Sister Anne Part 54

"Who told you, monsieur, that I am going to be married?"

"Someone who is absolutely certain of it: my father, who learned it from your uncle."

"From my uncle? Why, I can't understand this at all."

"You pretend not to understand; but, I doubt not, you are impatiently waiting for your future husband's arrival."

Constance reflected for some little time, then replied in a tone which she struggled to make indifferent:

"Really, monsieur, I am very much surprised by what you have told me; but, after all, suppose it to be true that I am to be married--how does it concern you? I imagine that it is a matter of the utmost indifference to you."

"Ah! you think that, do you? You are quite right, mademoiselle; of course, it cannot make any difference to me."

"Very well! then why do you ask me all these questions, monsieur?"

"Why? O Constance! are you going to be married? and this colonel--do you really love him?"

"And if I did love anyone--would that cause you any grief?"

She was determined to force him to the wall and make him avow his sentiments. Frederic could contain himself no longer; his heart could not keep its secret.

"Yes," he cried, "I love you, I adore you! I shall die if you marry another man!"

"He loves me!--Ah! it's very lucky that I have extorted that from you! I thought you would never say it."

And the blus.h.i.+ng girl gave her hand to Frederic, who had fallen at her feet; and he covered that hand with kisses, while she said to him with deep earnestness:

"Ah! Frederic, I love you, too. I shall never love anyone else. Why, my dear, did you not long ago say those words, which make me so happy, and which I have been expecting so long? My uncle is very fond of me; he will never do anything to make me unhappy. If it be true that he has planned a marriage for me--he has never mentioned the subject--why, he must abandon it, for I will tell him that I will marry no one but you, that you alone can obtain my heart and hand; and he will consent, I am certain of it. He is fond of you too, Frederic; indeed, who would not be? You see, you do wrong to be sad and depressed, and to conceal your sorrows from me. My dear, I read your heart long ago; should you not have been able to read mine?"

Frederic replied only by protestations of love; he was beside himself with joy; Mademoiselle de Valmont's avowal had disturbed his reason; not without difficulty did she succeed in calming him, and he did not leave her until she had repeated her solemn promise that she would never give her hand to another.

Frederic left the house in a very different frame of mind from that in which he had entered it. The certainty that Constance loved him had revolutionized all his ideas in an instant: in his delirious joy, Sister Anne was entirely forgotten; he did not even feel a pang of remorse.

Like those sick persons who, when the fever is at its height, are unconscious of pain, he said to himself again and again:

"Dubourg was quite right: I do love Constance, I adore her! I can never again love anybody else."

Two days after this declaration, the Comte de Montreville, well a.s.sured that his son no longer thought of leaving Constance, set out for Dauphine, in his own carriage, attended by a single servant and a postilion.

XXII

DEATH OF MARGUERITE.--SISTER ANNE LEAVES HER CABIN

Let us now return to the dumb girl in the woods, whom we left awaiting Frederic's coming, and whom we shall find still awaiting him.

But the trees have lost their foliage; the fields no longer offer to the eye the pleasing prospect of luxuriant vegetation; there is no green turf in the valley, no verdure on the banks of the stream. The leaves have fallen, and the villager's steps are deadened by that which shaded him and embellished his garden a few days since. He tramples under foot the beautiful foliage to which the approach of a harsher season has brought death. Thus do all things pa.s.s away. Other foliage will be born, only to die in its turn; and the man who tramples upon it must likewise return to the dust whereon future generations will tread. He fancies himself of some account because his allotted time is longer; but when the ages have dispersed his ashes, what more will he have left behind him than those leaves have done which whirl about in the wind at his feet?

The autumn disposes us to melancholy; it brings reverie and reflection, not to him who lives in the city, detained in the vortex of the world by the necessities of business or pleasure, but to the man of the fields who can contemplate each day the successive changes in the face of nature. Not without emotion does he look upon the forest, whose black, skeleton-like trees seem to be in mourning for the spring; if he walks along a path but lately shaded by dense foliage, if he seeks the thicket where he was wont to rest during the heat of the day, he sees naught but dry branches, often broken by the poor man's hand. The forest is less dark than in summer, for the sunlight finds its way in on all sides. But that brightness, far from embellis.h.i.+ng it, robs it of all its charm; one regrets the dark, mysterious paths, through which it is so pleasant to wander in the season of love.

As he watches the approach of the frost and snow, as he contemplates the effects of the winter's cold, man, always buoyed up by hope, says to himself:

"The spring will come again; I shall see once more my leafy lanes, my lawns, and my shrubs."

The spring comes again--but many men do not see it!

Sister Anne observed the change in the season only because it emphasized the length of time that had elapsed since Frederic left her. The unhappy child could no longer count the days; their number was too great.

However, hope had not vanished from her heart; she could not believe that her lover intended to abandon her forever; sometimes, she imagined that he had ceased to live, and then the blackest despair took possession of her thoughts. When that idea forced itself upon her, life seemed to be only one long agony. Could she live on, unsustained by the hope of seeing her lover? Often she longed to die. But she was soon to be a mother; that thought made her cling to life once more; something told her that she must live for her child.

It was a very long time since she had been to the village. An old shepherd, who went back and forth through the woods, was in the habit of leaving every day, at the foot of a tree, the loaf of rye bread required by the occupants of the cabin, and always found there, in exchange, a large pitcher filled with milk. This bread, with milk and fresh eggs, was all that the two poor women ate in winter. When Sister Anne had finished preparing the meal, and had given the old woman all that she required, she drove her goats to the hilltop, and seated herself at the foot of her mother's tree. Despite the cold, which was beginning to be severe, the girl did not fail to go thither a single day. Wrapped in a wretched woollen cloak, half worn out, she defied the rigor of the season, although the garment was but little protection to her; her goats, finding nothing on the hill to browse upon, huddled at her feet; and Sister Anne, her features pinched and worn by her condition and her sufferings, presented only too faithfully the image of poverty and sorrow.

More than once, the snow, falling in great flakes, formed an icy cloak about her body, so that the poor girl's form could hardly be distinguished from the ground she lay upon; and often she removed her cloak to cover her s.h.i.+vering companions. The traveller who happened to pa.s.s over the hill could make out nothing in that snow-covered group save the dumb girl's head, always turned toward the road to the town.

But, unheeding the cold, she did not realize that her whole body s.h.i.+vered, that her teeth chattered, that her limbs stiffened; she was unconscious of physical suffering; a single sentiment absorbed her whole being, and the pain it caused left her no feeling for any other.

When the darkness made it impossible for her to see the road, she rose and looked at herself, amazed to find that she was almost buried in snow. Then she would shake her cloak, caress her goats, and slowly descend the hill to the cabin and old Marguerite. When the old woman was asleep, and she threw herself on her solitary couch, she no longer found love there, nor even rest, to which she had long been a stranger. The memory of her lover was there, as it was everywhere. If only she could express her grief in words, call to him and implore him to return! It seemed to her that her voice would reach his ears.--Poor girl! heaven had deprived you of that priceless organ. Tears! always tears! those were all that remained to you!

But, meanwhile, Sister Anne saw that old Marguerite was failing from day to day. For a long while she had not left the house; she was hardly able to totter to her great armchair. Marguerite was seventy-six years of age; she had led an active, laborious life, and her old age was placid; she had no disease and did not suffer; age alone was wearing out her strength, which was daily diminis.h.i.+ng. She was going out like a lamp whose light has been soft and mellow; she had not shone with great brilliancy, but she had been useful, which is far preferable.

The hour fixed by nature drew near; Marguerite was destined not to see another spring. Sister Anne redoubled her loving attentions to her adopted mother; observing the gradual weakening of her faculties, she gave up going to the hilltop, in order to be always with her. She could have made no greater sacrifice. Good Marguerite, touched by her devotion, smiled at her affectionately, and called her her dear child.

But one morning, when Sister Anne went as usual to her mother's bed to ask how she had pa.s.sed the night, Marguerite did not answer, or, as her custom was, hold out her trembling hand. Her eyes were closed, never to open again. Sister Anne was terrified; she seized the old woman's hand--it was cold and inert, and she tried in vain to warm it in her own. She stooped and kissed Marguerite's forehead, but no smile rewarded her.

The girl stood by her aged companion's bedside, overwhelmed with grief; she gazed at the venerable features of her who had taken care of her from childhood, of her only friend, who had been taken from her!--Marguerite seemed like one asleep; the serenity of her face indicated the serenity of her mind in its last moments. Sister Anne, standing beside the bed, with one hand resting upon it, could not tire of gazing at her adopted mother. Her grief was calm, but none the less profound; her eyes were dry, but their expression was none the less heartrending.

She pa.s.sed a large part of the day beside the good woman's lifeless remains; not without difficulty did she succeed in tearing herself away; but she knew that she must perform the last duties for Marguerite, that she must consign her to her last resting-place; and she realized that she was incapable of doing it alone, without a.s.sistance. She must go to the village, therefore, where she had not been seen for a long while.

She left her cabin and went out of the woods on her way to Vizille. As she pa.s.sed, she bowed, as usual, to those of the village women whom she knew; but she could not understand why they turned their heads away, or stared at her with contempt. Instead of stopping, as their custom was, to bid her good-day, they walked quickly away, and seemed desirous to avoid meeting her. The young men looked at her with mocking smiles; some pointed at her, whispering to one another; and not upon a single face did she observe the marks of interest which they were accustomed to manifest.

"What can be the matter?" thought the poor child; "everybody seems to avoid me; is it because I am more unhappy than ever, because I have lost my kind mother, and Frederic has abandoned me?"

She forgot that she bore the testimony of her weakness; that pledge of love, of which she was so proud, was, in the eyes of the peasants, a proof of her shame. In villages, people are more severe than in cities; they set great store by innocence, because it is often the only treasure they possess. The good people of Vizille held very austere views on the subject of such falls from virtue: a girl who had been seduced became an object of general contempt, so long as her seducer did not repair her fault before the altar. Perhaps they should have been more indulgent to the dumb girl, who, living in the woods, did not know that she was culpable in yielding to the promptings of her heart. But peasants do not reason; they act in obedience to habit, and often mechanically. They had shown deep interest, so long as she was innocent as well as unfortunate; now that she bore manifest proofs of her weakness, they spurned her, without waiting to inquire whether she was not more unfortunate than before.

At last she reached the village, unable to understand the conduct of the people, having no idea why the young girls fled at her approach without deigning to answer her signs, or why their parents stared at her with a stern, disdainful air.

She knocked at the door of a cottage, the owners of which were friends of Marguerite. The woman who opened the door made a gesture of surprise when she saw her, then drove her away from the house. Sister Anne tried to insist and to make her understand the loss she had met with; but, refusing to notice her signs, the woman pushed her into the street, where a number of peasants had a.s.sembled and stood staring at her.

"How do you dare to come to the village in that state?" asked an old man; "to show your face here and try to get into our houses? You're carrying the token of your shame; you'd do better to hide it in your woods. And you come here and show yourself to our daughters! Do you do it to let them admire your pretty behavior, and set them an example? Off with you, Clotilde's child! you ought to die of shame! Go back to your cabin, clear out with your seducer, but don't come here again among our wives and children!"

Sister Anne could not understand how a person could be guilty for having known love. She gazed at the peasants in surprise; she held out her hands, clasped in entreaty: she tried to make them understand that she had not come to seek their aid for herself. But they did not choose to understand; they turned their backs on her and went into their houses; some escorted her to the outskirts of the village, and did not leave her until they had ordered her never to return.

The poor child was suffocated by the sobs that convulsed her whole body.

To be treated so for having loved Frederic! That thought sustained her courage; it was for him that she was subjected to such humiliation; she would endure everything rather than cease to love him. She returned to her cabin, weeping bitterly. It was dark. Absolute solitude reigned in her poor home, thenceforth the abode of silence. She was utterly alone on earth. Proof against idle terrors, against the childish fear which even the greatest geniuses sometimes feel at sight of death, Sister Anne went to the bed on which Marguerite lay, and, falling on her knees beside it, held out her arms to her protectress, as if to say:

"You would not have spurned me, mother, if I had come before you even guiltier than I am! You would have had pity on me. Your great age, your enfeebled sight, did not permit you to notice my condition; but you would have forgiven me; and they turned me away! Is it by heaping obloquy on the unfortunate that the path of repentance should be pointed out to them?"

She pa.s.sed the whole night by Marguerite's bed. She prayed with all her heart for her who had been a mother to her; she implored her to protect her still, and during that mournful night Frederic's image did not disturb her pious occupation.