Part 15

When I was alone I began to think over with amazement all that must have happened that night in the forest without my hearing or detecting the slightest thing. I was still more surprised when, passing once more, in broad daylight, the spot where the dance had taken place, I saw that since midnight persons had returned to mow the grass and dig over the ground to remove all trace of what had happened. In short, from one direction persons had come twice to make things safe at this particular point; from the other, Thérence had contrived to communicate with her brother; and, besides all this, a burial had been performed, without the faintest appearance or the lightest sound having warned me of what was taking place, although the night was clear and I had gone from end to end of the silent woods looking and listening with the utmost attention. It turned my mind to the difference between the habits, and indeed the characters, of these woodland people and the laborers of the open country. On the plains, good and evil are too clearly seen not to make the inhabitants from their youth up submit to the laws and behave with prudence. But in the forests, where the eyes of their fellows can be escaped, men invoke no justice but that of God or the devil, according as they are well or ill intentioned.

When I reached the lodges the sun was up; the Head-Woodsman had gone to his work; Joseph was still asleep; Thérence and Brulette were talking together under the shed. They asked me why I had got up so early, and I noticed that Thérence was uneasy lest I had seen or heard something. I behaved as if I knew nothing, and had not gone further than the adjoining wood.

Joseph soon joined us, and I remarked that he looked much better than when we arrived.

"Yet I have hardly slept all night," he replied; "I was restless till nearly day-break; but I think the reason was that the fever which has weakened me so much left me last evening, for I feel stronger and more vigorous than I have been for a long time."

Thérence, who understood fevers, felt his pulse, and then her face, which looked very tired and depressed, brightened suddenly.

"See!" she cried; "the good God sends us at least one happiness; here is our patient on the road to recovery! The fever has gone, and his blood is already recovering strength."

"If you want to know what I have felt this night," said Joseph, "you must promise not to call it a dream; but here it is--In the first place, however, tell me if Huriel got off without a wound, and if the other did not get more than he wanted. Have you had any news from the forest of Chambérat?"

"Yes, yes," replied Thérence, hastily. "They have both gone to the upper country. Say what you were going to say."

"I don't know if you will comprehend it, you two," resumed Joseph, addressing the girls, "but Tiennet will. When I saw Huriel fight so resolutely my knees gave way under me, and, feeling weaker than any woman, I came near losing consciousness; but at the very moment when my body was giving way my heart grew hot within me, and my eyes never ceased to look at the fight. When Huriel struck the fellow down and remained standing himself, I could have shouted 'Victory!' like a drunken man, if I had not restrained myself; I would have rushed if I could to embrace him. But the impulse was soon gone, and when I got back here I felt as though I had received and given every blow, and as if all the bones in my body were broken."

"Don't think any more about it," said Thérence; "it was a horrid thing to see and recollect. I dare say it gave you bad dreams last night."

"I did not dream at all," said Joseph; "I lay thinking, and little by little I felt my mind awakened and my body healed, as if the time had come to take up my bed and walk, like the paralytic of the Gospels. I saw Huriel before me, shining with light; he blamed my illness, and declared it was a cowardice of the mind. He seemed to say: 'I am a man, you are a child; you shake with fever while my blood is fire. You are good for nothing, but I am good in all ways, for others and for myself. Come, listen to this music.' And I heard an air muttering like a storm, which raised me in my bed as the wind lifts the fallen leaves. Ah, Brulette, I think I have done with being ill and cowardly; I can go now to my own country and kiss my mother, and make my plans to start,--for start I must, upon a journey; I must see and learn, and make myself what I should be."

"You wish to travel?" said Thérence, her face, so lately lighted like a star with pleasure, growing white and cloudy as an autumn moon. "You think to find a better teacher than my father, and better friends than people here? Go and see your mother; that is right, if you are strong enough to go,--unless, indeed, you are deceiving us and longing to die in distant parts--"

Grief and displeasure choked her voice. Joseph, who watched her, suddenly changed both his language and his manner.

"Never mind what I have been dreaming this morning, Thérence," he said; "I shall never find a better master or better friends. You asked me to tell my dreams, and I did tell them, that is all. When I am cured I shall ask advice of all three of you, and of your father also. Till then pay no attention to what comes into my head; let us be happy for the time that we are together."

Thérence was pacified; but Brulette and I, who knew how dogged and obstinate Joseph could be under his gentle manner, and remembered how he had left us without allowing us a chance to remonstrate or persuade him, felt sure that his mind was already fully made up, and that no one could change it.

During the next two days I once more felt dreadfully dull; and so did Brulette, though she amused herself by finishing the embroidery she wanted to give Thérence, and spent some hours in the woods with Père Bastien, partly to leave Joseph to the care of Thérence, and partly to talk of Huriel and comfort the worthy man for the danger and distress the fight had caused him. The Head-Woodsman, touched by the friendship which she showed him, told her the truth about Malzac, and, far from her blaming Huriel, as the latter had feared, it only drew her closer to him through the gratitude which she now felt she owed him.

On the sixth day we began to talk of separating. Joseph was getting better hourly; he worked a little, and did his best in every way to recover his strength. He had decided to go with us and spend a few days at home, saying that he should return almost immediately to the woods of Alleu,--which Brulette and I doubted, and so did Thérence, who was almost as uneasy about his health as she had been about his illness. I don't know if it was she who persuaded her father to accompany us half-way, or whether the notion came into Père Bastien's own mind; at any rate, he made us the offer, which Brulette instantly accepted. Joseph was only half pleased at this, though he tried not to show it.

The little trip naturally diverted the Head-Woodsman's thoughts from his anxieties, and while making his preparations the evening before our departure he recovered much of his natural fine spirits. The muleteers had left the neighborhood without hindrance, and nothing had been said about Malzac, who had neither relations nor friends to inquire for him. A year or two might go by before the authorities troubled themselves to know what had become of him, and indeed, they might never do so; for in those days there was no great policing in France, and a man might disappear without any notice being taken of it. Moreover, the Head-Woodsman and his family would leave those parts at the end of the chopping season, and as father and son never stayed six months in the same place, the law would be very clever indeed to know where to catch them.

For these reasons the Head-Woodsman, who had feared only the first results of the affair, finding that no one got wind of the secret, grew easy in mind and so restored our courage.

On the morning of the eighth day he put us all into a little cart he had borrowed, together with a horse, from a friend of his in the forest, and taking the reins he drove us by the longest but safest road to Saint-Sevère, where we were to part from him and his daughter.

Brulette inwardly regretted returning by a new way, where she could not revisit any of the scenes she had passed through with Huriel. As for me, I was glad to travel and to see Saint-Pallais in Bourbonnais and Préveranges, two little villages on the heights, also Saint-Prejet and Pérassay, other villages lower down along the banks of the Indre; moreover, as we followed that river from its source and I remembered that it ran through our village I no longer felt myself a stranger in a strange land. When we reached Saint-Sevère, I felt at home, for it is only six leagues from our place, and I had already been there two or three times. While the rest were bidding each other farewell, I went to hire a conveyance to take us to Nohant, but I could only find one for the next day as early as I wanted it.

When I returned and reported the fact, Joseph seemed annoyed. "What do we want with a conveyance?" he said. "Can't we start in the fresh of the morning on foot and get home in the cool of the evening? Brulette has walked that distance often enough to dance at some assembly, and I feel able to do as much as she."

Thérence remarked that so long a walk might bring back his fever, and that only made him more obstinate; but Brulette, seeing Thérence's vexation, cut the matter short by saying she was too tired, and she would prefer to pass the night at the inn and start in a carriage the next morning.

"Well, then," said the Head-Woodsman, "Thérence and I will do the same. Our horse shall rest here for the night, and we will part from you at daybreak to-morrow morning. But instead of eating our meal in this inn which is full of flies, I propose that we take the dinner into some shady place or to the bank of the river, and sit there and talk till it is time to go to bed."

So said, so done. I engaged two bedrooms, one for the girls, the other for us men, and wishing to entertain Père Bastien (who I had noticed was a good eater) according to my own ideas, I filled a big basket with the best the inn could afford in patés, white bread, wine, and wine-brandy, and carried it outside the village. It was lucky that the present fashion of drinking coffee and beer did not exist in those days, for I shouldn't have spared the cost, and my pockets would have been emptied.

Saint-Sevère is a fine neighborhood, cut into by ravines that are well watered and refreshing to the eye. We chose a spot of rising ground, where the air was so exhilarating that not a crust nor a drop remained after the feast. Presently Père Bastien, feeling lively, picked up his bagpipe, which never left him, and said to Joseph:--

"My lad, we never know who is to live or who to die; we are parting, you say, for three or four days; in my opinion, you are thinking of a much longer absence; and it may be in God's mind that we shall never meet again. This is what all persons who part at the crossways ought to say and feel to each other. I hope that you leave us satisfied with me and with my children; I am satisfied with you and with your friends here; but I do not forget that the prime object of all was to teach you music, and I regret that your two months' illness put a stop to it. I don't say that I could have made you a learned musician; I know there are such in the cities, both ladies and gentlemen, who play instruments that we know nothing about, and read off written airs just as others read words in a book. Except chanting, which I learned in my youth, I know very little of such music, and I have taught you all I know, namely, the keys, notes, and time measures. If you desire to know more you must go to the great cities, where the violinists will teach you both minuet and quadrille music; but I don't know what good that would be to you unless you want to leave your own parts and renounce the position of peasant."

"God forbid!" replied Joseph, looking at Brulette.

"Therefore," continued the Head-Woodsman, "you will have to look elsewhere for instruction on the bagpipe or the hurdy-gurdy. If you choose to come back to me, I will help you; but if you think you can do better in the Upper country, you must go there. What I should wish to do would be to guide you slowly till your lungs grew so strong that you could use them without effort, and your fingers no longer failed you. As for the idea within us, that can't be taught; you have your own, and I know it to be of good quality. I gave you, however, what was in my own head, and whatever you can remember of it you may use as you like. But as your wish seems to be to compose, you can't do better than travel about, and so compare your ideas and stock of knowledge with that of others. You had better go as far up as Auvergne and the Forez, and see how grand and beautiful the world is beyond our valleys, and how the heart swells when we stand on the heights of a real mountain, and behold the waters, whose voice is louder than the voice of man, rolling downward to nourish the trees the verdure of which never dies. Don't go into the lowlands of those other regions. You will find there what you have left in your own country, and that isn't what you want. Now is the time to give you a bit of information which you should never forget; listen carefully to what I say to you."

EIGHTEENTH EVENING.

Père Bastien, observing that Joseph listened with great attention, continued as follows:--

"Music has two modes which the learned, as I have heard tell, call major and minor, but which I call the clear mode and the troubled mode; or, if you like it better, the blue-sky mode and the gray-sky mode, or, still otherwise, the mode of strength and joy, and the mode of dreaminess and gloom. You may search till morning and you will find no end to the contrasts between the two modes; but you will never find a third, for all things on this earth are light or darkness, rest or action. Now listen to me, Joseph! The plains sing in the major, and the mountains in the minor mode. If you had stayed in your own country your ideas would belong to the clear and tranquil mode; in returning: there now, you ought to see the use that a soul like yours could make of that mode; for the one mode is neither less nor more than the other. But while you lived at home, feeling yourself a thorough musician, you fretted at not hearing the minor sound in your ears. The fiddlers and the singing-girls of your parts only acquire it; for song is like the wind which blows everywhere and carries the seeds of plants from one horizon to another. But inasmuch as nature has not made your people dreamy and passionate, they make a poor use of the minor mode, and corrupt it by that use. That is why you thought your bagpipes were always false. Now, if you want to understand the minor, go seek it in wild and desolate places, and learn that many a tear must be shed before you can duly use a mode which was given to man to utter his griefs, or, at any rate, to sigh his love."

Joseph understood Père Bastien so well that he asked him to play the last air he had composed, so as to give us a specimen of the sad gray mode which he called the minor.

"There, there!" cried the old man; "so you overheard the air I have been trying for the last week to put to certain words. I thought I was singing to myself; but, as you were listening, here it is, such as I expect to leave it."

Lifting his bagpipe he removed the chanter, on which he softly played an air which, though it was not melancholy, brought memories of the past and a sense of longing after many things to the consciousness of those who listened.

Joseph was evidently not at ease, and Brulette, who listened without stirring, seemed to waken from a dream when it ended.

"And the words," said Thérence, "are they sad too, father?"

"The words," said he, "are, like the air, rather confused and demand reflection. They tell the story of how three lovers courted a girl."

Whereupon he sang a song, now very popular in our parts, though the words have been a good deal altered; but this is how the Père Bastien sang them:--

Three woodsmen there were, In springtime, on the grass (Listen to the nightingale); Three woodsmen were there, Speaking each with the lass.

The youngest he said, He who held the flower (Listen to the nightingale), The youngest then said he I love thee, but I cower.

The oldest cried out, He who held the tool (Listen to the nightingale), The oldest cried aloud, When I love I rule.

The third sang to her, Bearing the almond spray (Listen to the nightingale), The third sang in her ear, I love thee and I pray.

Friend shall never be You who bear the flower (Listen to the nightingale), Friend shall never be A coward, or I cower.

Master will I none, You who hold the tool (Listen to the nightingale), No master thou of mine, Love obeys no rule.

Lover thou shalt be Who bear the almond spray (Listen to the nightingale), My lover shalt thou be, Gifts are for those who pray.

I liked the air when joined to the words better than the first time I heard it; and I was so pleased that I asked to hear it again; but Père Bastien, who had no vanity about his compositions, declared it was not worth while, and went on playing other airs, sometimes in the major, sometimes in the minor, and even employing both modes in the same song, teaching Joseph, as he did so, how to pass from one to the other and then back again.

The stars were casting their light long before we wanted to retire; even the townspeople assembled in numbers at the foot of the ravine to listen, with much satisfaction to their ears. Some said: "That's one of the Bourbonnais bagpipers, and what is more, he is a master; he knows the art, and not one of us can hold a candle to him."

On our way back to the inn Père Bastien continued to instruct Joseph, and the latter, never weary of such talk, lagged a little behind us to listen and question him. So I walked in front with Thérence, who, useful and energetic as ever, helped me to carry the baskets. Brulette walked alone between the pairs, dreaming of I don't know what,--as she had taken to doing of late; and Thérence sometimes turned round as if to look at her, but really to see if Joseph were following.

"Look at him well, Thérence," I said to her, at a moment when she seemed in great anxiety, "for your father said truly, 'When we part for a day it may be for life.'"

"Yes," she replied, "but on the other hand, when we think we are parting for life it may be for only a day."

"You remind me," said I, "that when I first saw you you floated away like a dream and I never expected to see you again."

"I know what you mean," she exclaimed. "My father reminded me of it yesterday, in speaking of you. Father really loves you, Tiennet, and has great respect for you."

"I am glad and honored, Thérence; but I don't know what I have done to deserve it, for there is nothing in me that is different from the common run of men."

"My father is never mistaken in his judgment, and what he says, I believe; why should that make you sigh, Tiennet?"

"Did I sigh, Thérence? I didn't mean to."

"No, of course you did not," she replied; "but that is no reason why you should hide your feelings from me. You love Brulette and are afraid--"

"I love Brulette very much, that is true, but without any love-sighing, and without any regrets or worries about what she thinks of me. I have no love in my heart, because it would do me no good to have any."

"Ah, you are very lucky, Tiennet!" she cried, "to be able to govern your feelings by your mind in that way."

"I should be better worth something, Thérence, if, like you, I governed them by my heart. Yes, yes, I know you; I have watched you, and I know the true secret of your conduct. I have seen how, for the last eight days, you have set aside your own feelings to cure Joseph, and how you secretly do everything for his good without letting him see so much as your little finger in it. You want him to be happy, and you said true when you told Brulette and me that if we can do good to those we love there is no need to be thinking of our own happiness. That's what you do and what you are; and though jealousy may sometimes get the better of you, you recover directly. It is marvellous to see how strong and generous you are; it is saintly. You must allow that if either of us two is to respect the other, it is I you, not you me. I am a rather sensible fellow, and that is all; you are a girl with a great heart, and a stern hand upon yourself."

"Thanks for the good you think of me," replied Thérence, "but perhaps I don't deserve it, my lad. You want me to be in love with Joseph, and I am not. As God is my judge, I have never thought of being his wife, and the attachment I feel to him is rather that of a sister or a mother."

"Oh! as for that, I am not sure that you don't deceive yourself, Thérence. Your disposition is impulsive."

"That is just why I do not deceive myself. I love my father and brother deeply and almost madly. If I had children I should defend them like a wolf and brood over them like a hen; but the thing they call love, such, for instance, as my brother feels for Brulette,--the desire to please, and a nameless sort of feeling which makes him suffer when alone, and not be able to think of her without pain,--all that I do not feel at all, and I cannot imagine it. Joseph may leave us forever if it will do him good, and I shall thank God, and only grieve if it turns out that he is the worse for it."

Thérence's way of looking at the matter gave me a good deal to think of. I could not understand it very well, for she now seemed to me above all others and above me. I walked a little way beside her without saying a word, not knowing whither my mind was going; for I was seized with such a feeling of ardent friendship that I longed with all my heart to embrace her, with all respect and thinking no harm, till suddenly a glance at her, so young and beautiful, filled me with shame and fear. When we reached the inn I asked her, apropos of what I forget, to tell me exactly what her father had said of me.

"He said," she replied, "that you were a man of the strongest good sense he had ever known."

"You might as well call me a good-natured fool at once, don't you think so?" I said, laughing, but rather mortified.

"Not at all!" cried Thérence; "here are my father's very words: 'He who sees clearest into the things of this world is he who acts with the highest justice.' Now it is true that great good sense leads to great kindness of heart, and I do not think that my father is mistaken."

"In that case, Thérence," I cried, rather agitated at the bottom of my heart, "have a little regard for me."

"I have a great deal," she said, shaking the hand which I held out to her; but it was said with an air of good-fellowship which killed all vaporing, and I slept upon her speech with no more imagination than justly belonged to it.

The next day came the parting. Brulette cried when she kissed Père Bastien, and made him promise that he would come and visit us and bring Thérence; then the two dear girls embraced each other with such pledges of affection that they really seemed unable to part. Joseph offered his thanks to his late master for all the benefits he had received from him, and when he came to part with Thérence he tried to say the same to her; but she looked at him with a perfect frankness which disconcerted him, and pressing each other's hands, they said only, "Good-bye, and take care of yourself."