The House with Blue Shutters Read Online Free PDF Page B

cheeks had faded,
     they were still sufficiently pink to suggest that she had plenty of energy to spare from the cheerful Christ-child plumped
     stolidly in her lap to go about such matters as the strangling of ducks and the bottling of apricots, should that be required.
     She suited Castroux much better than the delicate, etiolated remnants of more mystical piety. Superstitions that had been
     old in the days of the convent remained in the village yet, but they were of a practical cast, concerned with the burying
     of rabbits at full moon in potato patches, or the efficacy of a pregnant woman’s urine to bring on the artichokes. Père Guillaume,
     whose name had been manipulated on his arrival in Castroux to Poire William, a great joke in 1920 and still good for a laugh
     more than adecade later, had been troubled initially by the increases to the poor box brought about by his predecessor’s having sold
     vials of holy water, which were apparently of great benefit to the melons. He resigned himself quickly to the mysterious workings
     of the Lord, blessed a barrel of it in front of the church on Easter Monday, and permitted the congregation to siphon it off
     in cans, greatly benefiting in turn a charity for orphan apprentices that was dear to his heart. Castroux, correspondingly,
     was noted for the sweetness of its melons, and for a viscous eau de vie stewed out of them in a barely concealed still by
     Papie Nadl at Murblanc every September, to whose effects, within bounds and bearing in mind his nickname, Père Guillaume turned
     another blinded eye.
    The orphan apprentices possessed a fine new headquarters, with schoolhouse and dormitories, on the edge of Monguèriac, and
     it was to this long, yellow-washed building that Père Guillaume turned his thoughts when Sophie Aucordier, poor woman, passed
     away leaving an idiot son and a daughter not yet fourteen. Père Guillaume was concerned for the child; it seemed to him she
     had a hard life, even by Castroux standards, with a drunken father and an imbecile brother. The mother had been decent enough,
     though she had never struck the priest as a kind woman. She had brought her children regularly to Mass, and when Père Guillaume
     had tried to speak to her about Oriane’s more irregular appearances in the schoolhouse she had met his criticism with resignation
     rather than excuses, to which, from what he knew of their hardscrabble existence up there on the plain, he would have listened
     sympathetically. The Nadl family, at Murblanc, had been good to the orphans, he believed. Madame Nadl had come for him when
     it wastime for the last rites, and had supervised the arrangements for a respectable funeral, but charity in Castroux began strictly
     at home. Oriane Aucordier could not expect her neighbours to take responsibility for long.
    Père Guillaume had made inquiries at the apprentice school, and at the
Mairie
concerning what remained of the Aucordier farm, and, as he set out on his bicycle on a raw wet day in May, he believed he
     had found a solution to the poor girl’s future. If the property were to be sold, and Oriane spent a few years in Monguèriac,
     she would have enough to support the brother decently until such a time as God called (and Père Guillaume, calculating on
     the back of a missionary pamphlet in the presbytery one night, had guiltily considered that William’s type rarely live long),
     and to leave a small competence for herself that would enable her to find work, as a lower standard teacher perhaps. Mademoiselle
     Lafage, at the school, said she was quite able, and then, perhaps, she might get married.
    Père Guillaume freewheeled all the way to the bridge over the Landine, then dismounted for the climb to Aucordier’s. He thanked
     the good Lord for his bicycle, which kept him fit enough for emergency rushes about his hilly parish. The basket had been
     fitted with a rainproof leather fishing box, which was most convenient for the oil and