Even Zabette, with her thousand wrinkles, was young once. They say her lips were red as wild strawberries and her hair as sleek as the wing of a blackbird in spring. All the old people of St. Esprit remember how she used to swing along the street on her way to mass of a Sunday, straight, proud, agile as a goat, with her dark head flung back, and a disdainful smile on her lips that kept young men from being unduly forward. The country people, who must have their own name for everything and everybody, used to call her "la belle orgueilleuse," and sometimes, "the highstepper"; and though they had to laugh at her a little for her lofty ways, they found it quite natural to address her as mademoiselle.

But all these things one only knows by hearsay. Zabette does not talk much herself. So far as she is concerned, you might never guess that she had a story at all. She lives there in the little dormer-windowed cottage beyond the post-office with Suzanne BenoÎt. For thirty-three years now the two women have lived together; and it is the earnest prayer of both of them that when the time for going arrives, they may go together.

These two good souls have the reputation, all over the country, of immense industry and thrift. Suzanne keeps three cows, and her butter is famous. Zabette—she was a Fuseau, from the Grande Anse—takes in washing of the better class. Nobody in St. Esprit can do one of those stiff white linen collars so well as she. Positively, it shines in the sun like a looking-glass. If you notice the men going to church, you can always pick out those who have their shirts and collars done by Zabette Fuseau. By comparison, the others appear dull and very commonplace.

"But why must Zabette do collars for her living?" you are asking. "Why has she not a man of her own to look out for her, and half a dozen grown up children? Did she never marry, then—this belle orgueilleuse?"

No. Never. But not on account of that pride of hers; at least not directly. If you go into the pretty little living-room of the second cottage beyond the post-office—the one with such a show of geraniums in the front windows—you will guess half the secret, for just above the mantelpiece, between two vases of artificial asters, hangs the daguerreotype portrait of a young man in mariner's slops. The lineaments have so faded with the years that it is difficult to make them out with any assurance. It is as if the portrait itself were seeking to escape from life, retreating little by little, imperceptibly, into the dull shadows of the ground, so that only as you look at it from a certain angle can you still clearly distinguish the small dark eyes, the full moustache, the round chin, the square stocky shoulders of the subject. Only the two rosy spots added by the daguerreotypist to the cheeks defy time and change, indestructible token of youth and ardor.

A little frame of immortelles encloses the portrait. And directly in front of it, on the mantelpiece, stands a pretty shell box, with the three words on the mother-of-pearl lid: "À ma chÉrie." What is in the box—if anything—no one can tell you for a certainty, though there are plenty of theories. "Love letters," say some; and others, with a pitying laugh, "Old maid's tears."

Zabette and Suzanne hold their tongues. I think I know what the treasure of the box is; for I had the story directly from a very aged woman who knew both the "girls" when they were young; and she vouched for the truth of it by all the beads of her rosary. This is how it went.

Zabette Fuseau was eighteen, and she lived at the Grand Anse, two miles out of St. Esprit; and the procession of young fellows, going there to woo, was like a pilgrimage, exactly. Among them came one from far down the coast, a place called RiviÈre Bourgeoise. He was a deep sea fisherman, from off a vessel which had put in at St. Esprit for repairs, mid-course to the Grand Banks; and on his first shore leave Maxence had caught sight of la belle orgueilleuse, who had come into town with a basket of eggs; and he had followed her home, at a little distance, sighing, but without the courage to address her so long as they were in the village. He was a very handsome young fellow, with a brown, ruddy skin, and the most beautiful dark curly hair and crisp moustache imaginable.

Zabette knew he was behind her; but she would not turn; not she; only walked a little more proudly and gracefully, with that swinging movement of hers, like a vessel sailing in a head wind. At last, when they had reached the Calvaire at the end of the village, he managed to get out his first word.

"Oh!" he cried, haltingly. "Mademoiselle!"

She turned half about and fixed her dark proud eyes upon him, while her cheeks crimsoned.

"Well, m'sieur?"

He could not speak, and the two stared at each other for a long time in silence, while the thought came to her that this was the man for whom she was destined.

"Had you something to say to me?" she repeated, finally, in a tone that tried to be severe, but was really very soft.

He nodded his curly head, and licked his lips hard to moisten them.

"I cannot wait any longer," she protested, after a while. "They need me at home."

She turned quickly again, as if to go; but her feet were glued to the ground, and she did not take a step.

"Oh, s'il vous plaÎt, mam'selle!" he cried, to hold her. "You think I am rude. But I did not mean to follow you like this. I could not help it. You are so beautiful."

The look he gave her with those words sank deep into her heart and rooted itself there forever. In vain, for the rest of her life, she might try to tear it out; there was a fatality about it. Zabette, fine highstepper that she was, had been caught at last. She knew that she ought to send the handsome young sailor away; but her tongue would not obey her. Instead, it uttered some very childish words of confusion and pleasure; and before she knew it, there was her man walking along at her side, with one hand on his heart, declaring that she was the most angelic creature in the world, that he was desperately in love with her, that he could not live without her, and that she must promise then and there to be his, or he would instantly kill himself. The burning, impassioned look in his eyes struck her with dismay.

"But I cannot decide all in a moment like this," she protested, in a weak voice. "It would be indecent. I must think."

"Think!" he retorted, bitterly. "Oh, very well. Then you do not love me!"

"Ah, but I do!" she cried, all trembling.

With that he took her in his arms and kissed her, and nothing more was heard about suicide or any such subject.

"But we must not tell any one yet," she pleaded. "They would not understand."

He agreed, with the utmost readiness. "We will not tell a soul. It shall be exactly as you wish. But I may come and see you?"

"Oh, certainly," she responded. "Often,—that is, every day or two,—at Grande Anse; and perhaps we may happen to meet sometimes in the village, as well."

"The Soleil will be delaying at St. Esprit for two weeks," he explained, as they walked along, hand in hand. "She put in for some repairs. By the end of that time, perhaps"—

"Oh, no, not so soon as that," she interrupted. "We must let a longer while pass first."

She gazed at him yearningly. "You will be returning by here in the autumn, at the end of the season on the Banks?"

"We are taking on three men from St. Esprit," he answered. "We shall stop here on the return to set them ashore. That will be in October, near the end of the month, if the season is good."

She sighed, as if dreading some disaster; and they looked at each other again, and the look ended in a kiss. It is not by words, that new love feeds and grows.

Before they reached the Grande Anse he quitted her; but he gave her his promise to come again that evening. He did—that evening, and two evenings later, and so on, every other evening for those two weeks. Zabette's old mother took a great fancy to him, and gave him every encouragement; but the old pÈre Fuseau, who had sailed many a voyage, in younger days, round the Horn, would never speak a good word for him—and perhaps his hostility only increased the girl's attachment.

"A little grease is all very well for the hair of a young man," he would say. "But this scented pomade they use nowadays—pah!"

"You object then to a sailor's being a gentleman?" demanded the girl haughtily.

"Yes, I do," roared the old pÈre Fuseau. "Have a care, Zabette."

Nevertheless, the two lovers found plenty of chances to be alone together; and they would talk, in low voices, of their happiness and of the future, which looked very bright to Zabette, despite all the uncertainties of the sea.

"When we put in on the return from the Banks," said Maxence, "you will be at the wharf to meet me; and that very day we will announce our fiancailles. What an astonishment for everybody!"

"And then," she asked—"after that?"

"After that, I will stay ashore for a while. They can do without me on the Soleil. And at the end of a month"—he told her the rest with a kiss; and surely Zabette had never been so happy in her life.

But for the time being the affair was kept very, very secret, so that people might not get to gossiping. Even those frequent expeditions of Maxence to the Grande Anse were not remarked, for he always came after dusk: and when the fortnight was over and the Soleil once more was ready for sea, the two sweethearts exchanged keepsakes, and he left her.

"I will send you a letter from St. Pierre Miquelon," he said, to cheer her, while he wiped away her tears with a silk handkerchief.

"Do you promise?" she asked.

He promised. Three weeks later the letter arrived; and it told her that his heart was breaking for his dear little Zabette. "Sois fidÈle—be true," were the last words. The letter had a perfume of pomade about it, and she carried it all summer in her bodice, taking it out many times a day to scan the loving words again.

In St. Esprit, when the fishing fleet begins to return from the Banks, they keep an old man on the lookout in the church tower; and as soon as he sights a vessel in the offing, he rings the bell.

It was the fourth week in October that year before the bell was heard; and then rapidly, two or three at a time, the schooners came in. First the Dame Blanche, which was always in the lead; then the Êtoile, the Deux FrÈres, the Lottie B., and the Milo. Every day, morning or afternoon, the bell would ring, and poor Zabette must find some excuse or other to be in town. Down at the wharf there was always gathered an anxious throng, watching for the appearance of the vessel round the Cape. And when she was visible at last, there would be cries of joy from some, and silence on the part of others. Zabette was among the silent. When she saw the happiness about her, tears would swim unbidden in her eyes; but of course she did not lose heart, for still there were several vessels to arrive, and no disasters had been reported by the earlier comers. People noticed her, standing there with expectant mien, and they wondered what it could be that brought her; but it was not their habit to ask questions of the fine highstepper.

There was another young girl on the wharf, too, who had the air of looking for some one—a certain Suzanne BenoÎt, from l'Étang, three miles inshore, a very pretty girl, with a mild, appealing look in her brown eyes. Zabette had seen her often here and there; but she had no acquaintance with her. At the present moment, strangely enough, she felt herself powerfully drawn to this Suzanne. It came to her, somehow, that the girl had come thither on a mission similar to her own, she was so silent, and had not the look of those who had waited on the wharf in previous years. And so, one afternoon, when two vessels had rounded the Cape and were entering the harbor, amid a great hubbub of expectancy,—and neither of them was the Soleil,—Zabette surprised a look of woe in the face of the other which she could not resist. She went over to her, with some diffidence, and offered a few words of sympathy.

"You are waiting for some one, too?" she asked her.

The eyes of the other filled quickly to overflowing. "Yes," she answered. "He has not come yet."

"You must not worry," said Zabette, stoutly. "There are always delays, you know. Some are ahead; others behind; it is so every year."

The girl gave her a grateful look, and squeezed her hand. "It is a secret," she murmured.

Zabette smiled. "I have a secret too."

"Then we are waiting together," said Suzanne. "That makes it so much easier!"

They walked back to the street, arm in arm, as if they had always been bosom friends. And the next day they were both at the wharf again. The afternoon was bleak; but as usual they were in their best clothes.

"Oh, it does not seem as if I could wait any longer," whispered Suzanne, confidingly. "I do hope it will be the Soleil this time."

"The Soleil!" exclaimed Zabette, joyfully. "You are waiting for the Soleil?"

And at the other's nod, she went on. "How lovely that we are expecting the same vessel. Oh, I am sure it will come to-day—or certainly to-morrow."

The two girls felt themselves very close together, now that they had shared so much of their secret; and it made the waiting less hard to bear.

"Is he handsome, your man?" asked Suzanne, timidly.

"Ravishing," replied Zabette, eagerly. "And yours?"

Suzanne sighed with adoration. "Beyond words," was her reply—and the girls exchanged another of those pressures of the hand which mean so much where love is concerned. "He has the most beautiful moustache in the world."

"Oh, no," protested Zabette, smilingly. "Mine has a more beautiful one yet, and such crisp curly hair, and dark eyes."

Her companion suddenly looked at her. "Large eyes or small?" she asked in a strange voice.

"Oh," replied Zabette, doubtfully. "Not too large. I would not fancy ox eyes in a man."

Suzanne freed herself and stood facing her with a flash of hatred in her mild face which Zabette could not understand.

"And his name!" she demanded, harshly. "His name, then!"

Zabette smiled a little proudly. "That is my secret," she replied. "But, Suzanne, what is the matter?"

"It is not your secret," laughed the other, bitterly. "It is not your secret. It is my secret."

"What do you mean?" cried Zabette, with a sudden feeling of terror at the girl's drawn face.

"His name is Maxence!" Suzanne's laugh was like bones rattling in a coffin.

It seemed to Zabette as if a flash of lightning had cleft her soul in two. That was the way the truth came to her. She drew back like a viper ready to strike.

"Oh, I hate you!" she cried, and turned on her heel, white to the eyes with anger and shame.

But Suzanne would not leave her. She followed to the other side of the wharf, and as soon as she could speak again without attracting attention, she said, more kindly:

"I am very sorry for you, Zabette. It is too bad you were so mistaken. Why, he was engaged to me the very second day he came ashore."

Zabette stifled back a cry, and retorted, icily, "He was engaged to me the first day. He followed me all the way to the Grande Anse."

Suzanne's eyes glittered, this time. "He followed me all the way to l'Étang. He is mine."

Zabette brought out, through white lips, "Leave me alone. He was mine first."

"He was mine last," retaliated the other, undauntedly. "The very morning he went away, he came to see me. Did he come to you that day? Did he? Did he?"

Zabette ignored her question. "He wrote me a letter from St. Pierre Miquelon," she announced, crisply. "So that settles it, first and last."

The hand of Suzanne suddenly lifted to her bosom, as if feeling for something. "My letter was written at St. Pierre, too."

For an instant they glared at each other like wild animals fighting over prey. Neither said a word. Neither yielded a hair. Each felt that her life's happiness was at stake. Zabette had thought that this chit of a girl from l'Étang was mild and timid; but now she realized that she had met her match for courage. And the thought came to her: "When he sees us, let him choose."

She was not conscious of having uttered the words. Perhaps her glance, swiftly directed toward the Cape, conveyed the thought to her rival. At all events the answer came promptly and with complete self-assurance:

"Yes, let Maxence choose."

Just at that moment the first vessel appeared at the harbor entrance, while the bell redoubled its jubilation in the church tower on the hill.

"The Mercure!" cried an old woman. "Thank God!"

And a few minutes later, there was the Anne-Marie, all sail set over her green hull; and then a vessel which at first no one seemed to recognize.

"Which is that?" they asked. "Oh, it must be—yes, it is the Soleil, from RiviÈre Bourgeoise. She has several men from here aboard."

With eyes that seemed to be starting from her head, Zabette watched the Soleil entering the harbor. She could distinguish forms on deck. She saw handkerchiefs waving. At last she could begin to make out the faces a little. But she did not discover the one she sought. Holding tight to a mooring post, unable to think, unable to do anything but watch, it seemed to her that hours passed before the schooner cast anchor and a boat was put over. There were four persons in it: the mate and the three men from St. Esprit. They rowed rapidly to the wharf; and the three men threw up their gunny sacks and climbed the ladder, one after the other.

The mate was just about to put off again when Zabette spoke to him. She leaned over the edge of the wharf, reaching out a detaining hand.

"M'sieur!"

At the same instant the word was uttered by another voice close by. She looked up and saw Suzanne, very white, in the same attitude.

"What is it, mesdemoiselles?" asked the mate, touching his vizor.

As if by concerted arrangement came the question from both sides.

"And Maxence?"

The man answered them seriously and directly, perceiving from their manner that his reply was of great import to these two, whatever the reason for it might be.

"Maxence?—But we do not know where he is. There was a fog. He was out in a dory, alone. We picked up the dory the next day. Perhaps"—he shrugged his shoulders incredulously—"perhaps he might have been picked up by another vessel. Who can say?"

The girls gave him no answer. They reeled, and would have fallen, save that each found support in the other's arms. Sinking to the string piece of the wharf, they buried their faces on each other's shoulders and sobbed. Happy fathers and mothers and sweethearts, gathered on the wharf, looked at them in wonder, and left them alone, ignorant of the cause of their grief. So a long time passed, and still they crouched there, tight clasped, with buried heads.

"He was so good, so brave!" sobbed Suzanne.

"I loved him so much," repeated Zabette, over and over.

"I shall die without him," moaned Suzanne.

"So shall I," responded the other. "I cannot bear to live any longer."

"If only I had a picture of him, that would be some comfort," said the poor girl from l'Étang.

"I have one," said Zabette, sitting up straight and putting some orderly touches to her disarranged mouchoir. "He gave it to me the very last night."

Suzanne looked at her enviously, and mopped her red eyes. "All I have," she sighed, "is a little shell box he brought me, with the motto, À ma chÉrie. He gave me that the very last morning of all. It is very beautiful, but no one but me has seen it yet."

"You must show it to me sometime," said Zabette. "I have a right to see it."

"If you will let me look at the picture," consented the other, guardedly.

"Yes, you may look at it," said Zabette, "so long as you do not forget that it belongs to me."

"To you!" retorted the other. "And have you a better right to it than I, seeing that he would have been my husband in a month's time? You are a bad, cruel girl; you have no heart. It is a mercy he escaped the traps you set for him—my poor Maxence!"

A thousand taunting words came to Zabette's lips, but she controlled herself, rose to her feet with a show of dignity, and quitted the wharf. She resolved that she would never speak to that BenoÎt girl again. To do so was only to be insulted.

She went back to her home on the Grande Anse and endeavored to take up her everyday life again as though nothing had happened. She hid her grief from the neighbors, even from her own parents, who had never suspected the strength of her attachment for Maxence. By day she could keep herself busy about the house, and the secret would only be a dull pain; but at night, especially when the wind blew, it would gnaw and gnaw at her heart like a hungry beast.

At last she could keep it to herself no longer. She must share her misery. But there was only one person in the world who could understand. She declared to herself that nothing would induce her to go to l'Étang; and yet, as if under a spell, she made ready for the journey.

"Where are you going, my Zabette?" asked her old mother.

"To l'Étang," she answered. "I hear there is a girl there who makes a special brown dye for wool."

"Well, the walk will do you good, ma fille. You have been indoors too much lately. You are growing right pale and ill-looking."

"Oh, it is nothing, maman. I never feel very brisk, you know, in November. 'Tis such a dreary month."

She took a back road across the barrens to l'Étang. Scarcely any one traveled it except in winter to fetch kindling wood from the scrub fir that grew there. Consequently Zabette was much surprised, after walking about a mile and a half, to discover that some one was approaching from the opposite direction—a woman, with a red shawl across her shoulders. Gradually the distance between them lessened; and then she saw, with a start, that it was Suzanne BenoÎt. Her knees began to tremble under her. When they met, at last, no words would come to her lips: they only looked at each other with questioning, hunted eyes, then embraced, weeping, and sat down silently on a moss-hummock beside the road. Zabette had not felt so comforted since the disaster of October. For the first time she could let the tears flow without any fear of detection. At last she said, very calmly:

"I have brought the picture."

She drew it out from under her coat, and held it on her knees, where Suzanne could see it.

"And here is the shell box," rejoined her companion. "I do not know how to read, me; but there are the words—À ma chÉrie. It's pretty—hein?"

Each gazed at the other's treasure.

"Ah," sighed Suzanne, mournfully. "How handsome he was to look at—and so true and brave!"

"I shall never love another," said Zabette, with sad conviction—"never. Love is over for me."

"And for me," said Suzanne. "But we have our memories."

"Mine," corrected Zabette. "You are forgetting."

"Did he ever give you a present that said À ma chÉrie?" demanded Suzanne, pointedly.

The other explained blandly: "You cannot say anything, my dear, on the back of a tintype.—But I have my letter from St. Pierre."

She showed it.

"Even if I cannot read mine," declared the girl from l'Étang, hotly, "I know it is fully as nice as yours. Nicer!"

"Oh, can I never see you but you must insult me!" cried Zabette. "Keep your old box and your precious letter from St. Pierre Miquelon. What can they matter to me?"

Without a word of good-by she sprang to her feet and set out for the Grande Anse. She did not see the BenoÎt girl again that winter; but she could not help thinking about her, sometimes with sympathy, sometimes with bitter hatred. The young men came flocking to her home, as usual, vying with one another in attentions to her, for not only was Zabette known as the handsomest girl in three parishes, but also as an excellent housekeeper—"good saver, rare spender."

She would not encourage any of them, however.

"If I marry," she said to herself, "it is giving Maxence over to that l'Étang girl. She will crow about it. She will say, 'At last he is mine altogether. She has surrendered.' No, I could not stand that."

So that winter passed, and the next summer, and other winters and summers. Zabette did not marry; and after a time she began hearing herself spoken of as an old maid. The young men flocked to other houses, not hers. At the end of twelve years both her father and mother were dead, and she was alone in the world, thirty, and unprovided for.

It was, of course, fated, that these two women whose lives had been so strangely entangled should drift together again, sooner or later. So long as both were young and could claim love for themselves, jealousy was bound to separate them; but when they found themselves quite alone in the world, no longer beautiful, no longer arousing thoughts of love in the breast of another, the memory of all that was most precious in their lives drew them together as surely as a magnet draws two bits of metal.

It was after mass, one Sunday, that Zabette sought out her rival finally and found the courage to propose a singular plan.

"You are alone, Suzanne," she said. "So am I. We are both poor. Come and live with me."

"And you will give me Maxence?" asked Suzanne, a little hardly.

"No. But I will give you half of him. See, why should we quarrel any more? He is dead. Let us be reasonable. After this he shall belong to both of us."

Still the vieille fille from l'Étang held back, though her eyes softened.

"All these years," she said, with a remnant of defiance—"all these years he has been mine. I did not get married, me, because that would have let him belong to you."

Zabette sighed wearily. "And all these years I have been saying the same thing. And yet I could never forget the shell box and your letter from St. Pierre Miquelon. Come, don't you see how much easier it will be—how much more natural—if we put our treasures together: all we have of Maxence, and call him ours?"

Suzanne was beginning to yield, but doubtfully. "If it would be proper," she said.

"Not if he were living, of course," replied the other, with assurance. "The laws of the church forbid that. But in the course of a lifetime a husband may have more than one wife. I do not see why, when a husband is dead, two wives should not have him. Do you?"

"I will come," said Suzanne, softly and gratefully. "I am so lonely."

Three years later the two women moved from the Grande Anse into the village, renting the little cottage with the dormer windows in which they have lived ever since. You must look far to find so devoted a pair. They are more than sisters to each other. If their lives have not been happy, as the world judges happiness, they have at least been illumined by two great and abiding loves,—which does not happen often,—that for the dead, and that for each other.