Folle-Farine. Ouida
brows drew together.
"Little devil! Will you work now?" said the miller. "Do you think you are to stand in the sun and smell at flowers—you? Pouf-f-f!"
Folle-Farine did not move.
"Pick up the sacks this moment, little brute," said the miller. "If you stand still a second before they are all housed, you shall have as many stripes as there are sacks left untouched. Oh-hè, do you hear?"
She heard, but she did not move.
"Do you hear?" he pursued. "As many strokes as there are sacks, little wretch. Now—I will give you three moments to choose. One!"
Folle-Farine still stood mute and immovable, her head erect, her arms crossed on her chest. A small, slender, bronze-hued, half-nude figure among the ruby hues of the gladioli and the pure snowlike whiteness of the lilies.
"Two!"
She stood in the same attitude, the sacks lying untouched at her feet, a purple-winged butterfly lighting on her head.
"Three!"
She was still mute; still motionless.
He seized her by the shoulder with one hand, and with the other lifted the rope.
It curled round her breast and back, again and again and again; she shuddered, but she did not utter a single cry. He struck her the ten times; with the same number of strokes as there remained sacks uncarried. He did not exert any great strength, for had he used his uttermost he would have killed her, and she was of value to him; but he scourged her with a merciless exactitude in the execution of his threat, and the rope was soon wet with drops of her bright young blood.
The noonday sun fell golden all around; the deep sweet peace of the silent country reigned everywhere; the pigeons fled to and fro in and out of their little arched homes; the millstream flowed on, singing a pleasant song; now and then a ripe apricot dropped with a low sound on the turf; close about was all the radiance of summer flowers; of heavy rich roses, of yellow lime tufts, of sheaves of old-fashioned comely phlox, and all the delicate shafts of the graceful lilies. And in the warmth the child shuddered under the scourge; against the light the black rope curled like a serpent darting to sting; among the sun-fed blossoms there fell a crimson stain.
But never a word had she uttered. She endured to the tenth stroke in silence.
He flung the cord aside among the grass. "Daughter of devils!—what strength the devil gives!" he muttered.
Folle-Farine said nothing. Her face was livid, her back bruised and lacerated, her eyes still glanced with undaunted scorn and untamed passion. Still she said nothing; but, as his hand released her, she darted as noiselessly as a lizard to the water's edge, set her foot on the lowest range of the woodwork, and in a second leaped aloft to the highest point, and seated herself astride on that crossbar of black timber on which she had been throned when he had summoned her first, above the foam of the churning wheels, and in the deepest shadow of innumerable leaves.
Then she lifted up a voice as pure, as strong, as fresh as the voice of a mavis in May-time, and sang, with reckless indifference, a stave of song in a language unknown to any of the people of that place; a loud fierce air, with broken words of curious and most dulcet melody, which rang loud and defiant, yet melancholy, even in their rebellion, through the foliage, and above the sound of the loud mill water.
"It is a chant to the foul fiend," the miller muttered to himself. "Well, why does he not come and take his own? he would be welcome to it."
And he went and sprinkled holy water on his rope, and said an ave or two over it to exorcise it.
Every fiber of her childish body ached and throbbed; the stripes on her shoulders burned like flame; her little brain was dizzy; her little breast was black with bruises; but still she sang on, clutching the timber with her hands to keep her from falling into the foam below, and flashing her fierce proud eyes down through the shade of the leaves.
"Can one never cut the devil out of her?" muttered the miller, going back to his work among the beans.
After awhile the song ceased; the pain she suffered stifled her voice despite herself; she felt giddy and sick, but she sat there still in the shadow, holding on by the jutting woodwork, and watching the water foam and eddy below.
The hours went away; the golden day died; the grayness of evening stole the glow from the gladioli and shut up the buds of the roses; the great lilies gleamed but the whiter in the dimness of twilight; the vesper chimes were rung from the cathedral two leagues away over the fields.
The miller stopped the gear of the mill; the grindstones and the water-wheels were set at rest; the peace of the night came down; the pigeons flew to roost in their niches; but the sacks still lay unearned on the grass, and a spider had found time to spin his fairy ropes about them.
The miller stood on his threshold, and looked up at her where she sat aloft in the dusky shades of the leaves.
"Come down and carry these sacks, little brute," he said. "If not—no supper for you to-night."
Folle-Farine obeyed him and came down from the huge black pile slowly, her bands crossed behind her back, her head erect, her eyes glancing like the eyes of a wild hawk.
She walked straight past the sacks, across the dew-laden turf, through the tufts of the lilies, and so silently into the house.
The entrance was a wide kitchen, paved with blue and white tiles, clean as a watercress, filled with the pungent odor of dried herbs, and furnished with brass pots and pans, with walnut presses, and with pinewood trestles, and with strange little quaint pictures and images of saints. On one of the trestles were set a jug of steaming milk, some rolls of black bread, and a big dish of stewed cabbages. At the meal there was already seated a lean, brown, wrinkled, careworn old serving-woman, clad in the blue-gray kirtle and the white head-gear of Normandy.
The miller stayed the child at the threshold.
"Little devil—not a bit nor drop to-night if you do not carry the sacks."
Folle-Farine said nothing, but moved on, past the food on the board, past the images of the saints, past the high lancet window, through which the moonlight had begun to stream, and out at the opposite door.
There she climbed a steep winding stairway on to which that door had opened, pushed aside a little wooden wicket, entered a loft in the roof, loosened the single garment that she wore, shook it off from her, and plunged into the fragrant mass of daisied hay and of dry orchard mosses which served her as a bed. Covered in these, and curled like a dormouse in its nest, she clasped her hands above her head and sought to forget in sleep her hunger and her wounds. She was well used to both.
Below there was a crucifix, with a bleeding god upon it; there was a little rudely-sculptured representation of the Nativity; there was a wooden figure of St. Christopher; a portrait of the Madonna, and many other symbols of the church. But the child went to her bed without a prayer on her lips, and with a curse on her head and bruises on her body.
Sleep, for once, would not come to her. She was too hurt and sore to be able to lie without pain; the dried grasses, so soft to her usually, were like thorns beneath the skin that still swelled and smarted from the stripes of the rope. She was feverish; she tossed and turned in vain; she suffered too much to be still; she sat up and stared with her passionate wistful eyes at the leaves that were swaying against the square casement in the wall, and the moonbeam that shone so cold and bright across her bed.
She listened, all her senses awake, to the noises of the house. They were not many: a cat's mew, a mouse's scratch, the click-clack of the old woman's step, the shrill monotony of the old man's voice, these were all. After awhile even these ceased; the wooden shoes clattered up the wooden stairs, the house became quite still; there was only in the silence the endless flowing murmur of the water breaking against the motionless wheels of the mill.
Neither man nor woman had come near to bring her anything to eat or drink. She had heard them muttering their prayers before they went to rest, but no hand unlatched her door. She had no disappointment, because she had had no hope.
She had rebellion, because Nature had implanted it in her; but she went no further. She did