The Bagpipers

by George Sand

"What an amount of talk and wry faces, all about a kiss," said Joseph, his anger rising. "If I never asked for what you were ready enough to give others it was because I was a young fool. I thought you would receive me better now that I am neither a ninny nor a coward."

"What is the matter with him?" asked Brulette, surprised and even frightened, and coming close up to me. "Is it really he, or some one who looks like him? I thought I saw our José, but this is not his speech nor his face nor his friendship."

"How have I changed, Brulette?" began José, a little disconcerted and already repentant. "Is it that I now have the courage I once lacked to tell you that you are to me the loveliest in the world, and that I have always longed for your good graces? There's no offence in that, I hope; and perhaps I am not more unworthy of them than others whom you allow to hang round you."

So saying, with a return of his vexation, he looked me in the face, and I saw he was trying to pick a quarrel with whoever would take him up. I asked nothing better than to draw his first fire. "Joseph," I said, "Brulette is right in thinking you changed. There is nothing surprising in that. We know how we part, but not how we meet again. You need not be surprised, either, if you find a little change in me. I have always been quiet and patient, standing by you in all your difficulties and consoling your vexations; but if you have grown more unjust than you used to be, I have grown more touchy, and I take it ill that you should say to my cousin before me that she is prodigal of her kisses and allows too many young men about her."

Joseph eyed me contemptuously, and put on a really devilish look of malice as he laughed in my face. Then he said, crossing his arms, and looking at me as though he were taking my measure, "Well, is it possible, Tiennet? Can this be you? However, I always did doubt you, and the friendship you professed—to deceive me."

"What do you mean by that, José?" said Brulette, much affronted and fancying he had lost his mind. "Where did you get the right to blame me, and why are you trying to see something wrong or ridiculous between my cousin and me? Are you ill or drunken, that you forget the respect you owe me and the affection that you know I deserve?"

Joseph drew in his horns, and taking Brulette's hand in his, he said to her, with his eyes full of tears, "I am to blame, Brulette; yes, I'm irritable from fatigue and the desire to get here; but I feel nothing but devotion for you, and you ought not to take it in bad part. I know very well that your manners are dignified and that you exact the respect of everybody. It is due to your beauty, which, I see, is greater, not less, than ever. But you surely will allow that you love pleasure, and that people often kiss each other when dancing. It is the custom, and I shall think it a very good one when I profit by it; which will be now, for I have learned how to dance like others, and for the first time in my life I am going to dance with you. I hear the bagpipes returning. Come, you shall see that all my ill-humor will clear off under the happiness of being your sweetheart."

"José," replied Brulette, not more than half pleased at this speech, "you are very much mistaken if you think I still have sweethearts; I may have been coquettish,—that's my way, and I am not bound to give account of my actions; but I have also the right and the will to change my ways. I no longer dance with everybody, and to-night I shall not dance again."

"I should have thought," said Joseph, piqued, "that I was not 'everybody,' as you say, to an old friend with whom I made my first communion, and under whose roof I lived."

The music and the wedding guests returning with a great racket, cut short their words, and Huriel, also entering, full of eagerness and taking no notice of Joseph, caught Brulette on his arm and carried her like a feather to his father, who was waiting outside, and who kissed her joyously, to the great annoyance of Joseph, who clenched his fists as he watched her paying the old man the filial attentions of a daughter.