LITERATURE.

Globe, Volume I, Issue 14, 16 June 1874, Page 4

LITERATURE.

BERTHE’S WEDDING DAY

CHAriBB 111, Continued. Bo'jour — bo'jour, via belle." She throws back her old head, with its black silk covering pinned carefully over the snowy cap, and gazes admiringly at Madame 1 laniard. ‘Como, then ; but thou hast bonne mine today my Henrietta 1’ She glances over her shoulder at the broad lumber big tailor; his heavy straight bows are bent anxiously in search of his wife ; but Madame Carron’s sharp, ugly old eyes go past him to look for her granddaughter. ‘ tlia 1’ the o’d woman chuckles, 1 Eugenic will not improve the race, ma f lic ; she is for all the world like my Chinese pullet, all legs and neck, via foi ! Her mouth is big enough to swallow a small creature like mo altogether. Dame ! thou art big enough for a woman, Hcnriette; why, then, hast thou let Eugenie shoot beyond thee V A little flush rises on madame’s placid face ; but this is an old grievance, and she is too good a daughter to contradict her mother. She walks beside her silently. ‘ Thou wilt come in and eat, my mother ?’ she says, when they reach the tailor’s shop on the left side of the market place, ‘ But no, my Hcnriette ; on the contrary, I must hurry, or I shall miss the noon ferry boat ; my bonne , Naninc, is going to the fete at La Maillerayc, and she will not start till I return. Tims /’ She points suddenly to one of the groups in the Place. ‘Jacob Leduc is with Tonine Duval and her daughter. Is a marriage then arranged for la petite ? Ma foi ! But Jacob is too old and fat.’

‘ What wilt thou, my mother ?’ Madame Haulard speaks with the soft purring tone which so usually accompanies wordly wisdom in a woman. ‘ The Duvals have no money. Berthe’s health is so broken that she cannot oarn a sous, and Monsieur Lcduc wants a wife. If Matthicu had lived, or if affairs had been butter at the Chateau, then indeed such a difference of age might have been considered ; but I hardly know, nna mere. I do not suppose Matthieu would have laid by much for Berthe, and a girl without a portion should be thankful to get a husband at all.'

‘ Poor Berthe, I am sorry for her. The old woman rebels against her daughter’s wisdom ; but she admires what she calls Henrietta's civilisation too much to contradict it. ‘ She must have been very fond of that vaurlcn, Sec how pale and altered she has grown. She has never got over the illness she had afterwards.’ There are tears in old Julie’s eyes as she watches the group out of sight. ‘ Berthe must have been badly brought up, my mother, to be fond of a man who was not her husband ; thou dids’t not tell me it was my duty to love before marriage, so I began without any love; yet see how well Monsieur Haulard and 1 have got along together, Dos’t thou not think that Berthe’s paleness may rather be caused by the change that has come into her life, del ? It must be a great change to be shut up in a small close room in the Kite de la Boucherie, after living in her father’s cottage at Viilequicr, where she could roam the park all day.’ ‘Yes, yes, thou art always wise, my Henriette ; but batons lepas or I may loose the boat;’ and the squat old figure rolls on towards the river as if the soles of her stout black shoes were round.

The Hue de la Boucherie is certainly not a healthy street, its back windows overlook the small fetid river, which indeed runs under the house, but the room which Tonine and her daughter have rented ever since Matthieu died is neither small nor close ; on the contrary, it is spacious, and has two large pointed windows, with stone seals in the deep recesses. Matthieu had died suddenly in a fit, and his sudden death spared him the consciousness of the ruin of his employers ; for the Ghatelaiu de Villeqnier and his family are scattered in a foreign laud now, and their long-possessed home is let to strangers.

Berthe has never recovered from the shock of Francois Garaye’s disappearance and the long illness that followed ; but her father’s death aroused her. She planned the removal to Caudebec with all her former energy, and so long as there was anything to do she seemed to have rallied from the blight which had withered up her youth. But this excitement soon passed away, the girl became again pale and lifeless looking, and glance, which had so terriiied her mother at the cottage, showed at times on Berthe’s thin face.

‘ It is an ill wind that blows nobody good,’ the old woman murmured, ‘ Berthe pines, shut up here in Caudebec, but I have not half the pains and aches 1 suffered in the cottage. lam surely growing younger. Monsieur Jacob says so, and he is a wise man.’

Monsieur Jacob is a constant visitor in the room au gnatrleme Hue de la Boucherie. Berthe always takes her work into one of the arched windows when he comes, and sits sewing on the stone seat there till ids visit is over ; and yet, although he rarely ventures to address her daughter, Tonine understands the object of the well-to-do gendarme’s visits.

She is eager to encourage them, Little by little, fresh meat and white bread, now and then a chicken and a bottle of wine, come in an unexpected way, and eke out the frugal housekeeping of the mother and daughter.

At first Berthe rebels against these gifts, but her mother’s infirmities and helplessness close her lips. Little by little, too, her own increasing weakness makes even needlework irksome. Berthe feels that she is drifting slowly into a destiny, the first thougfit of which stirred her whole nature to desperate resistance.

Her mother has wept and prayed, and scolded and entreated, for more than a year, and Jacob Leduc has persevered in his silent unobtrusive suit, and now at last he is to be rewarded.

On this Sunday Monsieur Jacob has gone home with the mother and daughter, and has eaten with them for the first time ; and now he stands, bowing over the hand of Berthe, firmly clasped in hia own, for Berthe has just promised to be his wife as soon as the necessary arrangements are made. Monsieur Jacob raises his head and smiles at his afiiauced ; he is going to kiss her, and Ton me stands by, smiling too, to sanction the action. bhc sees the smile die out of the broad heavy face, she secs the dark sallow skin change suddenly to a sickly white, and then the old woman’s dull cunning eyes pass on swiftly to her daughter’s face. ISlio sees an awful, ghastly terror painted there ; the blue eyes are widely diluted, and fix on something

which Toninc cannot see; for there is nothing, absolutely nothing, but space on the blank stone wall behind Jacob, and it cannot be Jacob himself who has called up the horhor iu her daughter’s face.

'ls she mad V the frightened woman asks herself. ‘Well, if she is, Monsieur Jacob must not find it out. While Matthieu lived Tonine was looked upon almost as a helpless imbecile ; but she has regained the full use of her limbs since she has lived in Cauclebec, and her cunning has grown with her strength. Food and drink are the chief things of life to her. and Berthe i« only an available means to procure these without labor or an:-:ic( v. * No,’ she says agai" to herself. ‘ Monsieur Jacob must not find out anything which could prevent the marriage. Alions, monsieur.’ she says, in a bantering tone, * as you arc to hevc her altogether soon, you must leave Berthe to me tin's evening ; you see she is not well.’ Monsieur is glad to go ;he wants to marry Berthe, but he is never at case in her presence. ‘lt will bo different after marriage,’ he says, as ho goes down the broken staircase ; ‘she will be mine altogether, then, and I shall break her of these moods. I wish I had never seen her !’ and ho utters an oath. The staircase is certainly very dark and uneven, but the gendarme’s face has a heavier scowl on it than this should cause, even when he comes out into the sunshine. As soon as he departs, Tonine’s anger bursts out. ‘And is it not enough, then, foolish child, that thou hast flouted and chilled the man by thy haughty moods, but thou must glare as if thou sawest a. ghost over Jacob’s shoulder ! If thou hadst now and then given him so much as a smile he had married thee a year ago.’

Her voice falters as she ends, and she crouches into her low chair, set just within the projecting brick fireplace, Berthe does not sneak. She only keeps her eyes fixed on her mother, till Tonine can no longer bear their mute reproach. She begins to rock herself to and fro, and she flings her patched black apron over her head, that she may grumble with impunity. ‘ Pining and fretting away health and good looks for a vaurlcn —for Jacob says Francois was n ranricn and then treating an honest man like a dog, and no one may say a word ! Sainte Vierf/e, e'est fdcheux 1’ All tin's time Berthe has been trying to speak. She dares not utter all that is in her breast; hard as the task has been, she has tried to disbelieve her own suspicions that Francois was not fairly dealt by. From infancy she has been accustomed to hear her mother’s feeble impotent murmurs, aud she has met them as her father met them, with gentle patience.

But though Tonine has been a helpless tyrant, till to-day her tyranny has manifested itself rather in feeble complaints than in severe reproaches. The changed tone rouses Berthe from the stupor which has been creeping over her day by day since she has lived in Caudcbec—rouses her to a sudden and complete awakening, It is not on the crouching woman in the chair, with her apron over head, that Berthe gazes so intently ; it is on the gleam of light which has fallen on her mother’s conduct.

Till now, Berthe has neither thought nor reasoned about Monsieur Jacob and his visits. At first she tried, in a spirit of dumb resistance, to be absent when he came ; but she soon yielded to his vigilance, and then, as her health failed, and all resources seemed close to her, sin; felt with a sort of half-con-scious sullen despair what the end must be. Now, in one startled minute of cnlightment, she sees it all. Her mother lias from the first meant her to marry Jacob, although she well knew how Berthe had shrunk from the big gendarme, even at the cottage at Villeqnier. Something beyond there is, which Berthe strives to see in the flood of light that thus suddenly brings her back to her former mental energy, and she seeks to follow the cine ; but as she seeks she feels the black veil falling over her again, and striving hard to keep her newly-gained light, she breaks suddenly into words : ‘ Hush, my mother ! for the love of God do not make my burden heavier. I have promised to marry Jacob Leduc—is not that enough ? I have made no promise to love him, and if he is content thou must be so too.’

The tone of her daughter’s voice startles Tonine: she pulls down her apron, and looks at her hurriedly. Berthe has flushed ; her eyes are bright, and her lips so full of life ; for an instant she is almost the Berthe Duval of two years ago. At this sight all that there is of motherly feeling stirs in the old woman. Tonine struggles up to her feet, and hobbles over the tiled floor to her daughter. ‘My Berthe,’ she says, ‘don’t be angry with thy mother ; she is old and foolish, but all she does is love for thee ; only tell her just this, Berthe ; tell her why thou hast looked so strangely at Jacob, and why that wild look comes to thy face at face at—at’— She fixed her cunning little eyes on the soft, sweet blue eyes of her daughter, and then stands with her mouth wide open, stupefied, at the rapid change ; for Berthe’s colour fades as fast as snow melts before the fire; the light dies out of her eyes and she grows a ghastly white. ‘Do not ask mo,” she says. ‘ I cannot help my looks. Do not notice them my mother. bhc leads Tonine carefully back to her chair, and then she goes up the creaky staircase to the (/rank')', it is a large low room, open to the roof, but it has been unlet for years, and Berthe has the privilege of retiring here when she wants to be alone with her thoughts. >She only goes up there in daylight, the one window gives light to the far off cornel's, who: ce the shadows seem hardly to bo driven away by the noonday sun; there is a weird atmosphere in the gaunt, deserted place, and though this chimes in with Berthe’s sense of lonely sorrow, still she shudders and trembles if she stays up there a minute after dark. There is no furniture in the g renter, and Berthe seats herself on Ihe floor, near the window, and hides her face in her thin hands.

To hr, continued.