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Page 11
Jeanne's thin, stern lips trembled, almost as if in fear, as she
listened to Aim�e. She turned her shaking head slowly towards her, then
fixed her deep eyes on hers, and said:
"I have warned your belle-fille, that she may be saved. It was my love
for her. Let her have nought to do with Them that dwell in the rocks and
the trunks of the great trees."
Old Aim�e shook her stick on the floor with rage.
"Impious and wicked woman! Confess, I say, or I will tell the good cur�,
who knows your tricks, and he will not give you absolution; and then
the Evil Ones will have their way with you yourself, for what shall
save you from them?"
The thin lips in the strange face trembled more. "The old sorceress
dwells alone, abandoned of all," she murmured. "If she take not a sou
when one or another will give it her, how shall she contrive to live?"
"What is it," demanded Aim�e, with increasing shrillness, "that you have
told the child Marie about my grandson?"
A look of cunning suddenly drove away the expression of conscious guilt
in Jeanne's face. She dropped her eyes on the floor, mumbled
inarticulately a moment, and then said shiftily, "You have perhaps a few
sous in your pocket, Madame, to show good-will to the sorceress; for
without good-will she cannot tell you what you seek to know."
Aim�e's keen eyes flashed, as drawing forth two sous from her pocket,
she said in a tone of incisive contempt, "You shall have these,
Mademoiselle, but not till you have told me the whole truth, as you
would to the cur� at confession. Come then--say."
The sorceress began with shuffling tones and glances, which grew more
sure as she went on:
"I watched for the little one returning on the afternoon of Sunday--_he_
told me to do so. I was to give her the message that Antoine desired to
meet with her at the entrance of the Dwarf's Valley: I had but to give
the message: it was not my fault. I am but a poor old woman that does
the bidding of others."
"Well, well," said Aim�e, impatiently, "what else did you tell her?"
Jeanne looked at her interlocutor again, and a strange expression grew
in her eyes.
"It is Jeanne that knows the Evil Ones, that knows their shape and their
speech. She knows them when they walk among men, and she knows them in
their homes in the dark valley."
"Chut, chut," cried Aim�e, the more irritably that her maternal feelings
had to overcome her natural inclination to superstition. "It is only one
thing you have to tell--how did you frighten Marie so that she is ready
to go out of her wits at the sight of Antoine?"
"Nay, it was Geoffroi that frightened her, as they went up the ravine
together. I had but told her not to go alone, for that They were abroad
that night." The old woman broke into a curious chuckle. "How she
shivered, like a chicken in the wind! H'ch, h'ch! Then _he_ took hold of
her arm and led her away, for I had told her _he_ was a safe protector
against the spirits, not like some that wear the face of man and go up
and down in the village, saying that the people should not believe in
Jeanne the sorceress, for that she tells that which is untrue--while
they themselves have dealings such as none can know with the Evil Ones."
Aim�e looked at her keenly for some moments with a curious expression on
her tightly-folded lips.
"You would have me believe that Marie went into the ravine when she knew
the spirits were about, and went on the arm of Geoffroi?"
"I tell you, Grandm�re, that she did so. It was Jeanne that compelled
her. For Jeanne knows when a man is in league with Them, and she said to
Marie, 'Thou wilt wed Antoine, but thou knowest not what he is; go to
the Black Stone to-night, and thou shalt see.' H'ch! Jeanne knows
nothing, does she? But Marie went, for she knew that Jeanne was wise.
And what she saw, she saw."
It was strange to see the conflict between superstition and natural
affection in the face of Aim�e. Her thoughts seemed to be rapidly
scanning the past, and there was fear as well as anger in her look.
Could it be that this child, flung into her arms, as it were, from the
shipwreck, born before his time of sorrow, the very offspring of
death,--that had always lived apart from the other lads, with strange,
quiet ways of his own--that had astonished her by his wise sayings as a
child--and that, growing up had brought unnatural prosperity to the
home, as though some higher hand were upon him--could it be that there
was something in him more than of this earth? Her hand trembled so that
it shook the stick on which she leant: she made one or two attempts to
speak, then dropped the two halfpence on the table, as if they burnt
her, and went out.
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