The Bagpipers by George Sand - HTML preview

THIRTY-SECOND EVENING.

When I came to my senses I found myself in the same bed with Joseph, and it took me some time to recover full consciousness. When I did, I saw I was in Benoît's own room, that the bed was good, the sheets very white, and my arm bound up after a bleeding. The sun was shining through the yellow bed-curtains, and, except for a sense of weakness, I felt no ill. I turned to Joseph, who was a good deal cut about the head, but in no way to disfigure him, and who said, as he kissed me: "Well, my Tiennet, here we are, as in the old days, when we fought the boys of Verneuil on our way back from catechism, and were left lying together at the bottom of a ditch. You have protected me to your hurt, just as you did then, and I can never thank you as I ought; but you know, and I think you always knew, that my heart is not as churlish as my tongue."

"I have always known it," I replied, returning his kiss, "and if I have again protected you I am very glad of it. But you mustn't take too much for yourself. I had another motive—"

Here I stopped, fearing I might give way and let out Thérence's name; but just then a white hand drew back the curtain, and there I saw a vision of Thérence herself, leaning towards me, while Mariton went round between the bed and the wall to kiss and question her son.

Thérence bent over me, as I said; and I, quite overcome and thinking I was dreaming, tried to rise and thank her for her visit and assure her I was out of danger, when there! like a sick fool and blushing like a girl, I received from her lips the finest kiss that ever recalled the dead.

"What are you doing, Thérence?" I cried, grasping her hands, which I could almost have eaten up. "Do you want to make me crazy?"

"I want to thank you and love you all my life," she answered, "for you have kept your word to me; you have brought my father and my brother back to me safe and sound, and I know that all that you have done, all that has happened to you, is because you loved them and loved me. Therefore I am here to nurse you and not to leave you as long as you are ill."

"Ah, that's good, Thérence!" I said, sighing; "it is more than I deserve. Please God not to let me get well, for I don't know what would become of me afterwards."

"Afterwards?" said Père Bastien, coming into the room with Huriel and Brulette. "Come, daughter, what shall we do with him afterwards?"

"Afterwards?" said Thérence, blushing scarlet for the first time.

"Yes, Thérence the Sincere," returned her father, "speak as becomes a girl who never lies."

"Well, father, then afterwards, I will never leave him, either," she said.

"Go away, all of you!" I cried; "close the curtains; I want to get up and dress and dance and sing. I'm not ill; I have paradise inside of me—" and so saying I fell back in a faint, and saw and knew nothing more, except that I felt, in a kind of a dream, that Thérence was holding me in her arms and giving me remedies.

In the evening I felt better; Joseph was already about, and I might have been, too, only they wouldn't let me; and I was made to spend the evening in bed, while the rest sat and talked in the room, and my Thérence, sitting by my pillow, listened tenderly to what I said, letting me pour out in words all the balm that was in my heart.

The monk talked with Benoît, the pair washing down their conversation with several jorums of white wine, which they swallowed under the guise of a restorative medicine. Huriel and Brulette were together in a corner; Joseph with his mother and the Head-Woodsman in another.

Huriel was saying to Brulette: "I told you, the very first day I saw you, when I showed you your token in my earring, that it should stay there forever unless the ear itself came off. Well, the ear, though slit in the fight, is still there, and the token, though rather bent, is in the ear—see! The wound will heal, the token can be mended, and everything will come all right, by the grace of God."

Mariton was saying to Père Bastien: "What is going to be the result of this fight? Those men are capable of murdering my poor boy if he attempts to play his bagpipe in this region."

"No," replied Père Bastien, "all has happened for the best; they have had a good lesson, and there were witnesses enough outside of the brotherhood to keep them from venturing to attack Joseph or any of us again. They are capable of doing harm when, by force or persuasion, they have brought the candidate to take an oath. But Joseph took none; he will, however, be silent because he is generous. Tiennet will do the same, and so will our young woodsmen by my advice and order. But your bagpipers know very well that if they touch a hair of our heads all tongues will be loosened and the affair brought to justice."

And the monk was saying to Benoît: "I can't laugh as you do about the adventure, for I got into a passion which compels me to confess and do penance. I can forgive them the blows they tried to give me, but not those they forced me to give them. Ah! the prior of my convent is right enough to taunt me with my temper, and tell me I ought to combat not only the old Adam in me but the old peasant too,—that is, the man within me who loves wine and fighting. Wine," continued the monk, sighing, and filling his glass to the brim, "is conquered, thank God! but I discovered this night that my blood is as quarrelsome as ever, and that a mere tap could make me furious."

"But weren't you in a position of legitimate defence?" said Benoît. "Come, come; you spoke to those fellows in a proper manner, and you didn't strike till you were obliged to."

"That's all very true," replied the friar, "but my evil genius the prior will ask me questions,—he'll pump the truth out of me; and I shall be forced to confess that instead of doing it regretfully, I was carried away with the pleasure of striking like a sledge-hammer, forgetting I had a cassock on my back and thinking of the days when, keeping my flocks in the Bourbonnais pastures, I went about quarrelling with the other shepherds for the mere earthly vanity of proving I was the strongest and most obstinate of them all."

Joseph was silent; no doubt he felt badly at seeing two such happy couples without the right to sulk at them, after receiving such good support from Huriel and me. The Head-Woodsman, who had a tender spot in his heart for the fellow on account of his music, kept talking to him of glory. Joseph made great efforts to witness the happiness of others without showing jealousy; and we had to admit that, proud and cold as he was, there was in him an uncommon force of will for self-conquest. He remained hidden, as I did, for some time in his mother's house, till the marks of the fray were effaced; for the secret of the whole affair was very well kept by my comrades, though Leonard, who behaved very boldly and yet judiciously, threatened the bagpipers to reveal all to the authorities of the canton, if they did not conduct themselves peacefully.

When we all got about again it was found that no one was seriously damaged, except Père Carnat, whose wrist, as it proved, I had dislocated, and a parley and settlement ensued. It was agreed that Joseph should have certain parishes; and he had them assigned to him, though with no intention of using his privilege.

I was rather more ill than I thought for; not so much on account of my wound, which was not severe, nor yet of the blows that had been rained on my body, but because of the bleeding the monk had done to me with the best intentions. Huriel and Brulette had the charming amiability to put off their marriage till ours could take place; and a month later, the two weddings were celebrated,—in fact, there were three, for Benoît wished to acknowledge his publicly, and to celebrate the occasion with us. The worthy man, delighted to have had his heir so well taken care of by Brulette, tried to get her to accept a gift of some consequence, but she steadily refused, and throwing herself into Mariton's arms she said: "Remember that this dear woman was a mother to me for more than a dozen years; do you think I can take money when I am not yet out of her debt?"

"That maybe," said Mariton, "but your bringing up was nothing but honor and profit to me, whereas that of my Charlot brought you trouble and insult."

"My dear friend," replied Brulette, "that very fact is all that evens our account. I would gladly have made your José happy in return for all your goodness to me; but that did not depend on my poor heart, and so to compensate you for the grief I caused him, I was bound to suffer all I did for your other child."

"There's a girl for you!" cried Benoît, wiping his big round eyes, which were not used to shed tears. "Yes, yes, indeed, there's a girl!—" and he couldn't say any more.

To get even with Brulette, he was determined to pay all the costs of her wedding, and mine into the bargain. As he spared nothing and invited at least two hundred guests, it cost him a pretty sum, which he paid without a murmur.

The monk promised faithfully to be present, all the more because the prior had kept him on bread and water for a month and the embargo on his gullet was raised the very day of the wedding. He did not abuse his liberty, however, and behaved in such a pleasant way that we all became as fast friends with him as Huriel and Benoît had previously been.

Joseph kept up his courage till the day of the wedding. In the morning he was pale, and apparently deep in thought; but as we left the church he took the bagpipe from my father-in-law's hand, and played a wedding march which he had composed that very night in our honor. It was such a beautiful piece of music, and was so applauded, that his gloom disappeared, and he played triumphantly his best dance airs all the evening, and quite forgot himself and his troubles the whole time the festivities lasted.

He followed us back to Chassin, and there the Head-Woodsman, having settled his affairs, addressed us one and all, as follows:—

"My children, you are now happy, and rich for country folks; I leave you the business of this forest, which is a good one, and all I possess elsewhere is yours. You can spend the rest of the season here, and during that time you can decide on your plans for the future. You belong to different parts of the country; your tastes and habits are not alike. Try, my sons, both of you, to find what kind of life will make your wives happy and keep them from regretting their marriages now so well begun. I shall return within a year. Let me have two fine grandchildren to welcome me. You can then tell me what you have decided to do. Take your time; a thing that seems good to-day may seem worse, or better, to-morrow."

"Where are going, father?" said Thérence, clasping him in her arms in fear.

"I am going to travel about with Joseph, and play our music as we go," answered Père Bastien. "He needs it; and as for me, I have hungered for it these thirty years."

Neither tears nor entreaties could keep him, and that evening we escorted them half way to Saint Sevère. There, as we embraced Père Bastien with many tears, Joseph said to us: "Don't be unhappy. I know very well he is sacrificing the sight of your happiness to my good, for he has a father's heart for me and knows I am the most to be pitied of his children; but perhaps I shall not need him long; and I have an idea you will see him sooner than he thinks for." Then he added, kneeling before my wife and Huriel's, "Dear sisters, I have offended both of you, and I have been punished enough by my own thoughts. Will you not forgive me, so that I may forgive myself and go away more peacefully?"

They both kissed him with the utmost affection, and then he came to each of us, and said, with surprising warmth of heart, the kindest and most affectionate words he had ever said in his life, begging us to forgive his faults and to hold him in remembrance.

We stood on a hill to watch them as long as possible. Père Bastien played vigorously on his bagpipe, turning round from time to time to wave his cap and blow kisses with his hand.

Joseph did not turn round; he walked in silence, with his head down as if in thought or in grief. I could not help saying to Huriel that I saw on his face as he left us that strange look I had seen in his childhood, which, in our parts, is thought the sign of a man doomed to evil.

Our tears were dried, little by little, in the sunshine of happiness and hope. My beautiful dear wife made a greater effort than the rest of us, for never before being parted from her father, she seemed to have lost a portion of her soul in losing him; and I saw that in spite of her courage, her love for me, and the happiness she felt in the prospect of becoming a mother, there was always something lacking for which she sighed in secret. So my mind was constantly turning on how to arrange our lives to live in future with Père Bastien, were it even necessary to sell my property, give up my family, and follow my wife wherever she wished to live.

It was just the same with Brulette, who was determined to consult only her husband's tastes, specially when her old grandfather, after a brief illness, died quietly, as he had lived, protected by the care and love of his dear daughter.

"Tiennet," she often said to me, "I see plainly that Berry must give way to the Bourbonnais in you and me. Huriel is too fond of this free, strong life and change of air to endure our sleepy plains. He makes me so happy I will never let him feel a secret pain. I have no family now in our parts; all my friends there, except you, have hurt me; I live only for Huriel. Where he is happy there I am happiest."

The winter found us still in the forest of Chassin. We had stripped that beautiful region of its beauty, for the old oak wood was its finest feature. The snow covered the prostrate bodies of the noble trees, flung head-foremost into the river, which held them, cold and dead, in its ice. One morning Huriel and I were lunching beside a fire of brushwood which our wives had lighted to warm our soup, and we were looking at them with delight, for both were in a fair way to keep the promise they had made to Père Bastien to give him descendants, when suddenly they both cried out, and Thérence, forgetting she was not so light as she once was, sprang almost across the fire to kiss a man whom the smoke of damp leaves had hidden from our sight. It was her good father, who soon had neither arms nor lips enough to reply to our welcome. After the first joy was over, we asked him about Joseph, and then his face darkened and his eyes filled with tears.

"He told you that you would see me sooner than I expected," said Père Bastien, sadly; "he may have had a presentiment of his fate, and God, who softened the hard shell of his heart at that moment, no doubt counselled him to reflect upon himself."

We dared not inquire further. Père Bastien sat down, opened his sack and drew forth the pieces of a broken bagpipe.

"This is all that remains of that poor lad," he said. "He could not escape his star. I thought I had softened his pride, but, alas! in everything connected with music he grew daily more haughty and morose. Perhaps it was my fault. I tried to console him for his love troubles by proving to him the happiness of his art. From me, at least, he got the sweets of praise, but the more he sucked them the greater his thirst. We went far,—as far even as the mountains of the Morvan, where there are many bagpipers as jealous as those in these parts, not so much for their selfish interests as for their conceit in their talents. Joseph was imprudent; he used language that offended them at a supper to which they hospitably invited him with the kindest intentions. Unhappily, I was not there; not feeling very well, and having no reason to fear a misunderstanding, I stayed away. He was absent all night, but that often happened, and as I had noticed he was rather jealous of the applause people were pleased to give to my old ditties, I was apt not to go with him. In the morning I went out, still not feeling well, and I heard in the village that a broken bagpipe had been picked up at the edge of a pond. I ran to see it, and knew it at a glance. Then I went to the place where it was found, and breaking the ice of the pond, I found his poor body, quite frozen. There were no marks of violence on it, and the bagpipers swore that they had parted from him, soberly and without a quarrel, about a league from the spot. I searched in vain for the cause of his death. The place was in a very wild region, where the law fears the peasant and the peasant fears nought but the devil. I was forced to content myself with their foolish remarks and reasons. In those parts they firmly believe a great deal that we should laugh at here; for instance, they think you can't be a musician without selling your soul to hell; and that Satan tears the bagpipe from the player's hands and breaks it upon his back, which drives him wild and maddens him, and then he kills himself. That is how they explain the revenge which bagpipers often take upon each other; and the latter never contradict, for it suits them to be feared and to escape all consequences. Indeed, all musicians are held in such fear and disrepute that I could get no attention to my complaints, and if I had remained in the neighborhood I might even have been accused of summoning the devil to rid me of my companion."

"Alas!" said Brulette, weeping, "my poor José, my poor dear companion! Good God, what are we to say to his mother?"

"We must tell her," said Père Bastien, sadly, "not to let Charlot take a fancy to music. It is too harsh a mistress for folks like us; we have not head enough to stand on the heights to which it leads without turning giddy."

"Oh, father!" cried Thérence, "if you would only give it up! God knows what misfortunes it may yet bring upon you."

"Be comforted, my darling," said Père Bastien, "I have given it up! I return to live with my family, to be happy with my grandchildren, whom I dream of already as they dance at my knee. Where shall we settle ourselves, my dear children?"

"Where you wish," said Thérence.

"Where our husbands wish," said Brulette.

"Where my wife wishes," I cried.

"Where you all wish," said Huriel.

"Well," said Père Bastien, "as I know your likings and your means, and as, moreover, I bring you back a bit of money, I've been thinking; as I trudged along that we could all be satisfied. When you wish the peach to ripen you mustn't pull out the stone. The peach-stone is the property which Tiennet owns at Nohant. We will buy other land that adjoins it, and build a good house for all of us. I shall be content to watch the wheat-fields,—glad not to fell God's noble trees, but to make my little songs in the olden fashion, at evening, by my door, among mine own, instead of drinking the wine of others and making jealousies. Huriel likes to roam, and his wife, just now, is of the same turn of mind. They can undertake such enterprises as we have now finished in this forest (where I see you have worked well), and they can spend the fine season in the woods. If their young family is in the way, Thérence has strength and heart enough to manage a double nest, and you will all meet together in the autumn with increased pleasure, until my son, long after he has closed my eyes, will feel the need of resting all the year round, as I feel it now."

All that my father-in-law said came to pass, just as he advised and prophesied. The good God blessed our obedience; and as life is a pasty mixed of sadness and content, poor Mariton often came to us to weep, and the worthy monk, as often, came to laugh.

THE END.