Tales and Sketches.

New Zealand Mail, Issue 40, 28 October 1871, Page 16

Tales and Sketches.

MARIE OF YILLEFR AN CHE A TALE OE THE LATE WAR.

[By Miss Cross, in Macmillan’s Magazine.] It was a cold, snowy day when I went to see Marie : the villagers had their heads tied up in brilliant-colored hankerchiefs, contrasting pleasantly with the white snow, and they shuffled quickly over their errands in their clankiug sabots. There was a good deal of talk and laughter among them, but all the

faces looked pinched and cold. ‘ Where did Marie la Veuve live ?’ I asked. All knew, and all were willing to show me the way, for ‘ Marie was the village favorite,’ as one of the gossips explained to me : she kept a silent tongue in her head ; had been a good daughter, sister, and wife ; was helpful to those in trouble, and joyful with those who rejoiced ; but things were going badly with Marie, since the birth of her fatherless child, and there was no hope of peace, and these coqrdnsde Prussiens were eating up the land. When I entered Marie’s room, she was lying on her bed, white and still, with a little swaddled bundle beside her. ‘This is my baby,’ she whispered, setting upright the little stiff image. The baby opened its dark eyes, and looked at me with that entire want of speculation in its gaze common to its kind Marie said no more, but her face was as speaking in interest as her child’s was vacant; she took my hand, and' held it in both of hers. There was not silence in the room, however, for besides the bed stood the voluble little mother-in-law, tolling me all her symptoms ; how there was no milk for the little one, how feverish the mother was, what sleepless nights, what exhausting days. ‘ The doctor says it is because there is trouble on the mind. Of course there is trouble, with the husband dead, shot down before the eyes of his brother, on the heights above Sedan, on that fatal day of August 31st; of course there is trouble, with nothing to eat, and all the little saving going ; it is not all true, me mere V And the little old woman turned for corroboration to a bent figure sitting at the farther corner of the room, stretching out lean long fingers towards the glow from the little stove. ‘ Yes, yes,’ murmured this other, ‘it is the war, famine and fever that have done it all. I have just this and that,’ taking up the hern of her dress and petticoat, just this and that, all gone ; and then the smell of powder and blood !’ ‘ Never mind her,’ said the other to me apologetically, ‘ her mind is gone, but she is Marie’s mother, and in her day was the belle of the village. She married well, and had a farm of her own, plenty of linen, and three great lits monies. Marie was the only child -. there was another, a boy, humpbacked, and of weak intellect, who showed on love for any one but Marie, and her whole life was devoted to him until he died. My son never laughed at him as the other village lads did, but would spend long] 10 urs in amusing him, and the boy was never stubborn or wilful with Jacques. And then Marie married my son, and all the village said she might have done better ; but a man who is gentle with children is sure to be gentle with women, and a sou who is thoughtful for his mother is likely to make a good husband ; and so I told Marie; and to Jacques I said, “ Never leave off asking her until you get her and in the end he did win her. And now he has died fighting for his country, and I am proud and satisfied, though I am not happy.’ The brave little woman paused here to lift the corner of her apron to the dim old eyes. The door was now opened softly to admit a German soldier, one of those coquins de Prussiens, carrying an armful of small cut logs of wood. I had noticed him, as I came in, chopping them up in front of the door. He gave me a military salute as he passed on tiptoe to the little stove, where he began to replenish the dying flame, moving about silently and softly. There stood a saucepan of milk on the hearth, which the women were neglecting ; he moved it to a little distance from the fire, and, stirring it, saved it from being burnt. He then opened a cupboard, and drew out a little packet of cornflour which I had sent to Marie the previous day. Ah ! I had forgotton’ cried la belle mhre , quickly drying her eyes ; - she ought to have had that an hour ago. Go and get some water from the well, Heinrich, while I mix some in a cup.’ Heinrich reached her a cup and spoon from a shelf, and passed out as quietly as he had come in. He was a powerfully built man with a great head, set rather clumsily on square upright shoulders; there was a gentle dignity in his manners and a good resolute expression in his deep, grey eyes. One felt ho wase the reposeful element in that little household ; the women had taken the part of requisitioning the enemy, and making full use of his kindly helpfulness, while he the strong one, was being bullied, because of his strength, by the weak ones. ‘ Do you think there is danger,’ whispered la belle mhre, as she accompanied me to the door, ‘ having that great Prussian in the house, with Marie so young ?’ ‘ What, do you mean ?’ I asked astonished. ‘I don’t say that he is not all that is convenable , and Marie is entirely engrossed with her baby; mais apres ? How long is it to last ? I asked myself. When are these Germans to he sent away ? Marie is a good woman, and he is a good man, notwithstanding that he is our enemy. He lias, too, such a way of doing things for me before I ask him, seeming to divine all we want. My Jacques was always willing but not forethoughtful as this one is. I have nothing to complain of in Marie’s conduct ; she scolds him, and he never answers her back, and she sends him about and he always goes.’ _ , ‘ I don’t think you need anticipate anything, I said ; ‘ Marie’s baby is her great interest.’ ( If only he were like the rest of them, cruel and exacting, I should feel easier aud could complain,’ she muttered to herself as she reentered the cottage.

Some weeks after my return home from my visit, I went again to see Marie ; I had heard she has been getting on well, andl found her up, and much better, with a new and brighter expression on her face. Her mother had just been discusing the advisability of retiring to bed; she had tired of her coffee roasting, and knitting aud the afternoon was gloomy and cold. I helped the tottering old woman into an inner room, where in a sort of berth hollowed into the wall she lay down and soon fell asleep. While I was with her the German Heinrich came in, and went straight up to Marie. £ Why don’t you tell her P You can trust her, and she might help us.’ I knew he meant me. ‘ Speak, Marie,’ he went on, bending over her his great head, with the strong, short-cropped hair. He was all-powerful; Marie would have done anything for him, and he knew it, and she knew that he knew it; and yet he was pleading and tender, and gentler than she was. Her eyes had fallen under his gaze, and her lips pressed themselves together ; she had struck pettishly the great big hand that enclosed hers. It is only the strong and the great who are gentle ; it is the weak who strike out cruelly and recklessly to save themselves from falling. I came out from, the inner room, and sat down in the old mother’s chair, on the other side of the fire Heinrich came and stood before me, erect and resolute. ‘ Madame,’ he began, ‘ I love this Frenchwoman, Marie of Villefranclie, aud I wish to marry her ; but if we made our intentions known in the villiage, either she or I would be torn in pieces by the people, for at this hour there is no lore lost between the despoiled and the despoilers. In loving Marie I do not forget my country, nor does she renounce hers. I only find that love, when it comes, triumphs over all other feelings and considerations. Could you not speak to the cure for us, and get him to marry us privately ?’ ‘But,’ I interrupted, ‘surely it is too short a time since the death of Marie’s husband.’ ‘ I have been in the house for months and have to-day received marching orders,’ he put in. ‘ And ho has been everything to me, and done everything for me, and I cannot bear it any longer,’ added Marie, in her low pasionate voice. Then the big man knelt down, and kissed and stroked the pale hands that held with effort her baby’s weight. On my way home that evening, I called at the cure's house. I gave my name, and he came shuffling along the little garden walk, with sabots pulled over bis shoes, so as to open the gate to me himself. We bowed and scraped to one another, and remarked on the depth of the snow as we made our way to his sanctum. He motioned me to a chair, and drew a little mat in front of it for my feet; and with his snuff-box in his hand, and his head meekly bowed down, he listened to my tale. It was a difficult story to tell, and I stuttered and stammered over it, but the priest was all attention. ‘ That is all very right,’ he said, in a reassuring way, ‘ there are much more complicated cases than that in the village. And so you think they should marry,’ he went on, lifting his sleepy eyes to mine. ‘ Yes, indeed I do, and any little expense Marie may incur I shall most gladly ’ ‘ Of course, I understand,’ he interrupted waving his hand in a deprecating way. ‘ Poor Jacques, he could neither read nor write, but, as he said, that did not prevent him from serving his country. Well, we will try and arrange matters in a quiet way some time soon, and in the meanwhile Marie and this German must keep quiet and bide their time.’ And then I rose, and he, bowing low, put on his sabots again, and accompanied me to the garden gate. On the following day I called again at Marie’s cottage; she expected me, and had put the little coffee-pot on the stove, and had sent Heinrich out to get some new bread for me, talking of everything but the one subject nearest to her heart. She was looking charming, and was making a great effort to be energetic. I was being warmed by her hot coffee, and we were waiting for Heinrich, and the bread, when the outer door opened, and a great gust of cold wind swept through the narrow passage. Marie was holding a saucepan over the fire ; the pan shook and trembled, ' and I feared for the fate of the milk as Marie turned her eyes, so full of lustrous light, to the door. I was feeling a little shut out, and aggrieved about the probable loss of the milk destined for my cup, as I noticed Marie’s distraction, when—thud-thud came along the passage, and—thud-thud, echoed through the room. As I looked at her, I saw that suddenly the love-lit eyes waned and paled, and from her clenched white lips came an agonised shriek. She staggered forward, and fell into her husband’s arms. ‘Marie, mignonne e’est moi, re gardes ton Jacques,’ and he tried to lift up the blanched face to his. ‘ Ah! it was you who saved me,’ he "went on, turning and recognising me. ‘ How much I owe to you! Figure to yourself, my Marie, a party of five were brought from the field ; all had to undergo amputation, and I alone survived the surgeon’s knife. I thought it was all up with me, when I fell pierced by two balls, and with those riderless horses careering over me, and knew nothing more until I woke to find myself in an ambulance without my leg ; and now I walk with my head as high as any of those scelerats de Prussiens .’ I looked round bewildered, and saw Heinrich in the doorway ; he stood like one petrified, holding the loaf of bread listlessly in his hand; his face and form seemed to shrink, and all strength appeared to have left him; he ■ gave one despairing look at the bent head crowned with its glistening braids of black hair, and silently quitted the room.’ I laid Marie upon her bed, and watched beside it for many miserable hours, while she passed out of one fainting fit into another. It was a totally different home-coming to what poor Jacques had anticipated; he had meant it to be a triumphal entry—an unexpected,

unalloyed pleasure —instead of which it had only been a scene of consternation and distress. I returned home that evening with a very heavy heart; on the road I met Heinrich. ‘ I am going to try and get other quarters inside the town,’ he said to me as I came up to him. We walked together side by side, sadly and silently. A party of Prussians officers came riding joyously along the road ; they were returning from scouring the country, on the pretence of an alarm from Francs-Tireurs. AH were noisy, ruddy, and full of life ; they looked curiously at my companion as he returned their military salute. As we passed through the gates leading into the town, with all the bustle and confusion round us, he began abruptly to talk aloud bis inmost thoughts.

‘ And how my mother will grieve for me !’ he said. ‘ I have written to her from time to time, telling her about my love for Marie, and she has so well understood —she has all a man’s chivalry for women. At first she wrote, ‘Do not give your heart to a Frenchwoman, my sou,’ but in her last letter she said, ‘ When the war is over, and if your life is spared, bring Marie with her babe" and the two old women to our valley of the Wispertlial; the house is roomy, and with us there will be peace and plenty, and we shall together forget all that lias been,’ —and now,’ he went on, flinging up his arms, ‘it is all like some wild dream that is passed.’ ‘ You are a soldier ; you can fight,’ I said, feeling more pity for Marie. ‘Yes, I can do that,’ he said, laughing hoarsely. Some days afterwards I was in the doorway of a house opposite to that of Jacques, when my attention was attracted to a little crowd collected round his open door. Two Uhlans had come riding down the street, and stopped to join Heinrich, who was mounting his horse and bidding farewell to his hosts. Jacques held out his hand and gave Heinrich a kindly shake, for the wounded Frenchman could afford to be polite to his enemy; the old mother had come tottering into the light, and, while shading her eyes with her hand, was giving along earnest look at the departing guest. The bustling little mother-in-law was calling out her last farewell to Heinrich, who, though lie was one of the detested invaders, had proved himself a helpful and kindly inmate. Marie was standing with her baby in her arms at an upper window; she was full in the light, not partly hidden, as a girl might be, looking her last on the man she loves. She was gazing down with her Madonna face, full of a high purpose and a calm serenity; the war within her had been sharp and fierce, but the struggle was over, and she had accepted her fate as God had willed it. She had come forward into the window to bring peace and encouragement to Heinrich.

There was a divine tranquility about he 1 ’ whole bearing that struck him as he glanced up with a sad and disturbed face into the calm above liim; he looked again, long and earnestly, and the shadow of a great grief seemed to pass away, and the drawn, hollow lines about his face softened into repose.

The parting came. I stood and looked after the three figures, sitting square and upright on their powerful horses. As they passed out from the village street on to the straight highway, bordered with stately trees, whose frozen branches, entwining with one another, formed a trellised arch in long perspective, one heard the clank of the horses’ hoofs far up the road. Heinrich tnrned to give one last look, and then the three horsemen passed out of sight. Jaeques crossed the street, and caught sight of Marie, at the window. She smiled, and held up the laughing baby. Jacques’ face became radiant, as he stood leaning on his crutches, watching the mother and child, and then limped quickly back again into the house. Then Marie leant out for a moment, her whole face involuntarily changing as she looked for the last time into the misty distance, beginning perhaps to realise with something like despair the level dulness of her future daily life —it was a passionate farewell 100k —a helpless, wistful gaze; she was young and eager, with throbbing pulses and an aching heart, that revolted against the woman’s relentless will.

When the snow had melted, and the tender blades of grass had sprung out from the brown mould in the fields and hedges, and small buds had dotted the slender shoots of the trees, I went to bid farewell to the villagers of Yillefranclie.

I found Marie’s old mother sitting spinning outside the door, in the chequered sunlight. ‘ And so you too are going, and Heinrich has gone ; nothing is left —cent la guerre, c'est la guerre.’’ Within, Jacques was seated at a table, having a writing lesson ; Marie stood at his elbow, guiding liis pen. ‘ It is never too late to mend,’ said Jacques, as he rose to give me his chair. ‘ I ought to know how to write : I ought to have written to Marie when I was away. She has told me all. Ido not blame her; the fault was mine.’

I put into his hand a letter that I had just received from an unknown correspondent, announcing the death of Heinrich, who had been shot at Orleans. When he was dying he asked his doctor to write me a few lines : ‘he wishes you to know that he is at rest, Marie, and that his last prayer was for happiness for you and Jacques.’ Marie wept as she read the letter. Jacques drew her close to him, and sheltered the tearstained face. ‘ Marie,’ he said gently, c I sutler such pain, such constant knawing pain, that I sometime wish I too had been killed outright.’ Marie quickly raised her head: the hot tears ceased to flow.

‘ Ho, dear Jacques; no, it is much better as it is.’ I went out softly, I bade them no farewell; but as I left, I, too, like Heinrich, prayed that Marie and Jacques might be happy, with such M happiness as God gives to those who do not

question, nor struggle against destiny, but ■work and wait, earning that long rest which is the end of life.