Folle Farine Part 23

The women jeered him, menaced him, flouted him, besought him. But vainly--he would not move alone. He had become possessed with the terrors that his own fancy had created; and he would not stir a step for all their imprecations.

"Let us go ourselves, then!" screamed his wife at length, flouris.h.i.+ng above her head the broom with which she had swept the snow. "Men are forever cowards. It shall never be said of me, that I left those babes to the fiend while I gave my own children their porridge by the fire!"

There was a sentiment in this that stirred all her companions to emulation. They rushed into their homes, s.n.a.t.c.hed a shovel, a staff, a broom, a pegstick, each whatever came uppermost, and, dragging Flandrin in the midst, went down the sloping frozen road between its fringe of poplars. They were not very sure in their own minds why they went, nor for what they went; but they had a vague idea of doing what was wise and pious, and they had a great hate in their hearts against her.

They sped as fast as the slippery road would let them, and their tongues flew still faster than their feet; the cold of the daybreak made them sharp and keen on their prey; they screamed themselves hoa.r.s.e, their voices rising shrilly above the whistling of the winds, and the creaking of the trees; and they inflamed each other with ferocious belief in the sorcery they were to punish.

They were in their way virtuous; they were content on very little, they toiled hard from their birth to their grave, they were most of them chaste wives and devoted mothers, they bore privation steadily, and they slaved in fair weather and foul without a complaint. But they were narrow of soul, greedy of temper, bigoted and uncharitable, and, where they thought themselves or their offspring menaced, implacable. They were of the stuff that would be burned for a creed, and burn others for another creed. It is the creed of the vast majority of every nation; the priests and lawgivers of every nation have always told their people that it is a creed holy and honorable--how can the people know that it is at once idiotic and h.e.l.lish?

Folle-Farine sat within on the damp hay under the broken roof, and watched the open door.

The children were still asleep. The eldest one in his sleep had turned and caught her hand, and held it.

She did not care for them. They had screamed, and run behind the woodstack, or their grandam's skirts, a hundred times when they had seen her on the road or in the orchard. But she was sorry for them; almost as sorry as she was for the little naked woodpigeons when their nests were scattered on the ground in a tempest, or for the little starveling rabbits when they screamed in their holes for the soft, white mother that was lying, tortured and twisted, in the jaws of a steel trap.

She was sorry for them--half roughly, half tenderly--with some shame at her own weakness, and yet too sincerely sorry to be able to persuade herself to leave them to their fate there, all alone with their dead.

For in the savage heart of Taric's daughter there was an innermost corner wherein her mother's nature slept.

She sat there quite still, watching the open porch and listening for footsteps.

The snow was driven in circling clouds by the winds; the dense fog of the dawn lifted itself off the surrounding fields; the branches of the trees were beautiful with hanging icicles; from the meadow hard by there wailed unceasingly the mournful moaning of Flandrin's cattle, deserted of their master and hungry in their wooden sheds.

She heard a distant convent clock strike six: no one came. Yet, she had resolved not to leave the children all alone; though Flamma should come and find her there, and thrash her for her absence from his tasks. So she sat still and waited.

After a little she heard the crisp cracking of many feet on the frozen snow and ice-filled ruts of the narrow road; she heard a confused clatter of angry voices breaking harshly on the stillness of the winter morning.

The light was stronger now, and through the doorway she saw the little pa.s.sionate crowd of angry faces as the women pressed onward down the hill with Flandrin in their midst.

She rose and looked out at them quietly.

For a minute they paused--irresolute, silent, perplexed: at the sight of her they were half daunted; they felt the vagueness of the crime they came to bring against her.

The wife of Flandrin recovered speech first, and dared them to the onslaught.

"What!" she screamed, "nine good Christians fearful of one daughter of h.e.l.l? Fie! for shame! Look; my leaden Peter is round my neck! Is he not stronger than she any day?"

In a moment more, thus girded at and guarded at the same time, they were through the door and on the mud floor of the hearth, close to her, casting hasty glances at the poor dead body on the hearth, whose fires they had left to die out all through that bitter winter. They came about her in a fierce, gesticulating, breathless troop, flouris.h.i.+ng their sticks in her eyes, and casting at her a thousand charges in one breath.

Flandrin stood a little aloof, sheepishly on the threshold, wis.h.i.+ng he had never said a word of the death of Manon Dax to his good wife and neighbors.

"You met that poor saint and killed her in the snow with your witcheries!" one cried.

"You have stifled that poor babe where it lay!" cried another.

"A good woman like that!" shrieked a third, "who was well and blithe and praising G.o.d only a day ago, for I saw her myself come down the hill for our well water!"

"It is as you did with the dear little Remy, who will be lame all his life through you," hissed a fourth. "You are not fit to live; you spit venom like a toad."

"Are you alive, my angels?" said a fifth, waking the three children noisily, and rousing their piercing cries. "Are you alive after that witch has gazed on you? It is a miracle! The saints be praised!"

Folle-Farine stood mute and erect for the moment, not comprehending why they thus with one accord fell upon her. She pointed to the bodies on the hearth, with one of those grave and dignified gestures which were her birthright.

"She was cold and hungry," she said curtly, her mellow accent softening and enriching the provincial tongue which she had learned from those amidst whom she dwelt. "She had fallen, and was dying. I brought her here. The young child was killed by the snow. I stayed with the rest because they were frightened, and alone. There is no more to tell. What of it?"

"Thou hadst better come away. What canst thou prove?" whispered Flandrin to his wife.

He was afraid of the storm he had invoked, and would fain have stilled it. But that was beyond his power. The women had not come forth half a league in the howling winds of a midwinter daybreak only to go back with a mere charity done, and with no vengeance taken.

They hissed, they screamed, they hurled their rage at her; they accused her of a thousand crimes; they filled the hut with clamor as of a thousand tongues; they foamed, they spat, they struck at her with their sticks; and she stood quiet, looking at them, and the old dead face of Manon Dax lay upward in the dim light.

The eldest boy struggled in the grasp of the peasant woman who had seized him, and stretched his arms, instead, to the one who had fed him and whose hand he had held all through his restless slumber in that long and dreary night.

The woman covered his eyes with a scream.

"Ah--h!" she moaned, "see how the innocent child is bewitched! It is horrible!"

"Look on that;--oh, infernal thing!" cried Flandrin's wife, lifting up her treasured figure of Peter. "You dare not face that blessed image.

See--see all of you--how she winces, and turns white!"

Folle-Farine had shrunk a little as the child had called her. Its gesture of affection was the first that she had ever seen towards her in any human thing.

She laughed aloud as the image of Peter was thrust in her face. She saw it was some emblem and idol of their faith, devoutly cherished. She stretched her hand out, wrenched it away, trampled on it, and tossed it through the doorway into the snow, where it sank and disappeared. Then she folded her arms, and waited for them.

There was a shriek at the blasphemy of the impious act; then they rushed on her.

They came inflamed with all the fury which abject fear and bigoted hatred can beget in minds of the lowest and most brutal type. They were strong, rude, ignorant, fanatical peasants, and they abhorred her, and they believed no child of theirs to be safe in its bed while she walked alive abroad. Beside such women, when in wrath and riot, the tiger and the hyena are as the lamb and the dove.

They set on her with furious force; they flung her, they trod on her, they beat her, they kicked her with their wood-shod feet, with all the malignant fury of the female animal that fights for its offspring's and its own security.

Strong though she was, and swift, and full of courage, she had no power against the numbers who had thrown themselves on her, and borne her backward by dint of their united effort, and held her down to work their worst on her. She could not free herself to return their blows, nor lift herself to wrestle with them; she could only deny them the sweetness of wringing from her a single cry, and that she did. She was mute while the rough hands flew at her, the sticks struck at her, the heavy feet were driven against her body, and the fierce fingers clutched at her hair, and twisted and tore it,--she was quite mute throughout.

"p.r.i.c.k her in the breast, and see if the devil be still in her. I have heard say there is no better way to test a witch!" cried Flandrin's wife, writhing in rage for the outrage to the Petrus.

Her foes needed no second bidding; they had her already prostrate in their midst, and a dozen eager, violent hands seized a closer grip upon her, pulled her clothes from her chest, and, holding her down on the mud floor, searched with ravenous eyes for the signet marks of h.e.l.l. The smooth, soft skin baffled them; its rich and tender hues were without spot or blemish.

"What matter,--what matter?" hissed Rose Flandrin. "When our fathers hunted witches in the old time, did they stop for that? Draw blood, and you will see."

She clutched a jagged, rusty nail from out the wall, and leaned over her prey.

"It is the only babe that will ever cling to thee!" she cried, with a laugh, as the nail drew blood above the heart.

Still Folle-Farine made no sound and asked no mercy. She was powerless, defenseless, flung on her back amidst her tormentors, fastened down by treading feet and clinching hands; she could resist in nothing, she could not stir a limb; still she kept silence, and her proud eyes looked unquailing into the hateful faces bent to hers.

The muscles and nerves of her body quivered with a mighty pang, her chest heaved with the torture of indignity, her heart fluttered like a wounded bird,--not at the physical pain, but at the shame of these women's gaze, the loathsome contact of their hands.

The iron pierced deeper, but they could not make her speak. Except for her eyes, which glowed with a dusky fire as they glanced to and fro, seeking escape, she might have been a statue of olive-wood, flung down by ruffians to make a bonfire.