Laura Elizabeth Howe Richards

“ La Patronne, the wife of Le Boss, who was like a barrel, but not bad, when she could see through the fat, not bad in every way; and there was Old Billy, who took care of the horses and dogs, and he was her friend, and she loved him, and he had always the good word for her even when he was very drunk, too drunk to speak to any one else. And then there was the daughter of Le Boss, who would in all probability never die, for she was so ugly that she would not be admitted into the other world, where, Mere Jeanne said, even Monsieur the Great Devil himself was good-looking, save for his expression. ”

“ She had never seen anything like this in her life, since those days when she went to the chateau. She touched the white walls softly, and passed her hand over the pink mats on the bureau with wondering awe. And then she curled up in the white bed when Abby bade her, as like a kitten as anything could be. "Oh, you are good, good!" cried the child, whom the warmth and comfort and kindness seemed to have lifted into another world from the cold, sordid one in which she had lived so long. ”

“ Sing, brothers and sisters! be joyful, be joyful in the Lord! all sorrow and darkness is gone away, away, and light is here, and morning, and the world wakes with us to gladness and the new day. Sing, and let your songs be all of joy, joy, lest there be in the wood any sorrowing creature, who might go sadly through the day for want of a voice of cheer, to tell him that God is love, is love. Wake from thy dream, sad heart, if the friendly wood hold such an one! Sorrow is night, and night is good, for rest, and for seeing of many stars, and for coolness and sweet odours ”

“ He cry, and go to his bed. All the dogs, they afraid of Coquelicot, because he have the minds. And he, Coquelicot, he fear nossing, except Madame when she is angry."
"Who was she?" asked Petie,—"a big dog?"
"Ah, dog, no!" cried Marie, her face flushing. "Madame my violon, my life, my pleasure, my friend. Ah, mon Dieu, what friend have I?" Her breast heaved, and she broke into a wild fit of crying, forgetting the child by her side, forgetting everything in the world save the hunger at her heart for the one creature to whom she could speak, and who could speak in turn to her. ”

“ This was the man who happened to come into the street on some errand, that soft summer evening, at the very moment when Marie was feeling lifted up by the light of joy in the children's faces, and was telling herself how good it was that she had come this way. Hearing the sound of the fiddle, De Arthenay stopped for a moment, and his face grew dark as night. He was a religious man, as sternly so as his Huguenot ancestor, but wearing his religion with a difference. He knew all music, except psalm-tunes, to be directly from the devil. ”

“ Then, there was great pleasure in the housekeeping. Marie was a born housewife, with delicate French hands, and an inborn skill in cookery, the discovery of which gave her great delight. Everything in the kitchen was fresh and clean and sweet, and in the garden were fruits, currants and blackberries and raspberries, and every kind of vegetable that grew in the village at home, with many more that were strange to her. She found never-ending pleasure in concocting new dishes, little triumphs of taste and daintiness, and trying them on her silent husband. ”

“ Marie first giving a little startled shriek, but her voice dying away in terrified silence as she saw the man's face; the latter uttering a shout of delight, of fierce and cruel triumph, that rang out strangely in the quiet morning air. For this was Le Boss!
A man with a bloated, cruel face, sodden with drink and inflamed with all fierce and inhuman passions; a strong man, who held the trembling girl by the shoulder as if she were a reed, and gazed into her face with eyes of fiendish triumph ”

“ And La Patronne would be sorry perhaps a little,—she had the good heart, La Patronne, under all the fat,—and Old Billy, he would be too sorry, she was sure. Poor Old Billy! it was cruel to leave him, when he had such joy of her playing, the good old man, and a hard life taking care of the beasts, and bearing all the blame if any of them died through hunger. But it would have been sadder for Old Billy to see her die, Marie, and she would have died, of course she would! To live without the Lady, a pretty life that would be! ”

“ Also a pot of jam with a spoon in it proved an eloquent argument in favour of friendship; and after a while the children fell into a way of sauntering past with backward glances, and were always glad to come in when Marie knocked on the window, or came smiling to the door, with her handkerchief tied under her chin and her knitting in her hand. It was only when her husband was away that this happened; Marie would not for worlds have called a child to meet her husband's eyes, those blue eyes of which, she stood in such terror, even when she grew to love them. ”

“ It was about the dogs that Petie liked best to hear; of the wonderful feats of Monsieur George, the great brindled greyhound, and the astonishing sagacity of Coquelicot, the poodle.
"Monsieur George, he could jump over anything, yes! He was always jump, jump, all day long, to practise himself. Over our heads all, that was nothing, yet he did it always when we come in the tent, pour saluer, to say the how you do. But one day come in a man to see Le Boss, very tall, oh, like mountains, and on him a tall hat. ”

“ They were pleasant-looking houses, Marie thought, they looked as if persons lived in them who stayed at home and spun, as the women did in Brittany. Ah, that it was far away, Brittany! she had almost forgotten it, and now it all seemed to come back to her, as she gazed about her at the houses, some white, some brown, all with an air of thrift and comfort, as becomes a New England village. That white house there, with the bright green blinds! ”

“ You can do anything you're a mind to with him, I tell you. See them flowers there, in the chaney bowl! Now he never looked at a flower in his life, Jacques didn't; but knowing you set by them, he went out and picked them pretty ones o' purpose. Now I call that real thoughtful, don't you, Maree?"
So the good soul talked on, soothing the girl, who said no word, only trembled, and gazed at her with wide, frightened eyes; but Abby's heart was heavy within her, and she hardly heard her own cheery words. ”

“ Aha, yes, he is afraid of Marie too, when he wish to make devil work.
"And here," she cried, turning suddenly upon Abby, "you say you have no such thing, Abiroc,"—this was the name she had given her hostess,—"and here, too, is the evil eye, first what I see in this place, except the dear little children. A man yesterday came while I played, and looked—but, frightful! Ah!" she started from her seat by the window, and retreated hastily to the corner. "He comes, the same man! Put me away, Abiroc! put me away! He is bad, he is wicked! I die if he look at me!" ”

“ But his legs so short, and that make him hate Monsieur George."
"My legs are short," objected Petie, stretching out a pair of plump calves, "but that doesn't make me hate people."
"Ah, but if you see a little boy what can walk over the roof of the house, you want the same to do it, n'est-ce-pas?" cried Marie. "You try, and try, and when you cannot jump, you think that not a so nize little boy as when his legs were short. So boy, so dog. Coquelicot, all his life he want to jump like Monsieur George, and all his life he cannot jump at all. You say to him, 'Coquelicot, are you foolishness? ”

“ All days of my life I can make music, make happy, make joy of myself and ozerbodies. When I take her; Madame, so, in my hand, I can do what I will, no? People have glad thinks, sorry thinks; what Marie tells them to have, that have they. Ah! la tonne aventure, oh gai!" and she would throw her head back and begin to play, and play till the chairs almost danced on their four legs.
De Arthenay never heard the fiddle. Abby managed it somehow, she hardly knew how or why. ”

“ You are going to leave all those things behind you now, and there must be nothing to recall that life with those bad people. I will burn the evil thing now, and it shall be a sweet savour to the Lord, even a marriage sacrifice." As he spoke he opened the case, and taking out the violin, laid it across his knee, intending to break it into pieces; but at this Marie broke out into a cry, so wild, so piercing, that he paused, and Abby ran to her and took her in, her arms, and pressed her to her kind breast, and comforted her as one comforts a little child. ”

“ She belonged to Le Boss, as much as the tent or the ponies, or his own ugly girl: so they all thought in the troupe, and so Marie herself had thought till that day; that is, she had not thought at all. While she could play all the time, and had often quite enough to eat, and always something, a piece of bread in the hand if no more,—and La Patronne, Le Boss's wife, never too unkind, and sometimes even giving her a bit of ribbon for the Lady's neck when there was to be a special performance,—why, who would have thought of running away? ”

“ Life! life stirring and waking everywhere, in sky and earth; soft clouds sweeping across the blue, softening its cold brightness, dropping rain as they go; sap creeping through the ice-bound stems, slowly at first, then running freely, bidding the tree awake and be at its work, push out the velvet pouch that holds the yellow catkin, swell and polish the pointed leaf-buds: life working silently under the ground, brown seeds opening their leaves to make way for the tender shoot that shall draw nourishment from them and push its way on and up while they die content, their work being done ”

“ Marie was standing with her head bent down over her violin, in a pretty way she had. A light, slight figure, not short, yet with a look that spoke all of youth and morning grace. She wore a little blue gown, patched and faded, and dusty enough after her day's walk; her feet were dusty too, but slender and delicately shaped. ”

“ Marie held out her fiddle with a pretty, appealing gesture. "I come—from away!" she said, in her broken English, that sounded soft and strange to his ears. "I do no harm. I play, to make happy the children, to get bread for me."
"Who came with you?" De Arthenay continued. "Who are your folks?"
Marie shook her head, and a light crept into her eyes as she thought of Le Boss. "I have nobodies'" she said. "I am with myself, sauf le violon; I mean, wiz my fiddle. Monsieur likes not music, no?" ”

“ She had led the life that many an ugly saint leads, here in New England, and the world over. Nurse and drudge for the pretty younger sister, the pride and joy of her heart, till she married and went away to live in a distant State; then drudge and nurse for the invalid mother, broken down by unremitting toil. No toil would ever break Abby down, for she was a strong woman; she had never worked too hard that she was aware of ”

“ As for Abby herself, Marie gravely informed her that she was an angel. Abby laughed, not ill pleased. "I don't look special like angels," she said; "that is, if the pictures I've seen are correct. Not much wings and curls and white robes about me, Maree. And who ever heard of an angel in a check apurn, I want to know?"
But Marie was not to be turned aside. It was well known, she said, that angels could not come to earth undisguised in these days. It had something to do with the Jews, she did not know exactly what. Mere Jeanne had told her, but she forgot just how it was. ”

“ And she saying that fiddle was her life, only yesterday! How are all these lives going to work together? that's what I want to know!" And she shook her head, and went back to her spinning. There was no doubt in Abby's mind about Marie's answer, when she grew a little used to the new idea. Her silent suitor was many years older than she, it was true, but as she said to him, what a chance for the friendless wanderer! And if he loved her now, how much more he would love her when he came to know her well, and see all her pretty ways about the house, like a kitten or a bird. ”

“ Then—Marie did not know what came then. There were more words between the two men, loud and fierce on one side, low and fierce on the other; and then Le Boss was gone, and she was walking back to the house with the man who had saved her, the man to whom she belonged now; the strong man, whose hand, holding hers as they walked, trembled far more than her own. ”

“ What are joys of this world, that we should think of them? Do they not lead to destruction, even the flowery path of it, going down to the mouth of the pit, and with no way leading thence? Who is the woman for whose sake thou wilt lose thine own soul? ”

“ With the dazzle of that dancing sun still in her eyes, with happy thoughts filling her mind, Marie turned the corner of the straggling road that was called a street by the people who lived along it,—turned the corner, and almost fell into the arms of a man, who was coming in the opposite direction. ”

“ Marie answered innocently. "When a person has the evil eye, you not make at him the horns, so way?" and she held out the index and little finger of her right hand, bending the other fingers down. "So!" she said; "when they so are held, the evil eye has no power. What you do here to stop him?"
"We don't believe in any such a thing!" Abby replied, with, some severity. "Why, Maree, them's all the same as heathen notions, like witchcraft and such. We don't hold by none of those things in this country at all, and I guess you'd better not talk about 'em." ”

“ It did not in the least matter about shoes, when it was summer: when the road was hot, one walked in the cool grass at the side; when there was no grass—eh, one waited till one came to some. They were only for state, these shoes. They were stiff and hard, and the heel-places hurt: it was different for La Patronne, who wore stockings under hers. ”

“ The neighbours said, There! now Abby Rock was safe to live, for she had got another baby to take care of; she'd ha' withered up and blown away if she had gone on living alone, with no one to make of.
And what talks they had, Abby and Marie! The latter told all about her early childhood with the good old woman whom she called Mere Jeanne, and explained how she came to have the Lady, and to play as she did. The Countess, it appeared, lived up at the castle; a great lady, oh, but very great, and beautiful as the angels. ”

“ But Monsieur George was so 'shamed, he go away and hide, and not for a week we see him again. Le Boss think that man poison him, and he goes to beat him; but that same day Monsieur George come back, and stop outside the tent and call us all to come out. And when we come, he run back, and say, 'Look here, what I do!' and he jump, and go clean over the tent, and not touch him wiz his foot. Yes, I saw it: very fine dog, Monsieur George! But Coquelicot, he have more thinking than Monsieur George. He very claiver, Coquelicot! ”

“ It stood to reason that it was not the same Bible, hein? At this Jacques De Arthenay started, and took himself by the hair with both hands, as he did when something moved him strongly. "Those were bad people, Mary!" he cried. "Don't you see? they withstood the Elect, and they were slain. And we must think about these things, and think of our sins, and the sins of others as a warning to ourselves. Sin is awful, black, horrible! and its wages is death,—death, do you hear?"
When he cried out in this way, like a wild creature, Marie did not dare to speak again ”

“ No lover had ever looked into her eyes or taken her hand tenderly. Not likely! she would say to herself with a scornful sniff, eyeing her homely face in the glass. Men weren't such fools as they looked. ”