A frosty night or two had ushered in the summer of St. Martin, as it was called by the habitans,--the Indian summer,--that brief time of glory and enchantment which visits us like a gaudy herald to announce the approach of the Winter King. It is Nature's last rejoicing in the sunshine and the open air, like the splendor and gaiety of a maiden devoted to the cloister, who for a few weeks is allowed to flutter like a bird of paradise amid the pleasures and gaieties of the world, and then comes the end. Her locks of pride are shorn off; she veils her beauty, and kneels a nun on the cold stones of her passionless cell, out of which, even with repentance, there comes no deliverance.
Mere Malheur's arrival at Beaumanoir was speedily known to all the servants of the Chateau. She did not often visit them, but when she did there was a hurried recital of an Ave or two to avert any harm, followed by a patronizing welcome and a rummage for small coins to cross her hand withal in return for her solutions of the grave questions of love, jealousy, money, and marriage, which fermented secretly or openly in the bosoms of all of them. They were but human beings, food for imposture, and preyed on by deceivers. The visit of Mere Malheur was an event of interest in both kitchen and laundry of the Chateau.
Dame Tremblay had the first claim, however, upon this singular visitor. She met her at the back door of the Chateau, and with a face beaming with smiles, and dropping all dignity, exclaimed,--"Mere Malheur, upon my life! Welcome, you wicked old soul! you surely knew I wanted to see you! come in and rest! you must be tired, unless you came on a broom! ha! ha! come to my room and never mind anybody!"
This last remark was made for the benefit of the servants who stood peeping at every door and corner, not daring to speak to the old woman in the presence of the housekeeper, but knowing that their time would come, they had patience.
The housekeeper, giving them a severe look, proceeded to her own snug apartment, followed by the crone, whom she seated in her easiest chair and proceeded to refresh with a glass of cognac, which was swallowed with much relish and wiping of lips, accompanied by a little artificial cough. Dame Tremblay kept a carafe of it in her room to raise the temperature of her low spirits and vapors to summer heat, not that she drank, far from it, but she liked to sip a little for her stomach's sake.
"It is only a thimbleful I take now and then," she said. "When I was the Charming Josephine I used to kiss the cups I presented to the young gallants, and I took no more than a fly! but they always drank bumpers from the cup I kissed!" The old dame looked grave as she shook her head and remarked, "But we cannot be always young and handsome, can we, Mere Malheur?"
"No, dame, but we can be jolly and fat, and that is what we are!
You don't quaff life by thimblefuls, and you only want a stout offer to show the world that you can trip as briskly to church yet as any girl in New France!"
The humor of the old crone convulsed Dame Tremblay with laughter, as if some invisible fingers were tickling her wildly under the armpits.
She composed herself at last, and drawing her chair close to that of Mere Malheur, looked her inquiringly in the face and asked, "What is the news?"
Dame Tremblay was endowed with more than the ordinary curiosity of her sex. She knew more news of city and country than any one else, and she dispensed it as freely as she gathered. She never let her stock of gossip run low, and never allowed man or woman to come to speak with her without pumping them dry of all they knew. A secret in anybody's possession set her wild to possess it, and she gave no rest to her inordinate curiosity until she had fished it out of even the muddiest waters.
The mystery that hung around Caroline was a source of perpetual irritation to the nerves of Dame Tremblay. She had tried as far as she dared by hint and suggestion to draw from the lady some reference to her name and family, but in vain. Caroline would avow nothing, and Dame Tremblay, completely baffled by a failure of ordinary means to find out the secret, bethought herself of her old resource in case of perplexity, Mere Malheur.
For several days she had been brooding over this mode of satisfying her curiosity, when the unexpected visit of Mere Malheur set aside all further hesitation about disobeying the Intendant's orders not to inquire or allow any other person to make inquisition respecting Caroline.
"Mere Malheur, you feel comfortable now!" said she. "That glass of cognac has given you a color like a peony!"
"Yes, I am very comfortable now, dame! your cognac is heavenly: it warms without burning. That glass is the best news I have to tell of to-day!"
"Nay, but there is always something stirring in the city; somebody born, married, or dead; somebody courted, won, lost, or undone; somebody's name up, somebody's reputation down! Tell me all you know, Mere Malheur! and then I will tell you something that will make you glad you came to Beaumanoir to-day. Take another sip of cognac and begin!"
"Ay, dame, that is indeed a temptation!" She took two deep sips, and holding her glass in her hand, began with loose tongue to relate the current gossip of the city, which was already known to Dame Tremblay; but an ill-natured version of it from the lips of her visitor seemed to give it a fresh seasoning and a relish which it had not previously possessed.
"Now, Mere Malheur! I have a secret to tell you," said Dame Tremblay, in a low, confidential tone, "a dead secret, mind you, which you had better be burnt than reveal. There is a lady, a real lady if I ever saw one, living in the Chateau here in the greatest privacy. I and the Intendant only see her. She is beautiful and full of sorrow as the picture of the blessed Madonna. What she is, I may guess; but who she is, I cannot conjecture, and would give my little finger to know!"
