"Ah pardon, I am late, but the night is heavenly, and the spring comes on divinely. I have been just now towards Briois, and I could have walked, I think, on to La Ferté without fatigue. My legs do improve in these pleasant days, and the warmth stirs my blood. I am glad, father, you will have a church. Are you sure it is best to build it in St. Choiseul?" I answered.
"Why not, Alfred?" asked mother.
"Well there are not so many here who would need it and pas d'abeilles pas de miel;" I said laughing.
"But, Alfred, we are to have a new visitor to live with us in St. Choiseul, a rich man from Bordeaux, who is a leader of our congregations there. He is too what the English call, an exhorter, un homme qui exhorte; very eloquent, a great preacher in his way. If the church is built in our village he will help us, and then it might be that he will be willing to be our pastor too. He is a relative of le Capitaine, and now he has suffered a great sorrow. His daughter—the apple of his eye—died on the same day that Blanchette left us, nous laissait. The captain begged him to come to St. Choiseul, and he consented. It will be good for the captain, good for St. Choiseul—good for all of us. Is it not so?"
"Yes, mother," said Gabrielle, and she leaned towards her with her gentle smile of reassurance—there had been growing between sister and myself, and our parents, since Blanchette's death, a severer feeling of religious estrangement—"It will be good. I have heard Père Grandin. I heard him in the wards of the hospital, and he is a good man, parlant le plus beau? français avec une voix délicieuse."
Mother and father were delighted; it was a great surprise, and during our evening meal we talked of nothing else than the coming of Père Grandin. They asked Gabrielle about him with an increasing pleasure, as they saw how really admiring sister was of the excellent man's skill and sweetness. It was a pleasant time, and in the domestic glow of confidence, that the Père Grandin would become an instrument of propitiation, rather than of discord, while Julie placed before us one of Hortense's masterpieces—chefs d'oeuvres—le ragout de mouton, with garnishments of peppers and haricots, with her hot cakes—pains de seigle—and the melting chou-fleur and the inspiriting Burgundy, we bloomed, so to say, into a renewed affection. It was admirable. I recall it—shall I ever forget that wondrous night?—almost as if it had been a moment ago. I was soothed and quieted, and the rising frenzy of my blood subsided, and a most ingratiating blissfulness invaded me, and we lingered long at the table. Gabrielle was so gay and reminiscent it seemed as if she loved the hospital, now she was well free of it, and, as I listened in astonishment, I slowly realized that Gabrielle was responding to some hidden elation, and that—Was it her ecstacy to show me her strange power? Ah, yes, there was, too, her gladness that mother and father were to be away that night, and so—Voila, la diablerie sans bornes! Bah, I will confess I was displeased, and felt a little disgusted amazement at Gabrielle.
An hour later our parents were tucked in the cabriolet, the short snapping strokes of the horse's hoofs passed away into silence, and Gabrielle and I were alone. We faced each other as the door closed, and Gabrielle seized my arm, and speaking very slowly, with her face covered by her other hand, with all her late show of spirits vanished, said:
"Alfred, I feel the power; it thrills me. I cannot explain, but as the time comes on, I am crowded with a multitude—un essaim—of motions within me, as if I might be slowly dissolved into air, or something else light and floating. You thought that I was careless at dinner. I know, I watched your eyes. You thought I was glad that father and mother were going away, so that I could show you my power when I call Blanchette (I shuddered) back to meet you. But that was not true. I felt disengaged and well, most well, and my heart was contented. There was no deception, no guiltiness as of escaping detection. None, I was myself, that was all. And Alfred I shall tell father and mother. Why not?" at my gesture of discouragement.
"Gabrielle, promise me you will reveal nothing about this to anyone, until I have consented. Remember—the Hospital. Father and mother will be appalled. They cannot understand as I do your mysticism—and then, who knows what the power leads to? Be silent."
My sister lifted her face, and stared almost stealthily into my eyes. I, the soi-disant critic of her "delusions"—that was my word, was now masking her concealment, and urging her to continued secrecy, intending—what did she think?—to use her potency for the gratification of my mad cravings?—to make her the servile means of communication with Blanchette, more and more, that thus my awakened desires might be stilled with the apparitional image of possession?