[CHAPTER VI.]
Jean had been engaged for a couple of days in some fields which Hourdequin owned near Rognes, and where he had set up a steam threshing-machine, hired from a Châteaudun engine-builder, who sent it about from Bonneval to Cloyes. With his cart and his two horses, the young man brought the sheaves from the surrounding ricks, and then took the grain to the farm; while the machine, puffing away from morning till night, scattered golden dust in the sunlight, and filled the country-side with a terrific, incessant snorting.
Jean was not well, and was ransacking his brains as to how he might best recover possession of Françoise. A month had already gone by since he had clasped her, on that very spot, among the wheat which they were now threshing; and since then she had always escaped from him, apprehensively. He began to despair of renewing the intercourse; and yet his desire was increasing, becoming an all-absorbing, maddening passion. As he drove his horses, he wondered why he should not go to the Buteaus and roundly ask for Françoise's hand. There had been no open definitive rupture between them. He still bade them good-day as he passed, and, if he did not call on them, it was solely because he was influenced by the disquietude of guilt. As soon as this idea of marriage occurred to him, as the only means of getting the girl back, he persuaded himself that it was the path of duty, and that he should be acting dishonourably if he did not marry her. The next morning, however, when he returned to the machine, he was seized with fear; and he would never have dared to risk the step had he not seen Buteau and Françoise set off together for the fields. He then bethought himself that Lise had always been favourable to him, and that, with her, he would possess more confidence. So he slipped away for a few moments, leaving his horses in charge of a fellow-servant.
"Why, Jean!" cried Lise, sturdily up and about again after her confinement; "no one ever sees you now. What's up?"
He made some excuses, and then, with the brusqueness of shy people, he hurriedly broached the subject, in such an awkward way, however, that at first it was open for her to think that he was making her a declaration. For he reminded her that he had loved her, and that he would willingly have taken her to wife. However, he at once added:
"And that's why I'd all the same marry Françoise if she were given me."
Lise stared at him in such astonishment that he began to stammer:
"Oh, I'm well aware that it can't be settled straight off. I only wanted to talk to you about it!"
"Well, it takes me by surprise," she replied at length, "because I hardly expected such a thing, on account of your ages. First of all, we must know what Françoise thinks."
He had come formally resolved to tell the whole tale, thus hoping to make the marriage inevitable. But at the last moment a scruple restrained him. If Françoise had not confessed to her sister, if no one knew anything about it, had he the right to speak? He was discouraged, and felt ridiculous, on account of his thirty-three years of age.