“Standing, with uncertain feet,
Where the brook and river meet,
Womanhood and childhood fleet.”
SOME lives resemble a still, gray, cloudy day. There is “no wind, no rain, no thunder;” nothing strong, intense, passionate. Little things occupy and interest; little cares and duties fill up the long hours. Great sorrows sometimes threaten; but they come not. Great joys, that would take the gloomy landscape unawares and flood it with sunshine, are never even dreamed of or hoped for.
Thus gray and joyless was Madeleine’s young life in her mother’s absence. She moved about the house, a grave, patient, industrious little maiden, tending and soothing her grandmother, performing all motherly offices for her young brother, and wonderfully successful in her endeavor to rule and guide the wayward but affectionate boy. It was more difficult, perhaps, to do her duty to Madame Larachette than to Claude. The strong are often exhorted to have compassion on the weak; it were well sometimes to remind the weak to have mercy on the strong in heart, who suffer but make no sign.
Day was wearing towards evening. Though it was springtime, the mountain air was chill, and the snow still lay, half-melted, round the cottage.
“Put on more wood, Madeleine,” said Madame Larachette from her chair, placed carefully in the warmest comer.
Madeleine rose, went out to the woodshed, and returned with one small log.
“You have not overburdened yourself,” remarked the old woman.
“Dear grandmother, our store is low. We cannot always be troubling Jacques Brissac, who is so kind to us.” “It comes back on me like a dream, that I heard of someone else who offered to cut wood for thee.” Madeleine blushed.
“Yes, grandmother,” she said, in a low voice; “but it was one from whom we could neither ask nor accept anything―the curé’s brother.”
She sat down and resumed her work―a child’s garment which she was repairing and altering. For some time both were silent; then Madame Larachette asked, suddenly, “What art thou doing with that little coat? Whose is it?”
“An old one of little Paul Brissac’s, that Jeannette has given me, grandmother. I am trying to make it wearable, for today I saw Frangois Mortier’s orphan boy shivering with cold. Thou knowest it is not much that we can do for our Lord or His poor.”
Some one knocked just then at the closed door.
“Come in,” said Madeleine, expecting to see Jacques Brissac and her brother Claude.
A strong hand swung back the door, and the breath of spring filled the cottage as René entered, looked at Madeleine, and kissed the withered hand of Madame Larachette.
“René!”
“Madeleine!”
Their hands touched each the other’s. Surprise and frank undisguised delight brought the roses to Madeleine’s cheek, and the light to her eye. It was the brave, strong René, who, after the first rapturous moment, trembled with a strange agitation. This was not the child Madeleine, whose tears he had dried in other days. A fair and noble girl, careworn indeed, but crowned with all the grace and beauty of womanhood, stood before him.
As one in a dream he answered Madame Larachette’s confused inquiries, seeing no one all the time but Madeleine. He told them of his sojourn in Lausanne, his return last autumn, his ordination; he repeated the welcome tidings of Madame Meniet he had heard from Diffère; he spoke of his ministry in the Vivarais, and of his present destination. Then he asked for Claude.
“He is in the village, spending the day with the Brissacs,” Madeleine said. “Probably he will stay with them for the night.”
This led to inquiries for Jacques and Jeannette. The answers were cheering. Some homes there are from which “misfortune softly steps aside.” The aged elder, Père Brissac, was still spared to his family and the Church, and in excellent health. Jeannette was well, and much engrossed by the care and management of two handsome, sturdy boys, Paul and René. M. le Pasteur Roux had baptized them both; he too was sale and in good health, but his visits were necessarily brief and rare.
“When it grows dark,” René said, “I will steal down to the village, see the Brissacs, and spend the night with them.”
“What, René!” exclaimed Madame Larachette, with some indignation. “Do you mean to tell us that, after your four years’ absence, you will spend your first night beneath any roof tree but your own? I could not have dreamed of such a thing.”
“But consider, dear Madame, I dare not show myself in daylight. Yet I long to see my only and twin sister,” said René, not without embarrassment; for there was another reason, to which he cared not to allude: the strict regulations imposed by the synods on the pastors forbade his remaining beneath that roof.
“Well, young folk will be headstrong. Madeleine, of what are you dreaming? You might, at least, set food before René, if he has not sworn not to eat, as well as not to sleep, in his own house.”
“That I have not,” said René. He relapsed into silence, his eyes following Madeleine as she prepared the table, placing upon it, in honor of the traveler, the best provisions the house contained, which were mostly gifts from their kind neighbors.
After a while, Madame Larachette retired to rest, and Madeleine went with her to the inner room. René did not think it yet quite dark enough for his walk to the village. He stood at the little window, looking out upon the familiar scene, over which the shades of evening were falling fast; but he soon ceased to look―even to see. A profound reverie stole over him.
Yet he heard the approach of a light, noiseless footstep. He thought he would have heard it “fathom deep in his grave;” for poetry seems the simplest prose to a man who feels as he felt then. He turned to Madeleine with kindling eyes. “Dear Madeleine,” he said, “there comes to me sometimes a hope―a dream. I know not how to tell it.”
Madeleine smiled. “Tell it, René,” she answered; “then I shall know if it be the same as mine.”
René’s voice sank to a whisper. “M. Meniet is respected by every one,” he said. “Already he has suffered much, and for an offense which ah account a noble one. He has a powerful friend in M. de Chantal. And―of late ‘forcats pour la foi’ ―have been occasionally―pardoned.”
“Do not make me think of it!” cried Madeleine, with a piteous tone of entreaty in her voice. “Ah! my friend, if there were hope―”
“There may be,” René said, gently. “But you are right, Madeleine. We must not let our hearts dwell on it now. Only if―only when” (René grew confused and agitated, seemed almost to lose his self-possession)― “when your parents are restored to you, Madeleine, think of me. I, too, have a hope―a dream―which I will tell you in that day, should that day ever come.”
Madeleine looked up, with her candid, childlike eyes, anxious but unembarrassed. She saw his hesitation, but dreamed not of the cause. The faith so dear to both of them, and its interests, were uppermost in the mind of the Cévennol maiden. Did René want the cottage, which was now their borne, to tum it into a school for the secret instruction of the Protestant children of the neighborhood? M. Roux had hinted, during his last visit, that there was no place so eligible in all the district. She said, bravely, “Nay, René, tell me now; and, if it be possible, I will help you.”
Then, for the first time, she noticed the strange agitation of his look and manner, and with surprise and alarm. He saw it. His voice grew low, almost monotonous, in the effort to be calm.
“You know not what you say, Madeleine. If you did, those were blessed words for me; but give me a token that you mean them.”
Madeleine changed color and trembled a little. “When did we need tokens to show we meant truly by each other?” she said. “We always spoke from the heart, and we always trusted one another.”
“Still, give me a token now, Madeleine. Any trifle will do, that your hand has touched. That ribbon―”
“That you brought me, long ago, from the fair at Alais? No, René; if you must have a token, at least take something reasonable. There is a little Psalm book M. Roux gave me―” She paused―half laughing, half blushing―with a sudden strange confusion. This was not the old René who had bought the ribbon for her―her boyish playfellow, protector, friend. This was a grown man―M. le Pasteur Plans.
René did not take the Psalm book, though she fetched it, and offered it to him gravely. He did not move hand or foot. All his soul was in his dark, eager eyes, that burned with a steady, intense fire. “The full tide its bounds had riven” ―he must speak now. “Dare I indeed say all, Madeleine?” he asked.
Madeleine’s lips parted; but no sound was heard. She began to apprehend now that the crisis of her life was upon her, and to shrink from it, in natural fearfulness.
René spoke again. His voice seemed to come from a great distance, and had in it a kind of tender thrill, as of strong, suppressed emotion. “Dare I ask you to help and comfort me, as in the old days, Madeleine?”
“It was always you who helped and comforted us all,” Madeleine faltered.
“Then, Madeleine, comfort me now, and bless me for all coming time. Say but one word― ‘Je t’aime!’”
René bent low to hear the answer;―and then he bent lower still.―The room was in deep shadow; the fire was dying; but the evening star looked in at the lattice with pure, soft radiance.
“Now, God forgive me if I have done ill, and thought of myself first!” he said, in tones tremulous with deepest feeling. “God forgive me, and shelter thee! Thou knowest that I am a man proscribed, with a price on my head. That in this world I have no portion or inheritance―no, not so much as to set my foot upon. If such a lot seem not too perilous, too sad―”
“Too sad, René?” Madeleine looked up once more, and spoke bravely, even with a kind of surprise. “How could it seem sad to Majal’s sister’s child? René, I have seen the glory so near, that if God called, I think I could bear―” But here her voice failed, and the words died away in a passion of tears.
Not for the first time did René dry those tears. Nor was the man less successful than the boy had been.
Time, meanwhile, slipped unnoticed by. Madame Larachette, asleep, breathed softly in the adjoining room, dreaming her son was a child at her knee again, learning his simple prayer, “Our Father, which art in heaven.” The stars looked in, mute witnesses, “since the making of the world,” of ten thousand scenes like this. But the familiar, frugal furniture of the humble room seemed, to take a strange and ghost-like aspect, as though changed itself by the sudden change in the human life―which, through long use and habit, it almost appeared to share in―from patience, resignation, and submission, to joy and gladness.
René and Madeleine were both thinking of the prisoner far away, and of her who was ministering to him. “Oh! my mother!―my father!” was Madeleine’s cry.
“Will thy mother blame me, Madeleine?” asked René, with a pang of doubt.
“No,” said Madeleine’s low voice. “Nor my father.”
“I will write,” said René, “as soon as I dare. I will lay myself at their feet, and submit to their guidance in all things. Hark! is that a bell?”
“It is the new clock which the curé has bought, and set up over the church door.”
“It is late―far later than I thought,” said René. “I must hasten to the village, or the Brissacs will be all asleep, and there might be danger in arousing them.”
“Will you come tomorrow?”
“Not tomorrow; I must go forward to Genouilhac. But remember, Madeleine, nothing can part us really―nothing ever again.”
“God go with thee, René!”
“And stay with thee, Madeleine―life of my life!”
Hand rested in hand but for a moment, yet that touch of each would linger on the other as long as life should last.
Another moment, and René was gone. Madeleine stood at the door in the starlight, watching―not him, for his lithe, active figure had quickly disappeared―but the path his feet had trodden. The slow, quiet smile, “that cometh unawares,” lingered on her lip; but the wistful look of pain and patience had passed from her thoughtful eye; and the old chestnut tree, budding freshly with young life in its more than hundredth spring-tide, rustled and murmured in the breeze over the fair head of a happy girl, whose life was budding too.