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shock before was nothing to this.
"I'll live through this spring, " she continued, "and possibly the
summer as well. But I won't survive another winter. I know. The
pain in my lungs is too bad. " I made some little anguished sound. I
think I leaned forward and said, "Mother! "
"Don't say any more, " she answered. I think she hated to be called
mother, but I hadn't been able to help it.
"I just wanted to speak it to another soul, " she said. "To hear it out
loud. I'm perfectly horrified by it. I'm afraid of it. " I wanted to take
her hands, but I knew she'd never allow it. She disliked to be touched.
She never put her arms around anyone. And so it was in our glances
that we held each other. My eyes filled with tears looking at her. She
patted my hand.
"Don't think on it much, " she said. "I don't. Just only now and
then. But you must be ready to live on without me when the time
comes. That may be harder for you than you realize. " I tried to say
something; I couldn't make the words come. She left me just as she'd
come in, silently. And though she'd never said anything about my
clothes or my beard or how dreadful I looked, she sent the servants in
with clean clothes for me, and the razor and warm water, and silently I
let myself be taken care of by them.
3
I began to feel a little stronger. I stopped thinking about what
happened with the wolves and I thought about her. I thought about
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the words "perfectly horrified, " and I didn't know what to make of
them except they sounded exactly true. I'd feel that way if I were dying
slowly. It would have been better on the mountain with the wolves.
But there was more to it than that. She had always been silently
unhappy. She hated the inertia and the hopelessness of our life here as
much as I did. And now, after eight children, three living, five dead,
she was dying. This was the end for her. I determined to get up if it
would make her feel better, but when I tried I couldn't. The thought
of her dying was unbearable. I paced the floor of my room a lot, ate
the food brought to me, but still I wouldn't go to her. But by the end
of the month, visitors came to draw me out. My mother came in and
said I must receive the merchants from the village who wanted to
honor me for killing the wolves.
"Oh, hell with it, " I answered.
"No, you must come down, " she said. "They have gifts for you.
Now do your duty. " I hated all this. When I reached the hall, I found
the rich shopkeepers there, all men I knew well, and all dressed for the
occasion. But there was one startling young man among them I didn't
recognize immediately. He was my age perhaps, and quite tall, and
when our eyes met I remembered who he was. Nicolas de Lenfent,
eldest son of the draper, who had been sent to school in Paris. He was
a vision now. Dressed in a splendid brocade coat of rose and gold, he
wore slippers with gold heels, and layers of Italian lace at his collar.
Only his hair was what it used to be, dark and very curly, and boyish
looking for some reason though it was tied back with a fine bit of silk
ribbon. Parisian fashion, all this-the sort that passed as fast as it could
through the local post house. And here I was to meet him in
threadbare wool and scuffed leather boots and yellowed lace that had
been seventeen times mended. We bowed to each other, as he was
apparently the spokesman for the town, and then he unwrapped from
its modest covering of black serge a great red velvet cloak lined in fur.
Gorgeous thing. His eyes were positively shining when he looked at
me. You would have thought he was looking at a sovereign.
"Monsieur, we beg you to accept this, " he said very sincerely. "The
forest fur of the wolves has been used to line it and we thought it
would stand you well in the winter, this fur lined cloak, when you ride
out to hunt. "
"And these too, Monsieur, " said his father, producing a finely sewn
pair of fur-lined boots in black suede. "For the hunt, Monsieur, " he
said. I was a little overcome. They meant these gestures in the kindest
way, these men who had the sort of wealth I only dreamed of, and they
paid me respect as the aristocrat. I took the cloak and the boots. I
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thanked them as effusively as I'd ever thanked anybody for anything.
And behind me, I heard my brother Augustin say:
"Now he will really be impossible! " I felt my face color. Outrageous
that he should say this in the presence of these men, but when I
glanced to Nicolas de Lenfent I saw the most affectionate expression
on his face.
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