“Act openly; you yourself are not compromised. You must appear at Sairmeuse to-morrow as if you had just returned from Piedmont; go at once to the notary, take possession of your property, and install yourself at the Borderie.”
Marie-Anne shuddered. “What, live in Chanlouineau’s house,” she faltered. “Live there alone?”
“Heaven will protect you, my dear child. I can only see an advantage in your living at the Borderie. It will be easy to communicate with you; and with ordinary precautions there can be no danger. Before you start we will decide on a meeting place, and two or three times a week you can join Father Poignot there. And in the course of two or three months you can be still more useful to us. When people have grown accustomed to your living at the Borderie, we will take the baron there. Such an arrangement would hasten his convalescence; for in the narrow loft, where we are obliged to conceal him now, he is really suffering for want of light and air.”
Accordingly it was decided that Father Poignot should accompany Marie-Anne to the frontier that very night; and that she should take the diligence running between Piedmont and Montaignac, via Sairmeuse. Before she started, the Abbe Midon gave her minute instructions as to the story she should tell of her sojourn in foreign lands. The peasantry, possibly even the authorities, would question her, and all her answers must tend to prove that the Baron d’Escorval was concealed near Turin.
The plan was carried out as projected; and at eight o’clock on the following morning, the people of Sairmeuse were greatly astonished to see Marie-Anne alight from the passing diligence. “M. Lacheneur’s daughter has come back again!” they exclaimed. The words flew from lip to lip with marvellous rapidity, and soon all the villagers stood at their doors and windows watching the poor girl as she paid the driver, and entered the local hostelry, followed by a lad carrying a small trunk. Urban curiosity has some sense of shame, and seeks to hide itself when prying into other people’s affairs, but country folks are openly and outrageously inquisitive. Thus when Marie-Anne emerged from the inn, she found quite a crowd of sightseers awaiting her with gaping mouths and staring eyes. And fully a score of chattering gossips thought fit to escort her to the notary’s door. This notary was a man of importance, and he welcomed Marie-Anne with all the deference due to the heiress of a house and farm worth from forty to fifty thousand francs. However, being jealous of his renown for perspicuity, he gave her clearly to understand that, as a man of experience, he fully divined that love alone had influenced Chanlouineau in drawing up this last will and testament. He was no doubt anxious to obtain some information concerning the young farmer’s passion, and Marie-Anne’s composure and reticence disappointed him immensely.
“You forget what brings me here,” she said; “you don’t tell me what I have to do!”
The notary, thus interrupted, made no further attempts at divination. “Plague on it!” he thought, “she is in a hurry to get possession of her property—the avaricious creature!” Then he added aloud, “The business can be finished at once, for the magistrate is at liberty to-day, and can go with us to break the seals this afternoon.”
So, before evening, all the legal requirements complied with, and Marie-Anne was formally installed at the Borderie. She was alone in Chanlouineau’s house, and as the darkness gathered round her, a great terror seized hold of her heart. She fancied that the doors were about to open, that this man who had loved her so much would suddenly appear before her, and that she should hear his voice again as she heard it for the last time in his grim prison cell. She struggled hard against these foolish fears, and at last lighting a lamp she ventured to wander through this house—now her’s—but wherein everything spoke so forcibly of its former owner. She slowly examined the different rooms on the ground floor, noting the recent repairs and improvements, and at last climbed the stairs to the room above which Chanlouineau had designed to be the altar of his love. Strange as it may seem, it was really luxuriously upholstered—far more so than Chanlouineau’s letter had led her to suppose. The young farmer, who for years had breakfasted off a crust and an onion, had lavished a small fortune on this apartment, which he meant to be his idol’s sanctuary.
“How he loved me!” murmured Marie-Anne, moved by that emotion, the bare thought of which had awakened Maurice’s jealousy. But she had neither the time nor the right to yield to her feelings. At that very moment Father Poignot was no doubt waiting for her at the appointed meeting place. Accordingly, she swiftly raised the hearth-stone, and found the money which Chanlouineau had mentioned. She handed the larger part of it to Poignot, who in his turn gave it to the abbe on reaching home.
The days that followed were peaceful ones for Marie-Anne, and this tranquillity, after so many trials, seemed to her almost happiness. Faithful to the priest’s instructions, she lived alone; but, by frequent visits to Sairmeuse, she accustomed people to her presence. Yes, she would have been almost happy if she could only have had some news of Maurice. What had become of him! Why did he give no sign of life? She would have given anything in exchange for one word of love and counsel from him. Soon the time approached when she would require a confidant; and yet there was no one in whom she dared confide. In her dire need she at last remembered the old physician at Vigano, who had been one of the witnesses at her marriage. She had no time to reflect whether he would be willing or not; but wrote to him immediately, entrusting her letter to a youth in the neighbourhood. “The gentleman says you may rely upon him,” said the lad on his return. And that very evening Marie-Anne was roused by a rap at her door. It was the kind-hearted old man, who had hastened to her relief. He remained at the Borderie nearly a fortnight, and when he left one morning before daybreak, he took away with him under his cloak an infant—a little boy—whom he had sworn to cherish as his own child.