Beck Center English Dept. University Libraries Emory University
Emory Women Writers Resource Project Collections:
Women's Genre Fiction Project

Adrienne, an electronic edition

by Rita

date: 1898
source publisher: Hutchinson & Co.
collection: Genre Fiction

Table of Contents

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CHAPTER VI.

ADRIENNE and her husband drove through the winding roads, and under boughs where the spoils of autumn were ripe and ruddy. The heat of the sun was tempered by the cool breath of the mistral, which had suddenly sprung up, as it often does in Provence, and blew in strong gusts from time to time. It waved the silver boughs of the olives, and tossed the vine leaves to and fro. It rustled in the briar-wood hedges, and brought sweet odours from crushed and ripened fruits and dried grasses on its strong, rough wings.

"It is almost too strong to be pleasant," said Armand de Valtour, as a fiercer gust than usual tossed off his hat and sent it whirling into the road.

"It is delicious, I think," said Adrienne, laughing at his discomfiture, and reining in the ponies so that he might dismount and secure his truant headgear, with which the wind was taking strange liberties. He pursued it as it rolled over from place to place, escaping his hand just when he thought he had secured it. Suddenly a little figure flashed out from the hedge and handed him the recreant article with a smile and a deep courtesy. It was little Maï.

Armand did not know her, but he saw how pretty | | 75 was the little ripe berry of a face, how graceful and well-formed the rounded figure. He replaced his hat and thanked her for its capture.

"Do you live near here?" he said. "What is your name?"

"I live at Gran'mère Manon's," she said. "The cottage yonder by the Tour des Champs."

"By Brizeaux's farm!" exclaimed Armand de Valtour. "I have just come from there. Then you are little Maï?"

"Yes, monsieur."

"How changed you are! To think what a difference five years can make! Ah, there is the Countess; you must come and speak to her."

The pony-carriage was close at hand now; but the girl shrank back with visible reluctance. Yet she lacked courage to carry out her own impulse and avoid the young Countess, and in another instant the beautiful face was beside her.

"This is little Maï. You remember Céline told us of her," said Armand de Valtour. "Thanks to her I have recovered my hat. Phew! what a chase I had!"

He got into the low carriage as he spoke. He was flushed and warm with his chase. His dark, smiling eyes were still glancing admiringly at the picturesque face of the little peasant.

The young Countess said a few kind, graceful words, and then drove off. Maï had been stupid and embarrassed. She had said nothing--only looked | | 76 with admiration at the beauty she half envied, half wondered at. Of the Count she never thought, and when he turned back and waved his hand as she stood motionless there, she hardly noticed the action.

"What a pretty little thing she is," said Adrienne admiringly. "She is betrothed to André Brizeaux, is she not?"

"So they say," answered Armand de Valtour. "Not that he is fit to be a husband; he is full of dreams, and thinks only of his music. What an odd fate that he should be a peasant."

"You say truly--he is not fit for the life," said Adrienne. "He has real talent, that boy. It is a pity he could not have full scope for it."

"Yes, it is," said her husband, with an odd little smile. "He would be happier in Paris, I do not doubt. I wonder what the little girl would say to that?"

"He might become great and famous," continued Adrienne musingly. "She would be proud enough, then, when he came back to her."

"Ma chère!" laughed her husband, "if he became great and famous, there would be little chance of his coming back to her. I know the world, and men are made of pretty much the same stuff in all ranks and grades of life. No, our young genius would sing for other birds than the little brown swallow under the cottage eaves, once we gave him liberty of flight."

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"It would bring unhappiness to her," said Adrienne softly. "Ah, that would be sad! Doubtless she loves him dearly. She might make him happy. Shall we leave them alone, Armand? After all it might be best. He will soon forget his dreams, if he loves her."

"Au contraire, chérie," smiled the Count. "We will send him to Paris to try his strength. He will prove it there--if he loves her."

There was silence between husband and wife after that last remark. Something in Armand de Valtour's look and tone made Adrienne uncomfortable. She could not understand him quite. It seemed as if he wished to separate these lovers--to make them unhappy; to throw the young ignorant dreamer into the maelstrom of Paris life, and there leave him to sink or struggle.

The smile on his lips had been almost cruel, yet even while she imagined it so, she strove to think she had been mistaken. Armand was surely too kind, too generous to do anything that would hurt any one's feelings, or affect their happiness.

While these thoughts were perplexing her, her husband's voice sounded again.

"Would you not like to ask Madame de Savigny to stay with you for a time?" he said. "I fear you will find Valtours very dull."

"Dull!" she cried, and turned and looked at him with pain and wonder in her soft eyes. "Dull--with you, Armand!"

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He laughed a little.

"Flatterer!" he said. "Does my society content you sufficiently, then?"

"Oh, yes," she said, her voice pained and grieved now. "We have been married so short a time, Armand; I do not care for anyone else to disturb our home. I like to think we are all in all to each other."

"And so we are, my dearest," he said fondly, as he looked into the beautiful, troubled eyes. But to himself he thought, "Does she expect me to play the part of mari amoreux always? I hope not."

His words banished the cloud on Adrienne's brow. She loved him so dearly, and she never doubted but that he returned that love with equal ardour.

"Odylle always told me that Frenchmen made adorable husbands," she said, aloud. "You know, Armand, I was half afraid to marry you, and then you wanted everything done in such a hurry. I took counsel with Odylle at last, but she set all my doubts at rest."

"I am glad of that," said Armand de Valtour dryly. "She is very happy herself. Her husband is a delightful being."

"I have never seen him," said Adrienne eagerly. "I should so like to know him. I was sorry he was not at Trouville."

"No, strange to say, he is not as often with his charming wife as one might suppose," remarked Armand de Valtour.

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Adrienne looked at him quickly, but his face was not an easy one to read when he saw fit to hide his feelings. It was calm and inscrutable now, and told her nothing.

"I hope they are happy," she said hesitatingly.

"Happy--of course," laughed her husband; "why not? She has money--a title--a beautiful home. What more does a woman need?"

"Love," said the girl softly.

"Perhaps they love each other, too," he answered, more gravely. "The world says not--but the world is often wrong."

Adrienne flushed hotly.

"I know the world speaks lightly enough of marriage," she said. "But, oh, Armand, in our case let it never say such things. Why should not a French marriage be as happy as an English one?"

"Some say French marriages are a great deal happier," said Armand de Valtour, with the same odd smile on his lips. "In any case, the parties must make the best of their bargain here, for release is not easy. In your country, ma chère, it is different. When the chain galls it can be cut asunder."

"But of what use is that?" asked Adrienne earnestly. "Such freedom is only shame. A second marriage contracted under such circumstances is, in my idea, no marriage at all. Those who, in the sight of God, are united by a bond so sacred are one in an indissoluble union until life ends."

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"How seriously you speak. If those are you ideas, it is just as well you have married a Frenchman, chérie. Tell me, you who count love so sacred and important a thing--do you believe it can endure as long as the rite it consecrates? Do you think it lasts a lifetime, as does the bondage of the marriage ring you wear?"

He touched her hand lightly as he spoke, and something in the light touch, the mocking tone, made the girl's heart beat with a sudden vague fear.

"Surely," she said, "if it is worth the name."

"You think, then, you will always love me--love me as you do now?"

"As I do now?" she murmured dreamily. "That I cannot say. It is not possible to promise for the future. You may change. I--"

She stopped, then looked at him.

"I love and honour you now," she said softly. "I have given you my heart--my love--my life. It is for you to preserve them to yourself in the years to come, or cast them back as valueless."

"I shall never do that, believe me," he said, with an earnestness that was sincere enough then; and with sudden reverence he stooped and kissed the hand beside him--kissed it as a believer might kiss the shrine at which his knee is bent. For that moment, with the light of those steadfast eyes looking up with untold love to his own, she seemed to him not so | | 81 much a woman to be loved, as a woman to be reverenced.

"She would make me a better man were I always beside her," he thought, with an emotion that was true enough--while it lasted.

The mistral was still blowing in stormy gusts; but the air was hot as that of an eastern summer between those fierce outbursts. The pony-carriage trotted on and stopped at other farms, and its occupants dismounted and chatted in friendly fashion to such of the peasants as were not at work in the fields or vineyards.

But Armand de Valtour did not appear to feel any further interest in his people, and went through the ceremony more as a disagreeable duty than anything else. Adrienne, on the other hand, was delighted with the cordial welcome she received. The pleasant, homely ways, the sight of the rosy children tumbling in the doorways and about the grass-grown paths, the old gran'mères nodding their silver white heads in the sunshine, cheerful and thankful to the saints that life held still for them so much that was good and pleasant, the peasant maidens with their white caps and brown faces, and bright eyes and shy pretty ways. These people pleased her greatly, and her gracious words and winning smiles captivated them easily enough. Not one among them all but was full of praise and admiration for the lovely young countess, and eagerly expressed hopes that her home from henceforth would be amongst them all.

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"Our lord will surely not care for travel and foreign countries now that he has that bright angel to glorify the old château," they said one to another.

And meanwhile the lord was laughing at the "bright angel" for the trouble she had taken to inquire into the peasants' wants and desires, and declaring he was only too willing to give up all his own duties to her if she would undertake them. Adrienne was too entirely in earnest to believe his light words. She saw so much that needed reforming--so much that had been borne with patience and uncomplaining, and her heart was troubled to think that with all the wealth and means at hand the poor should suffer and endure hardships that a little scarcely-felt sacrifice would remedy.

They had not complained--indeed, they had spoken lightly and contentedly enough of their lives of burden; but, all the same, the young countess's quick instinct had perceived grievances and abuses and bitter wrongs lying beneath that lightness and content, and in her own mind she resolved that such things should exist no longer. But she did not press the matter too roughly upon Armand de Valtour's notice. She resolved to think out a plan of her own first, and then submit it to him, thus taking some of the burden upon her own shoulders.

The poor would always be poor--of course, she knew that; but something, surely, might be done to make that poverty less bitter, those toilful lives less hard.

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"How much we take from their hands: how little we give," she thought, remembering how the wealth of vineyards and orchards, and fields and olive groves went up to swell her husband's treasury, and what scant recompense was given to those whose care and toil were necessary in order to insure that wealth.

To all thoughtful minds--minds that are free from class prejudice, and are capable of clear judgment--the laws which disproportion the advantages and enjoyments of the human race must seem arbitrary and unjust. All the sufferings and privations, the toil and care, which are imposed upon the poor for the benefit of the rich, assume proportions that are at once immoderate and unfair. Can one wonder that the seeds so carelessly and heedlessly sown become in time a crop of anarchy and revolution? There are so many people who ask but little and are given nothing, who see abuses and injustice heaped upon their heads until the burden must either suffocate them or be thrown off into a sea of blood! And then the world wonders and cries out on the discontent that hunger and want and grinding misery have sharpened into weapons of destruction, or turned into a fever of indignation, whose watchword is Revolution!

As a rule, the peasantry are very contented and very patient.

The homely plodding life that goes on day by day is of itself innocent and peaceful, and affords little room for base passions or bloodthirsty thoughts. | | 84 The quiet years spent among grazing cattle and green fields and simple pasture lands, the threshing and ploughing and sowing and reaping, the cares of seed-time and harvest, the watching of wind and weather--all these are enough to occupy their thoughts and fill their lives. But with the poor in the world of a great city it is different. Poverty there is a hideous and a terrible thing, and breeds those vile sins and viler deeds that overthrow kingdoms and alter dynasties, and spread the evil of teaching and example even to the pure and simple lives of the country around. Then, where perhaps has only been discontent, comes fierce resentment. And no longer is there peace in the homestead, or innocent content of meadows and fields and mountain sides, and the cottage by stream or river. No longer are the dim woods filled with music of birds. The cool skies stretching over purple moors cease to attract the toiler's eyes, and all the freedom and loveliness of the world as God has made it becomes of no beauty. A fever of unrest and rebellion usurps their place. Something of all this Adrienne knew, and her own strict sense of justice recognised much that was wrong, and betrayed carelessness and indifference on his part among even the few of her husband's people whom she had seen to-day. It made her thoughtful, and troubled her, too, so that the drive home was silent and somewhat grave.

"What are you thinking of so earnestly?" asked Armand de Valtour at last.

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"Of the people," she said.

"So was I," he answered, and Adrienne looked pleased and eager as she heard the confession. But he did not tell her of what particular people he was thinking, nor what his thoughts respecting them were.

Had he done so she would hardly have felt so gratified, for the one idea in his mind was to send young André Brizeaux to Paris at any cost, and to separate him from little Maï.

"She would not be a fit wife for him," he said to himself, and again that odd little cruel smile was on his lips.

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