III.
Marie Famette was ill—much too ill to go to market.
"I will go. Do not vex thyself, my child, and I will see our good doctor and bring thee back a tisane." The bustling woman, with her blue eyes and light eyelashes, bent down and kissed Marie's forehead, and then departed.
"A tisane!" The bright blue eyes were so dull and languid now, half closed by the heavy white eyelids. "I wonder if even Doctor Guéroult is wise enough to cure the heart when it aches like mine? Ah, Léon, I did not think you could be so hard, so cruel; and how could he know, how could he see into my heart, while I stood laughing so foolishly with Nicolas and Monsieur Poiseau? If Elise Lesage had not teased me about Léon, it might have been different, but I could not let her think I cared for him after what she said." She leaned back her head and cried bitterly.
Madame Famette was more serious than usual on her way to the market. Matters were getting tangled, she thought. Léon Roussel had begun to be a regular Sunday visitor at the cottage, and now three weeks and more had gone by and he had not come; and a gossip who had walked home from church with her overnight had told Madame Famette that Mam'selle Lesage was going to marry a Monsieur Roussel: whether it was Léon or a Monsieur Roussel of some other place than Aubette her gossip could not affirm; and in this uncertainty the mother's heart was troubled. She was very proud of Marie's beauty and graceful ways, and she had thought it a just tribute when the young timber-merchant had asked her permission to call at the cottage; and now, just when she had been expecting that his aunt, La Mère Thérèse, the superior of the Convent du Sacré Coeur in Aubette, would send for her in order that the demand for her daughter's hand and the preliminaries of the marriage might be settled, had come first Léon Roussel's strange absence and the visits of Nicolas Marais, and now the gossip about Elise Lesage.
"I will know the right of it to-day," Madame Famette thinks, and she lashes out at Mouton in an unusual fashion.
The first customer at her stall is Madame Houlard, the wife of the tailor and town councillor. "How is Marie?" she says: "the market does not seem itself without Marie Famette."
Madame Famette smiles, but she sighs too: "My poor little girl is ill;" and then her eyes rove round the market, and fix on Mademoiselle Lesage bustling in and out among her clients. "Have you then heard that Elise Lesage is to be married?" she says in a low, cautious voice.
Madame Houlard's flat, good-tempered face grows troubled: "Ah yes, I have heard some talk; and listen to that noisy fellow;" then she points to Floris Marceau, who is gesticulating and vehement as usual.
She is surprised to find her arm tightly grasped by the large hand of the fruit-seller: "Madame Houlard, tell me the truth: who is to marry with Elise Lesage?"
Madame Houlard leads a very tranquil life: her husband is the most placid man in Aubette, and she has never had any children to disturb the calm of existence. She is ruffled and shocked by Madame Famette's vehemence. She bridles and releases her plump arm: "Ma foi, my friend! what will you? Gossip comes, and gossip goes. I believe all I hear—that is but convenable—but then, look you, I am quite as willing to believe in the contradiction which so frequently follows. One should never excite one's self about anything: be sure of this, my friend, it is bad for the nerves. What is salsify a bundle to-day?"
Madame Famette, as has been said, has a sieve-like nature with regard to the passing away of wrath, but still her anger is easily roused. "It would be simpler to tell me what you have heard," she says in a very snappish accent. "When I want a lecture I can get it from monsieur le curé."
Madame Houlard had felt unwilling to tell her news, but this aggravating sentence goaded it out of her mouth: "It is to Monsieur Roussel, the timber-merchant, that Elise Lesage is to be married: see, he is talking to her now." There is a slight tone of satisfaction in Madame Houlard's smooth voice, and yet in her heart she is sorry for her friend's disappointment. All the market-place of Aubette had given Léon Roussel to the charming Marie.
"Léon Roussel! Why, she is as old as he is—older; and, ma foi! how ugly! and her parents—no one knows where they came from; and she—she is nothing but a money-grubber."
The day was tedious to Madame Famette. She tried to speak to Léon, but he avoided her with a distant bow. There was not even Alphonse Poiseau to help her: only little Pierre Trotin came and carried her baskets to the donkey-cart. She called at the doctor's house, but she could not see him. Madame Famette's heart had not been so heavy since her husband died. "It is that serpent"—she wiped her eyes on a huge blue-and-yellow pocket handkerchief—"who has done it all; and my poor unsuspecting child has flirted with Nicolas, and made the way easy. Ciel! what do I know? It is possible that Marie loves Nicolas, and is willing to throw herself away on a vaurien with a pair of dark eyes; and the news will not grieve her as it has grieved me."
She met her servant Jeanne at the entrance of the road, and gave up the donkey-cart to her care. Then she went on sorrowfully and silently to find Marie. The door stood ajar, just as she had left it. She went in more quietly than usual, but Marie heard her. The girl sat just where her mother had left her: the loaf of bread lay untouched. It was plain that Marie had gone without breakfast. Her face was very pale, and her eyes fixed strainingly on her mother, but she did not speak.
Madame Famette's vexation had made her cross, and Marie's pale face increased her trouble: "How naughty thou art then, Marie! I set thee a knife and a plate: thou hadst but to stretch out thy hand. Ciel! but the market tires!" She cut a slice of bread for her daughter, and then she seated herself.
"Mother"—Marie bent forward and shaded her eyes with her hand—"didst thou see Léon Roussel?"
Madame's shoulders went up to her ears in a heave of disgust: "Thou mayest as well know it, Marie: Léon Roussel is promised to Elise Lesage, and they were together in the market. See what thy folly has caused!"
But Marie scarcely heard her mother's reproaches. The blood flew up to her face, and then it left her paler than before. She bent lower—lower yet, until she overbalanced and fell like a crushed lily at her mother's feet.