LITERATURE.

Globe, Volume II, Issue 184, 11 January 1875, Page 3

LITERATURE.

THE FLOWER OF BERNAY. A STORY OF BEKNAY DE L'EURE. Chapter 111. Concluded. Felix Fremont had a strange stricken look when he came out of the long, muddy, stable yard. He did not go out at the lower end, but came back thi'ough the porte-cochere of the hotel.

Madame Roussel was standing at the door of her little sitting-room but, though Fremont stared in eagerly, he did not see Eiigenie sitting behind the door. ' How pale and fierce that man looks!' But Madame Roussel said this to herself, and when she went back into the room and closed the door, she did not sxieak of Monsieur Fremont to Madame Lagrange. Every one in Bernay knew how the wild farmer of Orbec —for so Fremont was called by those who who knew his eccentric, undisciplined life had persecuted Eugenie Toutain with his addresses. Ever since she had first come, a girl of sixteen, to sell her grandmother's butter and garden stuff at market, Fremont had singled her out for admiration; and, because of this, old widow Fremont, his mother, had tried on every market day to spite or slander the " Flower of Bernay "—Eugenie had earned this name as much by her sweetness as by her beauty. She was so universally beloved that Bernay folk thought it no wonder when Monsieur Lagrange, from Lillebone, who had succeeded to his uncle's property, near Thiberville, fell in love with her so desperately the first time he came to Bernay market. Ho was so quiet and middle-aged that he was considered too old for Eugenie : ;

but Lagrange was too really in love to be fainthearted, and he feared ty lose so bright a prize by delay. The next day found him at the cottage where Eugenie and her grandmother lived; very soon after the ' Flower of Bernay' disappeared from the market, and in two months she had married Monsieur Lagrange. Even the spiteful ones could not say that Eugenie had married for money, when it was so well known that during the last three years she might have married any day Felix Fremont, a far richer man, if all tales were true, than Lagrange was. But Eugenie shrank from Fremont. Before she even knew who he was—before she had heard him spoken of as the half-crazed miser, who starved himself and his mother too, and lived all along in his large, gloomy, tumbledown chateau, with the rats—she had shrunk from his familiar address, and his evil, though well-featured face. And it was this total absence of coquetry on the girl's side that Marie Touchet was enlarging on as she sat leisurely repacking her few unsold wares.

' And T tell thee, la were, that thou art evil-tongued. What good is it to thee to scatter mud on so fair a flower as our Eugenie? Thou canst not really sully her, and there is no reason in thy dislike. She never encouraged thy son, and if she had married him thou wouldst have been displeased that he should take to himself a wife without a portion, and perhaps with reason—a woman should bring something in her hand to her husband. But there is no danger now. She is safe—she is the wife of another man. Davie ! I cannot see why thou art so hard upon her.' La mere Fremont had kept her head bent over the melons she was stowing in a tall basket full of hay, but she looked up now, and craned her head till r the bone of her withered discolored throat showed in knots above her orange neckerchief. ' Thou art forty and more, Marie, and yet thou hast no more wisdom than the boy Martha who guides thy donkey cart. For shame, then, learn a little wisdom. When didst ever hear that love or hate came be.cause it was reasonable they should come ? See that son of mine, with scarcely a word for his mother —his mother, who would have given body and soul for him when he was young —he worships that girl's little finger. I will wager j he has come into Bernay because it was said she would be here today. ' ' Here he comes,'says Marie. f I do not know if he has seen our Eugenie, but he looks as if he had seen a ghost.' Felix Fremont is coming up, not the street in which the fruit stalls are, but the broad street down which the market also spreads, and which traverses the Grande Place, between the ancient Abbey on one side, and the winding street, full of gabled houses, in which are the fruit stalls. When he reaches the Place he pauses just an instant, and then, instead of coming up and speaking to his mother, he turns off among the meat stalls, and goes rapidly down to the clear space in front of the Abbey. The farmers have departed. The are still plenty of corn-sacks inside the desecrated but majestic old building, which stands as a memorial—and not the only one—of what Norman princesses did for the glory of God. But the massive piers and solid arches tell of a different race from the present—a race which did not consider its riches solely its own, for pleasure and profit, but held in trust for God. All the fruit women had seen Felix Fremont, but no one speaks. La mere Fremont is not a favorite, but just now she is the object of universal sympathy. She makes no sign» however. Rarely has she been heard to speak as openly of her son's neglect as she has spoken to-day, and hitherto he has not slighted her before so many witnesses. But this is flagrant; she is almost stifled by outraged feeling, and then, welling up through the tempest of anger and pride that distracts her, comes the unutterable craving to look once more on her child's face. 'He is a fool to love her,' she says; ' but if he wanted her, she ought to have had him.' She leaves her melon basket, and hurries to the Abbey., Her gossips stand looking after her, in wonder at her forbearance, but they do not fathom her impulsiveness. By the time she reaches her son her love has so quickened that, but for actual fear of his anger —anger which she has often suffered from—she would throw her arms round his neck and kiss him on both cheeks. His back is towards her, so she lays her quivering lean hand on his arm, and says : 'Eh Men, mon garcon !' He turns round sharply, with an impatient word on his lips 'lt is thee, is it ? Well then, my mother, I cannot stop to talk with thee to-day ; it must be for the next time I come to Bernay. To-day I have not a moment.' She did not want talk from him; what does a mother want of her son ? not help, or guidance, or even profession of affection. She wants to gaze at the dear face; oh, how dear no one can ever know ; to see it lighten up with some, if but a tithe, of the same love that shines in her own; to feel that, however small the corner, there is a corner of her child's heart sacred to her, and that in a sense no woman can ever be to him that which his mother has been. Perhaps ..poor widow Fremont wanted more than this; wanted to have a larger part in her son's future than any mother may claim, for she had hated Eugenie Toutain, simply because her son wished to make the girl his wife; but yet she had borne patiently with her son's unkindness and neglect; weeks, months even, passed by, and although her son lived no farther than Orbec, yet he did not trouble to inquire for his mother's welfare. Once or twice he had, in a lordly fashion, bid her apply to him when she found herself straitened for money, but she had each time made the same answer.

' My son, as 1 have my fingers and feet to use, I can keep myself. When they fail me, then thou canst bury me at thy charge ; that is all I ask of thee.'

Once, inning for a sight of this only being on whom the entire love of her hungry heart was centered, mire Fremont had spent some of her hardly-Won earnings on a diligence journey to Orbec, to hear t from each person of whom she asked the way to the secluded place, 'Fremont the miser? Ah, but he does not receive visitors.' 'Fremont do you say mother? Well, Fremont is avoided more than he is sought about here;" till her heart sank and felt so leaden that it was almost as much relief as disappointment, when she reached the moat-circled gloomy dwelling, to find the gates locked and her son absent.

Still till to day she had borne these slights and smarts secretly, and held up her head

loftily among her gossips-when- she- spoke of her wealthy son. He had never before slighted her publicly. - ■•'• If he had even looked at her she might still have borne it; but to be spoken to thus under the eye 3 of Marie Touchet and the rest, for by this time the place between! the street and the Abbaye had. cleared, and' she could s*e that she was a mock for many! watchful eyes, was too much for her fiery temper. ' Felix,' she cried out, • art thou then a fool? Because a simpleton who has a fair face has jilted and despised thee, shouldst thou neglect thy mother in thy haste to gaze at the property or another man?' For her sharp eyes noticed that Fremont had turned in the direction leading to the Cheval Blanc. Her son turned and looked at her, and even her fierce spirit quailed. His face was lived, and his eyes looked like glowing coals under his frowning eyebrows. He seemed as if he were going to strike her, in the fury she had aroused, and then he turned away again and hurried up the street. Chapter IV. Monsieur and Madame Roussel both stand at the door, waving their hands to the farmer and his wife till they have driven out of sight. ' But she is more charming than ever, and as beautiful as an angel,' says Roussel, with a half sigh. It is wonderful that in twenty years of married life M. Roussel has. not learned to refrain from praising the beauty of women to his very plain-faced wife. Madame Roussel in her heart admires Eugenie, but then that half sigh has made her pugnacious. : '":_. ' I never saw an angel,' she says, and her lip curls ; ' but I never saw so kind a husband as Monsieur Lagrange is, Pierre.' And that is just what Eugenie is teUiite her husband as they leave Bernay" behind them, and the road begins to climb one of the steep hills that surround the ancient town. ' I wonder if any girl was ever so happy as thou hast made me Jean,'she says, and steals her plump soft hand under the farmer's arm. ' God bless thee, my darling,' he says, while she goes on. ' How dark it gets ! A storm must be coming. Somehow I can hardly believe we are safe on the Way liome again. I felt oppressed at Bernay; it seemed to me that something was coming between us.' Jean smiles down at her, and presses his strong arm against her hand. ' Thou art a true woman,' he says, ' full of fancies ; but I felt oppressed too in Bernay—it must have been the weather.' He looks up, and Eugenie's eyes follow the direction which his have taken. The afternoon is clouding over, and as they now reach the brow of the hill and the view widens before them, a bank of heavy vapour spreads up from the horizon, darkening the pale grey cloud lines, and dimming the blue of the sky itself as a mass of the vapour shrouds the sun. The descent before them is steep and stony, and the horse is so fresh that he begins to go down it at a much quicker rate, than Monsieur Lagrange is used to. He pulls the rein sharply; the horse shies; there is a crash, a cry, and then the horse plunges madly down hill. Not for long-—the vehicle is on one side, for one wheel is off—and when some way down hill it runs into the hedge on one side the road, it is empty. The first cry was Eugenie's, as she was dashed headlong into the stony road. Her husband has fallen some way beyond her, and for some time he lies helpless and stunned.

By slow degrees consciousness returns, and instinctively he feels for the soft, plump hand which had nestled so lovingly close to his heart. It is not there. Jean Lagrange raises himself on his elbow and looks round. Why, how dark the sky has grown, and how faintly a few level sunbeams reach the open field below. While he looks they -are gone, and a deeper gloom is around him. More from instinct than because his brain, still clouded by the blow he has received, realises his dread, 'Eugenie, Eugenie!'he cries: 'where art thou?' His voice has in it a wail that startles him, and there comes an answer—a shrill ringing laugh—and then, * Aha! she is my Eugenie now, Jean Lagrange 1 Nothing can take her from me.' Lagrange staggers up, and reels like a drunkard ; then he follows the sound uphill. He has not far to go. At the sttle of the road his wife lies with her sweet face upturned to the sky as when he last saw it. Her gentle eyes are closed, bat there is a peaceful smile on her lips.

This is all which he sees, for in an instant he is kneeling beside her. He tries to raise her. Ah, what is this ? her body is like lead in weight, and her hands as they touch his are icy cold. He presses his lips on her cheeks, and then starts violently away. The same shrill discordant laugh sounds yet more frightfully. ' Gently, gently, Jean Lagrange ! Leave my Eugenie alone ; she is not yours to kiss.' Lagrange looks round. Seated on the opposite hedge, waving his long arms as a bird of prey might wave its wings, is Felix Fremont —laughing, chattering, gesticxilating, with the antics of a monkey. Before Lagrange can speak, be bursts forth again : ' Aha ! I did not expect to see thee. Thou shouldst have taken a longer sleep while Eugenie and I stole away to the old house at Orbec. Hands off, I say !' for Lagrange was bending over his wife trying to restore animation. ' I have sat here waiting patiently till she should awake, and thou darest touch her ! Hands off, I say !' He sprang at Lagrange, and there was a desperate struggle. At last they fell, Fremont underneath ; bnt when Lagrange.rose his opponent make no movement; he lay still as the fair young wife on the other side of the road.

In vain her husband chafed her hands and feet. In vain he kissed the dear eyes which held the light of his life—the lovely lips which had so often met his in answering caress. < -• ' 'Eugenie, Eugenie!' he cried. 'Come back to me, my beloved.'

But no sound answered now. From far off in the forest of Beaumency there came the shrill croak of the night-jar ; by-and-by a huge beetle whirred past, striking him with its wing; and still the half-stunned man knelt,, clasping his dead wife in his arms, with the wail, r ~ 'Eugenie—may God .'pity me! Eugenie, come back to me, my beloved !'