of the calènos, the dried fruits and cakes which the patron distributed with a lavish hand, and which they took home to their bairns or to those less fortunate members of their families who were not partakers of Deydier’s hospitality. But they adored the Poumpo taillado, the sweet, oily cake that no one baked better than demoiselle Nicolette. And the banquet would begin with bouillabaisse which was concocted by Margaï from an old recipe that came direct from Marseilles, and there would be turkeys and geese from Deydier’s splendid farmyard, and salads and artichokes served with marrow fat. Already the men were smacking their lips; manners not being over-refined in Provence, where Nature alone dictates how a man shall behave, without reference to what his neighbours might think. There was a cheery fire, too, in the monumental hearth, and the shutters behind the windows being hermetically closed, the atmosphere presently became steaming and heady with the smell of good food and the aroma from the huge, long-necked bottles of good Roussillon wine.
But every one there knew that, before they could sit down to table, the solemn rite of the Calignaou must be gone through. As soon as the huge clock that stood upon the mantelshelf had finished striking six, old Tiberge, whose first birthday was lost in the nebulæ of time, stepped out from the little group that encircled him, and took tiny Savinien, the four-year-old son of the chief overseer, by the hand: December leading January, Winter coupled with Spring; Jaume Deydier put a full bumper of red wine in the little fellow’s podgy hand: and together these two, the aged and the youngster, toddled with uncertain steps out of the room, followed by the entire party. They made their way to the entrance door of the house, on the threshold of which a huge log of olive wood had in the meanwhile been placed. Guided by his mother, little Savinien now poured some of the wine over the log, whilst, prompted by Nicolette, his baby lips lisped the traditional words:
“Alègre, Diou nous alègre
Cachofué ven, tout ben ven
Diou nous fagué la graci de voir l’an qué ven
Se sian pas mai, siguen pas men.”[1]
After which the bumper of wine was handed round and every one drank. Still guided by his mother, the child then took hold of one end of the Provençal Yule log, and the old man of the other, and together they marched back to the dining-hall and solemnly deposited the log in the hearth, where it promptly began to blaze.
Thus by this quaint old custom did they celebrate the near advent of the coming year. The old man and the child, each a symbol—Tiberge of the past, little Savinien of the future, the fire of the Yule log the warmth of the sun. Every one clapped their hands, the noise became deafening, and Jaume Deydier’s stentorian voice, crying: “A table, les amis!” could scarce be heard above the din. After that they all sat at the table and the business of the banquet began.
Nicolette alone was silent, smiling, outwardly as merry as any of them; she sat at the head of her father’s table, and went about her duties as mistress of the house with that strange sense of unreality that had haunted her this past year still weighing on her heart.
In the years of her childhood—the years that were gone—Tan-tan and Micheline were always allowed to come and spend Christmas Eve at the mas. Even grandmama, dour, haughty grandmama, realised the necessity of allowing children to be gay and happy on what is essentially the children’s festival. So Tan-tan and Micheline used to come, and for several years it was Tan-tan who used to pour the wine over the log, and he was so proud because he knew the prescribed ditty by heart, and never had to be prompted. He spoke them with such an air, that she, Nicolette, who was little more than a baby then, would gaze on him wide-eyed with admiration. And one year there had been a great commotion, because old Métastase, who was said to be one hundred years old, and whose hands trembled like the leaves of the old aspen tree down by the Lèze, had dropped the log right in the middle of the floor, and the women had screamed, and even the men were scared, as it was supposed to be an evil omen: but Tan-tan was not afraid. He just stood there, and as calm as a young god commanded Métastase to pick up the log again, and when it was at last safely deposited upon the hearth, he had glanced round at the assembled company and remarked coolly: “It is not more difficult than that!” whereupon every one had laughed, and the incident was forgotten.
Then another time——
But what was the good of thinking about all that? They were gone, those dear, good times. Tan-tan was no more. He was M. le Comte de Ventadour, affianced to a beautiful girl whom he loved so passionately, that at even when he held her in his arms, the nightingale came out of his retreat amidst the branches of mimosa trees and sang a love song as an accompaniment to the murmur of her kisses.
Soon after eleven o’clock the whole party set out to walk to Manosque for the midnight Mass at the little church there. Laughing, joking, singing, the merry troup wound its way along the road that leads up to the village perched upon the mountain-side, girls and boys with their arms around each other, older men and women soberly bringing up the rear. Overhead the canopy of the sky of a luminous indigo was studded with stars, and way away in the east the waning moon, cool and mysterious, shed its honey-coloured lustre over mountain peaks and valley, picked out the winding road with its fairy-light, till it gleamed lemon-golden like a ribbon against the leafy slopes, and threw fantastic shadows in the way of the lively throng. Some of them sang as they went along, for your Provençal has the temperament of the South in its highest degree, and when he is happy he bursts into song. And to-night the pale moon was golden, the blue of the sky like a sheet of sapphire and myriads of stars proclaimed the reign of beauty and of poesy: the night air was mild, with just a touch in it of snow-cooled breeze that came from over snow-capped Luberon: it was heavy with the fragrance of pines and eucalyptus and rosemary which goes to the head like wine. So men and maids, as they walked, held one another close, and their lips met in the pauses of their song.
But Nicolette walked with her girl-friends, those who were not yet tokened. She was as merry as any of them, she chatted and she laughed, but she did not join in the song. To-night of all nights was one of remembrance of past festivals when she was a baby and her father carried her to midnight Mass, with Tan-tan trotting manfully by his side: sometimes it would be very cold, the mistral would be blowing across the valley and Margaï would wind a thick red scarf around her head and throat. And once, only once—it snowed, and Tan-tan would stop at the road side and gather up the snow and throw it at the passers-by.
Memory was insistent. Nicolette would have liked to smother it in thoughts of the present, in vague hopes of the future, but every turn of the road, every tree, and every boulder, even the shadows that lengthened and diminished at her feet as she walked, were arrayed against forgetfulness.
The little church at Manosque (crude in architecture, tawdry in decoration, ugly if measured by the canons of art and good taste) is never really unlovely. On days of great festivals it was even beautiful, filled as it was to overflowing with picturesque people, whose loving hands had helped to adorn the sacred edifice with all that nature yielded for the purpose: branches of grey-leaved eucalyptus and tender twigs of lavender, great leafy masses of stiff carob and feathery mimosa and delicate branches of red or saffron flowered grevillea, all tied with gaudy ribbons around the whitewashed pillars or nestling in huge, untidy bouquets around the painted effigy of the Virgin. In one corner of the little church, the traditional crêche had been erected: the manger against a background of leaves and stones, with the figures of Mary, and the Sacred Infant, of St. Joseph and the Kings. All very naïve and very crude, but tender and lovable, and romantic as are the people of this land of sunshine and poesy.
For midnight Mass, the little building was certainly too small to hold all the worshippers, so they overflowed into the porch, the organ-loft and the vestry; and those who found no place inside, remained standing in the road listening to the singing and the bells. The women in their gaudy shawls, orange, green, blue, magenta, looked like a parterre of riotous coloured flowers in the body of the church, while the men in their best clothes were squeezed against the walls or jammed into the corners, taking up as little of the room as they could.
Nicolette knelt beside her father. On entering the church she had seen Ameyric, who obviously had been in wait for her and offered her the Holy water as she entered. His eyes had devoured her, and despite his sense of reverence and the solemnity of the occasion, his hand had closed over her fingers when she took the Holy water from him. When Father Fournier began saying Mass, Nicolette bowed her head between her hands and prayed with all her heart and soul that Ameyric might find another girl who would be worthy of him and return his love. She prayed too, and prayed earnestly that Bertrand might continue to be happy with his beloved and that he should never know a moment’s disappointment or repining. Nicolette had been taught by Father Fournier that it was part of a Christian girl’s duty to love every one, even her enemies, and to pray for them earnestly, for le Bon Dieu would surely know if prayers were not sincere. So Nicolette forced herself to think kindly of Rixende, to remember her only as she had last seen her that evening in May, when she lay quite placid in Bertrand’s arms, with her head upon his breast and with the nightingale trilling away for dear life over her head.
So persistently did Nicolette think of this picture that she succeeded in persuading herself that the thought made her happy, and then she realised that her face was wet with tears.
Father Fournier preached a sermon all about humility and obedience and the example set by the Divine Master, and Nicolette wondered if it was not perhaps her duty to do as her father wished and to marry Ameyric Barnadou? Oh! it was difficult, very difficult, and Nicolette thought how much more simple it would be if le Bon Dieu was in the habit of telling people exactly what He wished them to do. The feeling of unreality once more came over her. She sat with eyes closed while Father Fournier went on talking, talking, and the air grew hotter, more heavy every moment with the fumes of the incense, the burning candles, the agitated breath of hundreds of entranced village folk. The noise, the smell, the rising clouds of incense all became blurred to her eyes, her ears, her nostrils: only the past remained quite real, as she had lived it before the awful, awful day when Tan-tan went out of her life, the past with its dragons, and distressful maidens, and woods redolent with rosemary and groves of citron-blossoms, the past as she had lived it with Tan-tan and Micheline, those happy Christmases of old.
Tan-tan, who was a wilful, fidgety boy, was always good when he came to midnight Mass. Nicolette with eyes closed and Father Fournier’s voice droning in her ears, could see him now sitting quite, quite still with Micheline on one side of him, and her, Nicolette, on the other. And they, the three children, sat agape while the offertory procession wound its way through the crowded church. She felt that she was a baby again, and that her tiny feet could not touch the ground, and her wee hands kept reaching out to touch Tan-tan’s sleeve or his knee. Ah, that beautiful, that exciting procession! The children craned their little necks to see above the heads of the crowd, and Jaume Deydier would take his little girl in his arms and set her to stand upon his knee, so that she might see everything; Micheline would stand up with Margaï’s arm around her to keep her steady, but Tan-tan’s pride would have a long struggle with his curiosity. He would remain seated just like a grown man and pretend that he could see quite well; and this pretence he would keep up for a long while, although Nicolette would exclaim from time to time in that loud hoarse whisper peculiar to children:
“Tan-tan, stand on your chair! It is lovely!”
Then at last Tan-tan would give in and stand up on his chair, after which Nicolette felt that she could set to and enjoy the procession too. First the band of musicians with beribboned tambours, bagpipes and clarinets: then a group of young men, goatherds from Luberon or Vaucluse, carrying huge baskets of fruits and live pigeons: after which a miniature cart entirely covered with leafy branches of olive and cypress with lighted candles set all along its sides, and drawn by a lamb, whose snow-white fleece was adorned with tiny bunches of coloured ribbons; behind this cart a group of girls wearing the Garbalin, a tall conical head-dress adorned with tiny russet apples and miniature oranges: finally a band of singers, singing the Christmas hymns.
The children would get so excited at sight of the lamb and the little cart, that their elders had much ado to keep them from clapping their hands or shouting with glee, which would have been most unseemly in the sacred building.
Then, when the procession was over, they would scramble back into their seats and endure the rest of the Mass as best they could. Nicolette saw it all through the smoke of incense, the flaring candles and the thick, heady air. That was reality! not the dreary present with Tan-tan gone out of Nicolette’s life, and a beautiful stranger with golden hair and gentian-blue eyes shouting petulantly at him or feigning love which she was too selfish to feel. That surely could not be reality: the Bon Dieu was too good to treat Tan-tan so.
And as if to make the past more real still, the sound of fife and bagpipe and tambour struck suddenly upon Nicolette’s ear. She looked up and there was the procession just starting to go round the church, the baskets with the live pigeons, the little cart, the white lamb with its fleece all tied up with ribbons: the same procession which Nicolette had watched from the point of vantage of her father’s knee sixteen years ago, and had watched every year since—at first by Tan-tan’s side, then with him gone, and the whole world a dreary blank to her.
Was this then what life really meant? The same things over and over again, year after year, till one grew old, till one grew not to care? Did life mean loneliness and watching the happiness of others, while one’s own heart was so full that it nearly broke? Then, if that was the case, why not do as father wished and marry Ameyric?