The Inn of the Golden Pear. (continued 2)

Benoit shook his head. "Thy horse hath been too tenderly reared," he said. "A hurt goes harder with him than with our horses. But I will do my best, sir. I doubt not it will inconvenience thee much to wait here till he be well. If thou couldst content thee with a beast sorry to look at, but like the wind to go, we have a nag would carry thee along, and thou couldst leave the stallion till thy return."

"But I come not back this way," replied Willan, strangely ready with his lies, now he had once undertaken the rôle of a manoeuvrer. "I go far south, even down to the harbors of the sound. I must bide the beast's time now. He hath made time for me many a day, and I do assure you, good Benoit, I love him as if he were my brother."

"Ay," replied the ostler; "so thought I when I saw thee bent under thy saddle-bags and leading the horse by the rein. It's an evil man likes not his beast. We say in Normandy, sir,--

"'Evil master to good beast, Serve him ill at every feast!'"

"So he deserves," replied Willan, heartily; and in his heart he added, "I hope I shall not get my deserts."

Benoit led the poor horse away toward the stables, and Willan entered the house. No one was to be seen. Benoit had forgotten to tell him that no one was at home except Victorine. It was a market-day at St. Urban's; and Victor and Jeanne had gone for the day, and would not be back till late in the evening.

Willan roamed on from room to room,--through the bar-room, the living-room, the kitchen; all were empty, silent. As he retraced his steps he stopped for a second at the foot of the stairs which led from the living-room to the narrow passage-way overhead.

Victorine was in her aunt's room, and heard the steps. "Who is there?" she called. Willan recognized her voice; he considered a second what he should reply.

"Benoit! is it thou?" Victorine called again impatiently; and the next minute she bounded down the stairway, crying, "Why dost thou terrify me so, thou bad Benoit, not answering me when I--" She stopped, face to face with Willan Blaycke, and gave a cry of honest surprise.

"Ah! but is it really thou?" she said, the rosy color mounting all over her face as she recollected how she was attired. She had been asleep all the warm afternoon, and had on only a white petticoat and a short gown of figured stuff, red and white. Her hair was falling over her shoulders. Willan's heart gave a bound as he looked at her. Before he had fairly seen her, she had turned to fly.

"Yes, it is I,--it is I," he called after her. "Wilt thou not come back?"

"Nay," answered Victorine, from the upper stair; "that I may not do, for the house is alone." Victorine was herself now, and was wise enough not to go quite out of sight. She looked entrancing between the dark wooden balustrades, one slender hand holding to them, and the other catching up part of her hair. "When my aunt returns, if she bids me to wait at supper I shall see thee." And Victorine was gone.

"Then sing for me at thy window," entreated Willan.

"I know not the whole of any song," cried Victorine; but broke, as she said it, into a snatch of a carol which seemed to the poor infatuated man at the foot of the stairway like the song of an angel. He hurried out, and threw himself down under the pear-tree where he had lain before. The blossoms had all fallen from the pear-tree now, and through the thinned branches he could see Victorine's window distinctly. She could see him also.

"It would be no hard thing to love such a man as he, methinks," she said to herself as she went on leisurely weaving the thick braids of her hair, and humming a song just low enough for Willan to half hear and half lose the words.

"Once in a hedge a bird went singing, Singing because there was nobody near. Close to the hedge a voice came crying, 'Sing it again! I am waiting to hear. Sing it forever! 'T is sweet to hear.'

"Never again that bird went singing Till it was surer that no one was near. Long in that hedge there was somebody waiting, Crying in vain, 'I am waiting to hear. Sing it again! It was sweet to hear.'"

"I wonder if Sister Clarice's lover had asked her to sing, as Willan Blaycke just now asked me, that she did make this song," thought Victorine. "It hath a marvellous fitness, surely." And she repeated the last three lines.

"Long in that hedge there was somebody waiting, Crying in vain, 'I am waiting to hear. Sing it again! It was sweet to hear.'"

"But I should be silent like the bird, and not sing," she reflected, and paused for a while. Willan listened patiently for a few moments. Then growing impatient, he picked up a handful of turf and flung it up at the window. Victorine laughed to herself as she heard it, but did not sing. Another soft thud against the casement; no reply from Victorine. Then in a moment more, in a rich deep voice, and a tune far sweeter than any Victorine had sung, came these words:--

"Faint and weary toiled a pilgrim, Faint and weary of his load; Sudden came a sweet bird winging Glad and swift across his road.

"'Blessed songster!' cried the pilgrim, 'Where is now the load I bore? I forget it in thy singing; Hearing thee, I faint no more,'

"While he spoke the bird went winging Higher still, and soared away; 'Cruel songster!' cried the pilgrim, 'Cruel songster not to stay!'

"Was the songster cruel? Never! High above some other road Glad and swift he still was singing, Lightening other pilgrims' load!"

Victorine bent her head and listened intently to this song. It touched the best side of her nature.

"Indeed, that is a good song," she said to herself, "but it fitteth not my singing. I make choice for whom I sing; I am not minded so to give pleasure to all the world."

She racked her brains to recall some song which would be as pertinent a reply to Willan's song as his had been to hers; but she could think of none. She was vexed; for the romance of this conversing by means of songs pleased her mightily. At last, half in earnest and half in fun, she struck boldly into a measure on which she would hardly have ventured could she have seen the serious and tender expression on the face of her listener under the pear-tree. As Willan caught line after line of the rollicking measure, his countenance changed.

"An elfish mood is upon her," he thought. "She doth hold herself so safe in her chamber that she may venture on words she had not sung nearer at hand. She is not without mischief in her blood, no doubt." And Willan's own look began to grow less reverential and more eager as he listened.

"The bee is a fool in the summer; He knows it when summer is flown: He might, for all good of his honey, As well have let flowers alone.

"The butterfly, he is the wiser; He uses his wings when they 're grown; He takes his delight in the summer, And dies when the summer is done.

"A heart is a weight in the bosom; A heart can be heavy as stone: Oh, what is the use of a lover? A maiden is better alone."

Victorine was a little frightened herself, as she sang this last stanza. However, she said to herself: "I will bear me so discreetly at supper that the man shall doubt his very ears if he have ever heard me sing such words or not. It is well to perplex a man. The more he be perplexed, the more he meditateth on thee; and the more he meditateth on thee, the more his desire will grow, if it have once taken root."

A very wise young lady in her generation was this graduate of a convent where no men save priests ever came!

Just as Victorine had sung the last verse of her song, she heard the sound of wheels and voices on the road. Victor and Jeanne were coming home. Willan heard the sounds also, and slowly arose from the ground and sauntered into the courtyard. He had an instinct that it would be better not to be seen under the pear-tree.

Great was the satisfaction of Victor and Jeanne when they found that Willan Blaycke was a guest in the inn; still greater when they learned that he would be kept there for at least two days by the lameness of his horse.

"Thou need'st not make great haste with the healing of the beast," said Victor to Benoit; "it might be a good turn to keep the man here for a space." And the master exchanged one significant glance with his man, and saw that he need say no more.

There was no such specific understanding between Jeanne and Victorine. From some perverse and roguish impulse the girl chose to take no counsel in this game she had begun to play; but each woman knew that the other comprehended the situation perfectly.

When Victorine came into the dining-room to serve Willan Blaycke's supper, she looked, to his eyes, prettier than ever. She wore the same white gown and black silk apron with crimson lace she had worn before. Her cheeks and her eyes were bright from the excitement of the serenading and counter-serenading in which she had been engaged. Her whole bearing was an inimitable blending of shyness and archness, tempered by almost reverential respect. Willan Blaycke would have been either more or less than mortal man if he had resisted it. He did not,--he succumbed then and there and utterly to his love for Victorine; and the next morning when breakfast was ready he electrified Victor Dubois by saying, with a not wholly successful attempt at jocularity,--

"Look you! your man tells me I am like to be kept here a matter of some three days or more, before my horse be fit to bear me. Now, it irks me to be the cause of so much trouble, seeing that I am the only traveller in the house. I pray you that I may sit down with you all at meal-times, as is your wont, and that you make no change in the manner of your living by reason of my being in the house. I shall be better pleased so."

There was about as much command as request in Willan's manner; and after some pretended hesitancy Victor yielded, only saying, by way of breaking down the last barrier,--

"My daughter hath desired not to see thee. I know not how she may take this request of thine; it seemeth but reasonable unto me, and it will be that saving of work for her. I think she may consent."

Nothing but her love for Victorine would have induced Jeanne to sit again at meat with her stepson, but for Victorine's sake Jeanne would have done much harder things; and indeed, after the first few moments of awkwardness had passed by, she found that she was much less uncomfortable in Willan's presence than she had anticipated.

Willan's own manner did much to bring this about. He was so deeply in love with Victorine that it had already transformed his sentiments on most points, and on none more than in regard to Jeanne. He thought no better of her character than he had thought before; but he found himself frequently recollecting, as he had never done before, or at least had never done in a kindly way, that, after all, she had been his father's wife for ten years, and it would perhaps have been a more dignified thing in him to have attempted to make her continue in a style of living suitable to his father's name than to have relegated her, as he had done, to her original and lower social station.

Jeanne's behavior towards him was very judicious. Affection is the best teacher of tact in many an emergency in life; we see it every day among ignorant and untaught people.

Jeanne knew, or felt without knowing, that the less she appeared to be conscious of anything unusual or unpleasant in this resumption of familiar relations on the surface, between herself and Willan, the more free his mind would be to occupy itself with Victorine; and she acted accordingly. She never obtruded herself on his attention; she never betrayed any antagonism toward him, or any recollection of the former and different footing on which they had lived. A stranger sitting at the table would not have dreamed, from anything in her manner to him, that she had ever occupied any other position than that of the landlord's daughter and landlady of the inn.

A clear-sighted observer looking on at affairs in the Golden Pear for the next three days would have seen that all the energies of both Victor and Jeanne were bent to one end,--namely, leaving the coast clear for Willan Blaycke to fall in love with Victorine. But all that Willan thought was that Victor and his daughter were far quieter and modester people than he had supposed, and seemed disposed to keep themselves to themselves in a most proper fashion. It never crossed his mind that there was anything odd in his finding Victorine so often and so long alone in the living-room; in the uniform disappearance of both Victor and Jeanne at an early hour in the evening. Willan was too much in love to wonder at or disapprove of anything which gave him an opportunity of talking with Victorine, or, still better, of looking at her.

What he liked best was silently to watch her as she moved about, doing her light duties in her own graceful way. He was not a voluble lover; he was still too much bewildered at his own condition. Moreover, he had not yet shaken himself free from the tormenting disapproval of his conscience; he lost sight of that very fast, however, as the days sped on. Victorine played her cards most admirably. She did not betray even by a look that she understood that he loved her; she showed towards him an open and honest admiration, and an eager interest in all that he said or did,--an almost affectionate good-will, too, in serving his every want, and trying to make the time of his detention pass pleasantly to him.

"It must be a sore trial, sir, for thee to be kept in a poor place like this so many days. Benoit says that he thinks not thy horse can go safely for yet some days," she said to Willan one morning. "Would it amuse thee to ride over to Pierre Gaspard's mill to-day? If thou couldst abide the gait of my grandfather's nag, I might go on my pony, and show thee the way. The river is high now, and it is a fair sight to see the white blossoms along the banks."

Cunning Victorine! She had all sorts of motives in this proposition. She thought it would be well to show Willan Blaycke to Pierre. "He may discover that there are other men beside himself in the world," she mused; and, "It would please me much to go riding up to the door for Annette to see with the same brave rider she did so admire;" and, "There are many ways to bring a man near one in riding through the woods." All these and many more similar musings lay hid behind the innocent look she lifted to Willan's face as she suggested the ride.

It was only the third morning of Willan's stay at the inn; but the time had been put to very good use. Already it had become natural to him to come and go with Victorine,--to stay where she was, to seek her if she were missing. Already he had learned the way up the outside staircase to the platform where she kept her flowers and sometimes sat. He was living in a dream,--going the way of all men, head-long, blindfold, into a life of which he knew and could know nothing.

"Indeed, and that is what I should like best of all things," he replied to Victorine. "Will thy aunt let thee go?"

"Why not?" asked Victorine, opening her eyes wide in astonishment. "I ride all over the parish on my pony alone."

"Stupid of me!" ejaculated Willan, inwardly: "as if these people could know any scruples about etiquette!"

"These people," as Willan contemptuously called them, stood at the door of the inn, and watched him riding away with Victorine with hardly disguised exultation. Not till the riders were fairly out of sight did Victor venture to turn his face toward Jeanne's. Then, bursting into a loud laugh, he clapped Jeanne on the shoulder, and said: "We'll see thee grandmother of thy husband's grandchildren yet, Jeanne. Ha! ha!"

Jeanne flushed. She was not without a sense of shame. Her love for Victorine made her sensitive to the stain on her birth.

"Thinkest thou it could ever be known?" she asked anxiously.

"Never," replied her father,--"never; 'tis as safe as if we were all dead. And for that, the living are safer than the dead, if there be tight enough lock on their mouths."

"He doth seem to be as much in love as one need," said Jeanne.

"Ay," said Victor, "more than ever his father was with thee."

"Canst thou not let that alone?" said Jeanne, angrily. "Surely it is long enough gone by, and small profit came of it."

"Not so, not so, daughter," replied Victor, soothingly; "if we can but set the girl in thy shoes, thou didst not wear thine for nought, even though they pinched thee for a time."

"That they did," retorted Jeanne; "it gives me a cramp now but to remember them."

Willan and Victorine galloped merrily along the river road. The woods were sweet with spring fragrances; great thickets of dogwood trees were white with flowers; mossy hillocks along the roadside were pink with the dainty bells of the Linnaea. The road was little more than a woodman's path, and curved now right, now left, in seeming caprice; now forded a stream, now came out into a cleared field, again plunged back into dense groves of larch and pine.

"Never knew I that the woods were so beautiful thus early in the year," said the honest Willan.

"Nor I, till to-day," said the artful Victorine, who knew well enough what Willan did not know himself.

"Dost thou ride here alone?" asked Willan. "It is a wild place for thee to be alone."

"If I came not alone, I could not come at all," replied Victorine, sorrowfully. "My grandfather is too busy, and my aunt likes not to ride except she must, on a market day or to go to church. No one but thou hast ever walked or ridden with me," she added in a low voice, sighing; "and now after two days or three thou wilt be gone."

Willan sighed also, but did not speak. The words, "I will always ride by thy side, Victorine," were on his lips, but he felt himself still withheld from speaking them.

The visit at the mill was unsatisfactory. The elder Gaspard was away, and young Pierre was curt and surly. The sight of Victorine riding familiarly, and with an evident joyous pride, by the side of one of the richest men in the country, and a young man at that,--and a young man, moreover, who looked and behaved as if he were in love with his companion,--how could the poor miller be expected to be cordial and unconstrained with such a sight before his eyes! Annette also was more overawed even than Victorine had desired she should be by the sight of the handsome stranger,--so overawed, and withal perhaps a little curious, that she was dumb and awkward; and as for Mère Gaspard, she never under any circumstances had a word to say. So the visit was very stupid, and everybody felt ill at ease,--especially Willan, who had lost his temper in the beginning at a speech of Pierre's to Victorine, which seemed to his jealous sense too familiar.

"I thought thou never wouldst take leave," he said ill-naturedly to Victorine, as they rode away.

Victorine turned towards him with an admirably counterfeited expression of surprise. "Oh, sir," she said, "I did think I ought to wait for thee to take leave. I was dying with the desire I had to be back in the woods again; and only when I could not bear it any longer, did I bethink me to say that my aunt expected us back to dinner."

Long they lingered on the river-banks on their way home. Even the plotting brain of Victorine was not insensible to the charm of the sky, the air, the budding foliage, and the myriads of blossoms. "Oh, sir," she said, "I think there never was such a day as this before!"

"I know there never was," replied Willan, looking at her with an expression which was key to his words. But the daughter of Jeanne Dubois was not to be wooed by any vague sentimentalisms. There was one sentence which she was intently waiting to hear Willan Blaycke speak. Anything short of that Mademoiselle Victorine was too innocent to comprehend.

"Sweet child!" thought Willan to himself, "she doth not know the speech of lovers. I mistrust that if I wooed her outright, she would be afraid."

It was long past noon when they reached the Golden Pear. Dinner had waited till the hungry Victor and Jeanne could wait no longer; but a very pretty and dainty little repast was ready for Willan and Victorine. As she sat opposite him at the table, so bright and beaming, her whole face full of pleasure, Willan leaned both his arms on the table and looked at her in silence for some minutes.

"Victorine!" he said. Victorine started. She was honestly very hungry, and had been so absorbed in eating her dinner she had not noticed Willan's look. She dropped her knife and sprang up.

"What is it, sir?" she said; "what shall I fetch?" Her instantaneous resumption of the serving-maid's relation to him jarred on Willan at that second indescribably, and shut down like a floodgate on the words he was about to speak.

"Nothing, nothing," said he. "I was only going to say that thou must sleep this afternoon; thou art tired."

"Nay, I am not tired," said Victorine, petulantly. "What is a matter of six leagues of a morning? I could ride it again between this and sunset, and not be tired."

But she was tired, and she did sleep, though she had not meant to do so when she threw herself on her bed, a little later; she had meant only to rest herself for a few minutes, and then in a fresh toilette return to Willan. But she slept on and on until after sunset, and Willan wandered aimlessly about, wondering what had become of her. Jeanne saw him, but forebore to take any note of his uneasiness. She had looked in upon Victorine in her slumber, and was well content that it should be so.

"The girl will awake refreshed and rosy," thought Jeanne; "and it will do no harm, but rather good, if he have missed her sorely all the afternoon."

Supper was over, and the evening work all done when Victorine waked. It was dusk. Rubbing her eyes, she sprang up and went to the window. Jeanne heard her steps, and coming to the foot of the stairs called: "Thou need'st not to come down; all is done. What shall I bring thee to eat?"

"Why didst thou not waken me?" replied Victorine, petulantly; "I meant not to sleep."

"I thought the sleep was better," replied her aunt. "Thou didst look tired, and it suits no woman's looks to be tired."

Victorine was silent. She saw Willan walking up and down under the pear-tree. She leaned out of her window and moved one of the flower-pots. Willan looked up; in a second more he had bounded up the staircase, and eagerly said: "Art thou there? Wilt thou never come down?"

Victorine was uncertain in her own mind what was the best thing to do next; so she replied evasively: "Thou wert right, after all. I did not feel myself tired, but I have slept until now."

"Then thou art surely rested. Canst thou not come and walk with me in the pear orchard?" said Willan.

"I fear me I may not do that after nightfall," replied Victorine. "My aunt would be angry."

"She need not know," replied the eager Willan. "Thou canst come down by this stairway, and it is already near dark."

Victorine laughed a little low laugh. This pleased her. "Yes," she said, "I have often come down by, that post from my window; but truly, I fear I ought not to do it for thee. What should I say to my aunt if she missed me?"

"Oh, she thinks thee asleep," said Willan. "She told me at supper that she would not waken thee."

All of which Mistress Jeanne heard distinctly, standing midway on the wide staircase, with Victorine's supper of bread and milk in her hand. She had like to have spilled the whole bowlful of milk for laughing. But she stood still, holding her breath lest Victorine should hear her, till the conversation ceased, and she heard Victorine moving about in her room again. Then she went in, and kissing Victorine, said: "Eat thy supper now, and go to bed; it is late. Good-night. I'll wake thee early enough in the morning to pay for not having called thee this afternoon. Good-night."

Then Jeanne went down to her own room, blew out her candle, and seated herself at the window to hear what would happen.

"My aunt's candle is out; she hath gone to bed," whispered Victorine, as holding Willan's hand she stole softly down the outer stair. "I do doubt much that I am doing wrong."

"Nay, nay," whispered Willan. "Thou sweet one, what wrong can there be in thy walking a little time with me? Thy aunt did let thee ride with me all the day." And he tenderly guided Victorine's steps down the steep stairs.

"Pretty well! pretty well!" laughed Mistress Jeanne behind her casement; and as soon as the sound of Willan's and Victorine's steps had died away, she ran downstairs to tell Victor what had happened. Victor was not so pleased as Jeanne; he did not share her confidence in Victorine's character.

"Sacre!" he said; "what wert thou thinking of? Dost want another niece to be fetched up in a convent? Thou mayst thank thyself for it, if thou art grandmother to one. I trust no man out of sight, and no girl. The man's in love with the girl, that is plain; but he means no marrying."

"That thou dost not know," retorted Jeanne. "I tell thee he is an honorable, high-minded man, and as pure as if he were but just now weaned. I know him, and thou dost not. He will marry her, or he will leave her alone."

"We shall see," muttered the coarse old man as he walked away,--"we shall see. Like mother, like child. I trust them not." And in a thorough ill-humor Victor betook himself to the courtyard. What he heard there did not reassure him. Old Benoit had seen Willan and Victorine going down through the poplar copse toward the pear orchard. "And may the saints forsake me," said Benoit, "if I do not think he had his arm around her waist and her head on his shoulder. Think'st thou he will marry her?"

"Nay," growled Victor; "he's no fool. That Jeanne hath set her heart on it, and thinketh it will come about; but not so I."

"He seems of a rare fine-breeding and honorable speech," said Benoit.

"Ay, ay," replied Victor, "words are quick said, and fine manners come easy to some; but a man looks where he weds."

"His father did not have chance for much looking," sneered Benoit.

"This is another breed, even if his father begot him," replied Victor. "He goeth no such way as that." And thoroughly disquieted, Victor returned to the house to report to Jeanne what Benoit had seen. She was still undisturbed.

"Thou wilt see," was her only reply; and the two sat down together in the porch to await the lovers' return. Hour after hour passed; even Jeanne began to grow alarmed. It was long after midnight.

"I fear some accident hath befallen them," she said at last. "Would it be well, thinkest thou, to go in search of them?"

"Not a step!" cried Victor. "He took her away, and he must needs bring her back. We await them here. He shall see whether he may tamper with the granddaughter of Victor Dubois."

"Hush, father!" said Jeanne, "here they come."

Walking very slowly, arm in arm, came Willan and Victorine. They had evidently no purpose of entering the house clandestinely, but were approaching the front door.

"Hoity, toity!" muttered Victor; "he thinks he can lord it over us, surely."

"Be quiet, father!" entreated Jeanne. Her quick eye saw something new in the bearing of both Willan and Victorine. But Victor was not to be quieted. With an angry oath, he sprung forward from the porch, and began to upbraid Willan in no measured tones.

Willan lifted his right hand authoritatively. "Wait!" he said. "Do not say what thou wilt repent, Victor Dubois. Thy granddaughter hath promised to be my wife."

So the new generation avenged the old; and Willan Blaycke, in the prime of his cultured and fastidious manhood, fell victim to a spell less coarsely woven but no less demoralizing than that which had imbittered the last years of his father's life.

[Footnote: Note.--"The Inn of the Golden Pear" includes three chapters of a longer story entitled "Elspeth Pynevor,"--a story of such remarkable vigor and promise, and planned on such noble and powerful lines as to deepen regret that its author's death left it but half finished. A single sentence has been added by another hand to round the episode of Willan Blaycke's infatuation to conclusion.]