This daughter had become the most mysterious of all our Villerville discoveries. Our old friend was a peasant, the child of peasant farmers. She would always remain a peasant; and yet her daughter was a Parisian, and lived in a bonbonnière. She was also married; but that only served to thicken the web of mystery enshrouding her. How could a daughter of a peasant, brought up as a peasant, who had lived here, a tiller of the fields till her nineteenth year, suddenly be transformed into a woman of the Parisian world, gain the position of a banker's wife, and be dancing, as the old mere kept telling us, at balls at the Elysée? Her mother never answered this riddle for us; and, more amazing still, neither could the village. The village would shrug its shoulders, when we questioned it, with discretion, concerning this enigma. "Ah, dame! It was she—the old mere—who had had chances in life, to marry her daughter like that! Victorine was pretty—yes, there was no gainsaying she was pretty—but not so beautiful as all that, to entrap a banker, un homme sérieux, qui vit de ses rentes! and who was generous, too, for the old mere needn't work now, since she was always receiving money." Gifts were perpetually pouring into the low rooms—wines, and Parisian delicacies, and thick garments.
The tie between the two, between the mother and daughter, appeared to be as strong and their relations as complete, as if one were not clad in homespun and the other in Worth gowns. There was no shame, that was easily seen, on either side; each apparently was full of pride in the other; their living apart was entirely due to the old mère's preference for a life on the cliffs, alone in the midst of all her old peasant belongings.
"C'est plus chez-soi, ici! Victorine feels that, too. She loves the smell of the old wood, and of the peat burning there in the fireplace. When she comes down to see me, I must shut fast all the doors and windows; she wants the whole of the smell, pour faire le vrai bouquet, as she says. If she had had children—ah!—I don't say but what I might have consented; but as it is, I love my old fire, and my view out there, and the village, best!"
At this point in the conversation, the old eyes, bright as they were, turned dim and cloudy; the inward eye was doubtless seeing something other than the view; it was resting on a youthful figure, clad in Parisian draperies, and on a face rising above the draperies, that bent lovingly over the deep-throated fireplace, basking in its warmth, and revelling in its homely perfume. We were silent also, as the picture of that transfigured daughter of the house flitted across our own mental vision.
"The village?" suddenly broke in the old mère. "Dieu de Dieu! that reminds me. I must go, my children, I must go. Loisette is waiting; la pauvre enfant—perhaps suffering too—how do I know? And here am I, playing, like a lazy clout! Did you know she had had un nini this morning? The little angel came at dawn. That's a good sign! And what news for Auguste! He was out last night—fishing; she was at her washing when he left her. Tiens, there they are, looking for him! They've brought the spy-glass."
The old mère shaded her eyes, as she looked out into the dazzling sunlight. We followed her finger, that pointed to a projection on the cliffs. Among the grasses, grouped on top of the highest rock, was a family party. An old fish-wife was standing far out against the sky; she also was shading her eyes. A child's round head, crowded into a white knit cap, was etched against the wide blue; and, kneeling, holding in both hands a seaman's long glass, was a girl, sweeping the horizon with swift, skilful stretches of arm and hand. The sun descended in a shower of light on the old grandam's seamy face, on the red, bulging cheeks of the chubby child, and on the bent figure of the girl, whose knees were firmly implanted in the deep, tall grasses. Beyond the group there was nothing but sea and sky.
"Yes," the mere went on, garrulously, as she recorked the bottle of old port, carrying table and glasses within doors. "Yes, they're looking for him. It ought to be time, now; he's due about now. There's a man for you—good—bon comme le bon Dieu. Sober, saving too—good father—in love with Loisette as on the wedding night—ah, mes enfants!—there are few like him, or this village would be a paradise!"
She shut the door of the little cabin. And then she gave us a broad wink. The wink was entirely by way of explanation; it was to enlighten us as to why a certain rare bottle of port—a fresh one—was being secreted beneath her fichu. It was a wink that conveyed to us a really valuable number of facts; chief among them being the very obvious fact that the French Government was an idiot, and a tyrant into the bargain, since it imposed stupid laws no one meant to carry out; least of all a good Norman. What? pay two sous octroi on a bottle of one's own wine, that one had had in one's cellar for half a lifetime? To cheat the town out of those twopence becomes, of course, the true Norman's chief pleasure in life. What is his reputation worth, as a shrewd, sharp man of business, if a little thing like cheating stops him? It is even better fun than bargaining, to cheat thus one's own town, since nothing is to be risked, and one is so certain of success.
The mere nodded to us gayly, in farewell, as we all three re-entered the town. She disappeared all at once into a narrow door way, her arms still clasping her old port, that lay in the folds of her shawl. On her shrewd kindly old face came a light that touched it all at once with a glow of divinity; the mother in her had sprung into life with sharp, sweet suddenness; she had caught the wail of the new-born babe through the open door.
The village itself seemed to have caught something of the same glow. It was not only the splendor of the noon sun that made the faces of the worn fish-wives and the younger women softer and kindlier than common; the groups, as we passed them, were all talking of but one thing—of this babe that had come in the night, of Auguste's absence, and of Loisette's sharp pains and her cries, that had filled the street, so that none could sleep.