HELEN had meant to go to Mass on the morning of the day when the young men of the village were to draw for the conscription, but she was late, as the interested and distressed young spectator so often is at the critical moment. Ursule had gone to the early Mass before break of day, and had stayed in church till the numbers were drawn, and the young conscrits coming out of the Mairie with their number, bad or good, in their caps. Madame Dupré would have liked to do the same, but she was afraid of the ridicule of her neighbours, who certainly would have taunted her with trying to curry favour with the bon Dieu at the moment when she was in need of His help. Not being able to do this, she began a special “cleaning out,” such as, in all regions, is soothing to the female mind perturbed. As the moment approached, the poor woman grew more and more cross, snapping at every one who approached her. M. Goudron, who liked to watch a dramatic situation, came in about ten minutes before the tirage began. “My house is all upside-down!” he said with keen enjoyment. “Nobody can pay any attention. One is praying and the other weeping, instead of awaiting with placidity whatever may have happened. I say to myself, Madame Dupré is an esprit fort. She will consider that a man must have his coffee, were the skies to fall. That is a thing that girls cannot be taught. I tell that little fool Blanchette, ‘If thou wilt take an example, look at his mother, our good neighbour of the Lion d’Or!’”
“If I were thou, Jean Goudron, I would hold my peace. I would not meddle with what concerns thee not,” said Madame Dupré, pushing against him with her great broom in her hand.
“Comment! my coffee? Does not that concern me?” cried old Goudron, with his grin.
Madame Dupré made no reply. Her round face was red as the embers on the hearth. She swept the dust out of all the corners, knocking her brush against the wall, making a great noise, and sweeping everything towards him. He got a mouthful of this dust, which, as it had not been stirred for some time, was of a piquant kind, and coughed.
“Suffocate me not, ma bonne femme,” he said. “I have done thee no harm!”
“How can I tell that?” cried the poor mother, in a frenzy of suspense and passion. “How do I know that thou hast not thrown an ill lot on my boy? That little saint Ursule, thou hast done thy best to keep her from praying for us; and it is thou, and such as thou, that make us ashamed to pray for ourselves! Get thee out of my sight, with thy devil’s grin! Thou shalt have no coffee here.”
“Bravo!” cried old Goudron. “Because thy son has gone to tirer, the whole world must stand still. There must be some one, n’est-ce pas, to cheat the others, to put the good number into his hands? Yes, yes; there must be a bon Dieu wherever there’s a woman!” said the old man. But he did not go much further, for suddenly, before he was aware, Madame Dupré and her vigorous broom were upon him. She did not condescend to strike or push, but taking the lean old sceptic at unawares, swept him forth like a piece of rubbish. “Va, canaille!” she said. Old Goudron sprawled and stumbled forth, saving himself only from a prostration on the threshold by grasping at the first prop that presented itself. The conscrits were beginning to appear in the street with cockades in their caps, singing and shouting. They stopped to give him a rude salutation. They were all safe; they had drawn good numbers; they were wild with joy. “Look at old Jean Goudron! he is ivre-mort! The bonne mère has swept him out of the house!” “Pauvre Mère Dupré!” said one among them, with a sob of excitement. Madame Dupré recognised the meaning of his tone. She came out, her broom in her hand, a paleness stealing over the red in her cheeks, and leant against the lintel of her door. She did not see the old man scowling and grinning at her, though he stood close by, waiting for the event. All was mist and darkness to her, save one thing. In the middle of the street was a figure alone, walking down slowly, looking at no one. His step, the sight of his folded arms and bent head, the stumble he made now and then, as he came over the rough stones, were enough, without words. Her eyes, too, were full of the giddiness of the calamity. She could see nothing but figures moving confusedly; faces looking out of the houses on the different sides of the village street all peering at him. It was Baptiste, with the ribbons of the conscrit hanging sadly over his ear, and a big 3 in the front of his cap.
Helen looked out from her window just as this sad sight appeared. She felt a pang of guilt, as if it had been her fault. Oh! why had she not gone to the early Mass to pray that he might have a good number? It did not occur to Helen that some one else must then have got a bad one. She heard a rush down the stairs, and saw Blanchette rush out across the street and fling herself upon him. Poor little Blanchette! poor dumb mother, not able even to cry! Their arms met about him, one on each side, as if to tear him out of the hold of fate.
It is terrible when a great calamity happens in the morning; there is such an endless day to realise it in, to turn it over, to see it in every possible light. Ursule came back almost immediately, following Baptiste, with her head bowed upon her breast. “You have heard, mademoiselle?” she said with a sob. “The bon Dieu has not thought fit to hear our prayers. There has been a want of faith on our part, or some other has prayed more strongly than we. We must not complain, mademoiselle, for if the bon Dieu heard us always, it would be very easy to be Christian. But only for my Blanchette it breaks my heart. Oh! if I were one of the saints in heaven—God forgive me for making so bold—I could not, I would not refuse any one! I would not take a denial! But when you are praying and praying, and there is no answer, heaven seems so far away, mademoiselle.”
“And there is nothing more that can be done?” Helen said, dropping a few tears of sympathy.
“Yes, mademoiselle, there is my coffee to make,” said old Goudron, who made his appearance just then; “which is their duty, what they are put into this world for, these girls—not to say incantations nor make a fuss about young good-for-nothings like the conscrit yonder. My coffee, petite hypocrite!” he cried, pushing before him the little shrinking figure. Helen felt her countenance flame.
“You are a wicked, horrible old man,” she cried in English, to relieve her mind, “and I hate you! Come in, M. Goudron,” she added, with an effort; “the coffee is made; come in and take it here.”
“Mademoiselle is too good,” said the old man, surprised; but he let Ursule go. Helen had been too late to help in the praying, but perhaps there might be something left which she could do. Mr Goulburn was late. He had not yet come down-stairs; and Margot, though she too had run out to take part in the melancholy excitement, could be brought back more easily than poor little Blanchette. Helen heroically poured out a large basin of coffee for the odious old man, whose sneer made her shiver; and he was so little prepared for this attention that for the moment he was entirely subdued.
“Mademoiselle is very good to take so much trouble,” he said. “The coffee is excellent. I have always been told that no one understood how to be comfortable like Messieurs the English. Comfort! it is even an English word!”
“We try to be good to each other—that is what makes us comfortable,” said Helen, with youthful severity. The coffee was served in little round basins of thick and heavy white crockery ware, and M. Goudron broke down his bread into it, and ate it with a spoon, which disgusted the English girl much, chiefly because it was not her way of taking the morning meal.
“I perceive,” said M. Goudron, “you think I am not good to my grandchildren, mademoiselle—notwithstanding that I feed them and lodge them, and allow them to give me a great deal of trouble. They cost me more than any one would think. They are not young ladies like mademoiselle. Why should not they go out into the world and gain their living like others? It is because I have a soft heart,” the old man said with a grin. “They are old enough to gain their living, yet I keep them at home. Is not that much? What would you have me do more?”
Helen did not know what to say. “You will not let them do anything they want to do,” she cried, with hot partisanship; but she was aware that there was not much reasonableness in the complaint, and this took away precision from her tone.
“One of them wants—to marry M. Baptiste, who is not what I approve, who is not rangé nor serious, but a young good-for-nothing,” said M. Goudron. “Fortunately, mademoiselle, that is put out of the question by this morning’s luck.”
“Fortunately!” (“Janey,” said Helen in English, “I cannot bear him much longer. He is horrible; he is disgusting; he is like the ogre in your fairy tale.”) “Fortunately, M. Goudron! when they love one another! when they will break their hearts! when——”
“Ah, bah! Excuse me, mademoiselle; you are young and romantic, like all the English ladies; but I am prudent. I think of Blanchette’s real welfare; and mademoiselle, who is Protestant, a religion of good sense, does not desire me, I hope, to bury Ursule alive in a convent. Pah!” said M. Goudron, spitting on the floor in sign of his disgust, a proceeding which elicited a restrained shriek from his young hostess.
“Janey, call Margot, call Margot! I cannot put up with him any longer. No one ever does that in England,” she said, turning away with a face of horror.
“Shut a girl up in a convent?” said M. Goudron. “No, you are prudent people; you have too much good sense. A girl who can do all that is necessary in a little ménage—who can make the kitchen very well, and mend my clothes, and do all that is needed, and is cheaper than a servant;—to shut her up in a convent, where she will no longer be of use to any one—and with a dot, if you please! Were they to take her with nothing, we might think of it. That is what mademoiselle would wish me to do—to give one, with her dot to the nuns and priests, whom I abhor, and to give another to Baptiste Dupré; and for myself to hire a servant, who would gad about from morning to night, and cost me as much as both put together! Is that what mademoiselle would have me do?”
Helen made no reply, for just then a hurried step had come in at the door, and a new tumult of anxiety, of emotion, seemed to pervade the house. There was a little pause and whispering outside, and then the door was thrown hurriedly open, and Blanchette came in, a fountain of tears.
“Oh, pardon, pardon, chère mademoiselle! It is because I am so unhappy. I think I shall die of grief. Grandpapa! I am come to ask you upon my knees to have a little pity upon us. Oh, ma bonne, douce, gentille demoiselle, help me! perhaps he will hear you. He is so rich, it would be so easy for him to do it. Grandpapa, if you will help us, I will be your slave, I will never complain any more; I will do anything; I will never ask to go out, nor for any toilet, nor for pleasure. Mon Dieu! he turns away his head! he will not even listen. Oh, mes chères demoiselles, help me! He is so rich—what would it do to him? He would never feel it. We should all be happy and pray to God for him—and he, he would never feel it at all!”
“How dare you say I am rich! Do not believe her, mademoiselle; she is talking of things she knows nothing about. Petite sotte! you had better get up and go home, and think of your duty a little.”
“Here is my duty, grandpère,” said poor Blanchette, on her knees. “Oh, help me, mes bonnes demoiselles! He does not care for God, nor for his children; but he cares for his locataires. If Baptiste goes away, his mother will be ruined, and he will be lost to me, and I shall die. Oh, my poor Baptiste! he never was wicked, only foolish a little, like all the young men; and he knows better, a great deal better now. Grandpapa, if you will only be kind, if you will do what we ask you, we will pray God for you on our knees every day, as Ursule does. Oh, mademoiselle, Ursule is a saint! she prays for him just the same as if he were the kindest; and so will I. And when you die, which cannot be long, for you are old, you will find the advantage—God will listen to you because you have listened to us. He will not remember the wicked things you have done, nor how hard you have been, nor——”
“This is something which is admirable,” said the old man, grinning more horribly than ever. “Mademoiselle, my granddaughter is of opinion that I am wicked, that I am hard, that I am old and will shortly die. Bien, très-bien! It is to please me she says all these pretty things. Va, petite imbécile!” He put out his foot furiously to push the kneeling girl away.
But Janey, who had been standing by listening all this time in unwonted silence, looking on with very curious eyes, investigating the strange chapter in human affairs thus exhibited to her, stepped in to the rescue.
“You are old, M. Goudron,” she said, “and you are not good. Papa is good, though he is old, but not you. He would do whatever I ask him. If you will not give Blanchette what she wants, I will ask papa, and he will do it for Janey; and then what Ursule gets from God will be for papa, and not for you; and all the village will say, ‘Down with that old Père Goudron and vive l’Anglais!’ Nobody loves you, M. Goudron,” continued Janey, “not one. You are a very bad old man; you never do anything that is kind. It would be better to be a wolf in the wood than you, for the wolf would not understand, and you hear me talking to you. And when you die, which can’t be long, you will be made into an old cinder” (Janey said tison). “You are very like one now; I think you must feel the fire burning you already,” cried Janey, vindictively; “you are so dried up and withered and wrinkled and wicked. Tiens, Blanchette, do not ask him any more; I will get it from papa.”
Janey put out her hand majestically, interposing her small person between the old man whom she had denounced and poor Blanchette, who had risen to her feet and turned her large astonished eyes, full of tears, upon the child. Janey, in her four feet of stature, towered over them all, her pretty hair streaming back as on a breeze of indignation, her eyes blazing. No consideration of circumstances or possibilities affected Janey. She was sublime, for she was absolute, above all reasoning. And while Blanchette started to her feet, half in fear of her grandfather, half in wondering hope at the impulse of this little heroine, the old man, on his side, cowered and shrank before her. He had one humanity in him, he was fond of little children; and Janey, the strange little foreign creature, exercised a kind of fascination over him. He tried to change his grin into a conciliatory smile.
“Tenez, tenez, ma petite demoiselle,” he said, with a broken sort of whimper in his voice; “do not speak to an old man so. When you ask me for something in your pretty little voice, I will do it. I am not wicked, as you say; it is they who are wicked, robbing me of everything. But you are a little angel. Naturally your papa will do whatever you ask him. He is a milord; he is rich, very rich, like all the English; and I too will do what you ask me, though I am not rich, but poor. But you must not say ‘À bas le père Goudron!’” cried the old man again with a whimper. He twisted all his lean person into a grimace of deprecating amiability, drawing his long legs under him, clasping his bony hands, putting his grotesque head on one side, while Janey stood impassive, disapproving, majestic, stretching out one small arm as a shield over Blanchette, who for her part, arrested in the very act of weeping, stood with her pretty lips apart, her eyes very widely opened, and the tears dropping down her cheeks.
Just then Mr Goulburn was heard coming down-stairs. He was in good spirits this morning: first he was heard whistling a favourite tune, then he began to talk to Margot, who had come in and was sweeping loudly, knocking her broom into all the corners by way of blowing off her emotion, as poor Madame Dupré had done. “So poor Baptiste has drawn a bad number,” they heard him say, and at the words Blanchette’s half arrested tears burst violently forth again.
“Oh, monsieur,” cried Margot, outside, “what good one can do when one is rich! If the Père Goudron would but be charitable one time in his life, and give the money for a substitute! Otherwise their hearts will be broken, and it will be ruin to the Mère Dupré.”
“Ah, a substitute!” he said, while the little company within listened with breathless attention. Then there followed a bar or two of Mr Goulburn’s favourite air, and the renewed knocks against the wainscot of Margot’s broom, and the step of the Englishman, lighter than usual, his daughter thought. Had he got good news? He pushed the door open, then stood surprised at the group he saw. “Ah!” he cried, “it is early to receive visitors, Helen.” They all turned their eyes upon him, Blanchette putting her hands together instinctively. Two pairs of entreating feminine eyes caught Mr Goulburn’s first glance; then his own fixed upon the little central figure, whose looks were less entreating than commanding. “Why, little Janey, what have you got to do with this?” he said.
“Papa,” said Janey, speaking in French—on the whole, she now spoke in French with more dignity than in English, her utterance in her native tongue being still made sweet to foolish parental ears by a few cherished baby errors—“papa, I have promised that you will give what old M. Goudron is too wicked to give—the money that Blanchette wants for Baptiste. She will tell you how much it is. I have said,” said Janey, with a falter in her small voice, for she began to feel the need of crying, being only six after all—“I have said that my papa would give the money for Janey. I know, I know,” she added, bursting into her native speech, “that you will dive it for Janey, papa.”
Mr Goulburn stood, looking much astonished, while this appeal was addressed to him. He looked at old Goudron, crumpled up in his chair with his deprecating look, and little Blanchette dissolved in tears, turning dim, imploring eyes upon him; and at Helen, who was old enough to know better, who ought to have put a stop to it. But he had not the habit of economy in money, and it did not occur to him, as it might have done to, alas! a better man, to consider a demand of this kind for a considerable sum out of mere kindness, to be at once out of the question. It was not out of the question to Mr Goulburn. When a man’s first quality is to be honourable and just above all things, he has to assume a sternness of self-restraint which sometimes makes him appear less amiable to superficial eyes; but one who is less decided upon such points is free of that bondage. He had spent money largely all his life, and he was not startled when he was asked for it, as most of us are who have to gain it by the sweat of our brow. He had never done much more than turn it over in his hands, gaining, yet sometimes losing, by chance, by luck, by hair-breadth hazards, but never by the strain of daily toil; and he had been in the habit of giving it away freely, whether it was his own or others’, all his life. But he was somewhat annoyed by this demand. Helen should have known better. She knew that he was not now a millionaire, that his resources were limited. These hesitations made a cloud over his face when little Janey began to make her little speech. But suddenly the cloud rolled off in a moment, the light broke out. He had not a noble face; a physiognomist would not have trusted it, an artist would have thought nothing of it; there were ignoble lines in it, something which told of cunning, a furtive look—but all at once it was transfigured. He broke out into a half laugh, half sob—
“I oughtn’t to do it; I’ve no right to do it! But I can’t refuse to dive it to Janey!” he cried, with that clamour of mingled feeling in his voice, and drew the child triumphant into his arms.
How hoarse and broken the sound was! Helen took fright. “Papa, you are ill!” she cried.
He went on laughing, not able to stop himself. “Not a bit,” he said, sitting down and panting for breath. “Bonjour, M. Goudron; you are a wise man, you are not led by the nose like me. Janey, my pet, tell your Blanchette to dry her eyes. We can’t have any crying such a bright morning; and let her send this conscrit to me.”
“It would be better, a great deal better, for him to accept the lot he has drawn, and serve as be ought, and give up all follies,” said old Goudron, gathering himself up out of his chair. He stood for a moment balancing himself on his long legs, somewhat crest-fallen, yet recovering his grin. “I have to thank mademoiselle for her excellent coffee,” he said, “and her hospitality, truly English. Tenez, mademoiselle la petite; you will say au revoir before I go?”
Janey put her two hands behind her, and fixed him with two glittering eyes. “I am afraid I shall see you again, but I wish I never might,” she cried. “You are a bad, bad, horrible old man!”
“And you, you are a charmante petite demoiselle,” said M. Goudron, grinning at her till his old face seemed cut in two.