Carmen had been left too much alone, as M. Fille had said to Judge
Carcasson. Her spirits had moments of great dullness, when she was ready
to fling herself into the river--or the arms of the schoolmaster or the
farrier. When she first came to St. Saviour's, the necessity of adapting
herself to the new conditions, of keeping faith with herself, which she
had planned on the Antoine, and making a good wife to the man who was to
solve all her problems for her, prevailed. She did not at first miss so
much the life of excitement, of danger, of intrigue, of romance, of
colour and variety, which she had left behind in Spain. When her child
was born, she became passionately fond of it; her maternal spirit
smothered it. It gave the needed excitement in the routine of life at St.
Saviour's.
Yet the interest was not permanent. There came a time when she resented
the fact that Jean Jacques made more of the child than he did of herself.
That was a bad day for all concerned, for dissimulation presently became
necessary, and the home of Jean Jacques was a home of mystery which no
philosophy could interpret. There had never been but the one child. She
was not less handsome than when Jean Jacques married her and brought her
home, though the bloom of maiden youthfulness was no longer there; and
she certainly was a cut far above the habitant women or even the others
of a higher social class, in a circle which had an area equal to a
principality in Europe.
Pages:
65
66
67
68
69
70
71
72
73
74
75
76
77
78
79
80
81
82
83
84
85
86
87
88
89