When morning came, and the sounds of the country brought it to Germain’s senses, he lifted his head from his hands and rose. He saw that little Marie had slept no more than he, but he knew no words in which to tell her of his anxiety. He was very discouraged. Hiding the gray’s saddle once more in the thicket, he slung his sack over his shoulder and took his son by the hand.
“Now, Marie,” said he, “we are going to try to end our journey. Do you wish me to take you to Ormeaux?”
“Let us leave the woods together,” answered she, “and when we know where we are, we shall separate, and go our different ways.”
Germain did not answer. He felt hurt that the girl did not ask him to take her as far as Ormeaux, and he did not notice that he had asked her in a tone well fitted to provoke a refusal.
After a few hundred steps, they met a woodcutter, who pointed out the high road, and told them that when they had crossed the plain, one must turn to the right, the other to the left, to gain their different destinations, which were so near together that the houses of Fourche were in plain sight from the farm of Ormeaux, and vice versa.
When they had thanked him and passed on, the woodcutter called them back to ask whether they had not lost a horse.
“Yes,” he said, “I found a pretty gray mare in my yard, where perhaps a wolf had driven her to seek refuge; my dogs barked the whole night long, and at daybreak I saw the mare under my shed. She is there now. Come along with me, and if you recognize her, you may take her.”
When Germain had given a description of the gray, and felt convinced that it was really she, he started back to find his saddle. Little Marie offered to take his child to Ormeaux, whither he might go to get him after he had introduced himself at Fourche.
“He is rather dirty after the night that we have passed,” said she. “I will brush his clothes, wash his pretty face, and comb his hair, and when he looks neat and clean, you can present him to your new family.”
“Who told you that I wish to go to Fourche?” answered Germain, petulantly. “Perhaps I shall not go.”
“But truly, Germain, it is your duty to go there. You will go there,” replied the girl.
“You seem very anxious to have me married off, so that you may be quite sure that I shall not trouble you again?”
“Germain, you must not think of that any more. It is an idea which came to you in the night, because this unfortunate mishap took away your spirits. But now you must come to your senses. I promise you to forget everything that you said to me, and not to breathe it to a soul.”
“Oh, say what you wish. It is not my custom to deny what I have spoken. What I told you was true and honest, and I shall not blush for it before anybody.”
“Yes, but if your wife were to know that just before you came you were thinking of another woman, it would prejudice her against you. So take care how you speak now. Don’t look at me before everybody with such a rapt expression. Think of Father Maurice, who relies on your obedience, and who would be enraged at me if I were to turn you from his will. Goodbye, Germain. I take Petit-Pierre in order to force you to go to Fourche. He is a pledge which I keep on your behalf.”
“So you want to go with her?” said the husbandman to his son, seeing that the boy had clasped Marie’s hands and was following her resolutely.
“Yes, father,” answered the child, who had heard the conversation and understood after his own fashion the words spoken so unguardedly before him. “I am going away with my dearest little Marie. You shall come to find me when you have done marrying, but I wish Marie to be my little mother.”
“You see how much he wishes it,” said Germain to the girl. “Listen to me, Petit-Pierre,” he added. “I wish her to be your mother and to stay with you always. It is she who does not wish to. Try to make her grant you what she has denied me.”
“Don’t be afraid, father, I shall make her say yes. Little Marie does everything that I wish.”
He walked away with the young girl. Germain stood alone, sadder and more irresolute than ever.
XI
The Belle of the Village
And after all, when he had brushed the dust of travel from his clothes and from his horse’s harness, when he had mounted the gray, and when he had learned the road, he felt that there was no retreat and that he must forget that anxious night as though it had been a dangerous dream.
He found Father Leonard seated on a trim bench of spinach-green. The six stone steps leading up to the door showed that the house had a cellar. The walls of the garden and of the hemp-field were plastered with lime and sand. It was a handsome house, and might almost have been mistaken for the dwelling of a bourgeois.
Germain’s future father-in-law came forward to meet him, and having plied him, for five minutes, with questions concerning his entire family, he added that conventional phrase with which one passerby addresses another concerning the object of his journey: “So you
