C/tx 
 
 PASTORALS OF FRANCE. 
 
 BY 
 
 FREDERICK/WEDMORE. 
 
 ; 
 
 A Last Love at Pornlc Yvonne of Crohic 
 The Four Bells of Chartres. 
 
 LONDON: 
 
 RICHARD BENTLEY AND SON, 
 New Burlington Street. 
 
 1877.
 
 DEDICATION. 
 
 MILLTCENT, 
 
 November, 1877.
 
 PREFACE. 
 
 DO not know whether it is 
 altogether a fancy, or whether 
 there is not some truth in the 
 
 impression, that it becomes just now more 
 and more difficult for the writer of English 
 fiction to deal satisfactorily with contem- 
 porary life : that is, the life of cities, the 
 life of Society. 
 
 The favourable time for the novelist 
 occupied with this theme, is, it may
 
 2 PREFACE. 
 
 hardly be doubted, a period of social 
 repose, when nothing rises to check the 
 stream of accepted beliefs, and he who 
 wants to be in some measure historian 
 and analyst of Society knows on what he 
 may count, and is in sympathy with the 
 moralities to which he appeals, because 
 the right and wrong bruited about him 
 are the right and wrong the good and 
 evil of his own mind. Such a period of 
 social repose and of hearty and unani- 
 mous faith in an order of things deemed 
 for the time as final and true, our own is 
 certainly not. We live, as many others 
 have lived indeed, in a period of social 
 change, but now of social change rather 
 foreseen than accomplished, and so espe- 
 cially bafiling to the somewhat fettered 
 chronicler of our daily ways. At a time
 
 PREFACE. 3 
 
 when the under-currents of English 
 thought and life have passed by into places 
 unsuspected by the stationary eyes that 
 have watched the surface, one cannot but 
 conjecture that to many novelists perfect 
 sincerity in their work has become hard 
 of attainment, for while the novelist may 
 think one thing, the Society he de- 
 picts may think another, or while both 
 may be thinking alike, it may still be 
 expected of him that he shall shape his 
 work in polite and gentle accordance with 
 traditions both have inherited and both 
 have cast aside. 
 
 There are writers who have tried to 
 overcome the difficulty : writers too for 
 whom it has never existed novelists of 
 a sunny hour ; day labourers of Romance. 
 There are writers again, and in the con-
 
 4 PREFACE. 
 
 ditions under which they work, I see no 
 cause why they should not be numerous, 
 who, in at least momentary uncertainty 
 and momentary discouragement, turn by 
 preference to such rural or outland life 
 as by reason of its remoteness can hardly 
 be deemed contemporary. Such life, 
 by the standards it still faithfully recog- 
 nises, belongs at least as much to the 
 Past as to the Present only Time and 
 the settlement of things disturbed can 
 show whether also it may belong to the 
 Future. 
 
 With that life, these Pastorals are 
 concerned. 
 
 But I have blown a big trumpet have 
 I? at the door of a very little Show 
 my own Show of three slender stories. 
 That is possible enough. Only it seemed
 
 PREFACE. 5 
 
 there could be no better opportunity than 
 the present one, for me, to express a 
 difficulty which must be just now very 
 specially present to many makers of 
 Fiction, but which I, for my f own small 
 part, here with cowardice avoid, in brief 
 descriptive writings which leave the pro- 
 blems of our complicated life, to deal, in 
 remote places, with the tenderness of the 
 old and the fancies of the simple. 
 
 F. W. 
 
 LONDON, November, 1877.
 
 A LAST LOYE AT PORNIC.
 
 A LAST LOYE AT PORNIC. 
 
 R. RUTTERBY had come by dili- 
 gence from Paimboeuf. There 
 was no traveller but himself, 
 so they had used the " supplement." 
 The " supplement" was like a phaeton, 
 with back-seat always covered by its 
 head. Mr. Rutterby had sat in the 
 back of the supplement, and the blue- 
 bloused driver of it had sat in front. The 
 blue-bloused driver had held the reins 
 loosely the horses were steady, and
 
 10 PASTORALS OF FRANCE. 
 
 knew their road over the hill from Paim- 
 bceuf to Saint Pere-en-Retz, and on from 
 Saint Pere-en-Retz to Pornic by the sea 
 and he had leant back half the way to 
 talk to the one traveller; and as Mr. 
 Rutterby was quiet and reserved, the 
 driver had chattered at will. Before the 
 Bay of Biscay came in sight or the little 
 blue bay, out of the Bay of Biscay, round 
 which Pornic rises Mr. Rutterby could 
 have passed a creditable examination in 
 his charioteer's history, but the charioteer 
 knew nothing of Mr. Rutterby. 
 
 At last, however having exhausted 
 conversation on his own affairs he 
 turned his attention to the passenger's. 
 
 " Do you go to Pornic to amuse your- 
 self, or to be a gentleman's valet ?" 
 
 " Not to be a gentleman's valet," said
 
 A LAST LOVE AT PORN 1C. n 
 
 Mr. Rutterby, with a quiet smile at the 
 corners of his mouth. He wore a shabby 
 overcoat ; he was faithful to an old port- 
 manteau ; and he had an income of seven 
 thousand a year. 
 
 " Then you go to amuse yourself ? 
 You cannot amuse yourself at Pornic. 
 There is no theatre, no billiard-table 
 no pretty women. Aha ! It is at Nantes 
 that you can amuse yourself. Nantes ! 
 What a city ! La grande ville. Ma foi ! 
 an inconceivable city. But Pornic ! you 
 have made a mistake." 
 
 " I am going on a visit to Monsieur 
 de Malmy," said Philip Rutterby. 
 
 " Monsieur de Malmy !" said the driver 
 De Malmy, though not rich, was a 
 man of social importance and the 
 driver was no longer a comrade. That
 
 12 PASTORALS OF FRANCE. 
 
 air of companionship and brotherly 
 equality is welcome to travellers who 
 hate gratuities and desire information. 
 With it, a gratuity is impossible, for a 
 gratuity implies inequality. The driver 
 was no longer sociable. At the top of 
 the hill he was Mr. Rutterby's brother; 
 at the bottom he was Mr. Rutterby's 
 servant. 
 
 This was Pornic, if Monsieur pleased. 
 If Monsieur pleased, it might be anything 
 else. 
 
 At last the diligence drove up to the 
 yellow-white inn, and rattled into its court- 
 yard roofed with vines. From the housetop 
 on one side to the housetop on the other, 
 this green roof stretched over the paved 
 courtyard, a sunny canopy, yet protecting 
 the yard from a heat too fierce. " It
 
 A LAST LOVE AT PORNIC. 13 
 
 is like an echo of Italy," th ought Mr. 
 Rutterby, as he stepped slowly down from 
 the " supplement," and Monsieur de 
 Malmy kissed him on his cheek. 
 
 Then visitor and host got into the 
 host's pony-carriage, and drove out to 
 Saint-Marie, where the Frenchman had 
 a chalet every year for the bathing 
 season. 
 
 " And your son and daughter ?" asked 
 Mr. Rutterby, inquiring for them directly 
 he had been assured that Madame de 
 Malmy was well. 
 
 " Alas ! dear friend, my son continues 
 to disturb me. Leon's expenditure is 
 on the scale of a millionaire's. I am 
 a weak man to allow it, for it cripples 
 me very much. Ondelette, too, must 
 suffer for it. It will reduce her dowry ;
 
 i 4 PASTORALS OF FRANCE. 
 
 and the poor girl's dowry is small 
 enough already. She has little but beauty 
 and a name." 
 
 " Well, that is much," said Mr. Butter- 
 by, pleasantly. 
 
 " ' Little' you mean in the age in 
 which we live. But never mind, never 
 mind ! I am not anxious to marry 
 Ondelette. Ondelette is young, and can 
 wait. It will satisfy me for her to be 
 always with us. I should miss her here 
 miss her much more at Angers. I 
 cannot play Bach's preludes for myself. 
 She must stay to play them to me, I sup- 
 pose." 
 
 And now they were in front of the 
 full sea. The castle, and the little 
 bay, and the many-shuttered town rising 
 tall on the hill side, were left behind.
 
 A LAST LOVE AT PORN 1C. 15 
 
 They drove along the main road, out 
 to Saint-Marie, past villas and chalets 
 set in pleasant gardens, where silvery 
 grass plants grew a dozen feet high, 
 and rose-tree and lavender, petunia and 
 geranium, vine, acacia and fig-tree, 
 flourished together in that genial sun- 
 shine and soft air of autumn after- 
 noon. 
 
 " The Bay of Biscay is placid enough 
 to-day," said Mr. Rutterby. But the 
 summer lingers, his friend could have told 
 him, and gives place only suddenly to 
 winter and storm. 
 
 But here was the particular chalet 
 which was home for the present a 
 creeper-covered cottage, with pretty front, 
 bizarre and individual, like all the rest 
 in the long and varied row set in their
 
 i6 
 
 PASTORALS OF FRANCE. 
 
 gardens along the mile of cultured 
 coast from Pornic to Saint-Marie. A 
 glass door from the garden led straight 
 into the little salon, and there sat Onde- 
 lette. 
 
 She had just come in with a basket 
 of blackberries, which grow in Pornic 
 hedges big and rich as mulberries. 
 
 " We will have them for dessert," 
 said Ondelette. " You must not neglect 
 them my blackberries. They all came 
 out of the lane leading to the Druids' 
 Stones, papa. We must take Mr. Rut- 
 terby to see the Druids' Stones. Oh ! 
 but he doesn't care for anything except 
 Art ; I forgot. Whatever can you find to 
 do at Pornic ?" 
 
 " You shall take me to see the 
 Druidical remains, Ondelette," said Mr.
 
 A LAST LOVE AT PORNIC. 17 
 
 Rutterby. He called her by her Christian 
 name because he was her father's friend. 
 He remembered the day when he had 
 congratulated her father on her birth. He 
 was thirty-five years her senior, for she 
 was nineteen and he was four-and-fifty. 
 
 " Thank you," she said : " that wiU be 
 for to-morrow. It will be a pleasant 
 walk, at all events. The stones stand 
 high on neglected ground. There are 
 legends about them, and terrors. But 
 I don't myself care for legends and 
 terrors ; I assure you I prefer this dear 
 little sunny garden of a Pornic. It is all 
 one garden, in the eye of the sun from 
 Pornic to Saint-Marie." 
 
 " It looks like a revival of Eden, I 
 fancy," Mr. Rutterby observed. 
 
 " With better gardening," said Onde- 
 
 o
 
 i8 PASTORALS OF FRANCE. 
 
 lette, "for Adam was but a beginner. 
 He would never have despised our Pornic 
 and Saint-Marie." 
 
 She had not seen the new guest for 
 five years, and was very young, inex- 
 perienced, and child-like, but was as free 
 with him as much at home in a moment 
 as any woman could have been, were she 
 accustomed to have a dinner-party twice 
 a week in London, and to say suitable 
 nothings to half the world every night of 
 the season. For Ondelette lived a free 
 family life, quiet and intimate, whether at 
 Angers or Pornic. Very few indeed were 
 admitted to her home ; but whoever was 
 admitted, was at once a friend. When 
 Mr. Rutterby went upstairs to dress him- 
 self for dinner, he carried with him the 
 impression of her frank simplicity, and
 
 A LAST LOVE AT PORNIC. 19 
 
 thought that he had seen a comely picture 
 in seeing her sun-browned cheeks, her 
 large brown eyes, very soft, over-shadowed 
 with shining hair, the colour of deep gold. 
 Philip Rutterby knew the old French 
 poetry, and remembered that Ondelette 
 was of the type that Ronsard loved seen 
 most in the green sunny country of Anjou 
 la petite pucelle Angevine. 
 
 The little dining-room looked pleasant 
 in the evening, with its dark buffet and 
 deep grey wall-paper ; and the lamp hung 
 from the ceiling, throwing a bright light 
 on the table, where silver glittered and 
 fine glass was clear, and Ondelette' s black- 
 berries had the place of honour, and were 
 duly flanked by blue plates with greyish- 
 red chrysanthemums. 
 
 " It is early to make a show of your 
 
 c 2
 
 20 PASTORALS OF FRANCE. 
 
 chrysanthemums," said Mr. Rutterby, 
 "for to-morrow is but the first day of 
 October. But your instinct of colour is 
 exquisite, Ondelette." 
 
 "Thank you," said Ondelette. "The 
 chrysanthemums cannot come soon 
 enough, nor stay long enough. They are 
 my favourite flowers. ! but that is a 
 poor word c favourite flowers. They are 
 more than that. But perhaps it's too 
 early in the year for you to value them. 
 They are best in their own time, 
 after all when the earth is gloomy, 
 whichever way you look. In November 
 they come like cheerfulness in winter, but 
 always very sober delightfully sober 
 like a friend who comes in your trouble." 
 
 "What is your < trouble,' Ondelette?" 
 asked Madame de Malmy.
 
 A LAST LOVE AT PORNIC. 21 
 
 " My trouble ! ! I have no trouble. 
 Perhaps I should not like these sad, dear, 
 sober things, if I had. There ! lie as I put 
 you. He will sink down below the rest. 
 He is so modest his stem is not long 
 enough. He doesn't assert himself that 
 chrysanthemum. He will never get on in 
 the world." 
 
 Philip Rutterby smiled. 
 
 " You have come to a foolish place," 
 said Ondelette. " We talk nothing but 
 nonsense at Pornic. It is such a pleasant 
 place, there is no need to be wise in it." 
 
 " But we want to hear about your ac- 
 quisitions, my dear friend," said De 
 Malmy, with genuine consideration for 
 his friend, as well as with the common 
 worldly-wise knowledge that you please 
 a man most by talking about his own
 
 22 P,4 STOOLS OF FRANCE. 
 
 affairs. " What have you been picking up 
 lately, since I was with you in London ?" 
 
 One of Rutterby's few pleasures was to 
 talk about Art : so he answered readily, 
 " You know Crome ? The chief man of 
 the Norwich landscape school, you re- 
 member. Unless, indeed, Cotman " 
 
 " Even /, in France, know Crome," 
 said Ondelette. " Have you got a picture 
 of his, Mr. Rutterby?" 
 
 " Two or three," he answered, glad that 
 she cared to know. " I have had them 
 for several years on my dining-room wall. 
 But it is a little water-colour I was 
 going to speak of to your father. I had 
 one home the day before I came away. 
 It is not at all a * taking' drawing. But 
 you must have what you can get of Crome, 
 I fancy, in water-colour. He is difficult
 
 A LAST LOVE AT PORN 1C. 23 
 
 to meet with, in water-colour; and when 
 met with, perhaps more interesting than 
 valuable. Perhaps he was not at his ease 
 in water-colour a little hard and dry 
 generally, I daresay; but there are 
 shivering grey willows in the background 
 of this drawing which have the same 
 masterhand in them, unmistakably, as the 
 great willow picture which is still in 
 Norfolk. The French were right, I be- 
 lieve, in ranking Crome high. Ondelette, 
 do you draw in water-colours ?" 
 
 " Ondelette obtained a certificate from 
 the teacher at the Convent," her mother 
 informed Mr. Rutterby, with pride. 
 
 " But Sister Claire was almost as partial 
 to me as Reverend Mother herself," said 
 the girl. " I know it was not fair of her, 
 though I did try my best. And if I had
 
 24 PASTORALS OF FRANCE. 
 
 deserved the certificate it wouldn't have 
 been much. I ought indeed to be able to 
 draw and play, being such a wretched 
 little housekeeper." 
 
 " You tell us the truth, Mademoiselle," 
 her father said, gently pulling the long 
 pendent pearl-drop in her ear. "As long 
 as you stay at home with us, and have 
 your mother to fall back upon" a graceful 
 concession on De Malmy's part to the 
 claims of Madame de Malmy " your faults 
 in this matter may be overlooked ; but the 
 day on which I put on my hat, little girl, to 
 go out and look for a son-in-law, I shall 
 have to remember what a child you are 
 in these matters. You would be at the 
 mercy of your servants, Ondelette." 
 
 " Then I would have good servants, and 
 should like to be at their mercy. But
 
 A LAST LOVE AT PORN 1C. 25 
 
 that will not be for a very long while." 
 
 " Ondelette allows herself to say silly 
 things," remarked her mother, in an 
 explanatory way. 
 
 " She has a very pretty talent as an 
 artist," her father added, to Mr. Rutterby. 
 Ondelette was used to be spoken of 
 frankly, and these chance phrases of slight 
 praise or blame wrought no change in her 
 look and manner a look and manner of 
 much peace, breaking now and again into 
 merriment, as when summer lightning 
 breaks across the placid summer sky. 
 
 " Do you keep to your habit of walking 
 after dinner ?" asked Monsieur de Malmy 
 of his guest. 
 
 "Except in winter," said Philip Rut- 
 terby. " Then I enjoy my own ' inte- 
 rior' as best I can looking over my
 
 26 PASTORALS OF FRANCE. 
 
 portfolios, in my chair by the fire, 
 like the self-centred bachelor that I am." 
 
 " Do you like interiors ?" asked Onde- 
 lette ; " for if you do, I will show you 
 some pretty ones in Pornic. I will take 
 you a walk after dark some evening." 
 
 " There is no one to mind in Pornic," 
 interpolated Madame de Malmy. 
 
 " Last year, when papa was less busy, 
 he and I used to go our rounds after 
 dark very often. I have hardly been at 
 all this year. Papa is working so hard 
 at his learned pamphlet, you know all 
 about the castle of Plessis-les-Tours. 
 But I tell papa your Walter Scott has 
 been before him in that." 
 
 " Sir "Walter wrote a novel, and would 
 have been the last person to think he had 
 anticipated my monograph," answered the
 
 A LAST LOVE AT PORN 1C. 27 
 
 man of learned leisure. " Give us some 
 music, my child, and place for my friend 
 R-utterby the cosiest chair in the salon. 
 Even your enthusiasm can hardly propose 
 to lead him forth to-night. Ah ! that is 
 right," he added, passing into the little 
 salon, and seeing with satisfaction the 
 cheerful light of the wood fire flickering, 
 sober, and low ; " to-morrow is the first 
 of October. The nights freshen, mafille." 
 " No lamp, De Malmy no lamp, unless 
 you wish it. It would quite spoil the 
 charm, I fancy. I have no doubt Onde- 
 lette can play without any further light, and 
 the effect of the ' interior ' is too pretty a 
 one to spoil." And Rutterby sat down, 
 as he was bidden, in the cosiest chair a 
 bachelor, when once past forty, takes the 
 cosiest chair without even knowing it
 
 28 PASTORALS OF FRANCE. 
 
 and De Malmy sat on the other side of the 
 fire, and his wife between, and the firelight 
 flickered on Ondelette's hair and cheek, 
 as she sat down to the little straight black 
 piano. 
 
 " In my house I have no use for a 
 piano," said Philip Rutterby, rather sadly. 
 (For he was often a calmly melancholy 
 man, of much timidity, and he never 
 sought to hide the expression of his tempe- 
 rament.) " But if I had a piano, it 
 should be a plain straight box, like your 
 French ones, and not spoilt by our mean- 
 ingless curves and vicious ornaments. A 
 piano, De Malmy, is a cabinet for music, and 
 that is simply what it ought to look like. 
 The spinnet was really the better-shaped 
 instrument, painted in quiet tints, sage 
 greens and yellow browns, as in a pic-
 
 A LAST LOVE AT PORN 1C. 29 
 
 ture I have, by Van der Meer of Delft." 
 
 " Shall you listen, do you think ?" 
 asked Ondelette, quite frankly. 
 
 " Why, of course" answered Rutterby. 
 
 " I asked, because if people listen, they 
 ought to know what they are listening to. 
 I am going to play a prelude of Bach's first ; 
 then a fugue that does not belong to it." 
 
 She played. He listened and looked. 
 She stopped. He asked her to repeat it. 
 She played the two again, without even 
 glancing round by way of answer to his 
 request. And when the two were finished 
 once more an affair of only five minutes 
 altogether there was nothing said 
 directly; and before the silence broke, 
 Ondelette had struck the full, deep chords 
 once more, and for the third time they 
 heard that music's passionate undertone.
 
 30 PASTORALS OF FRANCE. 
 
 " Then you like Bach ?" she said to Mr. 
 Rutterby, now turning round from the 
 piano, very happy and satisfied. " The 
 man who wrote that prelude must have 
 felt something deeply. I wonder what it 
 was ?" said Ondelette. 
 
 " You should play something else," said 
 Madame de Malmy. " One wearies of the 
 same thing." 
 
 " I never get tired of the sea in autumn, 
 and its long, low roll, out here, that never 
 stops. Why should one be tired of Sebas- 
 tian Bach, at a third hearing ? Eh, papa ?" 
 
 It was to her father she appealed. 
 And she knelt down by him, and put her 
 hand in his arm, and looked into the fire, 
 broodingly, quietly. Madame de Malmy 
 rang for the lamp, and began to scan the 
 pages of the ' Figaro.'
 
 A LAST LOVE AT PORN 1C. 31 
 
 " And the monograph on Plessis-les- 
 Tours ?" asked Philip Rutterby, of his 
 friend : " Don't let me interfere with your 
 evening occupations." 
 
 " I have nothing to do this evening but 
 to write two lines to an English archseolo- 
 gist, acknowledging the receipt of a re- 
 markable paper on * The Use of the word 
 Pig, in its connection with Pig Cross.' 
 Then we will talk again, dear friend, and 
 hear more of your acquisitions." 
 
 " Have you long been a collector ?" 
 enquired Madame de Malmy, with civil 
 but languid interest. 
 
 " A matter of twenty years, dear 
 Madam," Rutterby answered. " You see 
 I have neither chick nor child, nor any 
 relation. My little fortune has always 
 been more than enough for my own needs,
 
 32 PASTORALS OF FRANCE. 
 
 and men as ignorant of the world as I 
 am do not know how to be charitable 
 wisely to any one but themselves. So 
 I have a good many things by this 
 time not of much value to others, I 
 daresay but I admire them myself. 
 Moreover, I think one does some good, 
 in guarding reverently, beautiful things." 
 
 He always spoke of his collection 
 modestly, but it had been brought together 
 with the finest taste, and as to its money 
 value, it was the result of an annual outlay 
 of several thousands, continued now for 
 twenty years. Experts, who had seen it, 
 were right in judging that altogether it 
 had cost a hundred thousand pounds, and 
 would fetch double that money. 
 
 When Philip Rutterby went up to bed, 
 his thoughts were full of Ondelette. A
 
 A LAST LOVE AT PORN 1C. 33 
 
 bachelor of fifty-four, in indifferent health, 
 is particular about the disposition of his 
 chamber, and the set of its blinds and 
 window curtains. He does not sleep im- 
 mediately in a fresh room. The fresh 
 room breaks in a little upon his familiar 
 ways. So Rutterby had time to think of 
 Ondelette. Her beauty had impressed 
 him, and he had been at home with it 
 generally the beauty he saw was only 
 that which passed him by chance in the 
 street. There was such simplicity, too, 
 with the beauty, and with these tho 
 poetry of girl-nature never suppressed 
 child-nature, perhaps ; hardly a woman's 
 yet. " Were I a young man," thought 
 Philip Eutterby, " I suppose I should 
 fall in love with her to-day or to-morrow. 
 But for me, that is all past all past,"
 
 34 PASTORALS OF FRANCE. 
 
 he muttered to himself. He had had 
 his passion in his youth, and had been 
 constant to it. 
 
 And yet not quite " in his youth," 
 for his youth had had its lighter loves 
 " blazes," Polonius said, " giving more 
 light than heat, you must not take for 
 fire." These mild thin blazes of a mild 
 quiet temperament subsided soon, and at 
 thirty an old friendship glowed into 
 love, and he looked forward to happiness. 
 The girl a city parson's daughter fell 
 suddenly ill. The marriage had to be 
 postponed, while she wintered abroad. 
 She came back stronger, and the marriage 
 day was fixed upon. But she was ill again, 
 and was hurried to the South to Hyeres 
 whither Philip Rutterby followed her. 
 The new illness was a short one. She died
 
 A LAST LOVE AT PORNIC. 35 
 
 ore bright November morning, within 
 sight of the Mediterranean. They buried 
 her under a row of cypresses that bowed 
 lightly over her with every wind from 
 the mountains. These things were very 
 deep in Rutterby's heart, and for two- 
 and-twenty years he had been faithful to 
 that memory. 
 
 But, of course, in two-and-twenty years, 
 a structure wrought of many associations 
 and many days had arisen and spread 
 itself over the older memory, so that 
 the older memory was like some 
 verses learnt in childhood, recalled 
 now and again, but not for service, or 
 even pleasure, in the present life the 
 so-different, ever-changing present life, 
 with the common thoughts and common 
 needs of which this poor dead far away 
 
 D 2
 
 36 PASTORALS OF FRANCE. 
 
 Past has nothing to do. To many, when it 
 does come up, this older memory is like an 
 attenuated ghost unreal beside the gross, 
 tangible presences X>f our vulgar days. 
 
 But there was nothing gross, indeed 
 nothing vulgar, indeed in Ondelette and 
 her environments. It seemed like a new 
 poem, the bright and placid experience of 
 the last few hours, to Rutterby. There 
 was the sunny, unfamiliar country ; the 
 brown peasants, merry amidst their rich 
 lands, still almost in their yielding time; 
 there was the quaint, tall, many-shuttered 
 town, with narrow house fronts one 
 above the other, and hanging gardens, 
 and small castle jutting out where the 
 sinuous, shallow river passed into the 
 little blue bay; there was the deep blue 
 bay which, as you followed with keenest
 
 A LAST LOVE AT PORN 1C. 37 
 
 eye the track of its water, became some- 
 how invisibly all one with the great 
 outer sea. Then there had been the 
 pleasant sight of ordered villa and chalet, 
 with luxuriant garden; the cottage-villa, 
 which was home for a while; the cosy 
 lights and glooms of its chambers, full of 
 objects which spoke to Rutterby of 
 gentle life, its joys and busyness the 
 music Ondelette. Yes Ondelette. 
 
 All this produced a pleasant wakeful- 
 ness. You remember Goethe when he was 
 at Marienbad the summer holiday, the 
 encounter with one forgets what German 
 Fraulein, the stirred pulses, the half- 
 recognised longings and the poet was 
 seventy - four. Philip Rutterby was 
 twenty years younger ; but no poet, you 
 may say. No, indeed, there was little
 
 38 PASTORALS OF FRANCE. 
 
 power of expression much reticence and 
 timid reserve, about that lonely man, 
 whose pictures were his friends, and 
 whose hermitage was in the heart of 
 London. 
 
 Ondelette was in high spirits next morn- 
 ing, at the ten o'clock breakfast : flushed 
 with the salt sea-bath, and the walk after 
 it along the gleaming morning coast, 
 sparkling with sunshine. Philip Rutterby 
 looked at her from under his thin iron- 
 grey eyebrows, with the quiet, steadfast 
 examining eyes of the connoisseur of Art 
 eyes accustomed to the peaceful con- 
 templation of beautiful things. De Malmy 
 noticed how closely he looked at her. 
 Presently, when the meal was over, host 
 and guest marched out to the beach the 
 beach of La Noveillard, whose sands are
 
 A LAST LOVE AT PORNIC. 39 
 
 washed by open sea; more timid bathers 
 bathe in the little bay by the castle, 
 right under Pornic town ; but La 
 JSToveillard was always the choice of De 
 Maliny, who was now only too glad to 
 spend the best hours of the day there 
 with his friend, and watch the sunlight 
 steal along the coast, lighting up villa 
 and villa-garden, and the rising ground of 
 brown ploughed land beyond, dotted with 
 grey farms here and there, now rosy with 
 late afternoon, and then look out to the 
 clear sky and infinite sea, and in the far 
 horizon the dark line of coast the long 
 dark streak of Isle Noirmoutier. 
 
 " You find her very beautiful my 
 Ondelette?" said De Malmy, when they 
 had watched the afternoon bathers, and 
 when he saw that Rutterby was no more
 
 40 PASTORALS OF FRANCE. 
 
 minded than himself to read the English 
 newspaper which they had brought out 
 lest talk should flag. 
 
 Philip Rutterby did not often express 
 admiration in strong words, and when 
 he said quietly, " I should think Ondelette 
 a genius of happiness," the phrase meant 
 much with him. 
 
 " I have not judged it convenient to 
 mention to her that I have just received 
 a proposal in marriage. The young man 
 himself takes the initiative, by writing 
 me a letter which I have received this 
 morning. He is called Jules Gerard a 
 young man of some little talent sous- 
 prefet of Saumur. Only twenty-eight years 
 of age. I suppose he wishes to marry 
 himself into a premature reputation for 
 steadiness."
 
 A LAST LOVE AT PORN 1C. 41 
 
 " What does Ondelette think of him ?" 
 asked Philip Kutterby, rather nervously. 
 
 " Ondelette, dear friend, thinks well 
 of him, of course ; for I have not educated 
 Ondelette to think ill of anybody. My 
 child is as naive as your Shakspere's 
 * Miranda.' Besides, she is impulsive and 
 sympathetic. She is your true friend 
 Ondelette when you have talked to her 
 quietly for a quarter of an hour." 
 
 " I have not done so," remarked 
 Philip Rutterby. " And this young 
 man does he know her well ?" 
 
 " Man Dieu ! if my child is your friend 
 in a quarter of an hour, that is because 
 you can know her in that time. Ondelette 
 is excellent. I would not make a mere 
 mariage de convenance for her." 
 
 " There should be fine uses for so
 
 42 PASTORALS OF FRANCE. 
 
 fine an instrument," said Philip Rutterby, 
 broodingly, and in a low voice from under 
 his thin grey moustache. 
 
 " But I cannot regard a sous-prefecture 
 as an adequate provision," De Malmy 
 observed. 
 
 " She does not love him, then ?" asked 
 Rutterby. 
 
 " Romantic fellow ! You forget of whom 
 you speak. She is French ma fille et 
 bien elevee. Of course she does not 
 love him. . . . Well, well, Rutterby, dear 
 friend, we cannot settle it, out here this 
 afternoon. Let us go in. They will be 
 back from their drive. ... I will consider 
 at leisure Monsieur Gerard's pretensions." 
 
 " And what will Madame de Malmy 
 think of them ?" asked Rutterby, rising 
 from the low beach seat.
 
 A LAST LOVE AT PORNIC. 43 
 
 " She will think them unjustified. But 
 what of that ? It is I who must decide, 
 without prejudice or influence. I have 
 never yet taken counsel of women 
 especially middle-aged women. Oh ! les 
 femmes y les femmes ! fa ne vaut pas grand* 
 chose r 
 
 Ondelette and her mother had come 
 in from their afternoon drive, when 
 Rutterby and De Malmy re-entered the 
 villa. And again to-day there was yester- 
 day's pleasure of the cosy dining-room 
 and lamp-lit salon afterwards. Philip 
 Rutterby was again in his arm-chair, and 
 was looking at Ondelette. 
 
 " Are you tired, Mr. Rutterby ?" said 
 Ondelette. " I will play us all some 
 music, if you are." 
 
 " Will you take your promised walk
 
 44 PASTORALS OF FRANCE. 
 
 with me? your old evening round," 
 Rutterby made answer. 
 
 " That is what I was longing for," 
 said the girl, with glistening eyes. These 
 young eyes, thought Philip Rutterby, 
 can glisten with so small a pleasure. 
 
 Her hat and shawl were on her in a 
 minute. 
 
 " Do not allow our child to tire you," 
 said Madame de Malmy, who thought 
 proper, in the interests of respectability, 
 and of her own age, to insist upon the 
 childhood of Ondelette. 
 
 " Ondelette is not accustomed to make 
 herself a burden," murmured her father, 
 in his jealous regard for her. And he 
 went out to the gate, and followed with 
 his eyes the vanishing figures of his 
 daughter and his friend.
 
 A LAST LOVE AT PORNIC. 45 
 
 She had put her hand at once, unasked, 
 in Eutterby's arm, so very confidingly, 
 never thinking that his arm was not so 
 much her own as was her father's. 
 
 " If he were only ten years younger !" 
 thought De Malmy, going in, " she would 
 be very comfortably provided for. Even 
 now" 
 
 " Now what sort of a house is yours ?" 
 asked Ondelette boldly, after two minutes 
 of silence, for Rutterby did not begin a 
 conversation. " I want so much to 
 realise England I have only read of it 
 in books." 
 
 " A small house, in a quiet street, just 
 out of a London square. There is 
 nothing to notice in the old house, except 
 my pictures." 
 
 " Have you any pictures by artists I
 
 46 PASTORALS OF FRANCE. 
 
 know about ? Oh ! yes there was Crome 
 I forgot." 
 
 " The landscape painter, Corot he 
 alone among living men. Most modern 
 artists are too much, for me, Ondelette. 
 
 I am of the old school, and like the old 
 
 
 
 things best." 
 
 "What else, then, Mr. Rutterby? 
 What is it right to like if you must 
 always like wisely among prints for 
 instance ? Prints now tell me !" 
 
 " You may always like Turner's ' Liber 
 Studiorum.' Then I have a few of 
 Rembrandt's etchings, and some prints of 
 Marc Antonio's. Jacopo di Barbarj's too. 
 And most of Mantegna's prints I am for- 
 tunate enough to possess. That is, fortu- 
 nate, if my own taste is a right one. 
 These great men who are dead, could
 
 A LAST LOVE AT PORN 1C. 47 
 
 be vigorous without being violent. I 
 should like to show you one of Rem- 
 brandt's landscapes his most exquisite 
 one." 
 
 "Is it very beautiful ?" she asked. 
 
 " I think so. But much depends 
 on the impression. My own impression 
 of this happens to be fine. And yet 
 it cost me less than sixty pounds, I 
 recollect." 
 
 " And are these on the walls ?" 
 
 " I keep them in a portfolio the score 
 or so of Rembrandt's etchings that I 
 happen to have. My room is an old 
 panelled room, less cheerful than your 
 villa, but cheerful at night, and so still 
 that I can hear the tick of the insect in 
 my tapestry, on the further wall, facing 
 the windows, where I like the effect of
 
 48 PASTORALS OF FRANCE. 
 
 tapestry, as that is a bad light for 
 pictures. There is Flemish tapestry of the 
 fifteenth century, and some Italian of the 
 thirteenth." 
 
 " You must be very happy with all 
 your pictures, over there in London," the 
 girl said. 
 
 " You cannot buy happiness by buying 
 pictures, Ondelette," answered Mr. Kut- 
 terby, gently. They had got into the 
 little town now. 
 
 The town leads such an open life, that 
 you can see it all as you pass along its 
 short and narrow irregular streets, from 
 the little yellow-washed Hotel de France, 
 with its vine-covered court, in which the 
 heavy diligence stands waiting for to- 
 morrow, on to the slender thirteenth 
 century church, with the cafe by the side
 
 A LAST LOVE AT PORNIC. 49 
 
 of it, and so down hill a little, past the 
 hospital chapel, over whose door, in a 
 scant pent-house shrine, Our Lady of 
 Good Succour stands to watch over the 
 port, and so on a little to where the three 
 roads meet and the bridge joins the quiet 
 quay, and the lazy river water laps the 
 stonework, and little lights gleam from 
 detached cottages that stand back from 
 the port, and the masts of yacht and fish- 
 ing-smack rise like a company of darkened 
 spears against the clear night sky. 
 
 That was the evening round, which 
 Ondelette took Philip Rutterby, and they 
 glanced through many a window as they 
 passed, for the Pornic people keep their 
 shutters for the sun, and never trouble 
 in the evening to shut out from view such 
 simple "interiors" as their rooms present;
 
 50 PASTORALS OF FRANCE. 
 
 and no one but here and there a passing 
 stranger cares, as he walks, to take any 
 heed of the sight of such familiar homes. 
 Here was a tiny closet-like kitchen, with 
 the fire burning low, and a woman setting 
 things in order after the day's work, and 
 a child sitting up at a high kitchen-table, 
 munching its supper. " She will put him 
 to bed in a few minutes. A creature of 
 red fat legs of dawning intelligence 
 and developed appetite," explained Onde- 
 lette, whereat Philip Rutterby smiled 
 happily. It was new to him to have these 
 pleasant little nothings said to him confi- 
 dentially. 
 
 They passed a small room where a grey- 
 haired woman sat as one waiting, and a 
 high-capped servant-girl had brought the 
 last things for the evening meal. " She
 
 A LAST LOVE AT PORNIC. 51 
 
 is waiting for her son," said Ondelette. 
 " He works late in his study a notary, I 
 suppose. Mother and son, you see. 
 Mothers are always devoted to their sons. 
 Mamma dotes upon Leon," said Onde- 
 lette innocently. " Indeed, he was quite 
 my own ideal, until he spent so much of 
 papa's money. I love him very much 
 dear silly boy !" 
 
 Then they passed a darkened shop- 
 front, and saw that inside only one candle 
 lighted the family there. A small round 
 table had been drawn out into the shop, 
 and the candle stood on it, and on the 
 three straight little chairs sat mother and 
 two daughters busily at work. One snaps 
 a thread, another reaches the big scissors, 
 and a third looks up and laughs at some 
 light chatter that beguiles their toil. 
 
 E 2
 
 52 PASTORALS OF FRANCE. 
 
 " They are very merry in each other's 
 company," said Philip Eutterby. " I sit 
 alone of an evening myself, while my 
 servants, in their servants' parlour under- 
 neath, laugh at their own jokes as merrily 
 as these good stocking-menders here. I 
 shall be sorry, Ondelette, when I go 
 back from Pornic." 
 
 They made their way along the high 
 road, following the coast, and the little 
 salon clock struck ten as they got 
 inside from the dark garden to the lamp- 
 lit villa, and by that time all Pornic slept, 
 save the few hospital watchers and the 
 one constable trudging his rounds. Small 
 taverns were closed, chalets were shut, 
 the high road out to Saint-Marie deserted 
 for the night ; but clouds out of the west 
 had drifted up over the stars, and a wind
 
 A LAST LOVE AT PORN 1C. 53 
 
 had risen, and there was a deeper roll of 
 dark grey sea along the shore. " The 
 weather breaks to-night," Ondelette said, 
 with her hand in Philip Eutterby's dry 
 palm for good-bye. " The rainy time has 
 come our autumn in Anjou. But here 
 it was summer to-day, and will be winter 
 to-morrow." 
 
 Philip Rutterby went upstairs,' and 
 rested a minute at a still open window. 
 The tall thin spire of Saint-Marie stood 
 out even now against a space of yet un- 
 clouded sky, and in the evening dark, the 
 land had something of the sea's significance. 
 He looked right and left along the coast 
 was somehow strangely touched by that 
 quick change that she had prophesied. 
 " It might have waited a day or two, and 
 when it came, come sympathetically," he
 
 54 PASTORALS OF FRANCE. 
 
 half thought to himself ; " for anyhow 
 it will be winter indeed with me when I 
 go back, and away from her." And as 
 imagination followed the infinite line of 
 sea-board, to fair city and populous port 
 and open country, out there, leagues away 
 in the dark, he wondered where, in all 
 that guessed-at country, undiscovered by 
 his eye, there was any heart as lonely as 
 his, just now any life that seemed so 
 rich and prosperous, and was so yearning 
 and so hungry. He closed the window, 
 and drew its curtains, and shut out that 
 thought. " A mere passing fancy," he 
 said to himself. " Utterly idle hopeless- 
 ly idle !" She might even marry him, he 
 imagined, loving no other ; but if she did, 
 how little time would pass before she 
 must be sorry for her choice, in the
 
 A LAST LOVE AT PORNIC. 55 
 
 gradual perception of Ms failing health 
 and advancing age, and in the rising of 
 some unsatisfied need ! And he ? Why, 
 of course, it was a dreamer's dream, and 
 had vanished even now. 
 
 It rained hard all next morning, and 
 Monsieur de Malmy was occupied with 
 his monograph on Plessis-les-Tours. But 
 at last he sent a message to his old friend 
 Rutterby, and Rutterby joined him in the 
 room used as his study. " You look but 
 poorly, Rutterby, this morning. Onde- 
 lette must, after all, have taken you too 
 long a walk last night." 
 
 " No, no. But several money matters 
 kept me awake last night." 
 
 De Malmy lifted his eyebrows in sur- 
 prise. " Tou ! money matters." 
 
 "Why, yes," rejoined Rutterby; " I fancy
 
 5 6 PASTORALS OF FRANCE. 
 
 the possession of money is often as great a 
 tax on a man's peace as the lack of it." 
 
 " Tell that to the gardener out there, 
 who works for me at two francs a day. 
 Poor devil ! I can't afford to give him 
 any more, Rutterby." 
 
 " Casimir Delavigne is perhaps by no 
 means a great poet," Philip Rutterby 
 resumed, " but there are three lines in his 
 { Louis the Eleventh,' which struck me 
 very much this morning : lonely wretch 
 that lam!" 
 
 " That is a strong word from you, my 
 friend lonely wretch,' indeed ! "What 
 are the lines ?" 
 
 " These are the lines : 
 
 ' Apres la danse, au fond de sa chaumiere, 
 Le plus pauyre d'eux va rentrer en chantant ; 
 Ah ! 1'heureux miserable ! un doux sommcil 1'attend ; 
 II va dormir; et moi '
 
 A LAST LOVE AT FOR NIC. 57 
 
 They mean much or little to you, accord- 
 ing as you take them. To me they mean 
 very much, De Malmy. They sum up all 
 the weariness of Louis Onze." 
 
 " You should have left the spleen in 
 England," said De Malmy, lightly. " Eh 
 bien ! I have been weighing the preten- 
 sions of this young man, Jules Gerard. 
 Here is his photograph." 
 
 "He did not give it to Ondelette?" 
 asked Philip Rutterby, almost alarmed. 
 
 " I should think nof, indeed ! He in- 
 sisted, however, upon giving it to Madame 
 de Malmy, who values it even less than 
 Ondelette or I would do. For myself, I 
 think he is a very honourable young fel- 
 low. He has a good heart. He has 
 good intelligence. He will go very far 
 this young man you understand my
 
 58 PASTORALS OF FRANCE. 
 
 idiom. Madame de Malmy does not 
 attach enough importance to his future. 
 She asks only for present position 
 the result attained in a son-in-law. But 
 we must not be influenced by women in 
 these matters. Women do not count for 
 very much unless they happen to be On- 
 delettes. I am myself inclined to have the 
 young man on a visit, and while you are 
 here immediately. For though you are 
 no man of the world, you are a close ob- 
 server, nevertheless." 
 
 Philip Rutterby was silent ; and De 
 Malmy continued. 
 
 " It is true the young man is not as 
 well to-do, at present, as I should have 
 liked. What is a sous-prefecture ? Four 
 hundred a year, and the obligation to feed 
 several score of discontented local people,
 
 A LAST LOVE AT PORNIC. 59 
 
 once or twice a twelvemonth, in order to 
 report to head-quarters what is the spirit 
 of your population. . . . But Saumur is 
 very near to Angers, I must remember. 
 And then, again, the little private fortune 
 of Jules Ge'rard is equal to that of Onde- 
 lette. I shall still scrape together a dowry 
 of seventy -five thousand francs, if we like 
 Gerard better, on further acquaintance." 
 
 " I shall not like Ge'rard," said Philip 
 Rutterby, quietly, looking out of window, 
 and passing his thin hand over his thin 
 iron-grey hair. 
 
 "And why?" 
 
 " Because I like Ondelette too well. . . . 
 But this deluge will never stop, De 
 Malmy !" he said, with quite a new impa- 
 tience, turning round and leaving the room. 
 
 " Excellent man !" ejaculated De Malmy
 
 60 PASTORALS OF FRANCE. 
 
 to himself. " I am not sure now but 
 that he will propose to marry her. He is 
 not quite as young as he might be. But 
 what does that matter, now-a-days, when 
 science has added ten years to the average 
 of life ? Nelaton and Corvisart can keep a 
 man going pretty long. The science of 
 patching people up has been carried very 
 far. And then there is no devotion like 
 that of a man who is getting well past mid- 
 dle-age, and has been stranded from the sea 
 of passions into which, however, ce bon 
 Rutterby was never thrown, I am sure." 
 
 Philip Rutterby went back into the salon 
 with a book. An hour passed, and Ondelette 
 came in. " See ! It is clearing," said Onde- 
 lette, " and you want a walk, I am sure. 
 You look rather miserable, you know. Papa 
 can lend you a waterproof, if you think it
 
 A LAST LOVE AT PORN 1C. 61 
 
 will rain again. I will go and put on my 
 thick boots, and we will march away to 
 the Druid monument. Papa never walks 
 out in the wet. I walk alone generally at 
 Pornic. See, there is the sun ! These 
 gravelly lanes about here soon dry up, 
 with the strong west wind." 
 
 Of course he was pleased enough. So out 
 they walked again together ; a thin, wiry, 
 anxious man, with quiet contemplative 
 eyes ; and a blooming girl, all brown and 
 gold-coloured with the warmth of a land 
 near the sun and the health-bearing sea. 
 The blackberry hedges, glistening after the 
 morning rain, as they walked along the 
 lanes, were not fresher than Ondelette. 
 
 She had to talk, for Philip Rutterby 
 was silent; but she did not notice his 
 silence, and prattled on about Pornic and
 
 62 PASTORALS OF FRANCE. 
 
 Angers, the points of view here on the 
 upland by the sea, the little old chateau at 
 Angers, her brother Le*on, who was "learn- 
 ing his law " in Paris. If he were wise, 
 she said, he would persevere to take it 
 up professionally ; not as a mere finishing 
 accomplishment, but as the business of his 
 life. " For my brother is not only extrava- 
 gant you must know, Mr. Butterby : he is 
 very good-natured and clever besides. He 
 is very easily influenced, except by me, who 
 am young, and by papa who is indulgent, 
 and by mamma, who dotes upon him so." 
 " Which seems a very pretty way of 
 saying, Ondelette, that he is only capable 
 of being influenced for the bad," res- 
 ponded Mr. Rutterby, with a faint, 
 hopeless smile, which in a bolder man 
 one would have called slightly satirical.
 
 A LAST LOVE AT PORN 1C. 63 
 
 " No. Leon is much, better than that. 
 All depends on the people he is with. 
 Here, early in the season, he saw some- 
 thing of Monsieur Ge'rard, who did 
 him good for the time. I think I 
 should like my brother to live always 
 with Monsieur Gerard. I do not know 
 him very well, but it seems to me just 
 this that I should make him the hero 
 of a story-book, if I ever wrote one." 
 
 E/utterby made no comment, and there 
 was silence for a minute or two. 
 Ondelette had to begin again. " You 
 thought that very foolish, I see by your 
 face ; and so it was indeed, for what can we 
 girls know about men, till we are married 
 and quite in the world ? Supposing I 
 were married to Monsieur Gerard, for 
 instance only I am too insignificant
 
 64 PASTORALS OF FRANCE. 
 
 no doubt I should find out that lie had 
 his faults. . . . Well, but a good man 
 with faults would be only a hero in life, 
 instead of a hero in a story book. Papa, 
 now, has his faults. You, if I only 
 knew you long enough a certain tristesse 
 is what I should complain about in you. 
 . . . Ah ! now I remember one fault 
 which would be enough to dethrone him 
 from my story-book he does not care a 
 bit for music. Fancy such a thing !" 
 
 " I adore music," said Philip Rutterby, 
 scarcely knowing why he spoke so 
 strongly. 
 
 " Here is the common, high over the 
 sea, and here the Druid stone. Will 
 you go down into the chamber? There 
 are no ghosts but toads." 
 
 Philip Eutterby did not care a rush
 
 A LAST LOVE AT PORN 1C. 65 
 
 just now for Druid stones; he feigned 
 an interest clumsily; spoke awkwardly 
 about it, in forgetfulness of the diplo- 
 matist's creed that the use of speech is to 
 conceal your thought. But the two went 
 down into the cavernous chamber to- 
 gether the cavernous chamber in the 
 solitary waste land of an opulent country 
 and came up again, and marched 
 homewards. Rutterby, spurred on al- 
 most to folly by a not distant rivalry, 
 was quite aware that he had said nothing 
 worth saying little which that gentle girl 
 could have really cared to hear and he 
 welcomed a swift shower which, as they 
 needs must shelter, must prolong his time 
 with her. Very near them was a large 
 homestead, with granaries, cattle-sheds, 
 and wood-house.
 
 66 PASTORALS OF FRANCE. 
 
 " The wood-house will be the place/' 
 said Ondelette, leading the way with a 
 run, and stooping under the rough friendly 
 roof with her feet on the floor of bare soil, 
 dry with time. The wood was stacked 
 round them. Light enough came in at the 
 unglazed rough windows. 
 
 Mr. Rutterby looked about him at the 
 bare stone walls and high pitched roof, at 
 the sawdust, at a neglected tressel, a 
 neglected hatchet. 
 
 " Ostade would have liked to paint this 
 place, with its half-lights and shades," he 
 said. 
 
 " I should so much like Ostade's pic- 
 tures, then ! I love anything that is 
 tumble-down and dreary, and common, 
 and dull, and sad," said she. Philip 
 Rutterby was standing close to her, and
 
 A LAST LOVE AT PORN 1C. 67 
 
 now, as she spoke, looked almost anxiously 
 at her dark brown eyes, with their long 
 lashes giving depth to their darkness, and a 
 sense of quietude, much in accord with her 
 young French voice of subtle tenderness. 
 The shower was suddenly over. The 
 two looked out together from the window. 
 It was autumn sunset. Shafts of wan 
 yellow were shot up very feebly by the 
 spent sun, into the greyness and the calm 
 of the high skies. The wind had gone 
 down now, but a deep under-roll was in the 
 sea ; a turbid sea, of dark grey greens and 
 autumn browns; angry, forbidding, and 
 bitter and wild, along its miles of rocky 
 coast and in unnumbered leagues in the infi- 
 nite west. Ondelette saw all that, and was 
 a little awed by it. She knew nothing of 
 any element of storm in Rutterby's heart. 
 
 F 2
 
 68 PASTORALS OF FRANCE. 
 
 " You love anything that is tumble- 
 down, and dreary, and common, and dull, 
 and sad," said Rutterby, repeating her 
 words after her, and laying his hand, 
 which trembled a little, on Ondelette's 
 warm hand by the rough window-sill. An 
 anxious, nervous, over-sensitive man, 
 snatching with useless haste at the unready 
 Future. The quickened pulses promised a 
 keener life, compared with which that past 
 life must seem but as a sleep. 
 
 " Think of me very kindly when I go 
 away, Ondelette," he said, checking him- 
 self. 
 
 "You have only just arrived. Do not 
 talk about going," said she. 
 
 What should he say next, when her look 
 was sympathy and kindness ? Why not 
 say, that suddenly she had become very
 
 A LAST LOVE AT PORNIC. 69 
 
 much to him ? But no. For a minute he 
 was silent. 
 
 " I shall owe more than one pleasant 
 time and happy thought to you, Onde- 
 lette," he said then, gravely, and lifted 
 the young hand to his bent face, and kissed 
 it. ... And they went their way. 
 
 She made her usual music in the even- 
 ing, but did not try to talk with him, as 
 he was quiet and sad ; and she felt that 
 his life must have had some sadness in it 
 more than she knew of more than she 
 could understand. 
 
 Next day, at middle-day breakfast, came 
 a telegram for Rutterby's host. It was 
 from Jules Gerard. De Malmy did not 
 read it aloud, but said presently in such 
 a manner that no one but Philip Rutterby 
 guessed any connection between the tele-
 
 70 PASTORALS OF FRANCE. 
 
 gram and the remark " Ha ! By-the-bye, 
 Jules Gerard is coming to stay a day or 
 two to-morrow. Have the second spare 
 room arranged for him, man amie." 
 
 It was to Madame de Malmy that 
 De Malmy spoke. But Ondelette flushed 
 suddenly, and Rutterby saw it. 
 
 " My room, which must be larger, will be 
 free. I am going to-morrow," said Philip 
 Rutterby, resolutely calm. 
 
 " I hope there was nothing amiss in 
 your letters?" inquired Madame De 
 Malmy. 
 
 " I am obliged to go," answered the 
 guest, quietly. 
 
 " I do not see why this young man 
 should propose to himself to intrude on 
 our happy little party. I am sure I 
 wanted to see more of Mr. Rutterby my-
 
 A LAST LOVE AT PORNIC. 71 
 
 self ; and with two guests, in a small villa, 
 
 you know " began Madame de Malmy, 
 
 again. But her lord abbreviated her 
 discourse by saying in a full-toned voice, 
 " I see that the archaeologists, meeting at 
 
 Clisson " And so the talk was 
 
 turned to art and antiquarianism. 
 
 Why analyse Philip Rutterby's mind, 
 or by what devious ways he had come at 
 last, and at last suddenly, to decide to go ? 
 Of course, if he had coolly and deter- 
 minately fixed on the idea of marriage, 
 his friend and his friend's wife would have 
 he'ped his claim. And Ondelette hardly 
 knew herself; and with her dutiful love 
 and infinite pity and young naive sympathy, 
 she might have said she would be Rut- 
 teroy's wife, and, with her honour and 
 pure-hearted dignity, have kept the pro-
 
 72 PASTORALS OF FRANCE. 
 
 mise to the uttermost, and in some sort 
 learnt to love a foreigner, a stranger, a 
 lonely man, with his life in the Past and 
 hers in the Future. 
 
 But how much of that love would have 
 been spontaneous and free ? Would it on his 
 part, as time passed, and the new presence 
 and new pleasure became familiar things 
 of every day would it then continually 
 dominate, as it did in those brief hours at 
 Pornic, over the older memory, strong 
 with the passion of youth, and long re- 
 newed by the accumulating thoughts f 
 many days, by the very knowledge of jojrs 
 that might have been participated, and 
 loneliness that might have been com- 
 panionship ? No, no. Ondelette, and 
 all the new and possible experience with 
 her, could be but the sweet echo of a fer-
 
 A LAST LOVE AT PORNIC. 73 
 
 away voice. And the voice was more than 
 the echo. 
 
 In the evening Philip Rutterby followed 
 De Malmy to his study. 
 
 " Three pages and a half during the 
 morning, Rutterby," said the host, holding 
 up the monograph in triumph. " And after 
 three months' labour, I think I have de- 
 molished my confrere's theory as to the 
 existence of an ogival window " He 
 would not ask his guest the reason of his 
 departure. But Rutterby had come in to 
 speak, and, like most strong-feeling men, 
 he could speak to the purpose when the 
 occasion moved him. 
 
 " I have thought a good deal about my 
 going away," he said, pacing the room 
 with his thin hands clasped behind him, 
 " and it seems to me only right, De Malmy,
 
 74 PASTORALS OF FRANCE. 
 
 that you should know the reason of it. 
 I have had my last romance at Pornic. I 
 have been in love with Ondelette." 
 
 De Malmy, sitting at his writing-desk, 
 bowed his head slightly, in token that 
 thus far he " followed" Philip Rutterby, 
 and that his friend might be assured of 
 sympathetic attention. 
 
 " Madame de Malmy, if you consulted 
 her in the matter, would probably give 
 her vote for me, and not for this young 
 man. You, yourself, are an old friend of 
 mine, and it would be pleasant to you to 
 have a tie binding us very closely to- 
 gether; and again, you would not un- 
 naturally feel more immediate confidence 
 I do not say more permanent in giving 
 your daughter to a very dear old friend, 
 than to a young man of another generation
 
 A LAST LOVE AT PORN 1C. 75 
 
 almost a stranger whose thoughts and 
 ways would never be like yours and mine, 
 De Malmy, since ideas change every year, 
 and you and I belong, as we know very 
 well, to an old regime. . . . Well, then, 
 Ondelette, with whatever secret and unac- 
 knowledged misgivings, would probably 
 assent. Well, well, then ... it is / 
 who refuse. Let her marry this young 
 man, as the natural thing is." 
 
 " I understand you imperfectly," said 
 De Malmy, apologetically. 
 
 " Let her marry this young man, as the 
 natural thing is. As to means, you know, 
 they will have between them eight 
 hundred a year, which will do for the 
 
 present. Afterwards But the vital 
 
 point is just this, De Malmy : she was born 
 to make the happiness of some life that
 
 76 PASTORALS OF FRANCE. 
 
 has a Future. Well, the Future is for 
 this young man ; the Past is for me. No, 
 no, it is not all self-sacrifice, by any means, 
 if I go away. You remember two-and- 
 twenty years ago Hyeres I do not for- 
 get the Past. Why speak of that ? You 
 look at me, really, dear friend, with a 
 very civil surprise, as if you would believe 
 in some self-sacrifice after all, though you 
 know I have not generally in life been 
 a man called upon to make it. If this is 
 almost my first opportunity, let me take 
 it, then, if you will have it so. One must 
 not regard oneself and one's own life as 
 the centre of everything. That is the 
 thing we rich men have to guard against 
 the world revolves round us, we think. 
 Even if my own happiness were in question 
 which perhaps it is not wouldn't On-
 
 A LAST LOVE AT PORN 1C. 77 
 
 delette's happiness be of more importance 
 than mine ?" 
 
 He put his hand into De Malmy's and 
 shook it silently, for good-night. 
 
 He came down early in the morning, 
 very pale and tired. He had seen from his 
 window that Ondelette, with fresh morn- 
 ing gown, and hair in a twist of gold, 
 was busy in the sunny garden with the 
 grey-red chrysanthemums. 
 
 " I am going to say a word to Onde- 
 lette," he whispered to De Malmy, as he 
 met him on the stairs. 
 
 " Say what you will. You are a fine, 
 brave fellow, Rutterby. Whatever you 
 say she will hear considerately. She al- 
 ways would do that, of course ; but last 
 night I told her especially what a very fine 
 fellow you were, Rutterby. There is no
 
 78 PASTORALS OF FRANCE. 
 
 one, dear friend, whom she likes better 
 than you. Speak to her." 
 
 She heard his step coming towards her 
 in the garden, and lifted her head, flushed 
 with stooping. Did she, too, come, as 
 her favourite flowers, like love in winter ? 
 
 " Ondelette," said Mr. Rutterby, " I have 
 one quiet word to say to you before I go." 
 
 " Yes," she answered gravely, laying 
 her hand on his, struck with his face. 
 
 " The young man who is coming here 
 to-day comes here to ask for you to be his 
 wife." She took her hand away suddenly ; 
 but Philip Rutterby took it back again, 
 and did not flinch at all as he continued. 
 " The young man, Jules Gerard, is worthy 
 of you, my child. A manly fellow, as you 
 and your father know, better than I do. 
 In due time you will be his wife you will
 
 A LAST LOVE AT PORNIC. 79 
 
 both be very happy. I am going to start this 
 morning, and you will think of me sometimes 
 among my works of art my pictures 
 that talk to me. And you must not pity my 
 loneliness, you know, after all, with that 
 companionship. For pictures are the better 
 voices of great men. But sometimes some- 
 times you will think of me, my sweet child?" 
 
 He kissed her very gravely. She looked 
 up, with many feelings. 
 
 " Mr. Rutterby, why are you going 
 away ?" she asked, very earnestly. 
 
 He did not answer for a minute. Then 
 he said only, " I have heard and thought 
 of sad things sad things, Ondelette 
 which I need not tell you."
 
 YVONNE OF CROTSIC, 
 
 G
 
 YVONNE OF CROISIC. 
 
 HE little farm-liouse Yvonne's 
 home stood, sober and grey, 
 among the grey-green fields, 
 but half a mile from Croisic town. No 
 ivy lodged under its eaves, no vine crept 
 confidently up its southern wall, and the 
 fields around it were wide and bare, for 
 close beyond just within sight from the 
 top of the haystack was the rock-bound 
 shore, and all that country-side was 
 swept, from October to March, with the 
 
 G 2
 
 84 PASTORALS OF FRANCE. 
 
 heaviest winds and shrewdest salt from 
 the great western sea. 
 
 It was a lonely country, leading no- 
 where. Croisic itself is the last town or 
 village of the long narrow land-strip 
 which has the Atlantic to the west and 
 south, and to the north a huge gulf, like 
 an inland lake, dividing it from the 
 mainland of Brittany. And Croisic turns 
 its back on the farm, and its back on the 
 outer sea. Nearer to inland France, 
 from Croisic, is Bourg de Batz, set on a 
 sand hill, over its square salt-marshes, 
 intersected with streams from the sea. 
 Nearer again to inland France is Le 
 Pouliguen, a bathing-place, with a little 
 white bay, facing the sun and the south. 
 But these seemed far from Yvonne's 
 home, beyond which, as was said before,
 
 YVONNE OF CROISIC. 85 
 
 the roads led nowhere, or rather, be- 
 coming mere rough lanes with waggon 
 tracks between the fields, lost themselves 
 at last on the wide belt of coast here 
 brown or green with its short grass, here 
 grey and stony in its barrenness that 
 formed the top of the great cliff wall, 
 beneath which lapped blue in summer, or 
 thundered grey in late autumn and desolate 
 winter, the ceaseless waves of the Atlantic. 
 And that lonely country made lonely 
 lives for those who dwelt in it. It bred 
 in them a certain self-reliance and large 
 quietude, hardly found in the inhabitants 
 of cities or of crowded garden-lands a 
 large, restful, fearless quietude, as of those 
 accustomed to be much alone with peaceful 
 farm- work, and the beasts, and the wide 
 field-crops, and the wider sky.
 
 86 PASTORALS OF FRANCE. 
 
 The farm-life and the lonely country 
 had their own effect in moulding the few 
 dwellers near that peninsula's point; and 
 the influence was a constant one greater, 
 perhaps, just because constant, than that 
 of the cure" who preached on Sunday 
 morning at Croisic church. But, after 
 all, both influences were somewhat to the 
 same end, of patience, quietude, sobriety ; 
 and to remind the farm-folk Yvonne 
 among them of some life stranger than 
 theirs, higher than theirs, since filled with 
 sorrow and sacrifice, there stood, where 
 the two roads met from the coast, the dark, 
 worm-eaten cross, with its uplifted figure 
 the only sign to them, in all that country- 
 side, of an existence other than their 
 own of quiet hand-labour and quiet rest. 
 
 So the bare, rough, homely farm, at
 
 YVONNE OF CROISIC. 87 
 
 this world's-end, just beyond Croisic 
 town, was no forcing ground for human 
 feelings; and human life might grow and 
 spread there, one would think, in its own 
 natural way : the common love of parent 
 and child coming slowly, but firmly, half 
 unrecognised, because in each case purely 
 individual and genuine; and that other 
 love the love of man for woman, girl for 
 boy coming sweet, and new, and strong, 
 and unchecked alike in its birth and its 
 fulness ; and from first to last never 
 measured with curious care, to see if it 
 fitted the fanciful loves in story books and 
 plays. 
 
 It was September, evening. Yvonne 
 the farmer's daughter was not at the 
 farm. Rohan, a fisher youth from Piriac, 
 had put his arm in hers, and led her
 
 88 PASTORALS OF FRANCE. 
 
 along the lanes to the coast. With the 
 warm autumn and her eighteen years, the 
 time of love had come to her. 
 
 But it began quietly, and was of gentle 
 growth, like any natural thing ; and this 
 girl, very capable of passion, was lulled 
 rather than stirred by the presence in the 
 lane with her of that brown, sturdy 
 figure, which owed its litheness and its 
 young, manly grace and its sea-beaten 
 beauty to many days and nights spent 
 bending over the fishing-boat anchoring 
 or heaving anchor or setting sail to catch 
 the changing winds that came fresh over 
 the western sea. 
 
 Yvonne was calm in his presence. But 
 the natural soothing pleasure was not to 
 last long now, for in the background of 
 that simple mind of Yvonne's was the
 
 YVONNE OF CROISIC. 89 
 
 knowledge or the thought that the new 
 pleasantness in life must cease the two 
 must part. And the thought came up to 
 her, suddenly, as he led her along the lane. 
 
 " When are you going away ?" she asked, 
 suddenly grave. 
 
 " The boat is ready to-night," he said. 
 " Because it is ready, I must go to- 
 morrow." 
 
 That was matter of fact ; and it grieved 
 her, but did not surprise. He was not 
 rough at heart, though rough in words. 
 And he added seeing the trouble on her 
 clear face " My mate is bound to be at 
 Piriac again. I must stick to my mate, 
 whether I will or no." 
 
 She had been half inclined to motion 
 his arm away from hers. They could 
 walk separately, and talk all the same.
 
 go PASTORALS OF FRANCE. 
 
 But his last tone had been very gentle, 
 and though she saw no end but a parting 
 for them, the parting need not be before 
 its time. So she let him hold her arm 
 still firmly in his grasp, and they walked 
 quite silently along the lane together. 
 
 Here was the great rough crucifix, 
 lifted high where the lanes met and 
 widened towards the coast. She forgot 
 to cross herself. Here was the bare 
 field, giving place to barer, wind-blown 
 shore. Here was the water, blue beneath 
 them, tumbling in upon the strewn 
 boulders and the black line of sea-weed 
 on the beach. " The Point of Croisic" 
 the peninsula's end and to right and 
 left, as well as full in front of them, the 
 sparkling evening sea, and an immense 
 sky, orange-red at the sea's far edge, but
 
 YVONNE OF CROISIC. 91 
 
 fading above them into clear thin tones of 
 bluish silvery grey. 
 
 They sat down on the bare grey rock, 
 still almost warm with the long day's 
 sun. Eohan passed his hand over the 
 lichen-crust that roughened the surface; 
 found her hand there too. It was a fine 
 hand for a half peasant hand ; shapely 
 and sensitive, though brown and strong. 
 He put his own, broadened with heavier 
 work, upon it ; and did this gently, to her 
 who looked gently at him. There was 
 nothing coarse or common in the action 
 of either. That Breton population is 
 born civilized. School boards might teach 
 it geography, but not refinement. 
 
 "It is a long way Piriac. It is be- 
 yond the furthest point," said Yvonne, 
 thinking of his home.
 
 92 PASTORALS OF FRANCE. 
 
 " Yes," replied Rohan, hesitatingly ; 
 " with a good wind, five hours." 
 
 " It is so far, I never saw it on the 
 clearest day. It is beyond the furthest 
 point," reiterated Yvonne, looking at the 
 line of mainland coast. To be beyond the 
 furthest point was to be beyond imagina- 
 tion's widest reach. It must be at the 
 world's far end Piriac. "And what is 
 there after Piriac ?" asked the girl, with all 
 the readiness of an untrained mind to slip, 
 even in moments of strong feeling, from an 
 anxious train of thought on to another 
 quite indifferent one. And so the personal 
 question of her lover's distance, to-morrow, 
 was forgotten in the abstract question of 
 what the world might be beyond Piriac. 
 
 Rohan, being a fisher, had sailed far 
 travelled wide.
 
 YVONNE OF CROISIC. 93 
 
 " After Piriac," he said, " there is Sar- 
 zeau, then Quimper, then even Brest." 
 
 She heaved a sigh. It was a great 
 world, then. Well, it was for other people 
 to see it not for her. 
 
 She leaned back on the rock. Her 
 thick-soled country shoes and strong, 
 straight ankles lay out beyond the last fold 
 of her blue-grey gown. The gown's tight 
 body pressed the stout firm figure about 
 the breast and large throat ; and the sleeve, 
 on an arm thrown freely out, reached but 
 midway between the elbow and wrist, 
 showing the arm where it got full and 
 white, above the sun-browned wrist and 
 hand. She had long, pendent ear-drops, 
 of base gold, roughly worked, for only 
 ornament. They were less bright and 
 straight than her teeth, seen now between
 
 94 PASTORALS OF FRANCE. 
 
 the parted lips. One hand was held to 
 shade the sunlight from her grave black 
 eyes. 
 
 She looked a little sad again, as Rohan 
 saw. What could he say or do? He 
 bent quietly over her, and said, with his 
 strange Breton calmness. 
 
 " Yvonne I love you." 
 
 She lifted herself up at once a deeper 
 colour in her warm-toned face. He said 
 the words again. But she shook her 
 head. 
 
 " Would you some day let me come 
 again ? Then, if the fishery is good this 
 year, would you would you go with me 
 to Piriac ?" 
 
 She took her hand from her eyes, and 
 looked at him very straight, and honestly, 
 but sadly.
 
 YVONNE OF CROISIC. 95 
 
 " No I am Croisicaise 
 
 We are all of Croisic It is of no 
 
 use I cannot do differently from 
 
 all the rest Rohan, I daresay I 
 
 shall never be married but I must live 
 and die in Croisic." 
 
 A modern Englishman would take 
 such a devotion to place rather than 
 person as final and sufficient proof that 
 there was no love at all. The simple 
 Breton sailor had not learned our way of 
 disbelief in any love that is not wholly 
 absorbing. Rohan, not being suspicious, 
 was also not exacting. Other claims upon 
 her were as natural as his she had 
 wishes, thoughts, interests of her own, 
 which the new-found love need not quite 
 supersede. 
 
 He never thought then that she did not
 
 96 PASTORALS OF FRANCE. 
 
 love him, because she said so strongly she 
 must live and die in Croisic town. But 
 he did think as a sailor, with the sea for 
 his wide home that her attachment was 
 too particular and local. He wondered at 
 the strength of it. " Who is it you love so 
 much ?" he asked, after a silence. " What 
 
 is it here that you could never leave ? 
 
 The world is pretty well the same. Piriac, 
 Croisic, what matters ? If I were a girl 
 myself, I should be able to live as far as 
 Quimper perhaps even Brest if the man 
 I loved asked me." 
 
 "But you don't know" she answered. 
 " You never had to try and you don't 
 know, Rohan." 
 
 " That may be true," he answered, with 
 commendable philosophy. The fact was 
 undeniable he had never had to try.
 
 YVONNE OF CROISIC. 97 
 
 And they were silent again for a while. 
 There were tears now in Yvonne's eyes. 
 She had seen him only a little, but loved 
 him very much. It was all such a new 
 joy to her, and new sorrow. 
 
 " I never knew before to-night," she 
 said, at last, "how much I loved the 
 place. Of course, I knew that I should 
 have to spend my life here. That was 
 only right being Croisicaise. I never 
 could change myself into a Bretonne. 
 But I never felt before to-night only you 
 can't understand me how I should be 
 sad if any strange thing happened, that I 
 
 had to leave it Well, think of me 
 
 sometimes when you have got round the 
 furthest point. We have been very happy 
 
 together Whenever I can get to 
 
 Croisic church, at Benediction, I shall 
 
 H
 
 98 PASTORALS OF FRANCE. 
 
 pray Our Lady of Croisic, and she will 
 keep you safe, as she has never forgotten 
 
 to keep my brothers You can 
 
 think of me sometimes. You must have 
 lazy hours in the boats. Think, I'd have 
 done anything for you, except being 
 Croisicaise no more. Or no ! That is no 
 good after all. You'll see, some day, some 
 other girl to your mind. A Bretonne, 
 Rohan ; doubtless the good God wills it 
 so. You had better forget me, then." 
 
 Yvonne rose to her feet. It was sup- 
 per-time at the farm, and the dusk was 
 gathering. Rohan, while she spoke, had 
 looked out rather hopelessly on the last of 
 the sunset ; but the beauty of it had not 
 been lost on him or on the girl. The 
 poor never talk of scenery, but the finer 
 spirits among them sometimes sit and
 
 YVONNE OF CROISIC. gg 
 
 watch it, with all its changing lights, 
 reverently ; with placid hands crossed or 
 folded, as in act of devotion. Of it they 
 have nothing to say, but it somehow 
 speaks to them things half understood, 
 strange snatches of suggestion of wider 
 life and thought as they wait, with their 
 eyes fixed, in their grave loneliness. 
 
 And so, quite silently, Eohan and 
 Yvonne trudge homeward towards the 
 farm. The quick dusk of that country- 
 side has fallen now, and the long flat land, 
 of bare low-walled meadows, and square- 
 cut salt-marsh, is dull and grey with the 
 coming night. She is thinking, will he 
 ever sail again in these seas near to Croisic, 
 in that huge gulf beyond which is Brit- 
 tany ? and will some second mishap bring 
 him to Croisic port and town, and, while 
 
 H 2
 
 ioo PASTORALS OF FRANCE. 
 
 again the boat is mended, will lie stay, and 
 find his path to the farm, where she, with 
 placid, unchanged life, must still be at her 
 farm- work ? No, no ! what does she know 
 about the boat ? about his mate, his life, 
 his toil, his home, far out of sight on the 
 Breton coast ? These can be nothing to 
 her but a pleasant dream, from which, on 
 the morrow, when he is gone once and for 
 all, she will wake resolutely. 
 
 "Why it is even now a by-past thing. 
 The friendship, such as friendship is 
 among the poor, who have no intellectual 
 interests in common, to nurse and en- 
 courage it the quick friendship, the 
 strange Jove, the kiss, the walk at 
 twilight, the sad denial to him that even- 
 ing all was well over now : well nigh as 
 past and over as to-morrow when he
 
 YVONNE OF CROISIC. ICH 
 
 should be gone. The familiar beasts, she 
 knew and called by name, crooned low or 
 bellowed in the homestead : the watch- 
 dog barked at the unknown step of the 
 stranger ; it was supper-time ; the light 
 shone through the window. Inside she 
 knew that the small oil-lamp stood on the 
 round table, laid with plates for three. 
 And the father sat at ease after the day's 
 work, and the mother was serving a dish, 
 and had brought from the dark oak bahut 
 the bottle of thin white wine for the 
 evening's meal ; and all this was as it had 
 been on many nights for many months 
 nay, Yvonne's whole life had scarcely 
 known other than that regular round 
 and Rohan had no part in it ; nor she in 
 Rohan, and whatever life might be his, in 
 unknown places, beyond the furthest coast.
 
 102 PASTORALS OF FRANCE. 
 
 And so, when, as they pass the wicket- 
 gate, and go in across the grass-grown, 
 uneven, pebble-paved yard, the fisher- 
 youth puts his arm on hers again, and 
 bends his head close over her, and says, 
 so earnestly, " Tell me one thing, Yvonne: 
 do you love me ?" she is not sure at first 
 of her reply, but says, as she touches the 
 latch of the iron-bound thick wooden house- 
 door, " I don't know I am very 
 
 young I think I love you 
 
 This is my home." 
 
 This was her home, and he was not one 
 of her people, and could not enter there, 
 to break in upon that strange exclusive- 
 ness of Croisic, which refused to be Breton. 
 She had said to him, " I think I love 
 you," but then the qualification, " This is 
 my home."
 
 YVONNE OF CROISIC. 103 
 
 The very place on which they stood, and 
 its surroundings those of her whole life 
 seemed to make a new distance between 
 them. So very quietly she gave him " Good 
 night," which was perhaps "Goodbye;" 
 only he knew the way across the fields 
 from the port, and might, if very earnestly 
 minded, come once more in the morning. 
 
 He vanished into the dark of the 
 country lane, as she shut the heavy house- 
 door slowly then stopped suddenly, 
 thinking she heard a sound outside : 
 listened with strained ears and fixed eyes. 
 Rohan could he be coming back ? Was 
 there something else to say ? How could 
 he brave the farmer at his hearth-side; 
 the mother quietly awaiting her child ? 
 No, there was nothing to bring him back. 
 He had no place there. And with, only
 
 104 PASTORALS OF FRANCE. 
 
 the slightest shadow of sadness on her 
 strong, simple, contemplative face, Yvonne 
 passed on into the farm-house eating-room, 
 and sat down to her meal. 
 
 They knew where she had been, or, 
 rather, with whom she had been, and that 
 it was not the first time she had been with 
 him, and a word of very mild disapproval 
 had been spoken that forenoon, and she 
 knew well that father and mother would 
 think nothing was lost when the boat was 
 in right trim again, and the young foreign 
 sailor had gone, for good, beyond the 
 furthest point. 
 
 But at supper his name was not men- 
 tioned. Silence as to the cause of her 
 absence was their only sign of disapproval 
 of it. Nothing seemed much amiss to 
 them. She looked at them with all the
 
 YVONNE OF CROISIC. 
 
 105 
 
 wonted candour of her dark wide-open 
 eyes, with their expression of receptive- 
 ness and waiting. The day's work, 
 and the evening walk, and the air 
 sharpened with salt from the sea, had 
 made her healthily hungry. Even love 
 left her body at peace ; and the stout old 
 farmer, looking up from his loaf and his 
 fried fish and his mug of white wine, 
 thought confidently, " There is nothing 
 amiss. The young will be young. But 
 nothing is wrong, and the stranger will 
 go to-morrow." 
 
 The mother's meal was over, and she 
 sat with folded hands in the wooden arm- 
 chair by the side of the hearth, as was her 
 wont after supper. The same chair in the 
 same place, winter and summer. At 
 supper she talked, but sat meditative after-
 
 io6 PASTORALS OF FRANCE. 
 
 wards, straight upright in her chair. 
 Restless or fussy people would have called 
 it idle, and to other natures than that 
 country nature it might have been 
 stupid and dull. But old Annaic looked 
 forward to the time, after the day's work 
 and evening meal. Her face composed 
 itself, and her hands "settled;" and she 
 sat seemingly waiting, waiting for nothing, 
 with great restf ulness. Her dumb quietude 
 recalled that of the cattle. 
 
 Presently, when the clock struck, the 
 mother rose it was the regular time, 
 never, in many years, departed from old 
 Annaic rose, and struck a match for 
 Yvonne's candle, which was the signal 
 for Yvonne to go to her father to be 
 kissed for " good-night." And that was 
 the signal to Joel to put his pipe out ; and
 
 YVONNE OF CROISIC. 107 
 
 when Yvonne had gone, the old man lifted 
 the oil-lamp, by whose light they supped, 
 and with this in hand he trudged upstairs, 
 followed closely by Annaic. 
 
 Yvonne was now in her room. Leaving 
 it hurriedly early in the evening, she had 
 left the lattice window closed, as it had 
 been closed all day. The room was hot, 
 wanting its evening air, and the girl went 
 now to open the window at the time at 
 which she generally shut it. She knew 
 quite well why she had forgotten to open 
 it when the heat of the day was over. 
 The walk with Rohan Rohan in the lane ! 
 
 All that was so far past, only a minute 
 ago, when she had put her fresh brown 
 cheek by her father's for " good-night," 
 and everything had been as it had been for 
 many years. But now it had come back
 
 io8 PASTORALS OF FRANCE. 
 
 once more the strange experience and 
 as she stood at the window and felt the 
 night air, keen, but not harsh, from the 
 sea, she remembered his voice : her face 
 flushed unconsciously at the thought of 
 his kiss, his pressure, his strong warm 
 words, the like of which she heard for the 
 first time : she, a lonely farm girl, young 
 and calm, and with little thought but of 
 her kin, and the farm work, and the 
 cattle, and the fishing-fleet that came (her 
 brother's boat amongst it) at night round 
 Croisic pier into Croisic port. 
 
 She looked down at the farm-yard : the 
 beasts were quiet ; the watch-dog asleep ; 
 the haystack rose dark against the sky. 
 She looked beyond, and there was the 
 flat country, one space of meaningless 
 plain to stranger eyes, but to her all a
 
 YVONNE OF CROISIC. 109 
 
 familiar land : she could pick out in the 
 dark the spot where the roads met, and 
 the side where the salt-marsh was, and 
 the Five Acres, and the distant line of the 
 Grande Cote where the loftier shore was 
 set against the sea. 
 
 " Perhaps if he were but a Croisicais !" 
 she thought. . . . And to-morrow he 
 would be gone ! 
 
 The bright breezy morning found her at 
 her work again, and Rohan did not come. 
 The one farm-servant had gone off early 
 into Croisic, on a two days' leave. Yvonne 
 was doubly busy. The servant had gone 
 to have her bridesmaid's part in wedding 
 festivities. That morning there was the 
 service in Croisic church ; then the feast 
 in the town ; and then the wedding party, 
 with bride and bridegroom at their head
 
 I io PASTORALS OF FRANCE. 
 
 preceded only by the music-maker hired 
 for the time were to set out on the long 
 seemingly endless walk through country, 
 and past village inn ; through Bourg de 
 Batz, set on the sandhills, to Le Pouliguen, 
 between its hazel coppice and its little 
 sunny white bay, then round to Guerande, 
 the Middle Age town, from whose ramparts 
 one looks down on the gulf and the long 
 peninsula, with Croisic near to the end of 
 it, and beyond it the outer sea ; and then, 
 at last, into Croisic again, the folk, how- 
 ever weary, still tripping two and two, au 
 son du biniou, and in time with that strange 
 music. So they would trip and trudge all 
 day, and again, faithful to custom and 
 duty, all the morrow. And then, these 
 gaieties passed, the freshly married pair 
 would settle to common life. The hired
 
 YVONNE OF CROISIC. in 
 
 music-maker would encourage some other 
 party on the march, and the farm-servant 
 go back to the farm. 
 
 In thought, Yvonne would be with her 
 a little that morning more than a little, 
 now that Rohan did not come. Well, 
 Eohan had taken her words as final words, 
 and with his mate, in the fishing-boat, 
 was off to some strange port she did not 
 know. 
 
 " The young man who came, he said, 
 from Piriac, or beyond Piriac, and was 
 about here pretty much the last few days, 
 he is gone, eh?" asked old Joel, at 
 their midday meal. 
 
 Yvonne, thus suddenly taken, suddenly 
 reminded, only nodded assent. It would 
 have been hard to say, " Yes, father." 
 
 The old man stretched his long legs
 
 H2 PASTORALS OF FRANCE. 
 
 comfortably out under the table. He 
 looked contented, but said nothing. " It 
 is wise and well," he thought. Old An- 
 naic's face smoothed and composed. What 
 might have been a trouble since the 
 young have ways of youth was well over. 
 Even apart from all the binding Croisic 
 customs, which were religion itself to 
 them, they could not spare Yvonne away 
 from them. Their two sons, finding the 
 farm but bare and poor, and loving the 
 excitement and chances of the sea, had 
 passed over from farm life to the Croisic in- 
 dustry, and manned a fishing-boat, which 
 came sardine-laden into Croisic port, these 
 autumn nights. They had their home in 
 Croisic town, and their wives and children 
 too, for they were many years older than 
 Yvonne. Yvonne seemed the only young
 
 YVONNE OF CROISIC. 113 
 
 fresh thing at the farm. The future of 
 the farm was, in a sense, with her. 
 
 She had gone out of the room after their 
 meal; and Joel and Annaic, left alone, 
 looked at each other and were satisfied. 
 Old Joel rose, his hand in breeches' pocket, 
 feeling for a key. He went to the bureau 
 which stood under the window. 
 
 " There is not so great a dowry to count 
 for her, wife," he said, opening the lock ; 
 " but when she chooses a Croisicais, he 
 must come and live here at the farm with 
 us, eh?" he said, now handling lovingly 
 his leather bag, with a score or so of gold 
 coins in it nothing more. 
 
 " And that may be as soon as the child 
 likes," said old Annaic, somewhat earnest- 
 ly ; " for you are not as young as you 
 were, and I I get more tired of a night
 
 ii4 PASTORALS OF FRANCE. 
 
 than I used to be. This next Saint- 
 Martin we shall have been married six- 
 and-thirty years." 
 
 " He looked a sturdy, honest fellow 
 that I may say, now he is gone," said 
 Joel, referring, as his wife knew well, to 
 Rohan. 
 
 " That may be ; but he was amiss here. 
 What can we know of any man who comes 
 from Piriac ? Poor girl, I saw that if he 
 stayed much longer she would fancy him. 
 Praise be to God, he is out of sight, and 
 Yvonne is a good girl." 
 
 With that reflection ended their desul- 
 tory conference, for there was work to do. 
 
 Yvonne was in the garden, and before 
 sunset there came a friend from Croisic 
 the daughter of the landlord of the inn. 
 Jeanne Buillore 1 came to fetch something
 
 YVONNE OF CROISIC. 115 
 
 at the farm, and told Yvonne what was 
 the news. Yvonne was strangely absent, 
 when she began to speak of the wedding 
 procession, marching, au son du biniou y in 
 front of the inn, along the length of quay, 
 and so off by the dusty road, to Bourg 
 de Batz. 
 
 " By this time they will have got round 
 as far as Gruerande," said Jeanne. " Per- 
 haps they will dance there, before coming 
 home. How I should like to see ! But 
 have you heard how good a take our 
 Croisic boats had yesterday ? Never such 
 piles of fish-baskets on the jetty and the 
 quay ! You must come down to-night. 
 Come down an hour after me; meet me 
 at the pier -head. Watch the boats in, 
 with me, you can get away for once." 
 
 Yvonne nodded gravely. Yes, she 
 
 i 2
 
 Ii6 PASTORALS OF FRANCE. 
 
 would go to-night. She rarely went. 
 These small excitements the only ones 
 perhaps open to her did not seem needed 
 by her tranquil nature, self-reliant, and 
 in the main quietly happy in her regular 
 round. But she would go to-night. 
 
 So the dark found her under the little 
 lighthouse tower at the pier's far end. 
 Here the pier was broader than elsewhere 
 along its length. A parapet, plain gra- 
 nite, like the pier itself, was all round 
 the end of it. The parapet was on one 
 side only of the pier's full length the 
 exposed side; the side towards the west 
 and the main sea. But at the end it 
 went all round, a yard or so from the 
 lighthouse base, so that two could just 
 pass between the lighthouse and bounding 
 wall. And here, with eyes looking out
 
 YVONNE OF CROISIC. 117 
 
 eagerly to sea, stood Yvonne and Jeanne, 
 pressing forward against the parapet. 
 They sang in unison a strange wild coun- 
 try song, or sailor song, half like a chaunt, 
 with voices deep and clear. Then the 
 boats, with set sails, swept up from the 
 west, and passing near the pier's end, 
 went round into the port. 
 
 " A terre I a terre /" the girls now cried 
 to them, " Breton, or Croisicais ? il y a 
 du vin a boire /" 
 
 " Croisicais !" shouted the men from 
 the boats. And the dark sails swept past 
 into the port. The fishing was good, and 
 the home-coming joyous. Yvonne, with 
 nothing to gain, nothing to lose at the 
 farm, threw herself into the quick life of 
 the moment. Her friends, the Croisicais 
 she must give them welcome. " Land !
 
 ii8 PASTORALS OF FRANCE. 
 
 land I There is wine here you may 
 drink." 
 
 Presently, on the quay, far back from 
 the pier's end, and among the scattered 
 lights of Croisic town, and groups of 
 watching folk, the incoming boats were 
 unladen of their load. The sardine-salters, 
 from the salting-house, came down and 
 bargained for the spoil ; so much money 
 the dozen baskets, and a bottle of wine 
 for luck ; and then the bargaining over, 
 feasting began ; and late into the night, 
 mate and sweetheart, and wife and friend, 
 sat merry-making in their humble rooms, 
 with doors open carrying light and sound 
 to quay and street. Jeanne had gone back 
 to the inn, before whose door sat Buil- 
 lore*, her father, smoking the pipe of 
 peace. Buillore's few guests were gone
 
 YVONNE OF CROISIC. 
 
 119 
 
 to bed ; the father and two boys who had 
 come from Nantes, for bathing ; the man 
 with his two sons, who had talked with 
 Buillore" at dinner for Buillore sat at the 
 board with his guests, and compared ex- 
 periences of inns at Nantes and Saint- 
 Nazaire, as he sliced the well-cooked fare, 
 homely and bourgeois. Buillore 1 had waited 
 for Jeanne, and now his chair was taken 
 inside his house, his door shut, his light 
 extinguished. Sleeping-time was come. 
 
 And Yvonne ? The excitement passed ; 
 the movement over, she had stood still 
 at the pier's end, looking broodingly out 
 to night and sea. Then it was time to 
 go : it would be late at the farm. Eohan 
 had gone ; he had taken her at her word. 
 Had he been but a Croisicais ! These 
 Croisicais her brothers one great family
 
 120 PASTORALS OF FRANCE. 
 
 with common interests they were all so 
 different from him. For all her love of place 
 and townfolk, there was something in 
 Eohan from Piriac strange that she had 
 not known before that she would not 
 willingly lose. 
 
 He was suddenly by her, as she was 
 leaving the pier, and spoke to her with no 
 surprise for he had heard of her there, 
 incidentally, in the talk of a fisher-friend 
 of Jeanne's upon the quay. So he went 
 up quietly, and called her by her name. 
 
 " You !" she said, astonished, " I 
 thought, of course, you were gone." 
 
 Was anything wrong ? the boat not 
 ready at last ? the mate away ? What ? 
 
 Her eyes asked, " What?" though she 
 framed no question. He put his arm in 
 hers, and they walked down the dark pier.
 
 YVONNE OF CROISIC. 121 
 
 " I have been to the farm, but I saw 
 no one. I was a fool; staying for no- 
 thing for what was the good of speaking 
 to you ? I could get but the same answer. 
 . . . Only I just felt that I could not go. 1 ' 
 
 She let herself be held close to him, 
 walking a few paces on; then suddenly 
 stopped : " Rohan ! what is the use ? . . . . 
 No, I cannot go out there. I must go 
 back to the farm." 
 
 They turned, and walked quite silently 
 from pier to quay, from quay to little 
 street, from little street into the lonely 
 country road, making for her home. They 
 had both too much to say. At first, per- 
 haps, she hardly knew her own mind, 
 save that she knew she was glad he was 
 there. And he a simple sailor, with no 
 clever art in love-making he could not
 
 122 PASTORALS OF FRANCE. 
 
 very easily press again what he had 
 pressed last night. Perhaps his faithful 
 presence would speak for him his quiet 
 waiting for the chance of seeing her 
 better than words. 
 
 For she knew his own story : at least 
 he had told it to her, at their earlier meet- 
 ings. At Piriac, there was his mother, 
 blind and old, rooted firmly, by age and 
 weakness, to that Piriac soil. So that he 
 was rooted too. He could sail elsewhere ; 
 drop anchor here and there ; see strange 
 ports, and be contented for himself 
 wherever he was. But his home was 
 Piriac. And no Russian serf was ever more 
 firmly fixed. 
 
 So this night's meeting was after all 
 only a short reprieve. How intensely 
 conscious was Yvonne, then, of every step
 
 YVONNE OF CROISIC. 123 
 
 of the way ! The turn in the road ; the 
 second field gate; the square salt-marsh 
 gleaming in the night; their own low 
 boundary-wall of loose stones from the 
 coast ; the cattle-shed, the hay-stack, the 
 rounded tower-like corner of the farm- 
 house, heavy, solid, grey-black in the 
 night. And with the freshness of autumn, 
 rising wind full in her face, borne over 
 the flat land from the furthest sea. 
 
 Here was the gate. Strange love- 
 making ! Hardly a word had been said. 
 But she had not put him away. 
 
 She passed inside the short wooden gate. 
 He held her hand still, and kissed her, once, 
 quietly. She burst out suddenly with 
 many tears and thick, deep sobs : " Oh ! 
 Rohan, Kohan ! Tell me ! what am I 
 to do ? God ! what am I to do ?"
 
 124 PASTORALS OF FRANCE. 
 
 He could say nothing at the moment, 
 but he stood, trying to comfort, and the 
 tears passed. That weakness had been 
 so unlike her. Now she was herself again, 
 save that a storm had gone over her. 
 
 " You had better come to-morrow. At 
 mid- day. I will speak to father and mo- 
 ther before that, and will ask them what 
 we shall do. They will think me very 
 unnatural, at first wishing to leave 
 them, and the place, and the people all 
 our friends. I know there are fine ladies 
 going into convents, but that is for the 
 good God, or to leave more to their bro- 
 thers. But I am an only child, here at 
 the farm. What would they do, the two 
 together father and mother if I were 
 gone ? . . . . Just for myself, perhaps, 
 after all, I could go away, you know.
 
 YVONNE OF CROISIC. 125 
 
 Because I love you, yes, Bohan, I must 
 love you I" 
 
 He caught with a new hope, and a 
 rushing thoughtless happiness, all the look 
 of yearning-yielding, in the sweet grave 
 face then bent suddenly over her, draw- 
 ing her face to him, kissing quickly her 
 dark brows. And then he was gone to 
 come back with stronger hope on the 
 morrow. 
 
 It was late. And the first sound of 
 Yvonne's hand on the door-latch brought 
 her father to the door, holding a light on 
 high. He did not speak to her, but fol- 
 lowed her straight from the small stone 
 passage to the living room, where she 
 saw by the light of his candle for the 
 lamp was gone that supper was long 
 over. She thought her father's face
 
 126 PASTORALS OF FRANCE. 
 
 looked troubled; and, keenly conscious 
 of her own inner conflict half thinking 
 too that he suspected it her impulse was 
 to express her sorrow at it. She threw 
 her arms round him and kissed him vehe- 
 mently. It half seemed to her she had 
 been false to him; but he suspected no- 
 thing. There was nothing to tell him 
 that Rohan had not gone; and if he 
 thought anything of her excitement, he 
 thought only that the cause of it was the 
 poor child's realisation that it was all over 
 such natural pleasantness as there had 
 been between the two. And so when at 
 last he spoke, he spoke very tenderly, not 
 chiding her for her lateness, but saying 
 simply, " Cest bien, mon enfant. But your 
 mother was tired. She went, as she goes 
 always, when the clock strikes."
 
 YVONNE OF CROISIC. 127 
 
 There was the chair where old Annaic 
 had been sitting. Should Yvonne go to 
 her to say " Good-night ?" 
 
 " She sleeps," said old Joel, moving 
 towards the door, and wishing his daugh- 
 ter placid " good-night" himself. " Sleep 
 well, my child." 
 
 They went upstairs together; the old 
 man giving her the candle at her door. 
 She went in, shut the door, and sat down 
 on the bed. How should she tell them 
 on the morrow? she thought. How 
 should she persuade ? What words could 
 serve against the steady fact that linked 
 her life to Croisic, as Rohan's to that 
 unknown Brittany ? Her face flushed red 
 at the thought of it was she not almost 
 wicked, to plan and nearly hope for 
 parting, and a new life which would be
 
 128 PASTORALS OF FRANCE. 
 
 little different from her death to them ! 
 But Rohan was honest, manly, gentle, 
 kind ; and, in a few days, had become so 
 much to her. 
 
 It was a hard question, and gave her a 
 wakeful night. Turning from side to side 
 of her low bed, she watched, sleepless, 
 and waited for the day. In the intense 
 stillness she heard the striking of the 
 clock downstairs. Four of the morning. 
 The cock crew in the yard below her, and 
 presently from the window, by her bed, 
 she saw the dark night get greyer on the 
 horizon weird and cold and then came 
 the streak of red, widening and mounting 
 in the sky, and the fields rose grey out 
 of the night. Yes, this was all her home, 
 and had been all her life around her. She 
 welcomed it, after the sleepless hours,
 
 YVONNE OF CROISIC. 129 
 
 with weary eyes, and then suddenly 
 slept. 
 
 It was an hour after, in the full light 
 of September morning, that she woke, 
 roused by her father's knock and call at 
 the door. He said she was to come 
 quickly that her mother was ill. 
 
 Joel was, in general, a heavy sleeper, 
 and it was Annaic who woke first. But 
 this morning it had been different. Per- 
 haps Annaic, from her unexplained fatigue 
 of the overnight, had slept a little longer. 
 Anyhow, the old man was himself awake 
 and thinking of rising, when she turned 
 in her bed, opened her eyes, and seeing 
 the full light, sprang suddenly ; then sunk 
 back on the bed again, faint or uncon- 
 scious. 
 
 The old man had not known what to 
 
 K
 
 130 PASTORALS OP FRANCE. 
 
 do. Almost for the first time in his life 
 he was in presence of sudden illness. 
 Even the common immediate remedies 
 were strange to him, or, at all events, 
 long in coming to his slow thoughts. He 
 had left Annaic still unconscious when 
 he called his daughter, and, in hurriedly 
 donned raiment, prepared to go for skil- 
 ful aid into the town. 
 
 He said to Yvonne what he was going 
 for, and he then straightway went. He 
 had been gone hardly a minute when 
 Yvonne, with loose hair and troubled 
 face, passed across the passage from the 
 one bedroom to the other, and was by 
 her mother's side, touching, with her 
 warm strong hand, the livid fingers 
 looking, suddenly hopeless and awed, into 
 the glazing eyes. The girl never said,
 
 YVONNE OF CROISIC. 131 
 
 afterwards, to strangers what she had 
 done in those first terrible moments. But 
 presently her mother was lifted and placed 
 more placidly than before in the bed. 
 Yvonne's own lips must have blanched 
 when she at first suspected, next was 
 awfully assured, that she was in the pre- 
 sence, not of illness, but of death. 
 
 The half-hour between her father's 
 going and returning was at last over the 
 half-hour that seems years, because it is 
 filled with many thoughts that drag 
 laborious as actions, with fancies more 
 real than facts. Times like these mark 
 epochs in life ; they cut it sharply asunder. 
 The continuity of life is broken : life 
 divided once for all. There is a past 
 henceforth, which is wholly past the 
 
 memory of days, years, feelings, ex- 
 is: 2
 
 1 3 2 PASTORALS OF FRANCE. 
 
 periences, which are left for ever beyond 
 recall ; and with the death of others, in 
 the flesh, dies sometimes too much the 
 life of our own spirit. 
 
 Her father's step over the bit of paving 
 of the yard, the clink of the house-door 
 latch, his mounting of the stairs with the 
 rough doctor of that country side, the 
 entry into the room which had grown to 
 Yvonne like a prison from which she, in 
 her ghastly solitude, only longed to flee 
 these things she remembered ever after 
 vividly, but told them to no one. 
 
 Then the examination had to be made, 
 and the simple malady was easily within 
 the range of the old surgeon's knowledge. 
 There was little that he had to say, except 
 the due direction for the next day's 
 funeral. And again Yvonne was in the
 
 YVONNE OF CROISIC. 133 
 
 house and alone: her father had gone again, 
 and this time for some hours, into Croisic 
 town. The horrible business, which keeps 
 stricken men up at such a time, had to be 
 done by him. 
 
 A woman, one of their nearest neigh- 
 bours she could not, though the nearest, 
 be so very near a one had come in soon 
 after old Joel's leaving. She was upstairs 
 in the bedroom with Annaic : Yvonne 
 now below, standing waiting at the window 
 of the living-room. For now there had 
 been time to think that Rohan would be 
 coming. He could not see the father now. 
 He could not plead now. All that plead- 
 ing, that been looked for so anxiously, 
 seemed a now far-away thing. 
 
 It was a splendid autumn day : the 
 pitiless bright sun, high in the sky, shone
 
 134 PASTORALS OF FRANCE. 
 
 down over the large flat land, touching the 
 parched dry fields with more brilliant hue, 
 and making the grey salt-marsh flash 
 here and there with silvery light. The 
 dust on the white road the thin soil of 
 the lane was raised by the happy breeze 
 that came from the grey rocks, and the 
 clear blue tumbling sea. Yvonne went 
 outside the house, and crossed the yard, 
 and stood by the low wall of loose stones 
 from the coast, and looked up the road 
 towards the salt-marsh and Croisic town, 
 and down it to where the dark wooden 
 crucifix stood alone above the fields, 
 where the two roads met and became one 
 lane which led its lonely way between 
 broken bits of wall and hedge to the high 
 green cliff top, in front of the now spark- 
 ling sea.
 
 YVONNE OF CROISIC. 135 
 
 It was the very world's end, in its 
 bright loneliness the farm, that day. 
 She looked up at the broad blue sky, 
 flecked with little white clouds that 
 changed with the wind : she looked right 
 and left again, along the bare road. No 
 sound of voice or footstep, but, with figure 
 sharp relieved against the sky, the one 
 stilt-mounted salt-stirrer moved to and 
 fro along the straight tracks of the salt- 
 marsh, stirring very leisurely, here and 
 again, with the long pole which is the tool 
 for his work. No other sign of labour 
 hardly of life but that stilt-mounted 
 figure on his slow progress over the 
 straight tracks of the marsh. 
 
 The loneliness, which had used to be 
 happy, seemed cruel and not to be borne 
 that day. Yvonne cried out against it,
 
 136 PASTORALS OF FRANCE. 
 
 not indeed with voice or tears, but with 
 her inmost heart, that long, cruel, endless, 
 brilliant morning. 
 
 She came inside soon again, and sat 
 down in her wonted chair in the living 
 room, where at least the tall clock in the 
 corner ticked kindly for companionship. 
 Then Rohan came ; first heard opening the 
 gate, then seen at the open window, then 
 boldly in the room with her, and bending 
 over her for the first instant, ready to press 
 once for all the claim of his love, and to 
 say to old Joel, her father, all that on the 
 night before they had felt must be said. 
 
 He stood back ; or she put him aside 
 who knows ? He saw at once her changed 
 face, and strange trouble. 
 
 " Comment ?" he said to Yvonne, with 
 voice caught in with fear.
 
 YVONNE OF CROISIC. 
 
 137 
 
 She said to him quite simply, with some 
 touch re-found of that old calm of hers 
 which came alike of life and character 
 " Rohan ; my mother is dead." 
 
 All the simplicity and directness of the 
 short words, spoken with the solemn calm 
 of one to whom the intense hours of 
 thought and feeling have even now already 
 put that new death into the order of 
 accepted things, made the young man 
 stand back aghast. And he could only 
 mechanically echo her last word, " dead !" 
 and she had to be the witness of surprise 
 for him her own being so utterly past. 
 
 She told him quietly sitting down 
 again in her chair, and with hands joined 
 on grey apron and lap a very little 
 more : all that it was needful any one 
 should know. She got up then tears in
 
 138 PASTORALS OF FRANCE. 
 
 her eyes, but the low-toned voice hardly 
 quivering perceptibly and went to him, 
 and putting a hand on his, said very 
 slowly, " So you won't force me to say 
 many times you see you must go 
 Rohan !" 
 
 He vowed, of course, what any man, 
 high or low, fisher or citizen, would have 
 vowed then, in few words, earnestly 
 that he could not go : she must not send 
 him away in her trouble. But he had to 
 see, as she stood quietly by him, that the 
 very quietness of tone and look implied 
 finality. He had come in too late for the 
 battle. The battle if battle there had 
 been was over. 
 
 So he only said, hesitatingly the 
 strength being hers "I may come again ? 
 In the spring ? Next year ?" And still
 
 YVONNE OF CROISIC. 139 
 
 less confidently : " The autumn ? Things 
 change !" 
 
 Yvonne's eyes turned for a moment 
 from him, lighted on the hearth, the 
 father's chair, her own, her mother's. 
 
 She looked at him again, and shook her 
 head, quite slightly, with quivering lip. 
 But it was quite enough in its sad 
 decisiveness. Soon afterwards he was 
 gone. 
 
 Presently her father trudged wearily 
 back, and came, like a broken man, into 
 the house and room. He spoke a few 
 words about the morrow : sighed as 
 he sat down. And they sat together 
 silently. 
 
 The day had changed to afternoon. 
 From Croisic port the fishing-boats with
 
 140 PASTORALS OF FRANCE. 
 
 spread sails, orange and brown-red, were 
 scudding round the pier's end to the live, 
 open sea. The bathers had bathed ; the 
 post had come from Saint-Nazaire and 
 far-away Nantes ; the dinner cloth was 
 laid on Buillore''s inn table; Jeanne, 
 Buillore"'s daughter, was making ready for 
 her father's dining-guests. And about 
 the farm, far from all this little life of 
 Croisic, shadows gathered, of the quiet 
 afternoon. The sun crept round to the 
 house-side ; glowed more tenderly on roof 
 and haystack and wide-stretching field. 
 No one came near, and no sound broke 
 the stillness ; the barn-door fowls crossed 
 the yard; the clock ticked very gently; 
 and the day wore on. 
 
 They had said nothing to each other 
 father and child. The old man knew
 
 YVONNE OF CROISIC. 141 
 
 nothing, imagined nothing, of Rohan's 
 visit. Even yesterday, the uneasy thought 
 of the stranger had been past, for him. 
 It was of quite other things that he was 
 brooding now, with worn eyes, now closed, 
 now open. 
 
 At last one cannot say why, save that 
 such times must have an end, and com- 
 mon life, the life of work and rest, be 
 lived out after all at last he looked up, 
 appealingly, to Yvonne, who rose with 
 him, and they went together, her head 
 touching his shoulder gently, to the 
 
 door. 
 
 " It is time to feed the cattle," said the 
 
 old man. 
 
 She understood that word, and, in a 
 deeper sense than he, all that it signified 
 of common task and lonely life resumed.
 
 142 PASTORALS OF FRANCE. 
 
 " It is time to feed the cattle." 
 
 " O#/, mon pere" 
 
 And that new death, and that dead 
 love, were both among the order of 
 accepted things.
 
 THE FOUR BELLS OF CHARTRES.
 
 THE FOUR BELLS OF CHARTRES, 
 
 STRANGER walking out from 
 Chartres, some Sunday, to the 
 upland village of Le Coudry 
 say, at the hour of mass or of vespers 
 would see indeed there, on the edge of 
 La Beauce, the typical church of rural 
 France, but hardly its typical priest. Say, 
 it is three o'clock on a Sunday afternoon. 
 The sacristan is in the church already. 
 That simple blue-bloused peasant, beadle 
 
 L
 
 146 PASTORALS OF FRANCE. 
 
 and sexton in one, and doing on week- 
 days the duties of serving-man at a small 
 country-house some three or four miles 
 away, pulls the church-bell on Sunday to 
 summon the people by all their paths of 
 the plain, from scattered farms, rare way- 
 side cottages, and distant village street, 
 hidden in a hollow out of sight. The 
 church itself stands alone at the top of 
 the ascent from the valley of the Eure 
 plain solid grey stone walls, and square 
 tower, slate-roofed, set against the breezy 
 sky. Below it, on one hand, looking 
 towards Chartres, the road runs down, 
 by little orchard and patches of poorish 
 vine, to the valley with its green riverside 
 meadows, its cattle-sheds, its rows of 
 poplars along the bank of the stream. 
 And beyond the valley there rises a hill-
 
 THE FOUR BELLS OF CHARTRES. 147 
 
 side again, and the towers of Chartres 
 cap the summit. But, on the other hand, 
 looking south, and away from the valley 
 and Chartres, it is plain, it is table-land, 
 that extends to the far horizon. Just 
 round the church itself there is the little 
 close-walled churchyard, with its black 
 wood crosses among the unequal grass ; 
 and across the road, opposite the church's 
 tower, one large old oak all that the 
 country-side can boast of oak-trees lifts 
 itself above the brushwood of road-edge 
 and low growth of scanty copse. Further 
 away it is all plain and sky. 
 
 Slowly somehow the bell's one clear 
 monotonous strike brings the people from 
 the hidden village street, or from unsus- 
 pected homes lost somewhere to the eye 
 in the wide expanse of clover and corn- 
 
 E 2
 
 148 PASTORALS OF FRANCE. 
 
 field now low and bare with autumn. 
 These white-capped brown-gowned pea- 
 sants trudge by twos and threes along the 
 open field-paths : their slow gathering 
 from many sides all tending to the church. 
 Books in hand, they stand exchanging few 
 and quiet words at the church's gate, or 
 loiter about the small graveyard, waiting 
 for the Cure. A flapping of long black 
 raiment is seen at the turn of the high- 
 road. The Cure, a little late, strides 
 actively forwards, from background to 
 middle distance ; he is now a foreground 
 figure, and now has passed through gate 
 and churchyard into the small sacristy. 
 The scanty company is gathered by this 
 time in the church, and three of the blue- 
 bloused peasant proprietors of France go 
 from church to sacristy, and emerge in
 
 THE FOUR BELLS OF CHARTRES. 149 
 
 church again, peasants no longer, but 
 lay clerks, white-surpliced singing men. 
 
 Half an hour passes the service has 
 taken its course. The priest has said his 
 share by the altar, decked out in bravery 
 contrasting with the bare and white- 
 washed walls. The singing men, on their 
 low platform or dais placed out in the 
 middle of the chancel and between the 
 altar and the grouped village worshippers, 
 have made strange discords. The grouped 
 villagers on the rough pine benches have 
 sat and knelt and risen. The Cure" has 
 gone into the pulpit for the last string of 
 " Ave Marias" with the beads, and the 
 stranger can watch his face closely now, 
 as the old country priest leans forward 
 with repeated phrase, to which the people 
 answer. You catch not always, unless
 
 150 PASTORALS OF FRANCE. 
 
 you are familiar, every word; but here 
 and there, in the quick utterance, " benie 
 parmi toutes les femmes .... et Je*sus, 
 le fruit de vos entrailles." Clearly the 
 last words are rung out for the twentieth 
 time as for the first another bead, closed 
 eyes, and " Jesus, le fruit de vos en- 
 trailles." 
 
 The Cure* is seventy-four; he is hale, 
 serviceable, yet abstracted and sad. His 
 accent, when you have caught it, in the 
 native French, is not that of the priest 
 but just removed from peasant, who 
 ministers often in the country churches 
 of France. And his people are all pea- 
 sants, though some of them, with only a 
 peasant's knowledge and a peasant's life, 
 own wide enough fields aye, and coupons 
 of the Three per Cents to boot. Between
 
 THE FOUR BELLS OF CHARTRES. 151 
 
 them and him there is a wide, marked 
 difference. Nay, between him and them 
 there is seemingly nothing in common, 
 except what years of association must 
 needs have wrought ; nothing in common, 
 save for the somewhat fatherly relation 
 which nineteen years have given him to 
 the scattered people the quickly ageing 
 peasants who were almost young when he 
 knew them first; the young who were 
 children when he began his monotonous 
 tranquil service of nineteen years in that 
 one country-side. 
 
 What has his life been? He is per- 
 haps as simple as they ; but why on these 
 rough faces, the everyday village sim- 
 plicity at best slowness of apprehension, 
 regularity of handwork, paucity of ex- 
 perience and on his the sign of far other
 
 152 PASTORALS OF FRANCE. 
 
 memories, of a life not absorbed in the 
 main in the task work of village service, 
 whether his own of the church or theirs 
 of the farm and fields ? In that place, 
 certainly a mystery of a face. Physically 
 healthy, mentally tranquil, perhaps not 
 uncheerful, as cheerfulness goes but 
 certainly saddened. A face with the mixed 
 expression of deep natures in age, or in the 
 experience which may stand for age. 
 
 You cannot solve the question by a 
 ten minutes' gaze the chance look per- 
 haps, after all, of chance moments in the 
 pulpit. Or, as there are saintly men still, 
 such faces may yet come without personal 
 trouble come of compassionate brooding 
 over poor lives and fatal errors of the 
 many, unveiled to one more than another, 
 felt by one more than another, and,
 
 THE FOUR BELLS OF CHARTRES. 153 
 
 under all the quiet, not quite absent, per- 
 haps, even from these far-away fields of the 
 upland plain. You do not know. 
 
 And so he comes down from the pulpit, 
 his "Aves!" done, and blessings given. 
 Three white-robed singing men that were 
 peasants pass out into the sacristy : three 
 peasants that were singing men come 
 back again into the church. Slowly the 
 people disperse. A little more chatting 
 in the churchyard, and looking at the 
 sky, and prophecies of storm to-morrow 
 storm brooding now in the far south 
 and then the landscape of the plain is 
 enlivened again by the home-trudging 
 peasantry. White caps, blue blouses, dis- 
 appear behind low roofs of straggling 
 farm and cattle-shed; turn this and that 
 way, are smaller, are lost, leaving the
 
 154 PASTORALS OF FRANCE. 
 
 great plain all barren of life once more, 
 as far as eye can see. 
 
 The Cure" has something to keep him 
 awhile in the sacristy; the sacristan is 
 closeted with him question perhaps of 
 baptism or burial. At last both emerge. 
 A pleasant parting word and smile and 
 wave of hand from village priest to 
 labourer, and the humbler has lunged 
 forward on his way. The old man will 
 quickly follow. For him too a look at 
 the sky from that upland place whence 
 the sky is so vast that it must be varied 
 too ; a look also at the graveyard, which 
 is name and date to our chance stranger 
 name and date, and nothing beyond but 
 which, to the old furrow-facod man 
 now raising his stick as a first gesture 
 of departure, is full of histories he has
 
 THE FOUR BELLS OF CHARTRES. 155 
 
 known, and is familiar with, this day. 
 Then a step forward the gate is closed 
 the tall figure age has hardly bent is out 
 upon the road. The long black raiment 
 is flapping in the wind, as he marches too 
 to his unperceived home, somewhere 
 amidst the silence of the plain. And now 
 there is no figure anywhere. And 
 with the strange stillness save for the 
 motion of the wind a reserve and 
 reticence which are those of a wide 
 country only, are over these fields of the 
 Beauce. Bare, dull, and blind, they have 
 nothing to tell the stranger of the Past ; 
 nothing of the Future. 
 
 Five years ago, the old Cure, who 
 seems, as he strides home on Sunday 
 afternoon, so much a part of that land-
 
 156 PASTORALS OF FRANCE. 
 
 / 
 
 scape and its loneliness five years ago, 
 he with whom even short travel was an 
 event, had an unusual absence, and he 
 did not return alone. The village had 
 heard, through the gossip of his old 
 serving-woman, that his little house, when 
 he came back, would have a third inmate. 
 His niece was coming to him from her 
 convent school. 
 
 To Monsieur Devallet, the old Cure him- 
 self, the news, when he got it in Paris, was 
 a surprise and a pleasant one. Clementine 
 was the child of his brother ; she was one 
 of only two relations now remaining to 
 a man who had lived his lonely life long 
 enough to hear of rather than to see gap 
 after gap in the family. The Curb's brother 
 had been dead some years already, and 
 the brother's child was placed in the
 
 THE FOUR BELLS OF CHARTRES. 157 
 
 convent school in Paris ; visited there 
 rarely by the old priest, and by his only 
 other actual kinswoman, a sister, settled 
 at Orleans since half a lifetime. The 
 village priest, Monsieur Devallet, was both 
 uncle and guardian of the girl; and his 
 guardianship in those early years of the 
 girl's life was best exercised, he thought, 
 by leaving her very much undisturbed to 
 her school work and to the influence of 
 women to whom the best in France often 
 confide their daughters. In this view, 
 the choice for Clementine for schooling 
 was a choice of convents after all ; and no 
 teaching sisterhood had so high a fame as 
 that of the " Sacred Heart." Its houses 
 were all over France. Its rule was strict, 
 but its teaching excellent. And no house 
 of the sisterhood was deemed quite equal
 
 158 PASTORALS OF FRANCE. 
 
 to that in the middle of old Paris, in the 
 Faubourg St. Germain. Thither then 
 Clementine had been sent when a child, at 
 the death cf her father. Thence the old 
 village priest had fetched her when school- 
 ing was over. 
 
 The absence of any life in common, for 
 a couple of score of years the entire 
 division of interests which that entails 
 had made the Curb's sister at Orleans 
 gradually of less and less account to him. 
 They had rare brief interviews : visits now 
 and then which had got to be things of 
 convention, and times when both hid from 
 themselves the knowledge that joy and 
 affection were played at more than felt 
 between them; played at with excellent 
 will indeed, and the best of unrecognised 
 intentions, but still at heart it was make-
 
 THE FOUR BELLS OF CHARTRES. 159 
 
 believe. Common interests were wanting 
 to them. The old priest led his simple 
 life of service in church and visit in 
 cottage and farm, in that secluded upland 
 village of La Beauce. Madame Beaumarie, 
 in the petty bustle of a provincial town, 
 nattered herself that she led Society. 
 The small aristocracy of Orleans was her 
 world ; and it was a world that recognised 
 no importance in any other. 
 
 Often and often had the Cure" pondered 
 as in past years he had taken the accus- 
 tomed solitary walks by clover-field, cab- 
 bage-field, and patches of upland vine- 
 yard, on what might be the life in store 
 for the child of his brother ; and it may be 
 he had been led to that pondering by some 
 instinctive undefined perception that here, 
 with this girl, yet well-nigh a stranger to
 
 160 PASTORALS OF FRANCE. 
 
 him, lay his one chance of companionship 
 that might still be a delight. He was 
 getting old when he first pondered it; hale, 
 but feeling some progress of the years. 
 Alone so much with Nature, the trite 
 enough thought was somehow solemnly 
 borne to him his life had none of the 
 permanence of the fields. "What were his 
 own later years to be the later still, and 
 the last ? All these village people were 
 in some sense distant from him. Friend- 
 liness, respect, had always been between 
 them : hardly love. He was not a model 
 priest, to his own thinking, though only 
 blamed by himself. What he lacked, per- 
 haps and recognised he lacked, now in 
 these later years was impulse, enthusiasm 
 for his .career. A certain element of 
 routine and mechanism and monotony
 
 THE FOUR BELLS OF CHARTRES. 161 
 
 mixed itself with all the honesty of his 
 work. The work was well, and the life 
 blameless ; but was either or both enough ? 
 The haunting thought of a vocation some- 
 where missed, a greater happiness some- 
 where eluded, pursued him now and 
 again in that repeated labour and service 
 among the simple people in the wide and 
 silent fields. 
 
 All this while, Clementine was preparing 
 for her life, by months and even years 
 of an existence hardly less regular than 
 his own. The early morning studies, the 
 lessons steadily given by the skilled in 
 languages and music, the friendships 
 made and cherished in the scanty hours 
 of ordered leisure, the walks in the great 
 high-walled garden which Paris holds in 
 its very heart without suspecting it 
 
 M
 
 i6z PASTORALS OF FRANCE. 
 
 these things in their habitual interchange 
 filled Clementine's days ; but the great 
 Future was still coming, and we all in our 
 youth look forward to To-morrow, with 
 the thought that it must be brighter than 
 Yesterday. 
 
 One of two things Clementine might 
 do, thought the Cure, when schooling 
 should be over : one of two things, hardly 
 of three. His brief interviews with the 
 girl had made him already fond of her. 
 To be too fond of her, to seriously fix his 
 thoughts upon her, ere she made her 
 important choice that had seemed to him 
 a thing he was bound to guard against. 
 She could hardly be his companion, in 
 that lonely village and secluded life. 
 Practically the choice was small. A 
 sojourn, shorter or longer, with Madame
 
 THE FOUR BELLS OF CHARTRES. 163 
 
 Beaumarie at Orleans, and then marriage, 
 ordered as wisely as might be, and in the 
 selection of husband he must have himself 
 some share that or the discovery, true or 
 false, of " vocation," as vocation is con- 
 sidered within convent walls ; the choice, 
 not for the world, but for the convent for 
 life. 
 
 The Cure knew very well that that last 
 was likely to be. As the time approached 
 for leaving, or at least for decision, 
 Clementine was a favourite with the 
 sisters of the Sacred Heart, and the Cure* 
 knew of influences that would be con- 
 stantly at work. The good Monsieur 
 Devallet was in spirit so little an ecclesias- 
 tic that he allowed himself at times to be 
 sorry for those influences. They existed, 
 and he allowed himself priest as he was 
 
 M 2
 
 i6 4 PASTORALS OF FRANCE. 
 
 to look them in the face, and at times 
 to wish them away. The old man went no 
 step in the track of the new Catholicism. 
 He took his freedom, conservative and 
 French, hardly knowing that he 
 took it ; and he did not want the con- 
 vent life for Clementine. Was she not 
 more fitted for the activities of the 
 world ? 
 
 And so, of the two courses, Clemen- 
 tine's going first to his sister might 
 possibly be the better. He would go 
 there himself then ; get to know her more 
 at that time ; and the brother and sister, 
 long divided, might find some common 
 ground in planning in the true French 
 fashion for the life and happiness of 
 Clementine. That at least was the 
 thought with which he chose to solace
 
 THE FOUR BELLS OF CHARTRES. 165 
 
 himself, after the last thus far of those 
 rare visits to the girl, which, rare indeed 
 as they were, more and more impressed 
 his imagination, and lived before him at his 
 lonely meals or in the daily walks along 
 the accustomed ways. 
 
 And so it was with a hesitation he 
 hardly allowed himself to recognise, that 
 he went for his last visit to the convent 
 school. Madame Beaumarie, his sister, 
 had gone there from Orleans a day or 
 two before, and both had agreed that 
 school-days were finally over. Madame 
 Beaumarie had written to her brother 
 that as yet there was no sign of a " voca- 
 tion ;" but perhaps a few months of the 
 life of Orleans some wayward fancy 
 perhaps not yet to be foreseen 
 might produce the momentary distaste
 
 166 PASTORALS OF FRANCE. 
 
 for our common ways which, under re- 
 ligious influence, may ripen into mysticism. 
 The world must be lived in very long 
 its spirit very thoroughly entered into 
 some one of its attractions found absorb- 
 ing before the convent ceases to be 
 a possible resource, and a girl's own 
 life has led her irrevocably beyond its 
 gates. 
 
 The old priest a comely black-draped 
 figure in a second-class carriage journeyed 
 up by the train, reading alternately his 
 breviary and some secular volume. Pre- 
 sently he was in the city, striding through 
 it, with here and there an inquiry of the 
 way, till he reached the portals of the 
 great house of the sisterhood. Then the 
 request to see his niece, the permission 
 asked for him in turn by a subordinate
 
 THE FOUR BELLS OF CHARTRES. 167 
 
 of one in authority, and he was led into 
 the large visiting-parlour, and presently 
 some gentle nun, with subdued gesture 
 and scant speech, came in with Clementine. 
 A. few words only and courteous bows of 
 departure, and the old man and the girl 
 were left alone. 
 
 It was pleasant to him to see her. She 
 reminded him of his brother, of whom he 
 had been fond, and of his brother's wife, 
 who had been beautiful and who had died 
 young. Clementine was perhaps not pre- 
 cisely beautiful; but she was brown- 
 cheeked, black-eyed, glossy-haired, splen- 
 didly healthy, and gay because she was 
 French. More than that, she was his 
 niece. To a man who is a father, a niece 
 may be a distant relation, but to a child- 
 less man she may be very near how near
 
 168 PASTORALS OF FRANCE. 
 
 will depend on whether he belongs to the 
 class whose first need it is to love them- 
 selves, or to the class whose first need it 
 is to love some other. 
 
 And so, with a tenderness in his face 
 that had some memories in it, and a 
 bright cheerfulness which his instinctive 
 sympathy with that bright young life 
 gave him, he kissed Clementine and talked 
 to her, and had no thought at the mo- 
 ment of the question he was going to 
 put to her, and of what depended on the 
 answer. She was full of talk herself 
 plain things made bright and pleasant by 
 the pleasantness of her ways ; and when 
 he did remember and think of himself, 
 he was in no hurry to stop her. But at 
 last, standing by the window and turning 
 his head round to face her fully, he said :
 
 THE FOUR BELLS OF CHARTRES. 169' 
 
 " Clementine, my child." 
 
 Evidently from Ms tone it was going to 
 be very serious. 
 
 " Mon oncle ?" she said lightly, waiting 
 for him to continue. 
 
 " Your aunt, Madame Beaumarie, has 
 doubtless told you, and indeed my own 
 letters have done so too, that the time 
 has come, Clementine, for a very grave 
 choice. You are going out into the world, 
 Clementine." 
 
 A certain secular air about her words 
 and ways the keen appreciative merri- 
 ment of her dark vivacious eyes had 
 told the old priest that Madame Beau- 
 marie had been right. Thus far there 
 was no sign of " a vocation." So, " You 
 are going out into the world," he said 
 again.
 
 170 PASTORALS OF FRANCE. 
 
 " It is what I have been longing for," 
 said Clementine ; and the old Curb's heart 
 fell within him as he thought of the 
 society of Orleans. He had so little 
 sympathy with amusements, with " plea- 
 sure," or with any other gaiety than 
 that which was natural and spontaneous. 
 
 " My sister, Madame Beaumarie," the 
 Cure" continued in all these years of 
 separated interests he had got to speak 
 of her somewhat distantly " will do her 
 kindest for you, Clementine. She will 
 make a home for you, where you will not 
 lack society. An old priest like myself 
 probably undervalues the uses of Society 
 I mean that which is general and 
 mixed. But your aunt is connected with 
 very good families there at Orleans, and 
 on the whole the arrangement will no
 
 THE FOUR BELLS OF CHARTRES. 171 
 
 doubt be a wise one. You are fortunate, 
 Clementine, having so few relations, to 
 find one who will be very kind to you, 
 and will concern herself with your in- 
 terests, and will " 
 
 He hesitated a moment. He had thought 
 it his duty to send the girl away in good 
 hope as to her new life. He had been 
 straining a point in praise of Madame 
 Beaumarie, but his niece stopped him. 
 
 " I don't think I should like her very 
 much," said Clementine quietly. She was 
 calmly recording an impression well 
 formed before to-day. 
 
 " Not like her very much ?" repeated 
 old Monsieur Devallet, a little puzzled 
 how to proceed. " Then a/ors, mon en- 
 fant, that is scarcely the mood in which 
 to leave the convent : scarcely the mood
 
 172 PASTORALS OF FRANCE. 
 
 is it, my child? in which to go to 
 her." 
 
 " Well, no 1" answered the girl. " I 
 am afraid it is not. But I am going to 
 you, if you please." 
 
 " Clementine !" said the old priest, in a 
 tone of half incredulous surprise. 
 
 " Yes," said the girl with unshaken 
 decision. She had thought before, when 
 she had considered her choice, that even 
 if she liked to go, it might be a worry or 
 a burden to him. She must then of course 
 have hesitated. She had known for her- 
 self before she had known for him, and 
 so until to-day she had been silent on her 
 choice. But to-day she felt instinctively 
 that he liked her already. He could soon 
 get very fond of her, she thought. And 
 she had her young French longing for
 
 THE FOUR BELLS OF CHARTRES. 173 
 
 quickly declared fondness, for demonstra- 
 tive affection; and her aunt, without it, 
 was repellent to her. 
 
 " I am a simple village cure*," said Mon- 
 sieur Devallet at length ; " very dull, very 
 lonely, and fast getting old." He looked 
 at her gently, and it was not within his 
 heart to urge any more. He took her 
 hand, and there was a silent minute. 
 " You shall come to me," he continued 
 in a changed voice; "free to go the 
 moment you may wish." And he was 
 silent again for a little while. " I am 
 very touched very touched, my child." 
 His voice shook a little with the gladness 
 of his heart. 
 
 Soon afterwards he left her. A few 
 days more and he would come back to 
 fetch her away. Meanwhile there were
 
 174 PASTORALS OF FRANCE. 
 
 preparations to make at Le Coudry 
 many things to be arranged in the small 
 house. As the convent gates closed be- 
 hind him, the old priest strode along the 
 pavement with quicker and more elastic 
 step. He was a little flushed at first at 
 the decision. What a new interest in 
 his life ! And what a sudden gift ! He 
 said a prayer to himself with more than 
 common devoutness with the vividness 
 of feelings stagnant no more. The 
 thought of the girl who was quite a child 
 to him, and of his henceforth different 
 days, and of the brightened house in the 
 village on La Beauce, filled his mind. He 
 passed, preoccupied, through the clatter 
 of Paris. 
 
 There were many things to prepare for 
 Clementine, besides the one guest room,
 
 THE FOUR BELLS OF CHARTRES. 175 
 
 little used hitherto, in the small house 
 with its walled garden, lost almost to 
 sight among the great farm buildings of 
 the village street the immense cattle- 
 sheds, the straw-covered bartons, the 
 pointed-roofed granaries in whose long 
 succession, close down the village street, 
 was crammed much of the produce of 
 those wide fields that stretched to the far 
 horizon. The convent dress had of course 
 to be laid aside those gawky slipping 
 aprons of brown stuff in which graceful- 
 ness can hardly be graceful. And a 
 Parisian dressmaker, worthy to drape 
 that pleasant figure of Clementine's, was 
 to make her her gowns, as many as she 
 chose. The selection was all the girl's, 
 but the work required time; and for a 
 week, when the Cure" went back to her
 
 t76 PASTORALS OF FRANCE. 
 
 from Le Coudry, priest and girl were 
 lodged, with a view to these preparations, 
 at an old hotel in the Rue de Vaugirard, 
 facing the Luxembourg. That is really 
 the girl's first taste of Paris, its move- 
 ment and freedom. The quaint third- 
 floor room, with windows looking on to 
 the street and the omnibus station and 
 the sentry-box of the Luxembourg, is a 
 delight to her. There is a sense to her 
 of companionship in the very noise of 
 Paris. The convent bedroom was one 
 unbroken stillness. The great garden, 
 generations old, shut it off from the pre- 
 sence of Paris. Here all night the un- 
 certain noises came and went under her 
 window, leaving her only pleasantly 
 wakeful with the easy excitements of 
 youth. Long afterwards, in that other
 
 THE FOUR BELLS OF CHARTRES. 177 
 
 quiet to which she was going the quiet 
 of the upland plain, and its nestling vil- 
 lage with the low sound of bellowing 
 cattle would she remember the Paris 
 night : the candles extinguished, the plea- 
 sant reflections of the street lamp shot 
 upon wall and bed, the lessening of 
 passing voices and feet, the slackening of 
 traffic, the first sleeps, and then the brief 
 waking, hardly less pleasant, when the 
 hour of return from thirty theatres had 
 sounded by the clock of the Luxembourg, 
 and for one half -hour omnibuses rumbled 
 and coupes flew, and all the clatter of the 
 city had a little sweet excitement for her 
 unaccustomed ears. Afterwards, the later 
 night the night of Paris. 
 
 And then the day, busy with the con- 
 genial business of spending and acquiring ! 
 
 N
 
 178 PASTORALS OF FRANCE. 
 
 It is quite a levee that she holds the 
 young queen of her own freedom newly 
 given in that third-floor bedroom. 
 Thither, up the wide high staircase of 
 the hotel, comes the servant with letter 
 already from some convent friend ; comes 
 the tripping dressmaker's girl, neat, 
 black-dressed, and unbonneted, with 
 attendant boy, with the wicker basket 
 that contains the gown ; comes the errand 
 man with bonnet-box ; comes respectfully 
 the laundress's apprentice with fine linen 
 and the washing bill; come one and all 
 who minister in their small way to Clemen- 
 tine's sense of new independence, and of 
 the activities of common life. The convent, 
 truly, was not the place for you, Clemen- 
 tine. These quick black eyes and bound- 
 ing pulses it is a secular temperament.
 
 THE FOUR BELLS OF CHARTRES. 179 
 
 But it is above all things variable ; for 
 now at home and settling into that quiet- 
 ness of life which no previous thought 
 could realise, Clementine is happy in the 
 visible happiness of the old priest. He 
 may idolise her soon, for he will perceive 
 her pleasure in the happiness she gives 
 him, and will not remember that vanity 
 may have its part in such pleasure ; for 
 to see the happiness of another grow 
 under the influence of your eyes and 
 words and company, is to have, at least, 
 whatever be your sacrifice or effort, the 
 flattering sense of power. 
 
 And Clementine, indeed, in that bare 
 country-side, peopled sparely with pea- 
 sants, was a unique thing. If the old 
 Cure" had himself had anything of vanity, 
 he would have been vain of her. A less 
 
 N 2
 
 i8o PASTORALS OF FRANCE. 
 
 simple affection would have cherished and 
 increased itself on the praise of others 
 bestowed on the girl as ours is wont to 
 do, so often. But old Monsieur Devallet, 
 as he trudged with his niece, in those 
 early days, past the purple patches of 
 clover and the blue-green of potato-field, 
 from which bent figures of the labourer- 
 folk rose to salute him, was quite without 
 regard of what might be said in her 
 praise. A long walk into Chartres, to 
 show once and again to Clementine the 
 glory of that country the immense and 
 towering cathedral church, whose distant 
 spires broke the horizon from every field 
 of La Beauce brought the girl into brief 
 contact with people of her own rank, 
 who looked and admired, and wondered 
 who the two might be Cure and girl.
 
 THE FOUR BELLS OF CHARTRES. 181 
 
 But no look or interest of any of them 
 was noticed by the stalwart priest, black- 
 robed, with flowing iron-grey hair, as he 
 strode, pleasantly busy with explanation 
 and answer, through cathedral aisle, or 
 city street, or along the great road over 
 the high plain. His life had been all too 
 simple for a score of years, for pride in 
 her. These petty natural vanities of our 
 gregarious life, in towns, in watering- 
 places, under the influence of men, are 
 somehow lost in that elemental life of 
 larger outlook, because of slower and 
 more tranquil thought, in the immense and 
 silent plains, under the infinite sky. 
 
 Poor Clementine ! with her interests, 
 her existence, now more confined than she 
 had deemed possible, and her pretty 
 dresses visible sign of it now out of
 
 x8i PASTORALS OF FRANCE. 
 
 place in the unchanged simplicities of the 
 wide fields. The second Sunday she put 
 them finally by ; locked them up in her box 
 with an undefined feeling of dullness the 
 first touch of reaction at the experience of 
 some change which has not brought with 
 it quite the expected pleasure. That day 
 she trudged along the high-road by the 
 Cure's side, in simple black plain black 
 stuff, plainly made. She might have been 
 a London shop-girl, or a Parisian actress 
 with some character to lose. We are to 
 picture her so dressed the lithe elastic 
 figure thus suitably arrayed during the 
 time, lesser or longer, when she takes her 
 daily walks, by many weathers, to cottage, 
 farm, or church, across the fields, along 
 the upland high-roads of La Beauce. 
 And Clementine, being sensitive and
 
 THE FOUR BELLS OF CHARTRES, 183 
 
 French, fitted herself in many ways besides 
 this small one, to a life of which it had been 
 difficult to realise, before, the remoteness 
 and seclusion. She had that young 
 womanly quality not all unselfish, as has 
 been said already of taking pleasure 
 wherever she gave it. And she gave it to 
 her uncle the Cur : perhaps to some of 
 the people besides, who praised, and at all 
 events liked her. But to enter at all 
 intimately into lives so firmly set as theirs 
 of La Beauce lives cast once as it were 
 in a common mould, and repeated without 
 change or variety that would have been 
 no easy business. Beyond pleasant words 
 and kindly thoughts, she and the peasants 
 could hardly get, unless, indeed, by lapse 
 of years ; and even long years count as 
 few to a peasantry little accustomed to
 
 184 PASTORALS OF FRANCE. 
 
 form impressions swiftly, and with all its 
 associations well defined and old, dating 
 from childhood, and with its slow life led 
 ever in sight of the permanence of Nature. 
 With all this, that young, changing, 
 quickly-touched life of hers could have 
 little to do. 
 
 But at first the country itself, of which 
 the spaciousness and freedom were a 
 delight the domesticities of that small 
 home where she had arranged a room to 
 her own bright taste the pleasure that 
 the old priest had in her, in hours of walk- 
 ing through the continuance of the fields, 
 or sitting by the cosiness of lamplight 
 over their evening meal with shutters 
 closed against the darkness of deserted 
 village street and far-stretching plain at 
 first these things in their very newness
 
 THE FOUR BELLS OF CHARTRES. 185 
 
 sufficed her; and she looked forward no 
 more than did the Cure (wrapt in the con- 
 tentment of the Present) at what might 
 be her life in later years, when the need 
 of some other life would surely declare 
 itself. So time went on. Monsieur 
 Devallet, in the tranquil occupation of his 
 village work, and the new happiness of 
 his leisure, thought of no other end than 
 that, still distant, perhaps, which the old 
 man would himself meet with a brave 
 patience his decrepitude and death his 
 later days, and his last. 
 
 Presently came letters from Madame 
 Beaumarie at Orleans. " 'The child will 
 tire of your society , my dear brother. That is 
 not all that she requires. That she fancies you 
 more than me^ I readily allow. Let us unite to 
 find her some home more suited to her than
 
 i86 PASTORALS OF FRANCE. 
 
 either yours or my own. Tou live, my dear 
 brother , in unusual isolation^ and we must con- 
 sider her future" 
 
 Sensible it sounded. " But there are 
 difficulties there are difficulties !" ejacu- 
 lated the Cur in under-breath. " I do 
 not see at all how this is to be done. My 
 child !" aloud " Do you tire of my 
 company ? You do not tire of your life 
 here, Clementine, mafille?" 
 
 She said " No " of course, and came to 
 him to lay her hand on his head, for he 
 was worried the letter had brought him 
 face to face for that moment with a 
 question he was wishing to shrink from 
 and she looked first her brightest at him, 
 and then tempered her voice in talk with 
 him in a dozen changeful and delight- 
 ful ways, with that immediate sensitive
 
 THE FOUR BELLS OF CHARTRES. 187 
 
 appreciation of the requirements of 
 moment and mood which makes a French 
 girl a comedian, and makes a comedian an 
 artist. So that it was pleasant to him to 
 think that all was well ; and time could 
 pass, and he could disregard the letter and 
 its warning. 
 
 The town of Chartres itself, only 
 a good walk's distance from Le Coudry, 
 of course had interest for the girl 
 the grey and vast cathredal round which 
 the black-winged birds sailed and settled 
 in the upper air; the narrow winding 
 streets from the Eure valley bringing one 
 at last to the great horse-shoe Place where 
 market-stalls and bustling peasantry and 
 townsfolk crowded on market days, and 
 where three grand houses, inns now, but 
 with the outside dignity of mansions
 
 i88 PASTORALS OF FRANCE. 
 
 under Louis Quatorze, faced each other 
 in that open breathing-space of the 
 town. The old Cure, with something 
 of the learning of a man who had 
 used studiously the leisure hours of a life 
 without distractions, could talk instruc- 
 tively on peculiarities of the work of 
 sculpture or of painted window ; but for 
 Clementine the cathedral was most in- 
 teresting when her thought of it was still 
 most vague. Its size and gloom gave it 
 its fascination to her, and the remem- 
 brance that a score of generations had 
 worshipped within those walls. All that 
 impressed the imagination of youth. And 
 Clementine had a keener zest for personal 
 experience than for the reception of 
 facts. 
 
 At length, in August, the quiet and
 
 THE FOUR BELLS OF CHARTRES. 189 
 
 narrow house at Le Coudry, shut in by 
 its walled garden from neighbouring bar- 
 ton, farm, and cattle-shed, had a new 
 visitor. The Cure had known only dis- 
 tantly before of the existence of a man 
 who looked to him just like five thousand 
 that might be met in Paris Adrien Ro- 
 quette, a youth to the Cure, who lacked 
 to the Cure" the charm of youth, along 
 with the interest of maturity. Madame 
 Beaumarie at Orleans had some slight 
 knowledge of him, since he had been there 
 once to see her. He was the son of a 
 warm friend of Clementine's father, and 
 was now a visitor at Chartres. A master 
 of his means, such as they were never 
 taken at disadvantage when taken un- 
 awares he annoyed M. Devallet with his 
 easy and voluble politeness. Along with
 
 igo PASTORALS OF FRANCE. 
 
 his smooth city face and fashionable gar- 
 ments, he seemed to bring the clatter of 
 the Boulevard into the quietude of the 
 upland village. Honestly, the Cure* would 
 have been glad to see him, if only for the 
 sake of his niece, had there been possibi- 
 lity of sympathy between them. But 
 between that slow grave man, weighted 
 and wise a little restricted perhaps by 
 the lonely monotonous years of his village 
 service and this quick chatterer of Paris 
 street and club, who came with news of 
 the theatres, with opinions of operas, with 
 rumour of cafe" and gossip of green-room, 
 how could there be much in common ? 
 
 And yet Adrien seemed a good-tem- 
 pered fellow, and it was right to be civil 
 to him, whatever might be the reason of 
 his visits. Besides he had been born,
 
 THE FOUR BELLS OF CHARTRES. igi 
 
 promptly discovered Clementine, with 
 some natural liking for beautiful things. 
 He might perhaps be selfish in his life, 
 but he was not altogether gross. And 
 he brought some element of youth into 
 Clementine's career of inexperienced lone- 
 liness. Again, he was really a good- 
 looking fellow, dressed carefully by Du- 
 sautoy, or Laurent Richard : a happy 
 work of Nature and Art in his small way, 
 and pleasanter therefore to Clementine 
 than to the Cure. 
 
 It was plain that in his love of beautiful 
 things he admired Clementine. He had 
 likewise admired in Paris the Concierge's 
 daughter, who was a painter's model, and 
 Madame Ruinart of the Varietes, and 
 Mademoiselle Adele of the Bois de Bou- 
 logne. All these admirations had come,
 
 192 PASTORALS OF FRANCE. 
 
 and had gone. Now when Clementine 
 herself should admire any one, it might 
 well be that the admiration would not be 
 exalted. Her nature, pleasantly secular, 
 did not tend to the ideal. But at all 
 events, with her, the thing would be 
 absorbing. She would love once, with 
 the youth of her spirit. 
 
 So they were dangerous, thought 
 the Cure" these visits in which much 
 might be looked, when little was said. 
 He began to blame himself. Presently, 
 Adrien Roquette opened his mind to Mon- 
 sieur Devallet. The girl was in the house 
 reading in the little room which had 
 been so pleasantly planned for her : the 
 nest from which, almost without knowing 
 it, she might some day be wishing to fly. 
 The old man, matins long ago said in the
 
 THE FOUR BELLS OF CHARTRES. 193 
 
 little upland chapel, was enjoying in quiet 
 his long morning's leisure. He is picking 
 leaves from his peach-trees on the wall 
 side ; the fruit is ripening well in the late 
 summer time, in the long day of sun. 
 The door in the garden wall opens, and 
 Adrien Roquette makes straight for the 
 the Cure". Old Monsieur Devallet is genial 
 to all men. He inspires confidence and 
 generally accords it. And though he 
 cannot like the young Parisian very much, 
 the young Parisian must needs at least 
 like him. There is a certain dignity with 
 sweetness and restraint, which a man 
 must be wholly bad not to like in another, 
 and wish for himself. And young Mon- 
 sieur Roquette, who is not slow to per- 
 ceive, takes the Cure*, as he takes the 
 niece, into the list of his admirations, 
 
 o
 
 194 PASTORALS OF FRANCE. 
 
 which began with Ruinart of the Varie'te's, 
 and ended until now with Adele of the 
 Bois. 
 
 And now the September sun of La 
 Beauce glows happily on garden, fruit, 
 and flower, of that secluded spot, as the 
 old thick-shoed Cure", turning from his 
 peach-trees, lifts his low broad hat in 
 courteous slowness to the young man as 
 he enters the garden. 
 
 " We shall be alone ?" asks the young 
 man, in a minute. 
 
 " Certainly. "We can certainly continue 
 to be," answers the old priest, accustomed 
 to confidences, but with a touch of 
 instinctive shrinking from the confidence 
 that is to come. 
 
 " I have paid you many visits," says the 
 young man respectfully, as venturing to
 
 THE FOUR BELLS OF CHARTRES. 195 
 
 chronicle a fact which may possibly be 
 significant. And then he pauses, waiting 
 the Curb's pleasure. 
 
 "I am an old man," replies Monsieur 
 Devallet, with a kindly smile, that is yet 
 not quite cheerful ; " and it is the first 
 time that a young gentleman of Paris is so 
 attentive to me." 
 
 He waits a minute, and both men have 
 now allowed themselves to put on their 
 hats again ; and the Cure" takes half-a- 
 dozen slow paces under the garden wall, 
 the young man following at his side. 
 
 "I have come to speak to you about 
 your niece," says Monsieur Roquette. 
 
 The Cure* has no look of surprise ; a 
 shade, perhaps, of realised disappointment. 
 It might perhaps not have come, this 
 dreaded request ; but he could not persuade 
 
 o 2
 
 i g6 PASTORALS OF FRANCE. 
 
 himself that it was wholly unexpected. 
 And Monsieur Koquette continues : 
 
 " My dear Sir, I am informed of 
 Mademoiselle Clementine's position, and 
 you are aware of mine. You are so 
 prudent a guardian that you would hardly 
 have allowed my calls thus far, if you 
 had intended to oppose my wishes. But 
 Mademoiselle Clementine's consent " 
 
 " Dear Sir," answered the Cure", " I 
 do not know anything about it. I do 
 know that I am in no hurry whatever to 
 get my niece married. It is a bad system, 
 a bad teaching, my dear Sir," he went on, 
 with an air of conviction, " that places 
 marriage before girls as the prize of life, 
 or as their inevitable fate. That is not 
 my teaching at all ; though, because I am 
 a patriot, I do say sometimes to these
 
 THE FOUR BELLS OF CHARTRES. 197 
 
 village people, ' My children, we must 
 give children to France.' ' 
 
 " For a respectable woman," said young 
 Monsieur Roquette, " I see nothing but 
 the convent or marriage." 
 
 " I do not make that restriction c for 
 a respectable woman,' because I do not 
 concern myself with any other," rejoined 
 the Cure". 
 
 The young man looked at him in 
 surprise. 
 
 " I do not mean that I am exclusive," 
 he added, " here in my village on La 
 Beauce. Faults we have, failings we 
 have we have sins. But I do not like 
 such expressions as a woman who is 
 { respectable,' ' a woman who is comme il 
 faut.' For me, every woman is respect- 
 able, because I respect womanhood; but
 
 igB PASTORALS OF FRANCE. 
 
 I am perhaps more fortunate than some 
 persons, in living in the midst of a 
 population that has kept the religious 
 sentiment." 
 
 " In Paris, we always think the country 
 is ideal," said the young man, wishing to 
 humour him. 
 
 But the Curb's face kept a certain 
 reticence an expression of mental se- 
 paration and he only answered slowly, 
 
 " Devils rise also out of the silence of 
 the fields." 
 
 " Do you happen to know," asked the 
 young man, now convinced that it was 
 better for the conversation to be narrowly 
 practical, " whether I am personally dis- 
 agreeable to Mademoiselle Clementine ?" 
 
 " Why do you wish to marry her ?" 
 retorted the Cure", parrying the question,
 
 THE FOUR BELLS OF CHARTRES. 199 
 
 after a minute's silence, in which he had 
 recalled to himself only too surely the 
 signs that Adrien counted for much with 
 Clementine already. 
 
 " There are several reasons," answered 
 the young man promptly. " I admire 
 her greatly." 
 
 " You are a young Parisian," remarked 
 the old priest, in a dry quietude of tone 
 which implied that that first reason could 
 hardly be sufficient. He had had many 
 opportunities of "admiring." 
 
 " You mean that Mademoiselle Cle"men- 
 tine has money at her disposal, and that 
 when I came here first I had only once 
 seen her, and that by chance and in Paris. 
 That is what you wish to hint, very 
 politely, and it is perfectly true. But I 
 admire Mademoiselle Clementine ex-
 
 200 PASTORALS OF FRANCE. 
 
 cessively. I think Mademoiselle a very 
 exquisite young girl, who in a year or two 
 of married life would become one of the 
 most delightful of young women of the 
 world. Her fortune, again, though not 
 large, is sufficient for me. And more 
 than that, it was my father who wished 
 me to marry her." 
 
 " How was that ?" said the Cure", be- 
 ginning to take an interest, against his 
 inclination. 
 
 " The money-business, in which I am, 
 was established by my father and you 
 know it was your late brother, my dear Sir, 
 the father of Mademoiselle Clementine 
 who helped him started him in it. My 
 father never forgot the obligations of 
 friendship ; and I, who am a Frenchman, 
 have desired not to forget the obligations
 
 THE FOUR BELLS OF CHARTRES. 201 
 
 of a son." How proper he looked when 
 he made his little speech, followed by a 
 silence that he meant should be ef- 
 fective ! 
 
 How should the Cure* deal with the 
 difficulty ? He did not like the man, and 
 had not the heart to discuss with him the 
 question. But in past times had such 
 a question arisen he would certainly have 
 applied himself to it. He would have 
 grappled with the difficulty. But there 
 was growing on him now, with his well- 
 nigh seventy years, that love of pro- 
 crastination which belongs to the old, who 
 have no time to procrastinate. So, after 
 pacing the garden two or three times 
 quietly, he looked up at the young man 
 with an air of relief, and said with an ex- 
 pression as of a thing satisfactorily settled
 
 202 PASTORALS OF FRANCE. 
 
 "Well, you have made me aware of 
 your intentions." 
 
 It was indeed sufficiently obvious that 
 the young man had done so. So he 
 waited for more to be vouchsafed. But 
 they were at the garden-gate. Arrived 
 there, a man less simple than old Mon- 
 sieur Devallet a man to whom the re- 
 sources of a man of the world came 
 constantly and not at rare moments 
 would have grasped the other's hand, 
 followed up the advantage of the first 
 procrastination, and sent the other away 
 cordially, with nothing promised, and 
 with the whole business to be begun 
 again. But the slow, steady, stalwart 
 Cure" was too simple for that. He was 
 willing after all to accept the initiative 
 of the delay. And he said as he opened
 
 THE FOUR BELLS OF CHARTRES. 203 
 
 the door in the garden -wall, " I shall 
 ask you to absent yourself for a month, 
 or thereabouts. I do not wish to be un- 
 courteous. But I am not ready I 
 really am not at all ready to say any- 
 thing more for the present. My niece is 
 very much to me. It is a responsibility. 
 I cannot be in any way hurried. Re- 
 member, Sir, there are many questions to 
 consider. You will understand that the 
 marriage of my niece must be the gravest 
 act of my later years. I must take time 
 even to meditate a refusal." 
 
 And the young man, perhaps with a 
 touch of dignified indifference, yet by no 
 means wholly false, walked briskly away 
 to Chartres, and the train for Paris. And 
 the old man, with his mind crossed by 
 the shadow of loss or disturbance, went
 
 204 PASTORALS OF FRANCE. 
 
 back to his garden peach-trees and to un- 
 easy leisure the pleasantness of leisure 
 being so wholly gone. 
 
 That was the beginning of September. 
 A whole month was to pass. And the 
 first evening, turning round from the 
 little piano newly installed in those 
 hitherto silent quarters, Clementine asked 
 him, Well, had he seen any one to-day ? 
 
 Of course he had seen some of his 
 village folk. He had stood for a quarter 
 of an hour out in the clover-fields, chat- 
 ting to the brown-faced kneeling peasant- 
 woman, who was cutting her apron full 
 of clover for the rabbits. The two- 
 wheeled cart from a near farm had pulled 
 up on the high-road by the solitary cross 
 upon the plains he had said a few words 
 to the driving farmer and his wife on the
 
 THE FOUR BELLS OF CHARTRES. 205 
 
 return from market. They had grumbled 
 at the town dues two sous for every 
 fowl the farmer took at the bottom of 
 the cart into the town of Chartres. But 
 that was not what Clementine meant. 
 And he knew it was not, though 
 doubtless she was not thinking of the 
 particular visit he had had. She had 
 been busy at the moment, and could 
 not have known of it ; and had she known, 
 her French girl's reticence, on things that 
 concern men, would have prevented her 
 from asking. 
 
 But as she had put the question very 
 simply, he was bound to tell her the 
 truth. If he did not do so, there would 
 be the beginning of secrets he must keep 
 from her things which she might not 
 share. He had had secrets all his life :
 
 o6 PASTORALS OF FRANCE. 
 
 as a priest lie was used to keep them. 
 But that gave perhaps only greater 
 strength to his desire that all his dealings 
 with Clementine should be open and plain 
 for her. Something of that thought 
 went through his mind as he pondered. 
 
 " Yes, I have seen la mere Marguery, 
 and Grossetete and his wife, and Quinet, 
 the blacksmith, down in the valley and 
 young Monsieur Roquette." 
 
 He looked at her closely, though not 
 too keenly, as he spoke. It was only 
 half a minute, but she blushed before 
 turning to the piano. Nothing was said ; 
 her very reticence told her story; and 
 as she struck the keyboard again, and 
 the notes of an intricate waltz of Chopin, 
 that nobody ever danced to, filled the little 
 room with its resonant music in which
 
 THE FOUR BELLS OF CHARTRES. 207 
 
 she made several mistakes the old man's 
 heart sunk within him. Simple as his life 
 had been, he had not lived his well-nigh 
 seventy years for nothing. The many 
 thoughts and the amassed experiences of 
 all that life gave him at times a certain 
 rapidity in insight which served him instead 
 of cleverness. He could never have made 
 a bargain, have become a merchant or a 
 diplomatist ; but in all those years of 
 country priesthood he had thought, re- 
 flected, judged; and in questions of the 
 human heart he saw to the end of the 
 thing. What he recognised now was, 
 that the man not being visibly bad, and 
 the girl being plainly fascinated, there was 
 only one end possible they must have 
 their way. 
 
 Remonstrance, opposition, compulsion
 
 2 o8 PASTORALS OF FRANCE. 
 
 even yes, indeed, there might be all 
 that; but how far all that would be from 
 his plan ! his plan that the girl, almost 
 a child to him, should love and trust him, 
 and that their will should be a will in 
 common. She should see with him, or 
 he with her. It did not perhaps so much 
 matter which, so that she gave him that 
 almost filial love which the lonely life had 
 craved for. 
 
 But there were her interests her in- 
 terests after all. These at least must be 
 guarded. He would urge upon her, reason 
 and thoughtfulness no claim of his own : 
 that was quite past: no word to recall 
 how if marriage came so soon she would 
 in great part be lost to him, after a time 
 that had been too brief yes, but a time 
 perhaps that could not happily have lasted.
 
 THE FOUR BELLS OF CHARTRES. 209 
 
 He got up from his one of the two 
 seats of state and comfort in his village 
 Curb's parlour the Louis Quatorze chairs, 
 with yellow velvet, faded almost to straw- 
 colour walked to the marqueterie bureau 
 at the other end of the room, back again 
 behind Clementine and the piano, as that 
 waltz of Chopin was jigging its cruel 
 triumph; so backwards and forwards a 
 turn or two, and then into the chair 
 again. He stretched his tight black-covered 
 legs, settled his elbows on the chair-arms, 
 joined the finger tips of his two hands to- 
 gether. 
 
 " Clementine -fillette .'" 
 
 It was over now, the music, and the swift 
 accurate hands brought down the lid of the 
 piano with a neat sharpness. There are 
 two ways of doing everything, even shut-
 
 210 PASTORALS OF FRANCE. 
 
 ting a piano, and Clementine's was the 
 pretty way ; and the girl had swung her- 
 self round her chair-seat, and now, while 
 she sat sideways to listen, her arms were 
 on the chair-back, and her head bent 
 forward above. So they faced each other, 
 priest and girl ; the girl simply waiting ; 
 the old Cure", with a touch of hesitation, 
 nervousness almost, about the lines of the 
 mouth. With a lonely life, and little 
 experience, as he thought, and advancing 
 years, he did not trust himself very 
 much, now that he had to face, not the 
 light Paris youth he was indifferent to, but 
 the girl who was nearly all to him. 
 
 " I have wondered sometimes, Cl&nen- 
 tine, whether, after all the companionship 
 of the convent, you could settle down 
 here, placidly and restf ully. "We are very
 
 THE FOUR BELLS OF CHARTRES. 211 
 
 fond of each other But I do not 
 
 think you can." 
 
 " Oh ! mon oncle /" 
 
 By way of deprecation and protest she 
 exclaimed it. But it was the first touch 
 of falseness : with kindness at the root 
 of it, she would fain have persuaded her- 
 self. But she knew it was something of 
 an acted lie with which she faced the 
 Cure. She would like to have turned 
 round to the piano again. A pressing 
 need of Chopin's music at her finger-tips 
 through all her mind and body and 
 a trying question shirked for the time. 
 
 " Monsieur Roquette was here to-day," 
 continued the Cure", who had sadly 
 registered the half -sincerity of " Oh ! mon 
 oncle!" "He was here to propose to me 
 that you should be his wife." 
 
 p 2
 
 212 PASTORALS OF FRANCE. 
 
 The Cure* now got up from his chair 
 and ceased to look at her ; paced the room 
 as before. 
 
 " We will not talk very much about it 
 to-night," he added. " I dare say, Cle- 
 mentine, you do not know your own 
 mind." 
 
 " No, mon oncle /" That was sincere at 
 all events, as well as dutiful. , It was 
 sincere and grave. 
 
 " I have thought lately, in observing 
 you, I have perhaps allowed you too much 
 liberty." She and Monsieur Roquette had 
 been alone together for fourteen minutes ; 
 but in the eyes of a man of ancient 
 fashions, that may be "too much liberty." 
 " You have seen in one way or another 
 something of this young man, and of him 
 only. I ought perhaps to reproach my-
 
 THE FOUR BELLS OF CHARTRES. 213 
 
 self for permitting customs which are 
 unhealthy. In general society, in ' the 
 great world,' it might be different. If a 
 girl profits by choice at all and possibly 
 she does, our old French habits notwith- 
 standing it must be a sufficient choice. 
 .... This young man no, I will not 
 conceal it from you is not all that I 
 should wish. I ask myself, note it well, 
 Clementine, not * Does he love you ?' but 
 * Will he love you ?'....! daresay I 
 should be exacting on your behalf. 
 But, Clementine, you must yourself 
 be grave, not rash. You may leave 
 me, my dear child, at the first 
 moment, when it comes the true time 
 but you will not leave me lightly. They 
 tell me that in England they marry for 
 the Present. I do not know; but in
 
 a t4 PASTORALS OF FRANCE. 
 
 France we marry for the Future. I 
 would rather not say anything more to- 
 night." And he kissed her. Her eyes 
 were steadfast, grave, and brooding. 
 " Good-night, Clementine." 
 
 After that, he watched her behaviour 
 closely for a week, watched her dutiful, 
 quiet, pre-occupied, the early restless- 
 ness gone and that story which the 
 one look and one blush had told him, 
 was told him a hundred times. 
 
 So he sends for Monsieur K-oquette 
 sooner than he has meant to do. It is 
 found that there is nothing very visibly 
 against him. It is the middle of Septem- 
 ber, and the young man is here again 
 Bourse speculations left by him for a day 
 or two: manceuvrings of the "rise" and 
 " fall " confided to the hands of a sub-
 
 THE FOUR BELLS OF CHARTRBS. 215 
 
 stitute, and the young man willing, nay, 
 somewhat desirous, to renew his suit. 
 He fulfils his promise to his dead father ; 
 he possesses himself of money which will 
 make speculation more easy ; and he 
 marries a girl whom he knows, pretty 
 soon, as well as it is given to him to know 
 women. "What he knows is, that she is 
 graceful and good-natured, gentle and 
 bright. 
 
 She is very much in love with him 
 perhaps for want of some knowledge of a 
 better and it is soon all settled as he 
 wishes ; and the two, with the guardian 
 Cure", who, before many months, must 
 part with Clementine, trudge for a day or 
 two, during Adrien's stay at Le Coudry, 
 over the country and into the town of 
 Chartres. There are the sights to see
 
 216 PASTORALS OF FRANCE. 
 
 will not Monsieur Roquette see the great 
 enamels ? Leonard le Limosin's, in the 
 Church of Saint Pierre. Perhaps Monsieur 
 Roquette is not all that is admirable ; but 
 Clementine does not know it, for he seems 
 to promise the sympathy of youth. How 
 different now the house is the quiet 
 little house with his step in it ! How 
 cheerful to hear his voice in talk with the 
 Cure" at breakfast-time ! The knowledge 
 of his presence gives the village life, and 
 the dull plain becomes companionable. 
 And he himself how can he not be moved 
 by the ingenuous spectacle of her frank 
 friendship and prompt love ? 
 
 They have pleasant days together. 
 One day it is the day of a great pilgrimage 
 to the special chapel of Our Lady of 
 Chartres a side chapel in the immense
 
 THE FOUR BELLS OF CHARTRES. 217 
 
 cathedral: an altar raised in honour of 
 one who wrought, they say, wonders of 
 healing long ago. The faithful and the 
 curious flock in numbers so great that it 
 is a sight to see. They come, men, women, 
 children even, from all the scattered 
 villages of the immense upland ; and 
 peasants from the vineyards of La Brie, 
 that stretches beyond Paris, and from La 
 Perche, the orchard-country that lies to- 
 wards Normandy, and from La Sologne, the 
 marsh lands over the Loire by Orleans, 
 Gien and the South meet the corn 
 farmers of La Beauce under the great 
 church whose towers are sign and land- 
 mark to every villager of the plain. The 
 banner-hung streets are full of a great 
 procession. Children, women, monks of 
 many orders, the village priests, each with
 
 2i 8 PASTORALS OF FRANCE. 
 
 his following troop, the higher dignitaries, 
 Monseigneur himself these with banners 
 and blessings carry in triumph through 
 Chartres, the town's great relic, known 
 far and wide to Catholic France, the holy 
 vestment, la sainte tunique, which was once 
 the Virgin's own. 
 
 Even our old Cure* almost waxes 
 enthusiastic. "It is such a display of 
 faith," he says : " France has kept the 
 religious sentiment." There is expecta- 
 tion of Miracle. The sceptic may perhaps 
 be confounded, as at La Salette, and at 
 Lourdes, and at Paray-le-Monial. But 
 no ! The sceptic is convinced that it is 
 too near Paris : miracles may hardly 
 happen in the places to which a man 
 of science can take a return ticket and be 
 back by dinner-time.
 
 THE FOUR BELLS OF CHARTRES. 219 
 
 All the four bells of Chartres, and the 
 Bourdon to boot, have pealed their wel- 
 come to the pilgrims. What the bells are 
 these famous bells of an immense age 
 Clementine can tell to Adrien. They are 
 christened bells, all of them Anne, 
 Elisabeth, Fulbert, and Piat and each 
 has his own service. At a funeral of the 
 very poor, one thin sound rings out : it is 
 the humble Piat, two francs the charge 
 for him. Fulbert will cost you three; 
 Elisabeth six, for burial or marriage. 
 Anne is the greatest, and you may ring her 
 alone or in concert with one or two of the 
 others, or ring all together. Ringers and 
 fees are elaborately organised ; and rank, 
 consideration, eminence in Chartres, hang 
 somewhat on the bells you ask for, for 
 marriage or burial. Clementine, who did
 
 220 PASTORALS OF FRANCE. 
 
 not know, like her uncle, the changes 
 wrought in fourteenth century Gothic, and 
 was weak in her criticism of the sculptures 
 for which Chartres is famous, and won- 
 dered what was beautiful in the enamels 
 by the great man of Limoges, found a 
 touch of what seemed intimate associations 
 with many lives and various fortunes in 
 all that scheme duly printed on the back 
 of the church door for the ringing and 
 paying the four bells of Chartres. 
 
 One pleasant day more pleasant days 
 than one went by for the young. Cle'- 
 mentine was in love, yet the stir of the 
 pilgrimage gave a little new excitement to 
 that secular heart, which asked, almost 
 without knowing it, for life and the 
 world. Her uncle saw all that; recog- 
 nised it late, perhaps, when consent had
 
 THE FOUR BELLS OF CHARTRES. 221 
 
 been given to an union which could 
 hardly develope her feared how life would 
 be with her when the present sweetness 
 of hope was over, and no guiding hand 
 led that inexperience through difficult 
 ways. He began then to reproach him- 
 self : quietly, secretly, but almost bitterly. 
 He would like to have kept her to him- 
 self ; he should have sent her betimes into 
 the world, and then, surrounded by a 
 wise care, so slight a thing as Adrien 
 Roquette would have had no charm for 
 her. She had imagination, feeling, long- 
 ing no doubt for life less dull and experi- 
 ence more varied than that of the village 
 presbytery, the upland church, the village 
 and its farm-work, and the unbroken 
 plain. But why because of that the 
 Cure now asked himself with foreboding
 
 222 PASTORALS OF FRANCE. 
 
 ally herself with this weak thing ? a 
 something that you touch and break, a toy of 
 an hour, a gimcrack of the Palais Royal, 
 a thing of uselessness, an article de Paris ! 
 Once or twice this article de Paris felt 
 her charm, the charm at all events of her 
 face, when he came on it unawares. 
 Roquette arrived one day it was the first 
 of October at an unexpected hour, 
 meaning to pay a visit at Oiseme, oh some- 
 one whom he knew there, before walk- 
 ing south to Le Coudry. Oiseme is a 
 village not larger than Le Coudry, but quite 
 different, and there was one great house 
 in it : his friend's : a true maison de campagne, 
 with garden, terrace, and tall trees. It 
 was the first time that Roquette was at 
 Oiseme, and in that golden afternoon, 
 with summer lingering, he seemed to
 
 THE FOUR BELLS OF CHARTRES. 223 
 
 have fallen suddenly out of the bare up- 
 land on an enchanted land of garden and 
 stream. The little valley, into which by 
 almost unperceived degrees his steps had 
 brought him, had nothing to recall the 
 great bare plain of all that country. The 
 sun itself, which struck still strongly on 
 the unprotected upland, gleamed quietly 
 here as with a genial visitation, and passed 
 its level light through boughs and greenery 
 and over the clustered hayricks and brown 
 cottage roofs. A winding line of thin 
 slight lime-trees, hardly touched as yet 
 with autumn, edged the winding road, 
 and beyond them, by the path-side too, 
 a brook, now shallow with dryness of 
 weather, gurgled on its long low course 
 among the pebbles and weed flowers. 
 Three paths suddenly met where the tiny
 
 224 PASTORALS OF FRANCE. 
 
 valley was lowest, and there was nothing 
 seen around but the sun-touched tree 
 boughs, moved a little in the afternoon 
 breeze, and above them, and through 
 them, the calm sky. It was a very nest 
 of quietness and peace, and there was 
 Clementine discovered suddenly with 
 head bent over a small note-book, 
 as she sat on a felled tree trunk. 
 Walking thus far, she had stopped to 
 jot down, amateur fashion, the pic- 
 turesqueness of the rough village well, 
 with pent-house and bucket. She 
 sketched badly. But what did that 
 matter ? Even to Adrien Roquette, had 
 he not been her affianced lover, she would 
 have seemed most perfectly to fit the 
 scene, to emphasise and complete it. 
 The moment with its light and silence
 
 THE FOUR BELLS OF CHARTRES. 225 
 
 had a sweetness of its own, which could 
 hardly return again. It was one of those 
 benedictions thrown liberally on men, 
 whether they heed them or ignore. 
 
 Adrien, still fresh from the petty ex- 
 citements of Paris and the bustle of the 
 Bourse, had sentiment enough to be made 
 a little happier by so pleasant a moment. 
 He could still be attracted, and Clemen- 
 tine had never, he thought, looked so 
 delightful, for her face had flushed into 
 pleasure at seeing him, only after he had 
 had time to note already the immense calm 
 of her solitude. He was not the man 
 to value her, to lead her, to make the 
 most of her so various moods ; but all that 
 the unspoilt girlhood of France possesses 
 of tender and restrained, of " recueilli et 
 retenu" had been, before she recognised
 
 2*6 PASTORALS OF FRANCE. 
 
 him, in the placid contentment of her 
 eyes. And now the eyes, dark, with the 
 softness and abstraction of solitude not 
 quite gone out of them, looked at him 
 steadily, with the unapproachable candour 
 and directness of the very simple and the 
 very young. 
 
 With all his lightness and his flippancy 
 he was a lover of beautiful things, and, 
 moved rightly for the moment, he did 
 not make to her any conventional ex- 
 clamation of pleasure or surprise. For 
 a minute after she saw him, he said 
 nothing. Then, in a tone that was quite 
 happy, "What was I thinking of?" 
 
 She shook her head, smiling and 
 gratified how could she tell ? 
 
 " Vous etes bien douce" he said, with un- 
 wonted feeling. " Clementine, you are
 
 THE FOUR BELLS OF CHARTRES. 227 
 
 very sweet : you are more exquisite than I 
 thought." 
 
 If the two risen to their best moments 
 moments of shared happiness and plea- 
 sant things the best for such as they if 
 the two, risen to their best moments, could 
 but keep them ! 
 
 Then, one month afterwards, there was 
 the marriage; first at the Mairie of 
 Chartres, the civil marriage ; then at the 
 Cathedral, the ceremony and the blessing 
 - " Piat," " Fulbert," " Elisabeth," 
 " Anne," making their happy play high up 
 in the tower. 
 
 Clementine and the Cure" had never 
 been so much at one as in those last 
 weeks before the parting. The old man 
 took her more regularly then than before 
 
 Q 2
 
 228 PASTORALS OF FRANCE. 
 
 on many a round, in the autumn weather, 
 past fajrm and clover-field and small 
 scanty orchard that held its head up, 
 timidly it seemed, against the winds of the 
 plain. Afterwards there was the growing 
 dusk, the lamp Clementine lighted, the two 
 arm-chairs set face to face at the small 
 round table at dinner, the shuttered 
 room, the noise of heavy feet some home- 
 going peasant tramping down the village 
 road the wood-fire, when the October 
 evening freshened, the stray bits of 
 music, the game of piquet last of all, all 
 the simple and every-day companionship, 
 sweeter and more sweet as it drew on to- 
 wards its close. 
 
 They sat very silent the last night 
 before the wedding, after Adrien and his 
 friends, light of heart and civil and free
 
 THE FOUR BELLS OF CHARTRES. 229 
 
 of speech, had gone back to the inn in 
 the town. The old man would not per- 
 haps have felt the parting quite so keenly 
 had he in early life or middle life known 
 the daily pleasure of that intimate com- 
 panionship. He had only known the 
 lack of it. Now, of course, she would 
 come often to see him. She had 
 said so, and had meant it ; but all 
 these hopeful promises for the future 
 counted but for little with the old man. 
 People deceive themselves with the like 
 of them. He knew for himself that a 
 stage was passed : it was no use trying to 
 be persuaded that the altered circumstance 
 did not mean altered life, feelings perhaps 
 gradually and subtly estranged. 
 
 Having to rise so early to say his mass, 
 at seven o'clock, in the chapel by the high-
 
 23 o PASTORALS OF FRANCE. 
 
 road on the edge of the plain, Monsieur 
 Devallet was used to go to bed betimes. 
 At ten o'clock Clementine said good- 
 night, and his servant having gone before, 
 he followed a minute afterwards ; the 
 last, even then, of all the dwellers in that 
 village cluster of cottage and farm. But 
 this last night he did not go so quickly ; 
 and Clementine, undressing slowly, with 
 busy thoughts about the morrow nay, 
 not really undressing at all, but putting 
 on before the looking-glass a pretty gown 
 of twelve months ago in which she had 
 elected to be married wondered why 
 she had not heard, as usual, his step on 
 the stair; and after half an hour she 
 decided to go and summon him. Then 
 she heard him come upstairs, but for a 
 minute only, and then go down again.
 
 THE FOUR BELLS OF CHARTRES. 231 
 
 Soon afterwards she followed him. The 
 pretty gown was still on her, and might 
 wisely indeed be worn at the wedding, 
 for its rich simplicity was work of art that 
 could not pass out of fashion to-morrow. 
 With that she entered into the parlour. 
 
 When she had first gone upstairs to bed 
 he had paced up and down the little 
 room. His eye had fallen on the piano : 
 on the cards and card-box for their evening 
 game of piquet, which were allowed to lie 
 always on the corner of the mantel-shelf. 
 He had gone up to the piano and locked 
 it, for the first time since it had been in 
 the house. He had taken the cards and 
 card-box in his hand, and had gone up- 
 stairs, and there, in a little cabinet where 
 he kept chiefly such papers as were im- 
 portant to him a few old letters, and
 
 232 PASTORALS OF FRANCE. 
 
 letters of hers from the convent, and 
 certain family treasures which had been 
 untouched some forty years there he 
 locked up safely as if they were treasures 
 too card, card-box, piano key. 
 
 Then going downstairs again, at an 
 unwonted hour, he had taken from a 
 book-shelf his volume of Bossuet, and 
 seating himself gravely before the ash-white 
 logs now burnt thin and low indeed, but 
 enough for him to-night, he had drawn the 
 lamp to where it had been used to stand for 
 him alone, and had opened the book, and, 
 while Clementine before the mirror upstairs 
 was looking happily at her gown, had re- 
 sumed the solitary life which must needs at 
 all events return with the morrow. 
 
 Now the door opened Clementine ap- 
 peared. Yes, he was reading by the fire.
 
 THE FOUR BELLS OF CHARTRES. 233 
 
 " Remember to-morrow, mon oncle /" she ' 
 said cheerfully by way of a gentle re- 
 monstrance and surprise. " Will you not 
 go upstairs ?" 
 
 " I have" locked the piano," he said, 
 looking at her significantly, and rising. 
 
 " "Why ?" she asked, glancing quickly 
 round, and seeing that the mantel-shelf 
 was bare of cards and card-box in their 
 accustomed place. Without an answer 
 then, she saw his face, and understood. 
 She went up to him tenderly, and 
 took his hand. " Yes," she said, speak- 
 ing now slowly, in the one perfect tone of 
 all the pleasant ones of that changeful 
 voice : " you do love me very much." 
 
 There was a recognition that repaid him 
 in the tone. It was their last word that 
 night. And the morrow was the happy
 
 234 PASTORALS OF FRANCE. 
 
 day the day of the bustle of marriage. 
 
 Six months passed, and then she came 
 to him. Her husband was busy in Paris. 
 They were in an apartment in the Chauss^e 
 d'Antin, in the full movement of the 
 capital. Business and pleasure were more 
 and more engrossing. She saw little of 
 Adrien. The Cure* was begged to come 
 up to Paris but how could he doit? 
 to snatch a week from the country work, 
 and see a little of that bustling world of 
 the Paris of Finance restless action, life 
 busy with " rise" and " fall," happiness 
 hanging on a turn of the Bourse, money 
 made so as to purchase display, and dis- 
 play purchased to make more money. A 
 world in which steadier heads than Adrien 
 Roquette's are lost every morning.
 
 THE FOUR BELLS OF CHARTRES. 235 
 
 Six months more, and she was with him 
 again ; the autumn, that reminded him of 
 the parting, having again returned. She 
 looked older by three or four years ; spoke 
 little of " Monsieur Eoquette ;" talked 
 almost of return to Paris as if she were 
 tired of it. Was she at least happy now ? 
 " Oh yes," with half a heart. Could it be 
 that the Curb's sadness had had some- 
 thing prophetic in it ? Except in a moment 
 of selfish fondness, the mere parting 
 would not have been so mournful a thing. 
 Had he not divined what he could not 
 express, and felt what he could not per- 
 suade her that the marriage was like 
 Juliet's contract, "too rash, too unad- 
 vised, too sudden ?" He did not seek 
 now to press on her useless questions; if 
 there was anything still undefined, better
 
 236 PASTORALS OF FRANCE. 
 
 far not to define it. But he blamed him- 
 self constantly now for his whole 
 mistaken plan of a life for her. 
 
 Property of the girl's was suddenly 
 sold to meet demands on Adrien Roquette ; 
 business demands that must immediately 
 be satisfied. Clementine, made aware of 
 them, chose with her common prompti- 
 tude. The money should go to bring more 
 money back, though the husband was no 
 more to her what he was a year ago. 
 
 Monsieur Roquette now held, in his 
 distant intercourse with her, that none of 
 the expenses which perhaps had begun by 
 being pleasures could safely be curtailed 
 now that they were not pleasures, but ad- 
 vertisements. Every evening his wife 
 must be at the Opera; every afternoon 
 she was sent to drive in the Bois, and
 
 THE FOUR BELLS OF CHARTRES. 237 
 
 in a new carriage of Binder's, and behind 
 horses had over from Tattersall's. Older so 
 much, in one short year or two, she could 
 understand now that she was not leading a 
 life the life she wanted, of shared pleasure 
 but playing a part : an actress in a scene. 
 At last, ruin came, finding Clementine 
 stricken down with the commotion of the 
 house the old Cure* arriving to fetch her 
 away ; finding Adrien Roquette white 
 with disaster, talking of pistols and poison 
 to begin with, but settling down to every- 
 day manners, and finishing up with a 
 party of pleasure, while drawing-room 
 furniture was seized for debts. Cle*men- 
 tine journeyed with Monsieur Devallet to 
 Le Coudry. And Adrien tottered merrily 
 down the Boulevard in the evening. His 
 friends had promised that he should start
 
 238 PASTORALS OF FRANCE. 
 
 again, and, in Finance, he might lose two 
 fortunes, yet keep a third. 
 
 Again, for Clementine, alone and now 
 ill with the mental and physical trouble, 
 that her hard bright life in Paris has been 
 preparing for her again for her, so long 
 as she is strong enough to get to it, the 
 quietude, the silence of the plain. Sum- 
 mer now the long days when the steady 
 sun, the friend of all the peasants, shines 
 from morning till evening on the corn- 
 fields. Waggons and implements are 
 made ready for harvest. There are the 
 signs of coming activity in the village 
 street. The quiet presbytery again for 
 Clementine : the chair placed for her in the 
 garden. And the peaceful Sunday, when 
 the thin-voiced bell, pulled by the blue- 
 bloused sacristan in the upland chapel,
 
 THE FOUR BELLS OF CHARTRES. 239 
 
 calls the farm folk, the white-capped 
 peasantry, together, by all their paths of 
 the plain. The two-wheeled coburg, with 
 its time-worn dull black leather head, 
 makes its slow jogging way across the 
 immense table-land : the white geese, with 
 the goose-keeper, move slow straggling 
 over the fields. 
 
 Roquette sees Clementine hurriedly 
 yes, she is very ill. He manages to send 
 down, for half an hour, a famous man 
 from Paris, a physician, who examines 
 briefly, and gives directions, looks at his 
 watch and catches the next train: "cases " 
 as bad as Clementine's, and griefs more 
 important than the Cure's, waiting him in 
 Paris. 
 
 One day it is over. 
 
 She had said one night, in the weakness
 
 24 o PASTORALS OF FRANCE. 
 
 of just passing delirium, " Not the great 
 bell ! only Fulbert, which is next to the 
 paupers'." Strange fancy, the Cure* 
 guessed, a fancy that she lay at Chartres, 
 and must be buried there. That was soon 
 over. She recognised the Cure* later on, 
 and knew she was again in the familiar 
 village ; and held his hand in token of 
 great kindness of the one faithful love her 
 life had known. Death came to her gently. 
 Three days afterwards they buried 
 her the Cure and the sacristan and 
 the village folk and the husband from 
 Paris in the churchyard of Le Coudry, 
 opposite the big door to the west, by 
 which priest and sacristan, children and 
 
 farmer folk, go in on the Sunday. 
 ***** 
 
 After a second bankruptcy, Adrien
 
 THE FOUR BELLS OF CHARTRES. 241 
 
 Roquette, aided by Ms friends, did really 
 make a fortune rapidly. Then he came 
 down to Chartres, somewhat radiant 
 in his prosperity, when Clementine lay 
 quietly in the churchyard of Le Coudry. 
 " Yes, it was very terrible," he hastened to 
 say ; strange things had happened to him. 
 "What trouble he had had ! Who could 
 have foreseen it ? And poor Clementine ! 
 But in speculation you lose two fortunes, 
 you know, before you can keep a third. 
 
 And old Monsieur Devallet ? seventy- 
 four ; firm seemingly as years ago ; 
 flowing hair still iron grey ; lines softened 
 and saddened about the mouth, just so 
 the stranger sees him, who walks out 
 from Chartres some Sunday, as I said at 
 the beginning. The old Cure is carrying 
 still with him his lonely sorrow, which is 
 
 E
 
 242 PASTORALS OF FRANCE. 
 
 more than expiation ; and carrying it with 
 him to the end, whenever end may be. 
 There comes as yet no change nor break. 
 His days vary but with the seasons. The 
 prayer trudged to betimes in sunny 
 hours of the summer morning, or in the 
 snows of winter ; the visits to the hillside 
 farm, on very sick or very old ; baptism ; 
 burial ; the hours of reading the familiar 
 books ; the pacing of the narrow garden ; 
 all the permitted, the now possible 
 pleasure all the repeated task-work, un- 
 inspired and dull, of that quite solitary life. 
 Seventy-four ! 
 
 THE END.
 
 Second Edition, Is. Qd. 
 
 STUDIES IN ENGLISH ART. 
 
 FEEDEEICK WEDMOEE, 
 
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