The new farmers came next day. The farm hands and the serving women
had come early in the morning, and when the masters arrived in the
evening I knew that they were called Monsieur and Madame Alphonse. M.
Tirande remained at Villevieille for two days, and went off after
reminding me that I was in his daughter-in-law's service now, and that
I should have to do no more outside work on the farm.
The very first week she was there Madame Alphonse had had Eugène's room
turned into a linen-room, and she had set me to work at a big table on
which were a number of pieces of linen which I was to make into sheets
and other things. She came and sat down next to me, and worked at
making lace. She would remain for whole days at a time without saying
a word. Sometimes she talked to me about the linen presses which her
mother had, full of all kinds of linen.
Her voice had no ring to it, and she scarcely moved her lips when she
spoke. M. Tirande seemed very fond of his daughter-in-law. Every time
he came he always asked her what she would like him to give her. She
cared for nothing but linen, and he went off saying that he would get
her some more.
M. Alphonse never appeared at all except at meal times. I should have
found it very difficult to say what he did with his time. His face
reminded me of the Mother Superior's face somehow. Like her, he had a
yellow skin and his eyes glittered. He looked as though he carried a
brazier inside him which might burn him up at any minute. He was very
pious, and every Sunday he and Madame Alphonse went to mass in the
village where M. Tirande lived. At first they wanted to take me in
their cart, but I refused. I preferred going to Sainte Montagne, where
I always hoped to meet Pauline or Eugène. Sometimes one of the farm
hands came with me, but more often I would go alone by a little cross
road, which made the way much shorter. It was a steep and stony bit of
road which ran uphill through the broom. On the very top of it I
always used to stop in front of Jean le Rouge's house. This house was
low-roofed and spreading. The walls were as black as the thatch which
covered it, and it was quite easy to pass by the house without seeing
it at all, for the broom grew so high all round it. I used to go in
for a chat with Jean le Rouge, whom I had known ever since I had been
at Villevieille farm. He had always worked for Master Silvain, who
thought very highly of him. Eugène used to say of him that one could
set him to anything, and that whatever he did he did well.
Now M. Alphonse refused to employ him any more. He spoke of sending
him away from the house on the hill. Jean le Rouge was so upset by the
idea that he could talk of nothing else.
Directly after mass I used to go home by the same road. Jean's
children would crowd round me to get the blessed bread, which I brought
out of church for them. There were six of them, and the eldest was not
yet twelve years old. There was hardly one mouthful of my blessed
bread, so I used to give it to Jean's wife to divide up and give to the
children in equal shares. While she was doing this, Jean le Rouge
would set a stool for me in front of the fire and would seat himself on
a log of wood, which he would roll to the fireplace with his foot. His
wife put some twigs on the fire with a pair of heavy pincers, and as we
sat and talked we watched the big yellow potatoes cooking in the pot
which hung from a hook in the fireplace.
On the very first Sunday Jean le Rouge had told me that he, too, was a
foundling. And little by little he had told me that when he was twelve
he had been put to work with a woodcutter who used to live in the house
on the hill. He had very soon learned how to climb up the trees to
fasten a rope to the top branches so as to pull them over. When the
day's work was done and he had his faggot of wood on his back, he would
go on ahead so as to get to the house first. And there he used to find
the woodcutter's little daughter cooking the soup for supper. She was
of the same age as he was, and they had become the best of friends at
once.
Then, one Christmas Eve, came the misfortune. The old woodcutter, who
thought that the children were fast asleep, went off to midnight mass.
But directly he had gone they got up. They wanted to prepare midnight
supper for the old man's return, and they danced with glee at the
surprise they were getting ready for him. While the little girl was
cooking the chestnuts and putting the pot of honey and the jug of cider
on the table, Jean le Rouge heaped great logs on to the fire. Time
went on, the chestnuts were cooked, and the woodcutter had not yet come
home. It seemed a long time. The children sat down on the floor in
front of the fire to keep themselves warm, leaned up against one
another, and fell asleep. Jean woke up at the little girl's screams.
He could not understand at first why she was throwing her arms about
and shrieking at the fire. He jumped to his feet to run away from her,
and then he saw that she was ablaze. She had opened the door to the
garden, and as she ran out she lit the trees up. Then Jean had caught
hold of her and thrown her into the little well. The water had put the
flames out, but when Jean tried to pull her out of the well he found
her so heavy that he thought she must be dead. She made no movement,
and it took him a long time to get her out. At last, when he did get
her out, he had to drag her along like a bundle of sticks back to the
house.
The logs had become great red embers. Only the biggest one, which was
wet, went on smoking and crackling. The little girl's face was all
bloated, and was black with violet veins in it. Her body, which was
half naked, was covered with big red burns.
She was ill for many months, and when at last they thought she was
cured, they found out that she had become dumb. She could hear
perfectly well, she could even laugh like everybody else, but it was
quite impossible for her to speak a single word.
While Jean le Rouge was telling me these things his wife used to look
at him and move her eyes as if she were reading a book. Her face still
bore deep burn marks, but one soon got accustomed to it, and remembered
nothing of her face but the mouth with its white teeth, and her eyes,
which were never still. She used to call her children with a long, low
cry, and they came running up, and always understood all the signs she
made to them. I was so sorry that they had to leave the house on the
hill. They were the last friends I had left, and I thought of telling
Madame Alphonse about them, hoping that she might get her husband to
keep them on. I found an opportunity one day, when M. Tirande and his
son had come into the linen-room talking about the changes they were
going to make at the farm. M. Alphonse said he didn't want any cattle.
He spoke of buying machinery, cutting down the pine trees and clearing
the hillside. The stables would do for sheds for the machines, and he
would use the house on the hill to store fodder in. I don't know
whether Madame Alphonse was listening. She went on making lace, and
seemed to be giving her full attention to it. As soon as the two men
had gone I plucked up courage to talk of Jean le Rouge. I told her how
useful he had been to Master Silvain. I told her how sorry he was to
leave the house in which he had lived for so long, and when I stopped,
trembling for the answer which was coming, Madame Alphonse took her
needles out of the thread. "I believe I have made a mistake," she
said. She counted up to nineteen, and said again, "What a nuisance it
is. I shall have to undo a whole row." When I told Jean le Rouge
about this, he was angry, and shook his fist at Villevieille. His wife
put her hand on his shoulder and looked at him, and he was quiet at
once.
Jean le Rouge left the house on the hill at the end of January, and I
was very sad.
I had no friends left now. I hardly recognized the farm any more. All
these new people had made themselves quite at home there, and I seemed
to myself to be a new-comer. The serving-woman looked at me with
distrust, and the ploughman avoided talking to me. The servant's name
was Adèle. All day long you could hear her grumbling and dragging her
wooden shoes after her as she walked. She made a noise even when she
was walking on straw. She used to eat her meals standing, and answer
her master and mistress quite rudely.
M. Alphonse had taken away the bench which was by the door, and had put
up little green bushes with trellis-work round them. He cut down the
old elm tree, too, to which the wood owl used to come on summer
evenings.
Of course the old tree had not shaded the house for a long time. It
only had one tuft of leaves right up on the top. It looked like a head
which bent over to listen to what people underneath were saying. The
woodcutters who came to cut it down said that it would not be an easy
thing to do. They said there was some danger that when it fell it
would crash through the roof of the house.
At last, after a lot of talk, they decided to rope it round and pull it
over so that it fell on to the dung-heap. It took two men all day to
cut it down, and just when we thought that it was going to drop nicely,
one of the ropes worked loose, and the old elm jumped and fell to one
side. It slipped down the roof, knocking down a chimney and a large
number of tiles, bumped a piece out of the wall, and fell right across
the door. Not one of its branches touched the dung-heap. M. Alphonse
yelled with rage. He laid hold of the axe belonging to one of the
woodcutters, and struck the tree so violent a blow that a piece of bark
flew against the linen-room window and broke a pane.
Madame Alphonse saw the bits of glass fall on me. She jumped up in
more excitement than I had ever seen her show, and with trembling hands
and fearful eyes she examined closely every bit of the table-cloth
which I was embroidering. But she did not see me wiping away the blood
from my cheek, which had been cut by a bit of glass. She was so afraid
that something might happen to the piles of linen which were beginning
to grow that she took me off next day to her mother's to show me how
the linen should be put into the closets.
Madame Alphonse's mother was called Madame Deslois, but when the
ploughmen talked about her they always said "the good woman of the
castle." She had only been to Villevieille once. She had come close
up to me and looked at me with her eyes half shut. She was a big woman
who walked bent double as if she were looking for something on the
ground. She lived in a big house called the Lost Ford.
Madame Alphonse took me along by a path near a little river. It was
the end of March, and the meadows were already in flower. Madame
Alphonse walked straight along the path, but I got a lot of pleasure
out of walking in the soft grass.
We soon came to the wood where the wolf had taken my lamb. I had
always had a mysterious fear of this wood, and when we left the path by
the river to go through it I shook with fear. And yet the road was a
broad one. It must even have been a carriage road, for there were deep
ruts in it.
Above our heads heaps of pine needles tickled one another and rustled.
They made a gentle noise, not a bit like the whispering, with silences
in between, which I used to hear in the forest when the snow was on it.
But in spite of all I could not help looking behind me. We didn't walk
very far through the wood. The road turned to the left and we got to
the courtyard of the Lost Ford immediately. The little river ran
behind the stables as it did at Villevieille, but here the meadows were
quite close together, and the buildings looked as though they were
trying to hide among the sapling pines. The living house didn't look
anything like the farms thereabouts. The ground floor was built of
very thick old walls, and the first floor looked as though it had been
put on top of them as a makeshift. The house did not look a bit like a
castle to me. It made me think of an old tree trunk out of which a
baby tree had sprouted, and sprouted badly.
Madame Deslois came to the door when she heard us arrive. She winked
her little eyes as she looked at me and said at once in a loud voice
that she had dropped a halfpenny in the straw, and that it was very
funny that nobody had found it, as it had been lost for a week. While
she spoke she moved her foot about and stirred the straw which was in
front of the door. Madame Alphonse cannot have heard her. Her big
eyes were staring into the house, and she was almost excited when she
said why we had come. Madame Deslois said that she would take me to
the linen-room herself. She put the keys into the locks of the
cupboards, and after having told me to be very careful, and to
disarrange nothing, she left me alone.
It didn't take me long to open and close the great shining cupboards.
I should have liked to go away at once. This big cold linen-room
frightened me like a prison. My feet sounded on the tiles as though
there were deep vaults underneath them. All of a sudden it seemed to
me that I should never get out of this linen-room again. I listened to
see whether I could hear any animals stirring, but I only heard Madame
Deslois' voice. It was a rough, strong voice which went right through
the walls, and could be heard everywhere. I was going to the window so
as to feel a little less lonely, when a door which I had not noticed
suddenly opened behind me. I turned round and saw a young man come in.
He wore a long white smock and a grey cap. He stood standing as though
he were surprised to see anybody there, and I went on looking at him
without being able to take my eyes away. He walked right across the
linen-room, and he and I stared and stared at one another. Then he
went out, banging himself against the woodwork of the door. A moment
afterwards he passed by the window and our eyes met again. I felt
quite uncomfortable, and without knowing why, I went and shut the doors
which he had left open.
Presently Madame Alphonse came and fetched me, and I went back to
Villevieille with her.
Since M. Alphonse had taken Pauline's place I had got into the habit of
going and sitting in a bush which had grown into the shape of a chair.
It was in the middle of a shrubbery not far from the farm. Now that
spring was beginning I used to go and sit there when the ploughmen were
smoking their pipes at the stable doors. I used to sit there listening
to the little noises of the evening, and I longed to be like the trees.
That evening I thought of the man I had seen at Lost Ford. But every
time I tried to remember the exact colour of his eyes they pierced into
my own eyes so that they seemed to be lighting me all up inside.
The next Sunday was Easter Sunday. Adèle had gone to mass in M.
Alphonse's cart. I remained alone, with one of the ploughmen, to look
after the farm. After luncheon the ploughman went to sleep on a heap
of straw in front of the door, and I went to my shrubbery to spend the
afternoon. I tried to hear the bells ringing, but the farm was too far
from the villages round, and I could hear none of them.
I began to think about Sister Marie-Aimée, and my thoughts went back to
Sophie, who used to come and wake me up every year so that I should
hear all the bells ringing in Easter together. One year she didn't
wake up. She was so upset at that, that next year she put a big stone
in her mouth to keep herself from sleeping. Every time she nodded off
her teeth met on the stone, and she woke up.
I sat and thought about High Mass where Colette used to sing in her
beautiful voice, and I could see our afternoon on the lawn, and Sister
Marie-Aimée busy with the special dinner which they gave us on feast
days. And that evening when dinner-time came I should see, instead of
sister Marie-Aimée's sweet loving face, Madame Alphonse's hard face and
her husband's glittering eyes, which frightened me so. And as I sat
and thought how long I should still have to stay on the farm I felt
deeply discouraged.
When I was tired of crying I saw with astonishment that the sun was
quite low. Through the branches of my shrubbery I watched the long
thin shadows of the poplar trees growing longer than ever on the grass,
and quite close to me I saw a long shadow which was moving. It came
forward, then stopped, and then came forward again. I understood at
once that somebody was going to pass my hiding-place, and almost
immediately the man in the white smock walked into the shrubbery,
stooping to get out of the way of the branches. I felt cold all over.
I soon got control of myself, but I could not help trembling nervously.
He remained standing in front of me without saying a word. I sat and
looked at his eyes, which were very gentle, and I began to feel warm
again. I noticed that, as Eugène used to, he wore a coloured shirt and
a cravat tied under the collar, and when he spoke it seemed to me that
I had known his voice for a long time. He leaned against a big branch
opposite me, and asked me if I had no relations. I said "No." His eye
ran along the branch covered with young shoots, and without looking at
me he said again, "Then you are all alone in the world." I answered
quickly, "Oh no, I have Sister Marie-Aimée!" And without leaving him
time to ask any more questions I told him how I had longed for her, and
how impatiently I was waiting and hoping to see her again. Talking
about her made me so happy that I could not stop talking. I told him
of her beauty and of her intelligence, which seemed to me to be above
everything in the world. I told him, too, how sorry she had been when
I went away, and of the joy that I knew she would feel when she saw me
come back.
While I talked his eyes were fixed on my face, but they seemed to look
much further. After a silence he asked again, "Have you no friends
here?" "No," I said; "all those whom I loved have gone;" and I added
rather angrily, "They have even turned out Jean le Rouge." "And yet,"
he said, "Madame Alphonse is not unkind?" I told him that she was
neither unkind, nor kind, and that I should leave her without any
regret.
Then we heard the sound of M. Alphonse's cart-wheels, and I got up to
go. He stood aside a little to let me pass him, and I left him alone
in the shrubbery.
That evening I took advantage of the unusually good humour of Adèle to
ask her if she knew any of the ploughmen at the Lost Ford. She said
she only knew some of the old ones, for since Madame Deslois had been a
widow the new ones never stayed with her. A sort of fear which I could
not have explained kept me from mentioning the young man in the white
smock, and Adèle added with a wag of her chin: "Fortunately her eldest
son has come back from Paris. The farm hands will be happier."
Next day, while Madame Alphonse was working at her lace, I sewed and
thought about the ploughman in the white smock. I could not in my mind
help comparing him to Eugène. He spoke like Eugène did, and they
seemed like one another somehow.
That evening I thought I saw him near the stables, and a moment later
he came into the linen-room. His eyes just glanced at me and then he
looked straight at Madame Alphonse. He held his head high and the left
side of his mouth drooped a little. Madame Alphonse said, in a happy
voice, when she saw him, "Why, there's Henri!" and she let him kiss her
on both cheeks, and told him to bring a chair up next to her. But he
sat sideways on the table, pushing the linen to one side. Adèle came
into the room, and Madame Alphonse said, "If you see my husband, tell
him that my brother is here."
It was some minutes before I understood. Then I realized suddenly that
the young man in the white smock was Madame Deslois's eldest son. A
sense of shame which I had never felt before made me blush fiercely,
and I was ever so sorry that I had spoken about Sister Marie-Aimée. I
felt that I had thrown the thing that I loved best to the winds, and do
what I could, I could not keep back two big tears which tickled the
corners of my mouth and then fell on the linen napkin I was hemming.
Henri Deslois remained sitting on the corner of the table for a long
time. I could feel that he was looking at me, and his eyes were like a
heavy weight which prevented me from lifting up my head.
Two days afterwards I found him in the shrubbery. When I saw him
sitting there my legs felt weak under me, and I stood still. He got up
at once so that I should sit down; but I remained standing and looking
at him. He had the same gentleness in his eyes that I had noticed the
first time, and, as if he expected me to tell him another story, "Have
you nothing to tell me this evening?" he asked. Words danced across my
brain, but they did not seem to be worth speaking, and I shook my head
to say no. He said, "I was your friend the other day." Recollection
of what I had said the other day made me feel worse than ever, and I
only said, "You are Madame Alphonse's brother." I left him and did not
dare to go back to the shrubbery again. He often came back to
Villevieille. I never used to look at him, but his voice always made
me feel very uncomfortable.
Since Jean le Rouge had gone I had never known what to do with my time
after mass. Every Sunday I used to pass the house on the hill.
Sometimes I would look in through the gaps in the shutters, and when,
as I sometimes did, I bumped my head, the noise it made used to
frighten me. One Sunday I noticed that there was no lock on the door.
I put my finger on the latch and the door fell open with a loud noise.
I had not expected it to open so quickly, and I stood there longing to
shut it and go away. Then as there was no more noise, and as the sun
had streamed into the house making a big square of light, I made up my
mind to go in, and went in, leaving the door open. The big fireplace
was empty. There was no hook, there was no pot, and the big andirons
had gone. The only things left in the room were the logs of wood which
Jean le Rouge's children used to use as stools. The bark was worn off
them, and the tops of them were polished, as if with wax, from the
children sitting on them.
The second room was quite empty. There were no tiles on the floor, and
the feet of the beds had made little holes in the beaten earth. There
was no lock to the other door either, and I went out into the garden.
There were a few winter vegetables in the beds still, and the fruit
trees were all in flower. Most of them were very old. Some of them
looked like hunchbacks, and their branches bent towards the ground, as
though they found that even the flowers were too heavy for them to
carry. At the bottom of the garden the hill ran down to an immense
plain where the cattle used to graze, and right at the end a row of
poplars made a sort of barrier which kept the sky out of the meadow
land. Little by little I recognized one place after another. There
was a little river at the bottom of the hill. I could not see the
water, but the willows looked as though they were standing on one side
to let it pass. The river disappeared behind the buildings of
Villevieille farm. There the roofs were of the same colour as the
chestnut trees, and the river went on on the other side of them. Here
and there I could see it shining between the poplar trees. Then it
plunged into the great pine wood, which looked quite black, in which
the Lost Ford was hidden. That was the road I had taken with Madame
Alphonse, when we went to her mother's house. Her brother must have
come that way that day when he found me in the shrubbery. There was
nobody on the road today. Everything was tender green, and I could see
no white smock among the clumps of trees. I tried to see the shrubbery
but the farm hid it. Henri Deslois had been in the shrubbery several
times since Easter. I could not have told how I knew that he was
there, but on those days I could never prevent myself from walking
round that way.
Yesterday Henri Deslois had come into the linen-room while I was there
alone. He had opened his mouth as though he were going to talk to me.
I had looked at him as I had done the first time, and he went away
without saying anything. And now that I was in the open garden
surrounded by broom in flower I longed to be able to live there always.
There was a big apple tree leaning over me, dipping the end of its
branches in the spring. The spring came out of the hollow trunk of a
tree, and the overflow trickled in little brooks over the beds. This
garden of flowers and clear water seemed to me to be the most beautiful
garden in the world. And when I turned my head towards the house,
which stood open to the sunshine, I seemed to expect extraordinary
people to come out of it. The house seemed full of mystery to me.
Queer little sounds came out of it, and a few moments ago I thought
that I had heard the same sound that Henri Deslois's feet made when he
stepped into the linen-room at Villevieille.
I had been listening as though I expected to see him coming, but I had
not heard his footstep again, and presently I noticed that the broom
and the trees were making all kinds of mysterious sounds. I began to
imagine that I was a little tree, and that the wind stirred me as it
liked. The same fresh breeze which made the broom rock passed over my
head and tangled my hair, and so as to do like the other trees did I
stooped down and dipped my fingers in the clear waters of the spring.
Another sound made me look at the house again, and I was not in the
least surprised when I saw Henri Deslois standing framed in the
doorway. His head was bare, and his arms were swinging. He stepped
out into the garden and looked far off into the plain. His hair was
parted on the side, and was a little thin at the temples. He remained
perfectly still for a long minute, then he turned to me. There were
only two trees between us. He took a step forward, took hold of the
young tree in front of him with one hand, and the branches in flower
made a bouquet over his head. It grew so light that I thought the bark
of the trees was glittering, and every flower was shining. And in
Henri Deslois's eyes there was so deep a gentleness that I went to him
without any shame. He didn't move when I stopped in front of him. His
face became whiter than his smock, and his lips quivered. He took my
two hands and pressed them hard against his temples. Then he said very
low, "I am like a miser who has found his treasure again." At that
moment the bell of Sainte Montagne Church began to ring. The sound of
the bell ran up the hillsides, and after resting over our heads for a
moment ran on and died away in the distance.
The hours passed, the day grew older, and the cattle disappeared from
the plain. A white mist rose from the little river, then a stone
slipped behind the barrier of poplar trees, and the broom flowers began
to grow darker. Henri Deslois went back towards the farm with me. He
walked in front of me on the narrow path, and when he left me just
before we came to the avenue of chestnut trees I knew that I loved him
even more than Sister Marie-Aimée.
The house on the hill became our house. Every Sunday I found Henri
Deslois waiting there, and as I used to do when Jean le Rouge lived
there, I took my blessed bread to the house on the hill after mass and
we used to laugh as we divided it.
We both had the same kind of feeling of liberty which made us run races
round the garden and wet our shoes in the brooklets from the spring.
Henri Deslois used to say, "On Sundays I, too, am seventeen years old."
Sometimes we would go for long walks in the woods which skirted the
hill. Henri Deslois was never tired of hearing me talk about my
childhood, and Sister Marie-Aimée. Sometimes we talked about Eugène,
whom he knew. He used to say that he was one of those men whom one
liked to have for a friend. I told him what a bad shepherdess I had
been, and although I felt sure he would laugh at me, I told him the
story of the sheep which was all swollen up. He didn't laugh. He put
a finger on my forehead and said, "Love is the only thing that will
cure that."
One day we stopped near an immense field of corn. It was so big that
we could not see the end of it. Thousands of white butterflies were
floating about over the corn ears. Henri Deslois didn't speak, and I
watched the ears of corn which were stooping and stretching as though
they were getting ready to fly. It looked as though the butterflies
were bringing them wings to help them, but it was no good for the corn
ears to get excited. They could not get away from the ground. I told
my idea to Henri Deslois, who looked at the corn for a long time, and
then, as though he were speaking to himself, and dragging the words
out, he said, "It is much the same kind of thing with a man. Sometimes
a woman comes to him. She looks like the white butterflies of the
plain. He doesn't know whether she comes up from the earth or whether
she comes down from the sky. He feels that with her he could live on
the wind which passes, and the fresh young flowers. But like the root
which holds the corn to earth a mysterious bond holds him to his duty,
which is as strong as the earth." I thought that his voice had an
accent of suffering, and that the corners of his mouth drooped more
than usual. But almost immediately his eyes looked into mine, and he
said in a stronger voice, "We must have confidence in ourselves."
Summer passed and the autumn, and in spite of the bad weather of
December we could not make up our minds to leave the house on the hill.
Henri Deslois used to bring books with him which we would read, sitting
on the logs of wood in the back room which looked into the garden. I
went back to the farm at nightfall, and Adèle, who thought I was
spending my time dancing in the village, was always surprised that I
looked so sad.
Almost every day Henri Deslois came to Villevieille. I could hear him
from a long way off. He rode a great white mare which trotted heavily,
and he rode her without saddle or bridle. She was a patient and a
gentle brute. Her master used to let her run loose in the yard while
he went in to say "good day," to Madame Alphonse. As soon as M.
Alphonse heard him he would come into the linen-room. The two of them
would speak of improvements on the farm or about people whom they knew.
But there was always a word or a sentence in their conversation which
came straight to me from Henri Deslois. I often used to catch M.
Alphonse looking at me, and I could not always keep from blushing.
One afternoon as Henri Deslois came in to the room smiling, M. Alphonse
said, "You know I have sold the house on the hill." The two men looked
at one another. They both grew so pale that I was afraid they were
going to die where they stood. Then M. Alphonse got out of his chair
and stood leaning against the chimney-piece, while Henri Deslois went
to the door and tried to close it. Madame Alphonse put her lace down
on her knee and said, as though she were repeating a lesson, "The house
was of no particular good, and I am very pleased that it has been
sold." Henri Deslois came and stood by the table, so close to me that
he could have touched me. He said in a voice that was not quite firm,
"I am sorry you have sold it without having mentioned it to me, for I
intended to buy it." M. Alphonse wriggled like an earthworm. He made
a great effort to laugh out loud, and as he laughed he said, "You would
have bought it? What would you have done with it?" Henri Deslois put
his hand on the back of my chair and answered, "I would have lived in
it as Jean le Rouge did." M. Alphonse walked up and down in front of
the chimney. His face had changed into a yellow earthy colour. His
hands were in his trouser pockets, and he picked up his feet so quickly
that it looked as though he were pulling at them with a cord which he
held in each hand. Then he came and leaned on the table opposite us,
and looking at us one after the other with his glittering eyes, he bent
forward and said, "Well, I have sold it now, so it is all over."
During the silence which followed we could hear the white mare pawing
the ground with her shoe as though she were calling her master. Henri
Deslois went towards the door. Then he came back to me and picked up
my work which had fallen from my hands without my having noticed it.
He kissed his sister, and before he went, he said, looking at me, "I
shall see you to-morrow."
Next morning Madame Deslois came into the linen-room. She came
straight to me, and was very rude. But M. Alphonse told her to be
quiet, and, turning to me, he said, "Madame Alphonse has asked me to
tell you that she would like to keep you in her service. But she wants
you in future to come to mass with us." He tried to smile, and added,
"We will drive you there and back." It was the first time that he had
ever spoken directly to me. His voice was rather husky, as though he
felt some awkwardness in saying these things to me. I don't know what
made me think that he was lying, and that Madame Alphonse had not said
anything of the kind. Besides, he looked so much like the Mother
Superior that I could not help defying him. I told him that I didn't
care about driving, and that I should go to mass at Sainte Montagne as
before. He sucked in his lower lip and began biting it. Then Madame
Deslois stepped forward threateningly, and told me that I was insolent.
She kept on repeating this word as though she could not find any
others. She shouted it more and more loudly, and lost all control of
herself. The white of her eyes was becoming quite red, and she raised
her hand to strike me. I stepped back quickly behind my chair. Madame
Deslois bumped into the chair and knocked it over, and caught at the
table so as not to fall down. Her harsh voice terrified me. I wanted
to leave the linen-room, but M. Alphonse had placed himself in front of
the door, and I came back into the room and faced Madame Deslois across
the table. She began to speak again in a strangled sort of voice. She
used words which I didn't understand, but there was something about
what she said and the way in which she said it which I hated. At last
she stopped speaking, and shouted at the top of her voice, "Don't
forget that I am his mother."
M. Alphonse came towards me. He took hold of my arm and said, "Come,
now, listen to me." I shook myself loose, pushed him away and ran out
of the house. The last words that Madame Deslois had said hammered on
my brain as though they really were a hammer with one end of it
pointed. "I am his mother, do you hear?--his mother." Oh, mother
Marie-Aimée, how beautiful you were when compared to this other mother,
and how I loved you! How your many-coloured eyes beamed and lit up
your black dress, and how pure your face was under your white cap! I
could see you as clearly as though you were really in front of me.
I was quite astonished to find myself in front of the house on the
hill, and when I got there I saw that snow was falling in a regular
hurricane. I went into the house for shelter, and went straight into
the room which looked out on the garden. I tried to think, but my
ideas whirled round in my head like the snow-flakes, which looked as
though they were climbing up from the ground and falling from the sky
at the same time. And every time that I made an effort to think, the
only things I could think of were little bits of a song which the
children used to sing in the convent, and which ran--
The old girl jumped and jumped about
And jumped until she died.
The old girl jumped and jumped about
And jumped until she died.[1]
I felt less unhappy in this silent house. The softly falling snow was
pretty, and the trees were as beautiful as on that day when I had seen
them all in bloom. Then suddenly I remembered, quite clearly all that
had just happened. I saw Madame Deslois's hand with its square
fingers, and shivered all over. What an ugly hand it was, and what a
large one! Then I remembered the expression on M. Alphonse's face when
he took hold of my arm, and I remembered as I thought of it that I had
seen the same expression once before on a little girl's face. It was
one day when I had picked up a pear which had fallen from the tree.
She had rushed at me, saying, "Give me half of it, and I won't tell."
I felt so disgusted at the idea of sharing it with her that, although
Sister Marie-Aimée might have seen me, I had gone back to the tree and
put the pear down where it had fallen.
Thinking of all these things, I longed and longed to see Sister
Marie-Aimée again. I should have liked to have gone to her at once,
but I remembered that Henri Deslois had said as he went, "I shall see
you to-morrow." Perhaps he was at the farm already, waiting for me,
and wondering what had become of me. I went out of the house to run
back to Villevieille. I had only gone a few steps when I saw him
coming up. The white mare didn't find it very easy to climb the
snow-covered path. Henri Deslois was bareheaded, as he had been the
first time he came. His smock billowed out with the wind, and he had a
hand on the mane of the mare. The mare stood in front of me. Her
master leaned down and took my two hands which I held up to him. There
was on his face a look of worry which I had never seen before. I
noticed, too, that his eyebrows met, like those of Madame Deslois. He
was a little out of breath, and said, "I knew that I should find you
here." He opened his mouth again, and I felt quite certain that his
words were going to bring me happiness. He held my hands tighter, and
said in the same breathless voice as before, "I can no longer be your
friend." I thought that somebody had struck me a violent blow on the
head. There was a noise of a saw in my ears. I could see Henri
Deslois trembling, and I heard him say, "How cold I am!" Then I no
longer felt the warmth of his hand on mine. And when I realized that I
was standing all alone in the path, I saw nothing but a great white
shape which was slipping noiselessly across the snow.
[1] On a tant fait sauter la vieille,
Qu'elle est morte en sautillant,
Tireli,
Sautons, sautons, la vieille!
I went slowly down the other side of the hill, walking in the snow,
which squeaked under my feet. About half-way a peasant offered me a
lift in his cart. He was going to town too, and it was not long before
we got to the Orphanage. I rang the bell, and the porteress looked out
at me through the peephole. I recognized her. It was "Ox Eye" still.
We had named her Ox Eye because her eyes were big and round like a
daisy. She opened the gate when she recognized me, and told me to come
in; but before she shut the gate behind me she said, "Sister
Marie-Aimée is not here." I didn't answer, so she said again, "Sister
Marie-Aimée is not here." I heard what she said quite well, but I
didn't pay any attention to it. It was like a dream where the most
extraordinary things happen without seeming to be of any importance at
all. I looked at her great big eyes and said, "I have come back." She
closed the gate behind me and left me standing under the eaves of her
little house in the gateway, while she went to tell the Mother
Superior. She came back, saying that the Mother Superior wanted to
speak to Sister Désirée-des-Anges before she saw me.
A bell rang. Ox Eye got up and told me to go with her. It was snowing
again. It was almost dark in the Mother Superior's room. At first I
saw nothing but the fire, which was whistling and flaming. Then I
heard the Mother Superior's voice. "So you have come back?" she said.
I tried to think steadily, but I was not quite sure whether I had come
back or not. She said, "Sister Marie-Aimée is not here." I thought
that my bad dream was coming on again, and coughed to try and wake
myself. Then I looked at the fire and tried to find out why it
whistled like that. The Mother Superior spoke again. "Are you ill?"
she said. I answered "No." The heat did me good, and I felt better.
I was beginning to understand at last that I had come back to the
Orphanage, and that I was in the Mother Superior's room. My eyes met
hers, and I remembered everything. She laughed a little, and said,
"You have not changed much. How old are you now?"
I told her that I was eighteen years old. "Really," she said. "Going
out into the world has not made you grow much." She leaned one elbow
on the table, and asked me why I had come back. I wanted to tell her
that I had come back to see Sister Marie-Aimée, but I was afraid of
hearing her say once more that Sister Marie-Aimée was not there, and I
remained silent. She opened a drawer, took out a letter, which she
covered with her open hand, and said in the weary voice of a person who
has been bothered unnecessarily, "This letter had already told me that
you had become a bold, proud girl." She pushed the letter from her as
though she were tired, and in a long breath she said, "You can work in
the kitchen here until we find you something else to do." The fire
went on whistling. I went on looking at it, but I could not make out
which of the three logs was making the noise. The Mother Superior
raised her monotonous voice to draw my attention. She warned me that
Sister Désirée-des-Anges would watch me very closely, and that I should
not be allowed to talk to my former companions. I saw her point to the
door, and I went out into the snow.
At the other side of the yard I could see the kitchens. Sister
Désirée-des-Anges, who was tall and slim, was waiting for me at the
door. I could see nothing of her but her cap and her black dress, and
I imagined her to be old and withered. I thought of running away. I
need only run to the gate and tell Ox Eye that I had come on a visit.
She would let me out, and that would be all.
Instead of going to the gate I went towards the buildings where I had
lived when I was a child. I didn't know why I went there, but I could
not help it. I felt very tired, and I should have liked to lie down
and sleep for a long time.
The old bench was in the same place. I wiped some of the snow off it
with my hands, and sat down leaning against the linden tree as M. le
Curé used to do. I was waiting for something, and I didn't know what.
I looked up at the window of Sister Marie-Aimée's room. The pretty
embroidered curtains were no longer there, and although the window was
just like the other windows now, I thought it quite different. And
though the thick calico curtains were the same in this room as in the
others, they seemed to me to make that window look like a face with its
eyes shut.
The yard began to get dark, and the lights lit up the rooms inside. I
meant to get up from the bench, thinking, "Ox Eye will open the gate
for me;" but my body felt crushed, and I seemed to have two broad, hard
hands weighing heavily on my head. And, as though I had spoken them
aloud, the words, "Ox Eye will open the gate for me," repeated
themselves over and over again. All of a sudden a voice, with pity in
it, said, quite close to me, "Please, Marie Claire, don't sit out here
in the snow." I raised my head, and standing in front of me was a
young, quite young, sister, whose face was so beautiful that I could
not remember ever to have seen such a face before. She bent over me to
help me up, and, as I could hardly stand upright, she put my arm under
hers, and said, "Lean on me." Then I saw that she was taking me to the
kitchen, the great glass door of which was bright with light. I didn't
think of anything. The snow pricked my face, and my eyelids were
burning. When I went into the kitchen, I recognized the two girls who
were standing by the big square oven. They were Veronique the Minx,
and Mélanie the Plump, and I seemed to hear Sister Marie-Aimée talking
to them by these names. Mélanie nodded to me as I passed her, and
leaning on the young sister's arm, I went into a room in which there
was a night-light burning. The room was divided into two by a big
white curtain. The young sister made me sit down on a chair, which she
took from behind the curtain, and went out without saying a word. A
little while afterwards Mélanie the Plump and Veronique the Minx came
in to put clean sheets on the little iron bed beside me. When they had
finished, Veronique, who had not looked at me at all till then, turned
to me and said that nobody had ever thought that I should come back.
She said it as though she were reproaching me for something shameful.
Mélanie put her hands together under her chin, and put her head on one
side, just as she used to do when she was a little girl. She smiled
affectionately at me, and said, "I am very glad that you have been sent
to the kitchen." Then she patted the bed, and said, "You are taking my
place. I used to sleep here." She pointed to the curtain, and in a
low voice she said, "This is where Sister Désirée-des-Anges sleeps."
When they had gone out, closing the door behind them, I sat closer to
the bed. The big white curtain made me feel uncomfortable. I thought
I could see shadows moving in the folds which the night-light left in
darkness. Then I heard the dinner-bell. I recognized it, and without
knowing what I was doing I counted the strokes. Everything was quite
still for some time, and then the young sister came into the room
bringing me a bowl of steaming soup. She pulled the big curtain back
and said, "This is your room, and that is mine." I felt quite
reassured when I saw that her little iron bedstead was exactly the same
as my own. I began to wonder whether she was Sister Désirée-des-Anges,
but I dared not believe it, and asked her. She nodded "Yes," and
drawing her chair close to mine, she put her face in the full light and
said, "Don't you recognize me?" I looked at her without answering.
No, I didn't recognize her. In fact, I was certain that I had never
seen her; for I was certain that one could never forget her face if one
had seen it once. She made a funny little grimace, and said, "I can
see you don't remember poor Désirée Joly." Désirée Joly? Of course I
remembered her. She was a girl who had become a novice. Her face was
rosier than roses. She had a beautiful, slim figure, and used to laugh
all day long. We all loved her. She used to jump about so when she
played with us that Sister Marie-Aimée often used to say to her, "Come
now, come now, not so high, please, Mademoiselle Joly! You are showing
your knees!" Even now, when I was looking at her, I could not remember
her. She said "Yes, the dress makes a lot of difference." She pulled
up her sleeves; and making the same funny little face again, she said,
"Forget that I am Sister Désirée-des-Anges, and remember that Désirée
Joly used to be very fond of you." Then she went on quickly, "I
recognized you at once," she said. "You still have the same baby
face." When I told her I had imagined Sister Désirée-des-Anges to be
old and cross, she answered, "We were both wrong. I had been told that
you were vain and proud; but when I saw you crying in the middle of the
snow, I thought only that you were suffering, and I went to you." When
she had helped me to bed, she divided the room again with the curtain,
and I went to sleep at once.
But I didn't sleep well. I woke up every minute. There was a heavy
stone on my chest still, and when I managed to throw it off, it split
up into several pieces, which fell back on me and crushed my limbs.
Then I dreamed that I was on a road full of sharp pointed stones which
cut me. I walked along it with difficulty. On both sides of the road
there were fields, vines, and houses. All the houses were covered with
snow, but the trees were laden with fruit, and were in bright sunshine.
I left the road and went into the fields, stopping at all the trees to
taste the fruit. But the fruit was bitter, and I threw it away. I
tried to go into the snow-covered houses, but they had no doors. I
went back on to the road and the stones gathered round me so fast that
I could not go on. Then I called for help. I called as loud as I
could, but nobody heard me. And when I felt I was going to be buried
under a huge heap of stones, I struggled so hard to get away from them
that I woke myself up. For a moment I thought I was still dreaming.
The ceiling of the room seemed to be a tremendous height. The rod from
which the white curtain was hanging glittered here and there, and the
branch of boxwood which was nailed to the wall threw a shadow on the
statue of the Virgin which was in the corner. Then a cock crowed. He
crowed several times, as though he wanted to make me forget his first
crow, which had stopped short, as if he were in pain. The night-light
began to flicker. It flickered for a long time before it went out, and
when the room was quite dark I heard Sister Désirée-des-Anges breathing
gently and regularly.
Long before daybreak I got up to begin my work in the kitchen.
Mélanie showed me how to lift the big coppers. It was a matter of
skill as well as of strength. It took me more than a week before I
could even move one of them. Mélanie taught me how to ring the heavy
waking bell. She showed me how to put my shoulders into the work so as
to pull the rope, and I soon got into the way of it. And every
morning, whether it were cold or raining, I used to enjoy ringing the
bell. It had a clear sound which the wind increased or lessened, and I
never got tired of hearing it. There were days when I rang so long
that Sister Désirée-des-Anges would open her window and would say
pleadingly, "That'll do, that'll do."
Since I had come to the kitchen, Veronique the Minx used to look away
from me when she spoke, and if I asked her where anything was, she
would point to it without speaking. Sister Désirée-des-Anges used to
watch her, and would curl her lip as she watched. She was not as
quick-tempered as she used to be when she was a novice, but she was
full of life still and full of fun. Every evening we used to meet in
our room, and she would make me laugh at her remarks at what had been
going on during the day. Sometimes my laughter ended in a sob. Then
she used to put her hands together as the saints do in the pictures,
raise her eyes and say, "Oh, how I wish that your sorrow would leave
you." Then she would kneel on the ground and pray, and I often used to
go to sleep before she got up again.
Work in the kitchen was very hard. I used to help Mélanie polish up
the coppers, and wash the tiled floors. She did most of the work
herself. She was as strong as a man, and was always ready to help me.
As soon as she found that I was tired, she used to force me to sit down
on a chair, and would say smilingly, "Recreation time." A few days
after I had arrived, she reminded me of the difficulties she used to
have in learning her catechism.
She had not forgotten that during a whole season I had spent all my
recreation time trying to teach her to learn it by heart. And now she
delighted in making me rest.
Veronique's work was the preparation of the vegetables, and she also
took the meat in from the butcher. She used to stand stiffly by the
scales until the butcher's boys put the meat on. She was always
grumbling at them, saying that the meat was cut too small or cut too
big. The butcher boys used to get angry with her and were rude to her
sometimes, and Sister Désirée-des-Anges told me at last to take the
meat in instead of her. She came to the scales just the same next day;
but I was there with Sister Désirée-des-Anges, who was telling me how
to weigh the meat.
One morning one of the two butchers looked at me and spoke my name.
Sister Désirée-des-Anges and I looked at the butcher boy in surprise.
He was a new one, but I soon recognized him. He was the eldest son of
Jean le Rouge. He was delighted to see me again, and told me that his
parents had got a good place at the Lost Ford. He himself didn't care
about working in the fields, and had found work with a butcher in the
town. Then he told me that the Lost Ford was quite near Villevieille,
and asked me if I knew it. I nodded my head to say that I did. He
went on to say that his father and mother had been there for some
months, and that there had been feasting there last week because Henri
Deslois was married. I heard him say a few words more which I didn't
understand. Then the daylight in the kitchen turned into black night,
and I felt the tiles give way under my feet and drag me down into a
bottomless hole. I remember Sister Désirée-des-Anges coming to help
me, but an animal had fastened itself on my chest. It made a dreadful
sound which it hurt me to hear. It was like a horrible sob which
always stopped at the same place. Then the light came back again, and
I could see above me the faces of Sister Désirée-des-Anges and Mélanie.
Both were smiling anxiously, and Mélanie's broad, red face looked like
Sister Désirée-des-Anges' pointed pale one. I sat up in bed, wondering
why I was there by daylight, but I didn't get up. I remembered little
Jean le Rouge, and for hours and hours I fought with my pain.
When Sister Désirée-des-Anges came into the room at bedtime she sat
down on the foot of my bed. She put her two hands together like the
saints did. "Tell me of your sorrow," she said. I told her, and it
seemed to me that every word I spoke took some of my suffering away
with it.
When I had told her everything, Sister Désirée-des-Anges fetched "The
Imitation of Jesus Christ," and began to read aloud. She read in a
gentle and resigned voice, and there were words which sounded like the
end of a moan.
On the days which followed, I saw little Jean le Rouge again. He told
me some more about the Lost Ford, and while he said how happy his
parents were and how kind the master was to them, I could see the house
on the hill with its garden in flower, and its spring from which the
little brooklets crawled down to the river, hiding themselves under the
broom. I often spoke of it to Sister Désirée-des-Anges, who listened
to me meditatively. She knew the neighbourhood and every corner of the
place, and one evening, when she sat dreaming and I asked her what she
was thinking about, she said, "Summer will be over soon, and I was
thinking that the trees were full of fruit."
During the month of September a number of religious paid visits to the
Mother Superior. Ox Eye used to ring the bell to announce them. Every
time she rang Veronique went out to see who was coming in. She always
had something disagreeable to say about each one of the sisters whom
she recognized. One evening the bell sounded. Veronique, who was
looking out, said, "Well, here's one whom nobody expected." She put
her head into the kitchen again, and said, "It is Sister Marie-Aimée."
The big spoon which I had in my hand slipped through my fingers and
dropped into the copper. I rushed to the door, pushing past Veronique,
who wanted to keep me back. Mélanie rushed after me. "Don't," she
said, "the Mother Superior can see you." But I rushed out to Sister
Marie-Aimée. I rushed into her arms with such force that we nearly
fell over together. She clasped me tight and held me. She was
trembling and almost crazy with joy. She took my head in her hands,
and, as if I had been quite a little child, she kissed me all over my
face. Her stiff linen cap made a noise like paper when you crumple it
up, and her broad sleeves fell back to her shoulders. Mélanie was
right, the Mother Superior saw me. She came out of the chapel and came
towards us. Sister Marie-Aimée saw her. She stopped kissing me, and
put her hand on my shoulder. I put my arm round her, fearing that she
would be taken away from me, and the two of us stood and watched the
Mother Superior. She passed in front of us without raising her eyes,
and didn't seem to see Sister Marie-Aimée, who bowed gravely to her.
As soon as she had gone I dragged Sister Marie-Aimée off to the old
bench. She stopped a moment, and before sitting down she said, "It is
as though things were waiting for us." She sat down. She leaned
against the linden tree, and I kneeled down in the grass at her feet.
There were no more rays in her eyes. It was as though the colours in
them had all been mixed up together. Her dear little face had grown
smaller, and seemed to have gone further back into her cap. Her
stomacher had not the beautiful curve on her chest that it used to
have, and her hands were so thin that the blue veins in them showed up
quite clearly. She hardly glanced at the window of her room, but
looked out on the linden trees and round the courtyard, and as she
caught sight of the Mother Superior's house, these words fell from her
like a sigh, "We must forgive others if we wish to be forgiven." Then
she looked at me again, and said, "Your eyes are sad." She passed the
palms of her hands over my eyes, as if she wanted to wipe out something
which displeased her, and, keeping them there so that my eyes remained
shut, "How we suffer,"' she said. Then she took her hands away and
clasped mine, and, with her eyes on my face, she said, as though she
were praying, "My sweet daughter, listen to me. Never become a poor
religious." She heaved a long sigh of regret, and said, "Our dress of
black and white tells others that we are creatures of strength and of
brightness. At our bidding all tears are dried, and all who suffer
come to us for consolation, but nobody thinks of our own suffering. We
are like women without faces." Then she spoke of the future. She
said, "I am going where the missionaries go. I shall live there in a
house full of terror. Before my eyes will pass unceasingly everything
that is hideous, everything that is ugly, everything that is bad." I
listened to her deep voice. There was a note of passion in it. It was
as though she were taking on to her own shoulders all the suffering of
the world. Her fingers loosed mine. She passed them over my cheeks,
and in a gentle voice, and sweet, she said, "The purity of your face
will always remain graven on my mind." Then she looked out, away and
past me, and added, "God has given us remembrance, and it is not in
anybody's power to take that away from us." She got up from the bench.
I went with her across the yard, and when Ox Eye had closed the heavy
gate behind her, I stood and listened to the echo of its closing.
That evening Sister Désirée-des-Anges came into the room later than
usual. She had been taking part in special prayer for Sister
Marie-Aimée, who was going away to nurse the lepers.
Winter came again. Sister Désirée-des-Anges had soon guessed my love
of reading, and she brought me all the books in the sisters' library,
one after the other. Most of the books were childish books, and I read
quickly, turning over several pages at a time. I preferred stories of
travel, and I used to read at night by the night-light. Sister
Désirée-des-Anges used to scold me when she woke up; but as soon as she
went to sleep I took up the book again. Little by little we became
great friends. The white curtain was no longer drawn between our beds
at night time. All sense of constraint had disappeared between us, and
all our thoughts were in common. She was cheerful and bright always.
The one thing that annoyed her in her life was her nun's costume. She
found it heavy and uncomfortable, and she used to say that it hurt her.
"When I dress," she said, "I always feel as though I were putting
myself into a house where it is always night." She was always glad to
get out of her dress in the evening, and loved walking about the room
in her night-dress. She used to say, making that funny little face, "I
am beginning to get used to it, but at first that cap crushed my cheeks
and the dress weighed my shoulders down."
When the spring came she began to cough. She had a little dry cough
which used to make itself heard from time to time, and her long slim
body seemed to become more fragile than ever. She was as bright and
cheerful as before, but she complained that her dress became heavier
and heavier.
One night in May she tossed about and dreamed aloud. I had been
reading all night, and noticed all of a sudden that daylight was
coming. I blew out the night-light and tried to sleep a little. I was
just dropping off when Sister Désirée-des-Anges said, "Open the window,
he is coming to-day." I looked to see whether she was asleep, and saw
that she was sitting up in bed. She had drawn back her blanket, and
was untying the strings of her night-cap. She took it off and threw it
to the foot of the bed. Then she shook her head, her short hair rolled
into curls on her forehead, and I recognized Désirée Joly at once. I
was a little bit frightened, and got up. She said again, "Open the
window and let him in." I opened the window wide, and when I turned
round Sister Désirée-des-Anges was holding out her clasped hands
towards the sun, and in a voice which had suddenly grown weaker, she
said, "I have taken off my dress. I could not stand it any longer."
She lay down quietly, and her face became quite still. I held my
breath for a long time to listen to hers. Then I breathed hard, as
though I could give her my breath, but when I looked at her more
closely I saw that she had breathed her last. Her eyes were wide open,
and seemed to be looking at a sunbeam which was coming towards her like
a long arrow. Swallows flew past the window and flew back again,
chirruping like little girls, and my ears were filled with sounds which
I had never heard before. I looked up to the windows of the
dormitories, hoping that somebody would hear what I had to say, but I
saw nothing but the face of the big clock which seemed to be looking
down into the room over the linden trees.
It was five o'clock. I pulled the blanket up over Sister
Désirée-des-Anges and went out and rang the bell. I rang for a long
time. The notes went far, far away. They went right away to where
Sister Désirée-des-Anges had gone. I went on ringing because it seemed
to me that the bells were telling the world that Sister
Désirée-des-Anges was dead. I went on ringing too, because I hoped
that she would pop her beautiful face out of the window and say,
"That'll do, that'll do, Marie Claire."
Mélanie pulled the rope out of my hands. The bell, which was up, fell
back all wrong, and gave a sort of groan. "You have been ringing for a
quarter of an hour or more," Mélanie said. I answered, "Sister
Désirée-des-Anges is dead." Veronique went into the room after us.
She noticed that the white curtain was not drawn between the two beds,
and said that she thought it was disgraceful for a religious to let her
hair be seen. Mélanie passed her finger over a tear which was rolling
down each of her cheeks. Her head was more on one side than ever, and
she whispered quite low, "She is even prettier than she was before."
The sunshine bathed the bed, and covered the dead woman from head to
foot.
I remained with her all day. Some of the sisters came to see her. One
of them covered her face with a napkin, but as soon as she had gone, I
uncovered it again. Mélanie came and spent the night by the bedside
with me. When she had closed the window she lit the big lamp, "so that
Sister Désirée-des-Anges should not be in the dark," she said.
A week afterwards Ox Eye came to the kitchen. She told me to get ready
to go the same day. In the hollow of her hand she held two gold
pieces, which she put side by side on the corner of the oven, and,
touching one after the other with her finger, she said, "Our Mother
Superior sends you forty francs." I did not want to go away without
saying good-bye to Colette and to Ismérie, whom I had often seen at the
other side of the lawn; but Mélanie assured me that they didn't care
for me any more. Colette could not understand why I was not married
yet, and Ismérie could not forgive me for being so fond of Sister
Marie-Aimée.
Mélanie went to the gate with me. As we passed the old bench, I saw
that one of its legs was broken, and that one end of it had fallen into
the grass. At the gate I found a woman waiting. Her eyes were hard.
She said, "I am your sister." I didn't recognize her. It was twelve
years since I had seen her. Directly we got outside she caught hold of
my arm, and in a voice as hard as her eyes, she asked me how much money
I had. I showed her the two gold pieces which I had just received.
Then she said, "You will do better to remain in the town, where you
will find it easier to get something to do." As we walked on she told
me she was married to a gardener in the neighbourhood, and that she
didn't intend to give herself any particular trouble over me. We got
to the railway station. She took me on to the platform because she
wanted me to help her carry some parcels. She said "good-bye" when her
train went off, and I remained there and watched it go. Almost
immediately another train stopped. The railway men ran up and down the
platform calling to the passengers for Paris to cross over. In that
one moment I saw Paris with its great houses like palaces, with roofs
so high that they were lost in the clouds. A young man bumped into me.
He stopped and said, "Are you going to Paris, mademoiselle?" I
scarcely hesitated, and said, "Yes; but I have no ticket." He held out
his hand. "Give me the money," he said, "and I will go and get it for
you." I gave him one of my two gold coins, and he ran off. I put the
ticket and the change in copper which he had brought me into my pocket,
went across the line with him, and climbed into the train.
The young man stood at the carriage door for a minute, and went off,
turning back once as he went. His eyes were full of gentleness, like
those of Henri Deslois.
The train whistled once, as though to warn me, and as it moved off it
whistled a second time, a long whistle like a scream.
THE END
AFTERWORD
And now may I tell you what I know about Marguerite Audoux, the author
of the book you have just read? I know very little more of her than
you do, for you have read the book, and Marguerite Audoux is Marie
Claire. If Marie Claire in English does not please you, the fault is
mine. I have tried hard to translate into English the uneducated,
unspoilt purity of language, the purity of thought which are the
characteristics of the French; but the task was no easy one, much as I
loved it in the doing.
Marguerite Audoux herself is a plump and placid little woman, of about
thirty-five. She lives in a sixth-floor garret in the Rue Leopold
Robert, in Paris. From her window she has a view of roof-tops and the
Montparnasse cemetery. When she learned of the success of her book,
with which she had lived for six years, she cried. "I felt dreadfully
frightened at first," she said, "I felt very uneasy. I felt as though
I had become known too quickly, as though I were a criminal of note.
Now my one wish is to work again." She reads a good deal. Her
favourite authors are Chateaubriand and Maeterlinck. In Maeterlinck
she loves the mystery. "We never know people properly," she says.
"They are just as difficult to understand as things that happen are.
We never know whose fault it is when good or bad things happen, and we
don't really know whether we ought to be angry or to be sorry with
people who do harm. Wicked people are like a thunderstorm, don't you
think? And a lazy woman is like a hot room. Both are unhealthy, but
they cannot help it."
Marguerite Audoux does not say these things to be clever. She says
them quite simply, and they express her natural way of thought, which
is simplicity and purity itself.
She wrote her book when and how she could, on scraps of cheap paper,
and she does not know herself, now, whether she hoped to have it
published when she wrote it. She did hope for publication when she had
finished it, but that was because she was hungry.
I met a friend just outside Marguerite Audoux's house after my first
visit to her. "Tiens," he said, "tu viens de la mansarde de Génie
l'ouvrière." And the clever little pun was true. Marguerite Audoux is
a genius, and she does not understand what people mean when they ask
her "how" she "writes." She opens her weak eyes very wide at the
question, laughs as a child laughs when it doesn't understand, and
says, "But I don't know. The thoughts come, and I write them down. I
only wish that I could spell them better."
When the committee of the Vie Heureuse was voting on her book before
awarding her the 200 pound prize for the best book of the year,
somebody suggested the possibility that she had had help with it.
Madame Séverine was sent to fetch the manuscript. It was passed round,
examined, and no more doubt was possible.
I hope you will find the pleasure in reading Marie Claire that I found
in translating it. I should like to say quite earnestly--and perhaps a
little shamefacedly, because we hate saying these things out loud--that
when I had read it I felt awed. The book had worked upon me. Do you
remember the impression made on you by moonlight upon the snow in the
country? You must be quite alone to feel it. The purity of it all
makes you wish that you were a cleaner man or woman, and, till you rub
shoulders with people again, you mean to try hard to be cleaner and
better. Marie Claire made me feel just exactly like that.
JOHN N. RAPHAEL.