“Tiens” said the Comtesse, “these English are so droll; it does not please them to meet each other. We others, we love our compatriots. When you are in England it is a fête to see a Frenchman. But the English are different; they will not encounter each other if they can help it. You will see that Djohn will be equally discontented to hear that there is an English family at Latour.” This appeared both to Cécile and Thérèse a very likely solution of the question.
But Helen went home displeased and uncomfortable—displeased with herself: for what did it matter to her if some Englishman, whose very name she had never heard, should adapt himself to the special point in which French domestic arrangements are repugnant to the English mind? It was nothing to her. If he pleased Thérèse and Thérèse pleased him, and everybody else was pleased, what had Helen to do with it? But it is astonishing how determined we often are to annoy ourselves about things with which we have nothing to do. “No doubt it would be a most excellent arrangement,” she said to herself with a smile, which she felt must be very much like a sneer. In England people would be very much surprised; but Latour was not England, and probably Monsieur Charles had learned different fashions in India, which was not England either. She wondered what sort of person he could be, impatiently disengaging from her mind the shadow that would thrust itself forward of the Monsieur Charles who had been in India, and who had also been in Sainte-Barbe. Whoever it might be, it could certainly not be he. And yet how he would thrust himself into her imagination, poke himself forward, with his light hair and sun-burned countenance! She wondered—if it should happen to be he after all—would Thérèse like him? and what would he think, to find her, Helen, established there? and would he look in the same way and speak in the same way as he had done at the Lion d’Or? “In what way?” she said to herself sternly, and herself replied, “Oh, in no way at all!” with an impatient fling of the head. It was lucky that her companions chattered all the way, for Helen made no addition to the conversation. And it was not a very long way. The château had no lengthened avenue, no seclusion of lawns and trees between it and the village, but stood close to the road with patriarchal bareness and simplicity. It was a moonlight night, and the softening of spring was in the air. There was a little commotion, too, unusual to it, in Latour. The young men of the village were about in groups, the cabarets were more full than was usual, except on Sundays. Helen recalled to herself with a little effort a thing which in her preoccupation she had forgotten. The next day was the day on which the lots were to be drawn for the conscription. Poor little Blanchette’s heart was full of trembling, and there was many an ache of anxiety in the village. With all her homely neighbours in such suspense, to think that she should be able to make herself almost unhappy about this Monsieur Charles from beyond the sea!
CHAPTER XI.
Helen had meant to go to Mass on the morning of the day when the young men of the village were to draw for the conscription, but she was late, as the interested and distressed young spectator so often is at the critical moment. Ursule had gone to the early Mass before break of day, and had stayed in church till the numbers were drawn, and the young conscrits coming out of the Mairie with their number, bad or good, in their caps. Madame Dupré would have liked to do the same, but she was afraid of the ridicule of her neighbours, who certainly would have taunted her with trying to curry favour with the bon Dieu at the moment when she was in need of His help. Not being able to do this, she began a special “cleaning out,” such as, in all regions, is soothing to the female mind perturbed. As the moment approached, the poor woman grew more and more cross, snapping at every one who approached her. M. Goudron, who liked to watch a dramatic situation, came in about ten minutes before the tirage began. “My house is all upside-down!” he said with keen enjoyment. “Nobody can pay any attention. One is praying and the other weeping, instead of awaiting with placidity whatever may have happened. I say to myself, Madame Dupré is an esprit fort. She will consider that a man must have his coffee, were the skies to fall. That is a thing that girls cannot be taught. I tell that little fool Blanchette, ‘If thou wilt take an example, look at his mother, our good neighbour of the Lion d’Or!’”
“If I were thou, Jean Goudron, I would hold my peace. I would not meddle with what concerns thee not,” said Madame Dupré, pushing against him with her great broom in her hand.
“Comment! my coffee? Does not that concern me?” cried old Goudron, with his grin.
Madame Dupré made no reply. Her round face was red as the embers on the hearth. She swept the dust out of all the corners, knocking her brush against the wall, making a great noise, and sweeping everything towards him. He got a mouthful of this dust, which, as it had not been stirred for some time, was of a piquant kind, and coughed.
“Suffocate me not, ma bonne femme,” he said. “I have done thee no harm!”
“How can I tell that?” cried the poor mother, in a frenzy of suspense and passion. “How do I know that thou hast not thrown an ill lot on my boy? That little saint Ursule, thou hast done thy best to keep her from praying for us; and it is thou, and such as thou, that make us ashamed to pray for ourselves! Get thee out of my sight, with thy devil’s grin! Thou shalt have no coffee here.”
“Bravo!” cried old Goudron. “Because thy son has gone to tirer, the whole world must stand still. There must be some one, n’est-ce pas, to cheat the others, to put the good number into his hands? Yes, yes; there must be a bon Dieu wherever there’s a woman!” said the old man. But he did not go much further, for suddenly, before he was aware, Madame Dupré and her vigorous broom were upon him. She did not condescend to strike or push, but taking the lean old sceptic at unawares, swept him forth like a piece of rubbish. “Va, canaille!” she said. Old Goudron sprawled and stumbled forth, saving himself only from a prostration on the threshold by grasping at the first prop that presented itself. The conscrits were beginning to appear in the street with cockades in their caps, singing and shouting. They stopped to give him a rude salutation. They were all safe; they had drawn good numbers; they were wild with joy. “Look at old Jean Goudron! he is ivre-mort! The bonne mère has swept him out of the house!” “Pauvre Mère Dupré!” said one among them, with a sob of excitement. Madame Dupré recognised the meaning of his tone. She came out, her broom in her hand, a paleness stealing over the red in her cheeks, and leant against the lintel of her door. She did not see the old man scowling and grinning at her, though he stood close by, waiting for the event. All was mist and darkness to her, save one thing. In the middle of the street was a figure alone, walking down slowly, looking at no one. His step, the sight of his folded arms and bent head, the stumble he made now and then, as he came over the rough stones, were enough, without words. Her eyes, too, were full of the giddiness of the calamity. She could see nothing but figures moving confusedly; faces looking out of the houses on the different sides of the village street all peering at him. It was Baptiste, with the ribbons of the conscrit hanging sadly over his ear, and a big 3 in the front of his cap.