“He said it, but I put no limit to the time. I said I would wait to the end.”
“But he would not have it, Marie; he loved you too well to wish you to waste your life in solitude and vain hopes.”
But Marie shook her head and repeated:
“I promised I would wait for him.”
“And your uncle—does his wish count for nothing? You know that he has long since given up all hope, and that the thought of leaving you alone in the world is embittering his old age. ‘I am getting old,’ he said to me just now, ‘but the only thing that makes me dread death is this anxiety about my pauvre petite. Who will take care of her when I am gone?’ ‘I promised François I would, mon père,’ I said. ‘Then go and plead with her for yourself and for me,’ he replied, ‘that Marie may let you keep your promise.’”
They walked on in silence till they came to the gate of the presbytery, and Marie raised her face to Gaston’s and said:
“Wait one year more, Gaston, and then, if you still wish, come and tell me, and I will go home with you.”
“I have waited three years already, and I would wait as many more to win you,” answered the young man; and as he bent his face over hers—not a handsome face, but illuminated now by eyes that were liquid and beautiful with beseeching love—Marie thought that, since she must choose a home when her uncle was gone, she would rather share Gaston’s than any other, and that it might not be such a difficult thing to love him by-and-by.
That night, when Gervoise had gone to bed, and the place was quiet and all the bolts drawn, Gaston took out François’ money-bag and counted over the contents. It was a good round sum now. He built up the louis into little piles and reckoned them, and then poured them back into the bag; and the coins flashed like little suns in the dim light of his lantern; and Gaston feasted his eyes on them: he thrust his hand into the heap, and, gathering up a handful of
coins, let them drip down through his fingers one by one, listening to the pure ring of the metal as if it had been music, as indeed it was to him. Now that Marie had promised to be his wife, this gold which was hers would soon be his, and before the year was out it would be a still bigger heap. He had not told her or the curé that Francois had left any money in his charge, not from any idea of latent treachery to François—oh, no! Gaston was incapable of that; but it had been his dream ever since François had gone to win Marie and then settle this money on her, telling her, of course, whose gift it was. Partly from methodical habit, and partly from an unconfessed pleasure in the sight and touch of the gold, he had made a point of counting it all over after every fresh transaction, but from this night out he began to count it oftener. The fact that it was now to all intents and purposes his own added a new zest to the operation, and the prospect of it became by degrees the chief solace of his working hours, till at last he came to count it regularly every night and to long for the moment when he could lock his door and turn the flame of his lantern on the burning blaze of the gold.