ROUSILLE'S LOVE DREAM.
Sunday afternoon had become Rousille's hour for solitude. She could only go to vespers when the farm-servant was left in charge of the house; and he had stipulated that he should go once a fortnight to Saint Jean-de-Mont to his sister, a deaf-mute. Mathurin, who formerly had not left La Fromentière, now never missed attending High Mass at Sallertaine, where he met Félicité Gauvrit, greeted her for the most part without speaking, in order not to vex his father, watched her as she moved about the Place, then sat down at one of the inn tables to luette. As for André, he seemed just now to like to be away from La Fromentière as much as possible, and on Sundays would be off as early as he could to the villages on the sea coast, where he sought out old sailors and travellers who could tell him of the countries where fortunes were to be made.
Rousille knew nothing of the attraction that led her brother so far afield. One day she affectionately reproached him with leaving her so much alone. At first he had laughed, then suddenly had grown serious and said:
"Don't reproach me with leaving you so much alone, Rousille. Perhaps you will reap the benefit of my tramps one of these days; I am acting in your interests."
Thus on the fourth Sunday in January La Fromentière was in charge of Rousille. But Rousille did not find time hang heavy on her hands; she had taken refuge in the threshing-floor at the back of the farm, and was sitting at the foot of a great heap of straw, her face turned towards the Marais, visible through a break in the hedge. She would have been frozen in the north wind that was blowing, had not the straw all about her kept in the warmth like a nest. Leaning her head back against it, she had buried her elbows in the soft depths of some loose straw that had been forked out from the compact mass and not yet taken away.
The air was so clear that she could see away to the clock tower of Perrier, to the most remote farmsteads of the Marais, and even to the ruddy streaks, but rarely visible, of the pine-grown downs that bordered the sea more than three leagues distant. She was looking before her, but her mind was travelling beyond her father's meadows, beyond the great Marais, beyond the horizon—for Jean Nesmy had written to her. Rousille had the letter in her pocket—was feeling it with the tips of her fingers. Since morning she had known it by heart, had said it over to herself many a time, that letter of Jean Nesmy; the smile it called forth did not leave her lips, save to light up her eyes. All care was driven away, forgotten. Little Rousille was still loved by someone; the letter testified to it. It said:
"Le Château, Parish des Châtelliers,
"January 25th.
"My Dear Friend,
"We are all in good health, and I hope it is the same with you, though one is never sure when so far away. I have hired myself as labourer in a farm on the back of a hill as you leave the moor of Nouzillac, about which I have told you. In fine weather one can see six clock towers round about, and I think that but for the Mount of Saint Michel one might see the trees of the Marais where you are. Despite that, I see you always before my eyes. On Saturdays I generally go home to La Mère Nesmy, and so does my brother next in age to myself, who also has hired himself to one of the farmers of La Flocellière. We talk of you at mother's, and I often say that I am not as happy as I was before I knew you, or as I should be if they all at home knew you. At any rate, they know your name! My sister Noémi and the little ones, when they come along the road to meet me on Saturday evenings, always call out to make me laugh: 'Any news of Rousille?' But Mother Nesmy will not believe that you care for me, because we are too poor. If only she saw you, she would understand that it is for life. And I spend my time on Sundays telling her all about La Fromentière.
"Rousille, it is now four months since I have seen you, according to your desire. It was only at the fair at Pouzanges that, through a man from the Marais who came to buy wood, I heard that your brother André had come home, and that he was working on the land as the master of La Fromentière likes those about him to work; so it will not be very long before I come back to see you. Some evening I shall come, when the men are still out in the fields, and you, perhaps, are thinking of me as you boil the soup in the big room. I shall come round by the barn, and when you hear or see me, open the window, Rousille, and tell me with one of your little smiles, tell me that you still care for me. Then La Mère Nesmy will make the journey in the proper manner, and will ask your hand from your father, and if he says, Yes, by my baptism! I swear to you that I will bring you home to be my wife. You are my one thought and desire; there is no one but you that I cherish in my heart of hearts. Take care of yourself. I greet you with my whole heart.