I am not easily affronted, but I was so now at being thus received; and I went off home to put up the cart and to inquire after my family. After that, the day being too far gone to go to work, I sauntered about the village to see if everything was in its old place, and found no change, except that one of the trees felled on the common before the cobbler's door had been chopped up into sabots, and that Père Godard had trimmed up his poplar and put new flags on his path. I certainly supposed that my journey into the Bourbonnais had made a stir, and I expected to be assailed with questions which I might find it hard to answer; but the folks in our region are very indifferent, and I seemed, for the first time, to realize how dull they were,—being obliged to tell a good many that I had just returned from a trip. They did not even know I had been away.
Towards evening, as I was loitering home, I met the friar on his way to La Chatre, and he told me that Père Brulet wanted me to sup with him.
What was my astonishment on entering the house to see Père Brulet on one side of the table, and his granddaughter on the other, gazing at the monk's basket which lay open before them, and in it a big baby about a year old, sitting on a pillow and trying to eat some blackheart cherries, the juice of which had daubed and stained his face!
Brulette seemed to me thoughtful and rather sad; but when she saw my amazement she couldn't help laughing; after which she wiped her eyes, for she seemed to me to have been shedding tears of grief or vexation rather than of gayety.
"Come," she said at last, "shut the door tight and listen to us. Here is grandfather who wants to tell you all about the fine present the monk has brought us."
"You must know, nephew," said Père Brulet, who never smiled at pleasant things any more than he frowned at disagreeable ones, "that this is an orphan child; and we have agreed with the monk to take care of him for the price of his board. We know nothing about the child, neither his father, his mother, his country, nor anything else. He is called Charlot, and that is all we do know. The pay is good, and the friar gave us the preference because he met Brulette in the Bourbonnais, and hearing where she lived and how well-behaved she was, and, moreover, that she was not rich and had time at her disposal, he thought he could give her a pleasure and do her a service by putting the little fellow under her charge and letting her earn the money."
Though the matter was tolerably surprising, I was not much astonished at first hearing of it, and only asked if the monk was formerly known to Père Brulet, and whether he could trust him as to the future payment.
"I had never seen him," replied the old man, "but I knew that he had been in this neighborhood several times, and he is known to persons in whom I have confidence, and who informed me, two or three days ago, of the matter he was to come about. Besides, a year's board is paid in advance, and when the money doesn't come it will be soon enough to worry."
"Very good, uncle; you know your own affairs; but I should not have expected to see my cousin, who loves her freedom, tied down to the care of a little monkey who is nothing to her, and who, be it said without offence, is not at all nice in his appearance."
"That is just what annoys me," said Brulette, "and I was saying so to my grandfather as you came in. And," she added, rubbing the muzzle of the little animal with her handkerchief, "no wiping will make his mouth any better; I wish I could have begun my apprenticeship with a child that was prettier to kiss. This one looks surly, and won't even smile; he cares only for things to eat."
"Bah!" said Père Brulet, "he is not uglier than all children of his age, and it is your business to make him nice. He is tired with his journey, and doesn't know where he is, nor what we mean to do with him."
Père Brulet went out to look for his knife, which he had left at a neighbor's, and I began to get more and more surprised when alone with Brulette. She seemed annoyed at times, and even distressed.
"What worries me is that I don't know how to take care of a child," she said. "I could not bear to let a poor creature that can't help itself suffer; but I am so unhandy; I am sorry now that I never was inclined to look after the little ones."
"It is a fact," I said, "that you don't seem born for the business, and I can't understand why your grandfather who I never thought was eager after money, should put such a care upon you for the sake of a few crowns."
"You talk like a rich man." she said. "Remember that I have no dower, and that a fear of poverty has always deterred me from marrying."
"That's a very bad reason, Brulette. You have been and still will be sought after by men who are richer than you, and who love your sweet eyes and your pretty chatter."
"My sweet eyes will fade, and my pretty chatter won't be worth much when the beauty has gone. I don't wish to be reproached at the end of a few years with having lost my dower of charms and brought nothing more solid into the household."
"Is it that you are really thinking of marrying—since we left the Bourbonnais?" I asked. "This is the first time I ever heard you talk of money."
"I am not thinking of it any more than I have always thought," returned Brulette, but in a less confident tone than usual, "I never said I meant to live unmarried."
"I see how it is!" I cried, laughing, "you are thinking of it, and you needn't try to hide it from me, for I have given up all hopes of my own. I see plainly enough that in taking care of this little wretch, who has money and no mother, you are laying up a store, like the squirrels. If not, your grandfather, whom you have always ruled as if he were your grandson, would not have forced you to take such a boy to nurse."
Brulette lifted the child from the table, and as she carried him to her grandfather's bed she gave him a rather sad look.
"Poor Charlot!" she said, "I'll do my best for you; you are much to be pitied for having come into the world, and it is my belief that nobody wanted you."
But her gayety soon returned; she even had some hearty laughs at supper in feeding Charlot, who had the appetite of a little wolf, and answered all her attentions by trying to scratch her face.
Toward eight o'clock Joseph came in and was very well received by Père Brulet; but I observed that Brulette, who had just been putting Charlot to bed, closed the curtains quickly as if to hide him, and seemed disturbed all the time that Joseph remained. I observed also that not a word was said to him of this singular event, either by the old man or by Brulette, and I therefore thought it my duty to hold my tongue. Joseph was cross, and said as little as possible in answer to my uncle's questions. Brulette asked him if he had found his mother in good health, and if she had been surprised and pleased to see him. Then, as he said "yes" to everything, she asked if he had not tired himself too much by walking to Saint-Chartier and back in one evening.
"I did not wish to let the day go by without paying my respects to your grandfather," he said; "and now, as I really am tired, I shall go and spend the night with Tiennet, if I don't inconvenience him."
I answered that it would give me pleasure, and took him to my house where, after we were in bed, he said: "Tiennet, I am really on the point of departure. I came here only to get away from the woods of Alleu, for I was sick of them."
"That's the worst of you, Joseph; you were there with friends who took the place of those you left here in the same way—"
"Well, it is what I choose to do," he said, rather shortly; then in a milder tone he added: "Tiennet, Tiennet, there are some things one can tell, and others which force us to keep silence. You hurt me to-day in telling me I could never please Brulette."
"Joseph, I never said anything of the kind, for the reason that I don't know if you really care for her."
"You do know it," he replied; "and you blame me for not having opened my heart to you. But how could I? I am not one of those who tell their secrets willingly. It is my misfortune; I believe I have really no other illness than one sole idea, always stretching toward the same end, and always beaten back when it rises to my lips. Listen to me now, while I do feel able to talk; for God knows how soon I may fall mute again. I love; and I see plainly I am not loved. So many years have passed in this way (for I loved Brulette when we were little children) that I have grown accustomed to the pain. I have never flattered myself that I could please her; I have lived in the belief that she would never care for me. Lately, however, I saw by her coming to the Bourbonnais that I was something to her, and it gave me strength and the will not to die. But I soon perceived that she met some one over there who suited her better than I."
"I know nothing about it," I replied; "but if it were so, that some one you speak of gave you no ground for complaint or reproach."
"That is true," said Joseph; "and my anger is unjust,—all the more because Huriel, knowing Brulette to be an honest girl, and not being able to marry her so long as he remains in the fraternity of muleteers, has himself done what he could to separate from her. I can still hope to return to Brulette hereafter, more worthy of her than I have been; but I cannot bear to stay here now, for I am still nothing better than I was in the past. There is something in the manner and language of every one who speaks to me that seems to mean: 'You are sick, you are thin, you are ugly, you are feeble, you know nothing new and nothing good that can interest us in you.' Yes, Tiennet, what I tell you is exactly so; my mother seemed frightened by my face when she saw me, and she cried so when she kissed me that the pain of seeing her was greater than the joy. This evening, too, Brulette looked annoyed when I came in, and her grandfather, good and kind as he always is to me, seemed uneasy lest I should stay too long. Now don't tell me that I imagined all that. Like all those who speak little, I see much. My time has not yet come; I must go, and the sooner the better."
"I think you ought to take at least a few days' rest," I said; "for I fancy you mean to go to a great distance, and I do not think it friendly in you to give us unnecessary anxiety."
"You need not be anxious, Tiennet. I have all the strength I want, and I shall not be ill again. I have learned one thing; and that is that frail bodies, to which God has given slender physical powers, are provided with a force of will which carries them farther than the vigorous health of others. I was not exaggerating when I told you over there that I became, as it were, a new man on seeing Huriel fight so boldly; and that I was wide awake in the night when I heard his voice saying to me, 'Come, cheer up! I am a man, and as long as you are not one you will count for nothing.' I want therefore to shake myself free of my poor nature, and return here some day as good to look at and better to hear than all Brulette's other lovers."
"But," I said, "suppose she makes her choice before you return? She is going on nineteen, and for a girl as much courted as she is it is time to decide."
"She will decide only between Huriel and me," answered Joseph, in a confident tone. "There is no one but him and myself who are capable of teaching her to love. Excuse me, Tiennet; I know, or at least I believe, that you dreamed of it."
"Yes," I replied, "but I don't dream of it any longer."
"Well for you!" said Joseph; "for you could never have been happy with her. She has tastes and ideas which don't belong to the ground she has grown in; she needs another wind to rock her; the one that blows here is not pure enough and it might wither her. She feels all this, though she may not know how to say it; and I tell you that unless Huriel is treacherous, I shall find her still free, a year or two hence."
So saying, Joseph, as if wearied out by letting himself talk so much, dropped his head on his pillow and went to sleep. For the last hour I had been struggling to keep awake, for I was tired out myself. I slept soundly, and when at daybreak I called him he did not answer. I looked about, and he was gone without awaking any one.
Brulette went the next day to see Mariton, to break the news to her, and find out what had passed between her and her son. She would not let me accompany her, and told me on her return that she could not get Mariton to say much, because her master Benoît was ill and even in some danger from congestion of the brain. I concluded, therefore, that the woman, being obliged to nurse her master, had not had time to talk with her son as much as he would have liked, and consequently he had become jealous, as his nature led him to be at such times.
"That is very likely," said Brulette, "for the wiser Joseph gets through ambition the more exacting he becomes. I think I liked him better when he was simple and submissive as he used to be."
When I related to Brulette all that he had said to me the night before, she replied: "If he really has so high an ambition, we should only hamper him by showing an anxiety he does not wish for. Leave him in God's care! If I were the flirt you declared I was in former times, I should be proud to be the cause of his endeavoring to improve his mind and his career; but I am not; and my feeling is chiefly regret that he does nothing for his mother or himself."
"But isn't he right when he says that you can only choose between Huriel and him?"
"There is time enough to think about that," she said, laughing with her lips, though her face was not cheerful, "especially as the only two lovers Joseph allows me are running away as fast as their legs can go."
During the next week the arrival of the child which the monk had brought was the subject of village gossip and the torment of the inquisitive. So many tales were founded upon it that Charlot came near being the son of a prince, and every one wanted to borrow money of Père Brulet, or sell goods to him, convinced that the stipend which induced his granddaughter to take up a duty so contrary to her tastes must at least be a princely revenue. The jealousy of some and the discontent of others made the old man enemies, which he had never had in his life, and he was much astonished by it; for, simple, pious soul that he was, it had never occurred to him that the matter might give occasion for gossip. Brulette, however, only laughed and persuaded him to pay no attention to it.
Days and weeks went by and we heard nothing of Joseph, or of Huriel, or of the Woodsman and his daughter. Brulette wrote to Thérence and I to Huriel, but we got no answers. Brulette was troubled and even annoyed; so much so that she told me she did not mean to think anything more of those foreigners, who did not even remember her, and made no return for the friendship she had offered them. So she began once more to dress herself smartly and appear at the dances; for the gallants complained of her gloomy looks and the headaches she talked of ever since her trip to the Bourbonnais. The journey had been rather criticised; people even said she had some secret love over there, either for Joseph or for some one else; and they expected her to be more amiable than ever, before they would forgive her for going off without a word to any one.
Brulette was too proud to give in to cajoling them, but she dearly loved pleasure, and being drawn in that direction, she gave Charlot in charge of her neighbor, Mère Lamouche, and took her amusement as before.
One evening, as I was coming back with her from the pilgrimage of Vaudevant, which is a great festival, we heard Charlot howling, far as we were from the house.
"That dreadful child," said Brulette, "is never out of mischief. I am sure I don't know who can ever manage him."
"Are you sure," I said, "the Mère Lamouche takes as good care of him as she promised you?"
"Of course she does. She has nothing else to do, and I pay her enough to satisfy her."
Charlot continued to yell, and the house looked as though it were locked up and there was no one in it. Brulette ran and knocked loudly on the door, but no one answered except Charlot, who screamed louder than ever, either from fright, or loneliness, or anger.
I was obliged to climb to the thatch of the roof and clamber down through the trap-door of the loft. I opened the door for Brulette and then we saw Charlot all alone, rolling in the ashes, where by great good luck there was no fire, and purple as a beet from screaming.
"Heavens!" cried Brulette, "is that the way to care for the poor little wretch? Well, whoso takes a child gets a master. I ought to have known it, and either not taken this one, or given up my own enjoyments."
So saying, she carried Charlot to her own home, half in pity and half impatiently, and having washed, fed, and consoled him as best she could, she put him to sleep, and sat down to reflect, with her head in her hands. I tried to show her that it would be easy enough, by sacrificing the money she was gaining, to employ some kindly, careful woman to take charge of the boy.
"No," she exclaimed, "I must look after him, because I am responsible for him, and you see what looking after him means. If I think I can let up for one day it is just that very day that I ought not to have done so. Yes, that's it, I ought not," she said, crying. "It would be wrong; and I should be sorry for it all my life."
"On the other hand, you would do wrong if the child were to be the gainer by it. He is not happy with you, and he might be elsewhere."
"Why, isn't he happy with me? I hope he is, except on the days when I am absent; and so I say I will not absent myself again."
"I tell you he is no better off when you are here."
"What do you mean?" cried Brulette, striking her hands with vexation; "where have you heard that? Did you ever see me ill-treat the child, or even threaten him? Can I help it if he is an unpleasant child with a sulky disposition? If he were my own I could not do better for him."
"Oh! I know you are not unkind to him and never let him want for anything, because you are a dear, sweet Christian; but you can't love him, for that doesn't depend upon yourself. He feels this without knowing it, and that keeps him from loving and caressing others. Animals know when people like them or dislike them; why shouldn't little human beings do the same?”