La Teuse had laid out the breakfast beneath two big mulberry trees, whose spreading branches formed a sheltering roof at the bottom of the little garden. The sun, which had at last succeeded in dissipating the stormy-looking vapours of early morning, was warming the beds of vegetables, while the mulberry-trees cast a broad shadow over the rickety table, on which were laid two cups of milk and some thick slices of bread.
'You see how nice it looks,' said Desiree, delighted at breakfasting in the fresh air.
She was already cutting some of the bread into strips, which she ate with eager appetite. And as she saw La Teuse still standing in front of them, she said, 'Why don't you eat something?'
'I shall, presently,' the old servant answered. 'My soup is warming.'
Then, after a moment's silence, looking with admiration at the girl's big bites, she said to the priest: 'It is quite a pleasure to see her. Doesn't she make you feel hungry, Monsieur le Cure? You should force yourself.'
Abbe Mouret smiled as he glanced at his sister. 'Yes, yes,' he murmured; 'she gets on famously, she grows fatter every day.'
'That's because I eat,' said Desiree. 'If you would eat you would get fat, too. Are you ill again? You look very melancholy. I don't want to have it all over again, you know. I was so very lonely when they took you away to cure you.'
'She is right,' said La Teuse. 'You don't behave reasonably, Monsieur le Cure. You can't expect to be strong, living, as you do, on two or three crumbs a day, as though you were a bird. You don't make blood; and that's why you are so pale. Don't you feel ashamed of keeping as thin as a lath when we are so fat; we who are only women? People will begin to think that we gobble up everything and leave you nothing but the empty plates.'
Then both La Teuse and Desiree, brimful of health and strength, scolded him affectionately. His eyes seemed very large and bright, but empty, expressionless. He was still gently smiling.
'I am not ill,' he said; 'I have nearly finished my milk.' He had swallowed two mouthfuls of it, but had not touched the bread.
'The animals, now,' said Desiree, thoughtfully, 'seem to get on much more comfortably than we do. The fowls never have headaches, have they? The rabbits grow as fat as ever one wants them to be. And you never saw my pig looking sad.'
Then, turning towards her brother, she went on with an air of rapture:
'I have named it Matthew, because it is so like that fat man who brings the letters. It is growing so big and strong. It is very unkind of you to refuse to come and look at it as you always do. You will come to see it some day, won't you?'
While she was thus talking she had laid hold of her brother's share of bread, and was eating away at it. She had already finished one piece, and was beginning the second, when La Teuse became aware of what she was doing.
'That doesn't belong to you, that bread! You are actually stealing his food from him now!'
'Let her have it,' said Abbe Mouret, gently. 'I shouldn't have touched it myself. Eat it all, my dear, eat it all.'
For a moment Desiree fell into confusion, with her eyes fixed upon the bread, whilst she struggled to check her rising tears. Then she began to laugh, and finished the slice.
'My cow,' said she, continuing her remarks, 'is never as sad as you are. You were not here when uncle Pascal gave her to me, on the promise that I would be a good girl, or you would have seen how pleased she was when I kissed her for the first time.'
She paused to listen. A cock crowed in the yard, and a great uproar followed, with flapping of wings and cackling, grunting, and hoarse cries as if the whole yard were in a state of commotion.
'Ah! you know,' resumed Desiree, clapping her hands, 'she must be in calf now. I took her to the bull at Beage, three leagues from here. There are very few bulls hereabouts, you know.'
La Teuse shrugged her shoulders, and glanced at the priest with an expression of annoyance.
'It would be much better, mademoiselle,' said she, 'if you were to go and quiet your fowls. They all seem to be murdering one another.'
Indeed, the uproar in the yard had now become so great that the girl was already hurrying off with a great rustling of her petticoats, when the priest called her back. 'The milk, my dear; you have not finished the milk.'
He held out his cup to her, which he had scarcely touched. And she came back and drank the milk without the slightest scruple, in spite of La Teuse's angry look. Then she again set off for the poultry-yard, where they soon heard her reducing the fowls to peace and order. She had, perhaps, sat down in the midst of them, for she could be heard gently humming as though she were trying to lull them to sleep.
III
'Now my soup is too hot!' grumbled La Teuse, as she returned from the kitchen with a basin, from which a wooden spoon was projecting.
She placed herself just in front of Abbe Mouret, and began to eat very cautiously from the edge of the spoon. She wanted to enliven the Abbe and to draw him out of his melancholy moodiness. Ever since he had returned from the Paradou, he had declared himself well again, and had never complained. Often, indeed, he smiled in so soft and sweet a fashion, that his fever seemed to have increased his saintliness, at least so thought the villagers. But, at intervals, he had fits of gloomy silence, and appeared to be suffering torture which he strove to bear uncomplainingly. It was a mute agony which bore down upon him, and, for hours at a time, left him stupefied, a prey to a frightful inward struggle, the violence of which could only be guessed by the sweat of anguish that streamed down his face.
At such times La Teuse refused to leave him, and overwhelmed him with a torrent of gossip, until he had gradually recovered tranquillity by crushing the rebellion of his blood. On that particular morning, the old servant foresaw a more grievous attack than usual, and poured forth an amazing flood of talk, while continuing her wary manoeuvres with the spoon, which threatened to burn her tongue.
'Well, well,' said she, 'one has to live among a lot of wild beasts to see such goings-on. Would any one ever think in a decent village of being married by candlelight? It shows what a poor sort these Artauds are. When I was in Normandy, I used to see weddings that threw every one into commotion for a couple of leagues round. They would feast for three whole days. The priest would be there, and the mayor, too; and at the marriage of one of my cousins, all the firemen came as well. And didn't they have a fine time of it! But to make a priest get up before sunrise and marry people before even the chickens have left their roost, why, there's no sense in it! If I had been your reverence, I should have refused to do it. You haven't had your proper sleep, and you may have caught cold in the church. It is that which has upset you. Besides which it would be better to marry brute beasts than that Rosalie and her ugly lout. That brat of theirs dirtied one of the chairs.-But you ought to tell me when you feel poorly, and I could make you something warm.-Eh! Monsieur le Cure, speak to me!'
He answered, in a feeble voice, that he was quite well, and only needed a little fresh air. He had just leant against one of the mulberry-trees, and was breathing rather quickly, as if faint.
'Oh! all right,' went on La Teuse, 'do just as you like. Go on marrying people when you haven't the strength for it, and when you know very well that it's bound to upset you. I knew how it would be; I told you so yesterday. And if you took my advice, you wouldn't stay where you are. The smell of the yard is bad for you. It is frightful just now. I can't imagine what Mademoiselle Desiree can be stirring about there. She's singing away, and doesn't seem to mind it at all. Ah! that reminds me of something I want to tell you. You know that I did all I could to keep her from taking the cow to Beage; but she's like you, obstinate, and will go her own way. Fortunately, however, for her, she's none the worse for it. She delights to be amongst the animals and their young ones. But come now, your reverence, do be reasonable. Let me take you to your room. You must lie down and rest a little. What, you don't want to! Well, then, so much the worse for you, if you suffer! Besides, it's absurd to keep one's worries locked up in one's heart till they stifle one.'