Michelle and Little Jack

Chapter I

117m/ Michelle wanted a Locket. pg|Sl|N an evening early in May two i^Sj^J women were sitting by the side of a steep mountain path. They had descended from one pine forest and looked across a long narrow valley towards another. Rocky summits towered above the forests, glowing in the sunlight, and the more distant snowy peaks gleamed against a cloudless sky. The valley was in shadow, the fields so bright throughout the day with the verdure and the B Michelle. flowers of spring were dull and dark, and the village of Leste was silent. High among the hills the two women, a mother and her daughter, could descry small isolated fields ; and the level rays of the sun would strike some solitary farm-house with its tiny patch of level ground, perched upon crags that seemed inaccessible. They searched for first one and then another of these farms as they sat to rest.

The sound of water was in their ears, of many streams leaping down the hills to join the Gave, which, with its turbid rapid torrent, hurried away from the mountains to the peaceful plains and the distant sea. The elder woman was withered and decrepit. Her brown skin, puckered about the mouth and brow, was drawn tightly over projecting cheekbones. Her dark eyes were deeply sunk, and the red rims of eyelids, devoid of lashes, gave them a vicious gleam. She was much crippled by rheumatism, and, after the labour of dragging firewood from the forest above, she seemed unable to straighten her back and sit upright. An enormous bundle of wood was heaped up by her side, and the rope that tied it had passed in front of her forehead, over a pad which somewhat relieved the pressure. She wore what looked like a great sack, open on one side.

The closed end of the sack was pulled over her head, and the garment, which reached below her knees, formed a serviceable though an uncomely cover- Michelle. ing for one employed in rough work. As she sat, she smoked a short, black pipe ; and at intervals she would sniff and cast no very friendly glances at the pretty, well dressed peasant girl who had accompanied her throughout the expedition without taking any share in the labour it involved. The girl was intent on tracing out mountain paths and tracks and watching the upward stretch of dark shadow, and the rosy glow that began to suffuse the summits of the snow moun tains. She was unconscious of her mother's scrutiny, or indifferent to it, and yet it was not the beauty of the scene which engrossed her. The beauty of nature is indeed seldom a source of delight to the inhabitants of mountain regions and they do not watch it with the admiration that a traveller can afford to feel.

Their own personal interests are closely touched by these magic changes ; the sudden grand effect of cloud and storm will bring destruction to some distant scanty crop, reared with much care, and may change the fertile field to a stony desolation. Beneath the rain bow, whose soft colours gleam against the hill-side, the shepherd and his flock may be struggling in vain amidst the torrents that overwhelm them. The young girl, as she watched the shadows, thought of a small band of villagers who might be benighted among the mountains, and of the brothers whom she had not seen for two years. Her mother's words followed her own thoughts. "Can you see them, Michelle?" she asked. Michelle. 8 "No, mother, I see nothing." "Why do you keep on looking that " Because I thought I heard the tinkle of a bell."

" Surely, child, you do not suppose the contrabandists put bells on their mules. Why, it would tell the douaniers where they are. Ah, when I was your age I could have seen every foot of the road to Urdos, and every sheep that strayed upon it." Michelle looked towards the south, where all exit from the valley seemed barred by lofty mountains. The Gave emerges thence through a dark gorge, and a road, only to be detected by eyes that know where to seek it, is carried first on one side and then on the other hy Michelle wanted a Locket. 9 of the ravine, through tunnels and along galleries, until it reaches the Fort of Urdos, which guards the French side of the pass. Michelle, with a somewhat incredulous smile, turned to her mother and said : " I can see the road well enough in daylight, but when the shadows are as dark as they are now I cannot make it out, although I know exactly where it ought to be."

" Then I wouldn't give much for your eyes," was the curt rejoinder. There was silence for a few moments, and then Michelle resumed: "Do you think they will come home to-night, mother ?" " I think nothing about it. I shall know when I see them, and that is enough for me." Michelle. 10 " But don't you get frightened when they are away for so long, and in so much danger?" " Not I ; they will come sooner or later, and danger is everywhere — quite as much by the fireside as on the moun tain-tops. The passes are all open ; there has been no snow for a month, and they have only to keep out of the way of the douaniers and come home at their leisure." Michelle l'eddened as she said, " I think Cadet and Pierre might have hurried themselves. They knew I should be at home this week, and that I shan't have another holiday for a year.

It is the third time they have been away just when I hoped to see them." " Your brothers," retorted the old wo man, coldly, " have got something better Why Michelle wanted a Locket. 11 to do than neglect their work for a girl who neither cares for her home nor her friends." Michelle made no reply, and la mere Tourre continued : " Mark my words, you will repent not having taken my advice about Gaston." " Oh, mother, let us part good friends. I am in no hurry to be married ; I would rather wait a little longer, and if we wait something may turn up." " Turn up ; pray, what is there to turn up ? How is Gaston ever to have a sou to spare, much less eighty francs. He is only a shepherd, and has nothing in the world of his own." Michelle did not answer this question ; a deep blush suffused her face, and with some hesitation she said : Michelle.

"I don't see why I need have a gold chain and locket. I don't want it, and Gaston can't afford it. Look at you, you never wear yours, and you would be just as happy without it." La mere Tourre sat speechless with surprise ; she laid the pipe upon her knee and looked at Michelle with gather ing anger and contempt. "Not want it?" she broke forth, in a shrill voice ; " you don't want what every other married woman in Leste has got, and not only in Leste, but in the whole Aspe valley ? What folly is this, and where did you learn it ? Not from me, I'm sure. These are the new-fangled doctrines that M. le Cure" says will ruin France." " No, mother, they are not new-fangled, Why Michelle ivanted a Locket. 13 for Gaston says it is only in Leste that people lay so much stress upon a locket and chain.

At Bordeaux and Bayonne they are never thought of." " Oh, that's the way he tries to get out of it." "No, indeed, he does not try to get out of it. He would gladly give me the foolish things if he had got them. But why should he do what he thinks wrong to get me what I don't want?" "Gaston is in no hurry," said la mere Tourre, taking up her pipe and puffing at it sedulously. Michelle made no reply. La mere Tourre removed her pipe to say: " Gaston will think no more of a wo man he gets without any trouble than Michelle. another would do. I promise you he won't set much store by her." " Mother, I believe every good man would love a woman all the better if he knew that she cared more to please him than to please herself." The old woman snarled. " Don't talk like a fool ! Pray how should you know what men like?

I tell you, if they get a thing cheap they think little of it, and if you drop into Gaston's hand like a ripe pear, don't be surprised if he throws you on one side." Michelle started up with a sudden angry gesture, and the mother saw that she had gone too far, and was more likely to defeat her own object than to gain it. " There, there, child, sit down and talk sensibly. You make me so angry, I hardly know what I say. Is there any mother in Leste has done so much for a daughter as I have done for you ? Seven years you have lived at Oleron with nothing to do but carry about a baby, eat and drink of the best, and dress in your Sunday clothes every day in the week. Just think what hard work you would have had at home." "Yes, but I have always said I wouldn't do it." " Some one must do it. Where would the fuel come from if I did not drag it all from the forest ?"

Michelle reddened as she answered, " It makes my head ache. I can't do such work." "I never ask you, do I? I am used Michelle. 16 to it, and am quite satisfied if you will pick up the wood and leave me to drag it down the hill. Besides, you have come home for a holiday and to enjoy yourself." Michelle understood the covert re proach, and made no reply. " There are no holidays for me," resumed her mother. "Look at the piles of good strong house linen lying in the press. They are all for you. Through the long winter your old mother is never idle, she spins and weaves for you. All will be yours. You wrill have one third of the field when you marry, and your two cows. There are no finer in the whole valley than Bermeilhe and Arouyete. Gaston knows this, I can tell you. He looks well after them and after all that is yours.

Such a girl should not throw herself away." "Well, mother," replied Michelle, soft ened by the recapitulation of her pos sessions, " I am not ungrateful. I do what I can for you." " Yes, yes. I say nothing against you there — and I confess that I shall miss your wages terribly. But a mother likes to see her daughter settled, and there are many ways in which you can help me wherever you are. All I say is for your good. If Gaston can't get you a locket and chain before you are his wife, it is very little he will do after. Why, all the village would cry shame upon such a marriage, and so would your poor mother." The old woman rubbed her red eyes C Michelle. and sniffed ominously. Michelle took the hint, and said : " Don't cry, mother dear. You know I don't want to vex you just when I am going away."

" But I don't want you to go away. It is time for you to settle in your own home, and then when you are married, Pierre can marry and bring home Nanon, and I shall sit by the fire and knit and spin. I am sure my life has been hard enough, and it is time for me to have a little rest." Michelle made no direct answer. She looked away from her mother and said, as if to herself: "If I can't marry in the way I like, I'd rather not marry at all. I am very happy as I am." In/ Michelle wanted a Locket. 19 "Not marry!" almost shrieked the old woman, shaking her clenched hand, "not marry ! Why, your poor dear father and Gaston's father first thought of it when you were ten years old, and when Gaston drew the bad number at the con scription and had to go away and serve his time. And now your father, poor dear man, lost in the snow, is lying dead up there in the mountains, and Gaston's father dead too ; and you set yourself up against them.

You don't want to come home, your mother is not good enough for you." The mother's tears flowed in earnest this time, and she rocked herself back wards and forwards sobbing loudly. Now it so happened that Michelle had given but partial attention to her mother c2 Michelle. during the whole conversation. Her thoughts would wander away to the kindly bourgeois and his wife, with whom she had lived in service for seven years, and who treated her as their own child. They understood her better, she said to herself, loved her more truly, wrere kinder and more sympathetic than this, her own mother. Was this harsh, cruel woman, with her sharp temper and bitter tongue, was this really her mother ! The week Michelle had spent at home had seemed long and dreary. Her brothers and Gas ton were away, and she had felt the full force of her mother's tongue and temper.

She had even trembled to think that, if the brothers should die or leave the valley, her mother must live with her. Oh, what a home ! and it was just at Why Michelle ivanted a Locket. 21 this point that la mere Tourre's words seemed to answer her : " Your mother is not good enough for you !" With a sudden revulsion of feeling she rose, and throwing herself at her mother's knees she covered the withered hands with kisses and contrite tears. Shame and remorse overpowered her, but at last she sobbed : " Oh, mother, mother, I love you dearly." "Well, then, why don't you do as I tell you." "Listen, mother dear. Suppose Pierre and Cadet did not like to go to the mountains, you would not send them, would you, when you know it might be to their death." The mother did not answer. She thought Michelle's opposition had been Michelle. 22 overcome, and was mortified to discover her mistake.

"You wouldn't, mother, would you?" persisted Michelle, who had dried her tears and was looking up in the mother's face. " I hope I shouldn't be such a fool as you, any way," was the angry reply. Michelle mistook this answer for a concession, and urged : " Even if it was to get their living, you would not send them, much less to get you a thing you didn't really want." " There, child, hold your tongue, or you will make me say and do what I shall be sorry for. Your own father and your brothers, Gaston's father and every man in the village can make up a party, and go over the border and bring back a little tobacco and wine and what not, and earn a trifle when they want it. And you and Gaston set your selves up against us all, young and old." " It isn't that, indeed it isn't. I have told you so, mother.

Gaston has been a soldier, and a soldier must not do a taing for which he can be punished as a thief, or shot like a spy or a deserter." " Oh, that I should be the mother of such a monster !" shrieked the old wo man. " She calls her own father a thief, and her brothers that are over yonder and may be lying dead this very minute. They are thieves — thieves!" "You are cruel to me, mother. You know I didn't say that or think it, and I can see no harm in fetching the wine and tobacco. They buy it over yonder and sell it here, and it does no harm to Michelle. anyone that I know of ; but if Gaston doesn't like a thing, I can't and I won't make him do it to please me." Madame Tourre did not answer. She was moaning and rocking herself back wards and forwards. She was deaf to all Michelle's expostulations, and the poor girl broke down at any attempt to argue.

" Please yourself, please yourself," at length la mere Tourre muttered, " I shall soon be dead and gone. Take your own way." i-i With a weary sigh Michelle turned away. She would do and say no more ; her mood of relenting was over, and she relapsed into silence. The mother's sobs gradually subsided, and they sat once again watching the winding road and the high bridge over the Gave. The Gave, rushing noisily down its steep course, filled the valley with the murmur of waters ; but soon upon the fine clear air was borne the sound of the sioulot, the Pan's pipe, with which the mountaineer calls his goats, and then a voice, at first faint but growing stronger and stronger, was heard: " Pas tourelle, Pastourelle, viens done ! Christ ine, Amigote, Negrete — vite, vite, ici!" The voice and the words rang clearly across the narrow valley, and Michelle turned towards the sound with a smile.

She soon discovered the goatherd on an eminence among the rocky hills on the opposite side of the valley. He was bring ing his flock down from the mountains, and stood with the sioulot in one hand and in the other the long stout stick Michelle. which is both Alpenstock and rod of office. A magnificent Pyrenean dog stretched itself at his feet, and lying with muzzle between fore paws took no part in his master's efforts to recall the flock, which indeed was a detail that formed no part of his duty. He was there for real work with wolf or bear, and not for such nousense as running after goats or sheep. Moreover, they came in answer to their names and to the far reaching sound of the pipe. From upland pasture and over high crags head and horns would appear ; a goat would stand expectant, watch for a moment as if to make sure there was no mistake, and then in answer to its name leap from point to point of projecting stone, de scend the steep hill-side, and join the flock already clustering round the peasant and his dog.

There is always one missing member in every flock, and among the goats it was Berouyine. Berouyine was alternately reproached and affectionately called, whistled for, piped to, and it must be confessed very heartily cursed. At length she came with precipitate haste, as if to atone for past neglect, and the peasant looking round saw that his flock was complete. Then the dog rose slowly, shook himself, looked up in his master's face, and keep ing close to his side accompanied him to a steep narrow path. Man and dog commenced the descent followed by the goats. Michelle rose also and said : " I am going to Gaston." Michelle.

Chapter II

Gaston's Promise. HE maiden, who was born to the mountains, descended rapidly and lightly, untroubled by the steep path and rolling stones. She was absorbed in thought, or rather was doing her best to think — but the occupation was one to which she was not accustomed, and her demeanour showed traces of the agitation which it caused. She shook her head from time to time and stopped with a puzzled look, then resumed her walk with a somewhat more listless motion. She caught at the twigs as she passed a tree and snapped them off impatiently, throwing them aside with some petulance. How tiresome people were ! Why did they interfere so much ? What had anyone in the village to do with her and Gaston ? If only her father had been alive, she thought, it would have been different. He would have taken his own way and would not have heeded chatter and gossip.

When he said a thing it never seemed hard, for of course one must obey a parent. At this point it occurred to her that her mother was a parent, and obedience began to look not quite so easy. She and Gaston were to marry. That was the starting point of all her medita tions. His father and her own had Michelle. wished it for many years, and had defi nitely arranged the marriage three years previously, when Gaston returned to Leste after having served his time as a con script. They were to have been married at once, but Tourre and Plante had both met their death that spring in the moun tains, within a few months of each other. The marriage was postponed, and had since been deferred from time to time, although the engagement was looked upon as sacred and binding. Gaston was the last surviving child of his parents.

Two sisters died in infancy, and his brother Jean when he was twenty two, so that all the Plantes possessed would be Gaston's at his mother's death, and Gaston's wife would go home with him to the house in which his mother lived. Michelle had always liked Made lon, as Gaston's mother was called by young and old throughout the village. She was very sad, but " so kind and gentle," thought Michelle, "not like " But here she checked herself. She would not compare mothers, " that would be too wicked, when it is God who has given me my own. I suppose she must be good for me," she said to herself, with a sigh. Still there was no harm in thinking that Madelon was pleasant to live with, and that perhaps she would not always be so sad if her daughter-in-law But here Michelle stopped again. She shrank from the assumption of a position which was not yet her own, and was rather afraid of her future, although she was always fluttering around it.

Michelle. 32 Lying beneath her, aud at some dis tance from the village of Leste, was the large, gloomy Maison Plante. The rough hewn stone and solid masonry gave it an imposing external appearance. Within it was bare of comfort, and even of con venience. It had been for many genera tions the abode of peasants whose needs were amply supplied if they had a chair, a table, and a bed. The kitchen was shared by the poultry and a pig, the cows were stabled in the winter within the house. An upper room formed the granary, and the winter fodder was stored wherever it was convenient. To Michelle, however, her future home did not seem either poor or bare. " There is everything that one can want," she thought, with complacency. " Gaston has not much, but he has something ; with care there will be enough and to spare for us all."

She remembered the large press full of strong linen in her own home, which she and her mother had been spinning and weaving ever since she could remember. She had walked about Leste as a little child with a small spindle in her hand, and had known then that she was twist ing thread for the linen that was to be her marriage portion. " I shall not go to him with empty hands," she thought, with a smile : " No doubt the fathers were right. It will be a suitable match. There will be no money, but that is of no con sequence." Unfortunately at this point her eye was attracted by a sign affixed to a house showing that it was insured, D Michelle. and she remembered that there must be money to pay the insurance against hail — a most important point — and they must have wine, and coffee, and tobacco.

They must have money, that she saw. Her mother always wanted money. By-the way, what would her mother do without the wages she had hitherto given to her ? Michelle smiled, and thought she was very cunning when she said to her self: " Men always spend more money on themselves when there is a woman to work for them. Pierre and Cadet will contrive to bring home money when I am married." " When I am married !" She started as if the words had been spoken aloud. No doubt the time had come when she ought to consider her mother's wishes and Madelon's, and ar range for her return to Leste, and she could but acknowledge to herself that the principal, if not the only obstacle, was the betrothal. Gaston must give his bride the immemorial gold chain and locket. She thought this a right thing, her mother insisted that it was a primary condition of any marriage, and all the women in Leste agreed with her mother.

Gaston raised no objections, but he had no money. No one in Leste has any money, and therefore he was not peculiar in this respect ; but when he refused to join the village band of contrabandists who were about to cross the frontier, and to make his venture in Spanish produce, d Michelle. 36 and earn a share of the profits, he was looked upon not only as peculiar, but as very eccentric indeed. He had no money to trade with, but his uncle Bonza had offered to advance the wages which the contrabandists were willing to pay for his services and those of his mule and invest them in the venture, and thus he would have a pecuniary interest and position much higher than those of a mere porter. Each journey would increase his capital, and a single year might see him in possession of a hundred francs.

Mi chelle knew this, and knew that Gaston had refused his uncle's offer and her mother's request. In fact it was the difficulty around which her intellectual con sciousness had been playing freely enough, and long enough, and yet no light visited her. Gaston was a soldier, he was not afraid of the risk, and if he really wished to marry her, she thought he might over come his scruples. That is, she thought so at times, and at other times she thought differently. She had lived for some years in a large town, and had imbibed something of a belief that breaking the laws of one's country, and incurring a penalty, is dis creditable. When she was in Oleron she had one creed, but when she returned to Leste, home influence and village opinion made her waver and recur to the pre vailing view. " The contrabandists do no harm," she thought, " they have only to keep out of the way of the douaniers, and no harm will come to them.

Gaston ought to go with them. He is young Michelle. and active. No one is so familiar with the passes as he is. He has taken cattle to the summer pastures all his life, ex cept the five years of service. He could always keep the whole band out of danger. And yet what would people say in Oleron, if they knew she had married a smuggler ?" She remembered how strongly Gaston had expressed his determination never to have anything to do with the illicit adventures in which his neighbours were engaged. When he appealed to her, she was sure that he was right ; and when her mother blamed, she always warmly de fended him. But her mother and her village friends urged that his objection was a foolish fancy which would destroy her happiness. They said he was setting up his opinion against that of all the village and all his elders, even of his own father, who had crossed the Pyrenees with contraband articles for twenty years.

Michelle thought there was so much in this argument that she could not re fuse her assent. There certainly did seem a want of filial piety in thus ignoring the example of a good parent's life, and everyone said Gaston's father had been a good man and a kind father. " I wonder who it was that shot him and left him dying, alone up there by the Breche de Rolande ?" she said to herself. "All alone for three or four days, till death mercifully ended his sufferings." It was a terrible picture. Michelle shuddered as she thought of the long Michelle. and solemn procession to the village, of the widow's anguish, and the way in which she had clung to her only child. Gaston ought never to run such a risk, what should they do if they lost him also? No, he should not cross the frontier. She walked on with a resolute air, but faltered as she approached an overhanging bush, covered with clusters of buds of the dog-rose.

Already the white of the blossom was beginning to show be tween the opening capsule which had en closed it. Michelle thought of white bridal flowers, flowers that perhaps she would never wear. There would be no espousals for her. She would have to live at Oleron all her life, to nurse the children of other women, to carry large, heavy jars of water up interminable stairs, to get wrinkled, and old, and brown, and to wear shabby dark clothes. Oh ! it was hard, it was cruel ! Yes, her mother was right, Gaston was foolish, and she was a most unhappy girl ! By this time she had reached the high road which runs by the side of the noisy Gave, as it flows through the valley. Gaston, who had descended from the opposite hills, and been hidden by them, also emerged upon the high road, walking slowly along at the head of his goats, with Migou by his side.