She paused and raised a lorgnette to her eyes, gazed for a moment on the picture of the departed Riande, and then allowed her cold, wearied glance to wander round and down and about until they rested on the hunched-up little figure of Nicolette.
“What is that child doing here?” she asked, speaking to Micheline who stood by, mute and shy, as she always was when her grandmama was nigh.
It was Bertrand who replied:
“Nicolette came to ask us to go over to the mas and have coffee there,” he said, hesitating, blushing, looking foolish, and avoiding Nicolette’s innocent glance. “Margaï has baked a big, big brioche,” Nicolette chimed in, in her piping little voice, “and churned some butter—and—and—there’s cream—heaps and heaps of cream—and——”
“Go, Bertrand,” the old Comtesse broke in coldly, “and you too, Micheline, to your mother. I will join you all at coffee directly.”
Even Bertrand, the favourite, the enfant gâté, dared not disobey when grandmama spoke in that tone of voice. He said: “Yes, grandmama,” quite meekly, and went out without daring to look again at Nicolette, for of a surety he knew that her eyes must be full of tears, and he himself was sorely tempted to cry, because he was so fond, so very fond of Margaï’s brioches, and of her yellow butter, and lovely jars of cream, whilst in mother’s room there would only be black bread with the coffee. So he threw back his head and ran, just ran out of the room; and as Nicolette had an uncomfortable lump in her wee throat she did not call to Tan-tan to come back, but sat there on the floor like a little round ball, her head buried between her knees, her brown curls all tangled and tossed around her head. Micheline on the other hand made no attempt to disguise her tears. Grandmama could not very well be more contemptuous and distant towards her than she always was, for Micheline was plain, and slightly misshapen, she limped, and her little face always looked pinched and sickly. Grandmama despised ugliness, she herself was so very tall and stately, and had been a noted beauty in the days before the Revolution. But being ugly and of no account had its advantages, because one could cry when one’s heart was full and pride did not stand in the way of tears. So when grandmama presently sailed out of the hall, taking no more notice of Nicolette than if the child had been a bundle of rags, Micheline knelt down beside her little friend, and hugged and kissed her.
“Never mind about to-day, Nicolette,” she said, “run back and tell Margaï that we will come to-morrow. Grandmama never wants us two days running, and the brioche won’t be stale.”
But at six years of age, when a whole life-time is stretched out before one, every day of waiting seems an eternity, and Nicolette cried and cried long after Micheline had gone.
But presently a slight void inside her reminded her of Margaï’s brioche, and of the jar of cream, and the tears dried off, of themselves; she picked herself up, and ran out of the hall, along the familiar corridors where she had so often been a damsel in distress, and out of the postern gate. She ran down the mountain-side as fast as her short legs would carry her, down and down into the valley, then up again, bounding like a young kid, up the winding track to the old house which her much-despised ancestor had built on the slope above the Lèze when first he laid the foundations of the fortune which his descendants had consolidated after him. Up she ran, safe as a bird in its familiar haunts, up the gradients between the lines of olive trees now laden with fruit, the source of her father’s wealth. For while the noble Comtes de Ventadour had wasted their patrimony in luxury and in gambling, the Deydiers, father and son, had established a trade in oil, and in orange-flower water, both of which they extracted from the trees on the very land that they had bought bit by bit from their former seigneurs; and their oil was famed throughout the country, because one of the Deydiers had invented a process whereby his oil was sweeter than any other in the whole of Provence, and was sought after far and wide, and even in distant lands. But of this Nicolette knew nothing as yet: she did not even know that she loved the grey-green olive trees, and the terraced gradients down which she was just able to jump without tumbling, now that she was six and her legs had grown; she did not know that she loved the old house with its whitewashed walls, its sky-blue shutters, and multi-coloured tiled roof, and the crimson rose that climbed up the wall to the very window sill of her room, and the clumps of orange and lemon trees that smelt so sweet in the spring when they were laden with blossom, and the dark ficus trees, and feathery mimosa, and vine-covered arbours. She did not know that she loved them because her baby-heart had not yet begun to speak. All that she knew was that Tan-tan was beautiful, and the most wonderful boy that ever, ever was. There was nothing that Tan-tan could not do. He could jump on one leg far longer than any other boy in the country-side. He could throw the bar and the disc much farther even than Ameyric who was reckoned the finest thrower at the fêtes of Apt. He could play bows, and shoot with arrows, and to see him wrestle with some of the boys of the neighbourhood was enough to make one scream with excitement.
Nicolette also knew that Tan-tan could make her cry whenever he was cross or impatient with her, but that it was nice, oh! ever so nice!—when he condescended to play with her, and carried her about in his arms, and when, at times, when she had been crying just in play, he comforted her with a kiss.