Nicolette: a tale of old Provence

by Baroness Emmuska Orczy Orczy

Already he loved her because he had been told that she had hair glossy and golden like the Rixende of the picture, and great mysterious eyes as blue as the gentian; and that her lips smiled like those of Rixende had done, whereupon he marvelled if they would be good to kiss. After which, by an unexplainable train of thought, he fell to thinking of Nicolette. She had sent him a message by Micheline yesterday that she would wait for him all the afternoon, on their island beside the pool. It was now past four o’clock. The shades of evening were fast gathering in, in the valley below, and even up here on the heights the ciliated shadows of carob and olive were beginning to lengthen. It would take an hour to run as far as the pool; and then it would be almost time to come home again, for of late Jaume Deydier had insisted that Nicolette must be home before dark. It was foolish of Nicolette to be waiting for him so far away. Why could she not be sensible and come across to the château to say good-bye? The boy was fighting within himself, fighting a battle wherein tenderness and vanity were on the one side, and a false sense of pride and manliness on the other. In the end it was perhaps vanity that won the fight. All day he had been treated as a child that was being packed up and sent to school: all day he had been talked to, and admonished, and preached at, first by grandmama, and then by Father Siméon-Luce; he had been wept over by mother and by Micheline: now Nicolette neither admonished nor wept. He would not allow her to do the former and she was too sensible to attempt the latter. She would probably stand quite still and listen while he told her of his plans for the future, and all the fine things he would do when he was of age, and rich, and had married his cousin Rixende.

Nicolette was sensible, she would soothe his ruffled self-esteem and restore to him some of that confidence in himself of which he would stand in sore need during the long and lonely voyage that lay before him.

Hardly conscious of his own purpose, Bertrand sauntered down the mountain-side. It was still hot on this late September afternoon, and the boy instinctively sought, as he descended, the cool shadows that lay across the terraced gradients. A pungent scent of rosemary and eucalyptus was in the air, and from the undergrowth around came the muffled sound of mysterious, little pattering feet, or call of tiny beasts to their mates. Bertrand’s head ached, and his hands felt as if they were on fire. A curious restlessness and dissatisfaction made him feel out of tune with these woods which he loved more than he knew, with the blood-red berries of the mountain ash that littered the ground, and the low bushes of hazel-nut which autumn had painted a vivid crimson. Now he was down in the valley and up again on the spur behind which tossed and twirled the clear mountain stream.

The rough walk was doing him good: his body felt hot but his hands were cooler and his temples ceased to throb. When he reached the water’s edge, he sat down on a boulder and took off his boots and his stockings and slung them over his shoulder, and walked up the bed of the stream until the waters widened into that broad, silent pool which washed the shores of his fairy island. Already from afar he had spied Nicolette; she was watching for him on the grassy slope, clinging with one hand to the big carob that overhung the pool. She had on a short kirtle of faded blue linen, and a white apron and shift, the things she always wore when she was Virginie and he was Paul on their fairy island. She had obviously been paddling, for she had taken off her shoes and stockings, and her feet and legs shone like rose-tinted metal in the cool shade of the trees. Her head was bare and a soft breeze stirred the loose brown curls about her head, but Bertrand could not see her face, for her head was bent as if she were gazing intently into the pool. Way up beyond the valley, the sinking sun had tinged the mountain peaks with gold, and had already lit the big, big fire in the sky behind Luberon, but here on the island everything was cool and grey and peaceful, with only the murmur of the stream over the pebbles to break the great solemn silence of the woods.

When Bertrand jumped upon the big boulder, the one from which he was always wont to fish, Nicolette looked up and smiled. But she did not say anything, not at first, and Bertrand stood by a little shamefaced and quite unaccountably bashful.

“The fish have been shy all the afternoon,” were the first words that Nicolette said.

“Did you try and fish?” Bertrand asked.

Nicolette pointed to a rod and empty basket which lay on the grass close by.

“I borrowed those from Ameyric over at La Bastide,” she said. “I wanted to try my hand at it.” She paused. Then she swallowed; swallowed hard and resolutely as if there had been a very big lump in her throat. Then she said quite simply:

“I shall have to do something on long afternoons when I come here——”