But Nicolette walked with her girl-friends, those who were not yet tokened. She was as merry as any of them, she chatted and she laughed, but she did not join in the song. To-night of all nights was one of remembrance of past festivals when she was a baby and her father carried her to midnight Mass, with Tan-tan trotting manfully by his side: sometimes it would be very cold, the mistral would be blowing across the valley and Margaï would wind a thick red scarf around her head and throat. And once, only once—it snowed, and Tan-tan would stop at the road side and gather up the snow and throw it at the passers-by.
Memory was insistent. Nicolette would have liked to smother it in thoughts of the present, in vague hopes of the future, but every turn of the road, every tree, and every boulder, even the shadows that lengthened and diminished at her feet as she walked, were arrayed against forgetfulness.
The little church at Manosque (crude in architecture, tawdry in decoration, ugly if measured by the canons of art and good taste) is never really unlovely. On days of great festivals it was even beautiful, filled as it was to overflowing with picturesque people, whose loving hands had helped to adorn the sacred edifice with all that nature yielded for the purpose: branches of grey-leaved eucalyptus and tender twigs of lavender, great leafy masses of stiff carob and feathery mimosa and delicate branches of red or saffron flowered grevillea, all tied with gaudy ribbons around the whitewashed pillars or nestling in huge, untidy bouquets around the painted effigy of the Virgin. In one corner of the little church, the traditional crêche had been erected: the manger against a background of leaves and stones, with the figures of Mary, and the Sacred Infant, of St. Joseph and the Kings. All very naïve and very crude, but tender and lovable, and romantic as are the people of this land of sunshine and poesy.
For midnight Mass, the little building was certainly too small to hold all the worshippers, so they overflowed into the porch, the organ-loft and the vestry; and those who found no place inside, remained standing in the road listening to the singing and the bells. The women in their gaudy shawls, orange, green, blue, magenta, looked like a parterre of riotous coloured flowers in the body of the church, while the men in their best clothes were squeezed against the walls or jammed into the corners, taking up as little of the room as they could.
Nicolette knelt beside her father. On entering the church she had seen Ameyric, who obviously had been in wait for her and offered her the Holy water as she entered. His eyes had devoured her, and despite his sense of reverence and the solemnity of the occasion, his hand had closed over her fingers when she took the Holy water from him. When Father Fournier began saying Mass, Nicolette bowed her head between her hands and prayed with all her heart and soul that Ameyric might find another girl who would be worthy of him and return his love. She prayed too, and prayed earnestly that Bertrand might continue to be happy with his beloved and that he should never know a moment’s disappointment or repining. Nicolette had been taught by Father Fournier that it was part of a Christian girl’s duty to love every one, even her enemies, and to pray for them earnestly, for le Bon Dieu would surely know if prayers were not sincere. So Nicolette forced herself to think kindly of Rixende, to remember her only as she had last seen her that evening in May, when she lay quite placid in Bertrand’s arms, with her head upon his breast and with the nightingale trilling away for dear life over her head.
So persistently did Nicolette think of this picture that she succeeded in persuading herself that the thought made her happy, and then she realised that her face was wet with tears.
Father Fournier preached a sermon all about humility and obedience and the example set by the Divine Master, and Nicolette wondered if it was not perhaps her duty to do as her father wished and to marry Ameyric Barnadou? Oh! it was difficult, very difficult, and Nicolette thought how much more simple it would be if le Bon Dieu was in the habit of telling people exactly what He wished them to do. The feeling of unreality once more came over her. She sat with eyes closed while Father Fournier went on talking, talking, and the air grew hotter, more heavy every moment with the fumes of the incense, the burning candles, the agitated breath of hundreds of entranced village folk. The noise, the smell, the rising clouds of incense all became blurred to her eyes, her ears, her nostrils: only the past remained quite real, as she had lived it before the awful, awful day when Tan-tan went out of her life, the past with its dragons, and distressful maidens, and woods redolent with rosemary and groves of citron-blossoms, the past as she had lived it with Tan-tan and Micheline, those happy Christmases of old.
Tan-tan, who was a wilful, fidgety boy, was always good when he came to midnight Mass. Nicolette with eyes closed and Father Fournier’s voice droning in her ears, could see him now sitting quite, quite still with Micheline on one side of him, and her, Nicolette, on the other. And they, the three children, sat agape while the offertory procession wound its way through the crowded church. She felt that she was a baby again, and that her tiny feet could not touch the ground, and her wee hands kept reaching out to touch Tan-tan’s sleeve or his knee. Ah, that beautiful, that exciting procession! The children craned their little necks to see above the heads of the crowd, and Jaume Deydier would take his little girl in his arms and set her to stand upon his knee, so that she might see everything; Micheline would stand up with Margaï’s arm around her to keep her steady, but Tan-tan’s pride would have a long struggle with his curiosity. He would remain seated just like a grown man and pretend that he could see quite well; and this pretence he would keep up for a long while, although Nicolette would exclaim from time to time in that loud hoarse whisper peculiar to children:
“Tan-tan, stand on your chair! It is lovely!”
Then at last Tan-tan would give in and stand up on his chair, after which Nicolette felt that she could set to and enjoy the procession too. First the band of musicians with beribboned tambours, bagpipes and clarinets: then a group of young men, goatherds from Luberon or Vaucluse, carrying huge baskets of fruits and live pigeons: after which a miniature cart entirely covered with leafy branches of olive and cypress with lighted candles set all along its sides, and drawn by a lamb, whose snow-white fleece was adorned with tiny bunches of coloured ribbons; behind this cart a group of girls wearing the Garbalin, a tall conical head-dress adorned with tiny russet apples and miniature oranges: finally a band of singers, singing the Christmas hymns.