The Yellow Book/Volume 3/Jeanne-Marie

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The Yellow Book

Jeanne-Marie by Leila Ellen Macdonald

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4542461The Yellow Book — Jeanne-MarieLeila Ellen Macdonald

Jeanne-Marie

By Leila Macdonald

I

Jeanne-Marie lived alone in the white cottage at the far end of the village street.

It was a long narrow street of tall houses, stretching each side of the white shining road, for two hundred yards or more. A street that was cool and shadeful even in the shadeless summer days, when the sun burned most hotly, when the broad roads dazzled between their avenues of plane-tree and poplar, and the mountains disappeared from the horizon in the blue haze of heat.

From her little garden Jeanne-Marie liked to look at the mountains each morning, and, when for two or three days following they were not to be seen, she would shake her head reproachfully, as at the failing of old friends.

"My boys, Jeanne-Marie is only thirty-seven," Bourdet the innkeeper said to his companions, as they sat, one May afternoon, smoking under the chestnut-trees in front of the café. They all looked up as he spoke, and watched Jeanne-Marie, as she walked slowly past them to her cottage.

"Bourdet has been paying court," said Leguillon, the fat, redfaced butcher, with a chuckle, as he puffed at his long pipe. "You see, he is anxious we should think her of an age suitable, before he tells us the betrothals are arranged."

"For my part I should give many congratulations," said the village postman and tobacconist, gruffly. "Jeanne-Marie is worth any of our girls of the village, with their bright dresses and silly giggles."

Bourdet laughed. "You shall come to the wedding, my friends," he said, with a wink and a nod of the head to the retreating figure; "and since our friend Minaud there finds the girls so distasteful, he shall wait till our babies are old enough, and be betrothed to one of them."

The postmaster laughed with the rest. "But seriously," he said, "Bourdet will pardon me if I tell him our Jeanne-Marie is a good deal past the thirties."

Laurent, the good-looking young farmer, who stood leaning against the tree round which their chairs were gathered, answered him gravely. "Wait, beau-pѐre, till you see her on Sunday coming from Mass on M. Bourdet's arm; the cap that hides the grey knot of hair at the back of the head is neat and bright—oh! so bright—pink or blue for choice, and if M. Bourdet chances to compliment the colour of the stockings—he is gay, you know, always—the yellow face turns rosy and all the wrinkles go." And laughing maliciously at Bourdet, the young fellow turned away homewards.

Bourdet looked grave. "'Tis your son-in-law that speaks like that, Minaud," he said, "otherwise I would say that in my day the young fellows found it better to amuse themselves with the young girls than to mock at the old ones."

"You are right, my friend," said Minaud. "'Tis the regiment that taught Laurent this, and many other things. But it is a good boy, though with a sharp tongue. To these young ones it seems all foolishness to be an old girl."

And the others nodded agreement.

So they sat, chatting, and drawing at their long pipes, while the afternoon sun gleamed on the little gardens and on the closed green shutters of the houses; and the slow, large oxen lumbered through the village street, their yoked heads pressed well down, and their tails flicking unceasingly at the swarm of flies.

Jeanne-Marie stood in her garden, blinking thoughtfully at the flowers, while she shaded her eyes with her hand. On her bare head the sparse brown hair was parted severely and neatly to each side, and the deep southern eyes looked steadily out of the tanned and wrinkled face. Her light cotton bodice fell away from the thin lines of her neck and shoulders, and her sabots clicked harshly as she moved about the garden.

"At least the good God has given me a fine crab-apple bloom this year," Jeanne-Marie said, as she looked at the masses of rich blossom. On the wall the monthly roses were flowering thickly, and the Guelder roses bent their heads under the weight of their heavy bunches. "In six days I shall have the peonies, and the white rose-bush in the corner is coming soon," said Jeanne-Marie contentedly.

II

It was four and a half years ago that Jeanne-Marie had come to the white cottage next to the mill, with the communal school opposite. Till that autumn day, when a pair of stout oxen had brought her goods to the door, she had lived with her brother, who was métayer to M. François, the owner of the big villa a quarter of a mile beyond the village. Her father had been métayer; and when he died, his son Firman—a fine-looking young man, not long home from his service—had taken his place. So the change at the métairie had very little affected Jeanne-Marie.

But she missed her father sorely every day at mid-day, when she remembered that there was one less to cook for; that the tall, straight old figure would not come in at the door, and that the black pudding might remain uncooked for all Firman's noticing; and Jeanne-Marie would put the bouillon by the fire, and sit down and cry softly to herself.

They were very kind to her at the villa, and at night, when Firman was at the café, she would take the stockings and the linen and darn them in the kitchen, while she listened to the servants' talk, and suppressed her patois as much as possible, for they were from the North, and would not understand.

Two years after her father's death, Jeanne-Marie began to notice that Firman went no more to the café in the evening, and had always his shirt clean, and his best black smocked cape for the market in the town on Mondays, and for Mass on Sundays.

"It astonishes me," she had said, when she was helping M. François' cook that day the château-folk had come to déjeûner, unexpectedly—for Jeanne-Marie's cooking was very good indeed—"because, you understand, that is not his way at all. Now, if it were Paul Puyoo or the young André, it would be quite ordinary; but with Firman, I doubt with him it is a different thing."

And Anna had nodded her black head sagely over the omelette aux fines herbes as she answered: "Jeanne-Marie, Firman wishes to marry; Jeanne-Marie, for my own part, I say it's that little fat blue-eyed Suzanne from the métairie on the hill."

III

Suzanne looked very pretty the day she came home to Mr. François' métairie, leaning on her husband's arm; but Jeanne-Marie was not there to see; she was sitting in the large chair in the kitchen of the white cottage, and she was sobbing with her head in her hands. "And indeed the blessed Virgin herself must have thought me crazy, to see me sitting sobbing there, with the house in confusion, and not a thing to cook with in the kitchen," she said, shamefacedly, to Marthe Legrand from the mill, when she came in, later, to help her. "You should have remained," Marthe answered, nodding at her pityingly. "You should have remained, Jeanne-Marie; the old house is the old house, and the good God never meant the wedding of the young ones to drive away the old ones from the door."

Jeanne-Marie drew in her breath at the words "old ones." "But the book says I am only thirty-four!" she told herself; and that night she looked in the old Mass-book, to be sure if it could be true; and there was the date set down very clearly, in the handwriting of Dubois, her father's oldest friend; for JeanneMarie's father himself could neither read nor write—he was, as he said with pride, of the old school, "that kissed our sweethearts, and found that better than writing them long scribbles on white paper, as the young ones do now; and thought a chat with a friend on Sundays and holidays worth more than sitting cramped up, reading the murders and the adulteries in the newspapers." So it was Dubois who wrote down the children's births in the old Mass book. Yes, there they were. Catherine first of all; poor Catherine, who was so bright and pretty, and died that rainy winter when she was just twelve years old. Then "Jeanne-Marie, née le 28 Novembre 1854, à minuit," and added, in the same handwriting, "On nous raconte qu'à cette heure-là nous étions en train de gagner une grande bataille en Russie! Que ça lui porte bonheur!" Eight years later; "Jacques Firman, né le 12 Fѐvrier à midi." It all came back to Jeanne-Marie as she read; that scene of his birth, when she was just eight years old. She was sitting alone in the kitchen, crying, for they had told her her mother was very ill, and had been ill all the night, and just as the big clock was striking twelve she heard the voice of the neighbour who had spent the night there, calling to her; "Jeanne-Marie, viens vite, ta mere veut te voir"; and she had gone, timid and hesitating, into the darkened room. The first thing she noticed was the large fire blazing on the open hearth—she had never known her father and mother have a fire before—and she wondered much whether it was being too cold that had made her mother ill, as it had little Catherine. She looked towards the bed and saw her mother lying there, her eyes closed, and very pale—so pale that Jeanne-Marie was frightened and ran towards her father; but he was smiling where he stood by the bed, and the child was reassured. She saw him stoop and kiss his wife on the forehead, and call her his "bonne petite femme," and taking Jeanne-Marie by the hand he showed her the sage-femme—the sage-femme who had come the night before to make her mother well—sitting near the fire with a white bundle in her arms, and thanked the good God aloud that he had sent him a fine boy at last. Old Dubois had come in gently, his béret in his hand, as Jeanne-Marie's father was speaking, and turning to the bed had reiterated emphatically, "Tu as bien fait, chѐre dame, tu as bien fait."

Jeanne-Marie sat silently going over it all in her mind. "Té," she murmured, "how quickly they all go; the father, the mother, old Dubois, even Jeanne the voisine, is gone. I alone am left, and the good God knows if there will be any to cry for me when my turn comes to go." She shut the old Mass-book, and put it carefully back on the shelf, and she went to the old looking-glass and the tanned wrinkled face met its reflection very calmly and patiently. "I think it was the hard work in the fields when I was young," she said; "certainly Marthe was right. It is the face of an old woman, a face more worn than hers, though she is beyond forty and has borne so many children."

IV

Firman had urged his sister to stay on at the métairie after his marriage. "You should not go, it is not natural," he said one evening a few weeks before his wedding, while they were piling the small wood in the shed. "The old house will not be the old house without you. Suzanne wishes it also. Parbleu! Is it the custom for the fathers to turn their sons out, when they marry? Then, why should I let the old sister go, now my time for marrying has come? Suzanne is a good girl and pretty; and has never even looked at any young fellow in the village—for I, as you know, am particular, and I like not the manners in some villages, where a girl's modesty is counted nothing—but blood is worth the most, ma foi, as the old father used to say; and badly must he think of me to see the old sister making room even for the little Suzanne."

She closed her eyes again. There were noises singing in her head, louder and louder; but the pain at her heart had ceased, She was conscious only of a great loneliness, as if a curtain had risen, and shut her off from the room; and again the words came, whispered from her lips: "A woman, accursed and wasted; no mother and no wife."

But some one was speaking, speaking so loudly that the sounds in her head seemed to die away. She opened her eyes, and saw M. le Curé, where he knelt, with his eyes shining on her face, and heard his voice saying: "And God said, 'Blessed be the virgins above all women; give unto them the holy places; let them be exalted and praised by My church, before all men, and before Me. Worthy are they to sit at My feet—worthy are they above all women.'"

A smile of infinite happiness and of supreme relief lit up Jeanne-Marie's face.

"Above all women," she whispered: "above all women."

And Jeanne-Marie bowed her head, and died.

The Yellow Book/Volume 3/Jeanne-Marie

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