IN THE PLACE DE L'EGLISE.
The bells rang out the close of High Mass; choir boys chanted the _Deo
gratias_.
As in its early days, when in the last years of the twelfth century it
was erected on the summit of the Isle of Sallertaine, the little
church, now yellow with age and growth of lichen and wild-flower,
witnessed the crowd of worshippers, dressed in the same fashions as
then, pour out from the same doors in the same order and collect in
the same groups in the same Place.
The first to be seen were the farm-labourers and farmers' sons, who
came out by the east door from the transept where they had heard mass,
and who, passing round the choir, grouped themselves on the other
side, where the young girls would presently emerge. Two by two they
appeared between the pillars of the west porch with eyes lowered to
the tips of their sabots. They were well aware that their rosy cheeks,
smoothly braided hair beneath the pyramid of muslin, the embroidered
stockings peeping under the short petticoat, the manner in which they
walked with hands demurely crossed over the moire aprons, made them
the cynosure of all eyes. This retired bearing only lasted for some
twenty paces; soon the girls had formed themselves into a group close
by the Michelonnes' house, at a short distance from that of the
younger men. And now in their turn they waited. Eyes grey, blue,
brown, very much on the alert; eyes sparkling with life; eyes in which
lived a remembrance. Laughing lips, telling of the mere joy of living;
the chirping as of a flock of birds greeting one another. Following
them came the farmers and their wives; widows, distinguishable by the
band of velvet in front of their coifs; older men, men of position;
these all issuing from the nave, among them many a grave face still
under the influence of devotion, in which like walking saints they
seemed wholly absorbed. Many tall, finely set up men there were, with
calm, fresh complexioned faces closely shaven, save for a thin line of
whisker. All wore the same costume of black cloth coat with straight
collar, trousers with flaps, raised on the ankle by a fold in the
cloth, blue or green belt extending half way up the waistcoat, round
felt hat bound with velvet. They joined the younger men, swelling the
groups that shouldered each other, forming by this time a dark swaying
mass reaching to the last buttress of the choir.
The matrons, on the contrary, making a passage for themselves through
the crowd, went their way, looking in their plaited skirts like
ornamental round towers. From their calm eyes, and the brief smile
with which they exchanged greetings with a town acquaintance, it was
plain to see that, having outgrown the follies and illusions of youth,
each had settled down to her store of domestic happiness, joy, or
sorrow that a green patch in the Marais had reserved for her. They
talked with other farmers' wives, were joined by one or other for the
homeward way, and thus accompanied, dignified and worthy, they
directed their steps towards the plain, or to the various boating
stages.
Despite their departure, the gathering in the Place grew denser and
denser. It was the place of Sunday meeting where for centuries past
the dwellers of the marshes, prisoners of the canal-bound land, had
been wont to assemble. To them attendance at mass was alike a
religious duty and an occasion of social gathering. Before wending
their way back to their farms, not a man, even the gravest and most
considered among them, would have failed to pass an hour in a wine
shop chatting with his friends over a bottle of muscadet and a game of
cards, _luette_ particularly, a game imported from Spain in ancient
times. Already innkeepers were standing at their doors at the foot of
the Place, sounds of merriment and laughter were to be heard from
within, and the stock-phrases of _luette_ players, "Your turn." "My
turn." "I play a horse." "I take merienne."
Meanwhile there was more than ordinary animation among the girls
stationed behind the groups of men. They were scanning all the church
doors, whence were now issuing good women, tellers of rosaries, who
had lingered long over their devotions.
"He is coming out," exclaimed tall Aimee Massonneau, the daughter of
farmer Glorieux, of Terre-Aymont. "Did you see him, that poor Mathurin
Lumineau? He insisted upon coming to mass. I am sure he might have got
dispensation!"
"Yes," returned the little auburn-haired daughter of Malabrit, "it is
six years since he came to Sallertaine."
"Six years--really?"
"Yes, I remember. It was the year my sister was married."
"And why do you think he came?" asked Victoire Guerineau, of La
Pinconniere, a sharp-tongued pretty girl, with a complexion like a
wild rose. "For he must have shown some spirit to manage it."
"To stand by his father," said a voice; "the old man had been so
saddened by the going of Eleonore and Francois."
"To show himself with his brother Andre," put in another. "He's a
good-looking fellow is Andre Lumineau! I should not mind----"
Victoire Guerineau and the others broke into a peal of laughter.
"You are quite out of it. It's for Felicite Gauvrit he came!"
"Oh, oh!" exclaimed those in front.
"How ill-natured you are! If she were to hear you."
And several turned towards the Michelonnes' doorstep, near to which,
amid a little throng, stood Mathurin's former fiancee.
Suddenly a murmur ran through the crowd.
"There he is. Poor fellow! How difficult it is for him to walk."
And under the pointed arch of a low doorway, one half of which only
was open, a deformed figure was seen struggling to force a passage
through the narrow aperture, one hand holding a crutch clutched hold
of a pillar outside, by which the poor man strove to drag himself
through, but he had only succeeded in freeing one shoulder. With head
thrown back, there was an expression of agony upon the face which
attested the violence of the effort, and the strength of will that
would not give in. Mathurin Lumineau seemed on the point of
suffocation; he looked at no one in the throng of people whose gaze
was riveted upon him; his eyes on a higher level than those of the
spectators were fixed upon the blue vault of heaven with an expression
of anguish that re-acted upon them.
Conversation was interrupted; voices began to murmur,
"Oh, help him! He is suffocating!"
Some of the men made a movement to go to his assistance; at that
moment, from the gloom of the interior, his father asked:
"Shall I help you out, Mathurin? You cannot squeeze through there. Let
me help you."
In a low voice, inaudible to those without, but with terrible energy,
Mathurin answered:
"Don't touch me. Confound it! Don't touch me. I will get out by
myself."
At length the man forced his huge bust through the door, and with a
tremendous effort steadied himself, stroked his tawny beard and
settled his hat on his head. Then with the aid of his crutches,
standing as upright as he could, Mathurin looked straight before him,
and advanced towards the group of men, which opened out silently at
his approach. No one ventured to address him, it was so long since he
had been among them, the old habit of familiarity seemed lost; but the
attention of all was concentrated upon their former comrade, and no
one noticed that his old father with Andre and Marie-Rose were
following close behind him.
The cripple had soon reached the spot where the girls were standing.
They fell apart even more quickly than the men had done, for they
guessed his intention; a lane opened between them reaching up to the
houses. At the far end of this living avenue, clad in black dresses
and white coifs, standing erect, quite alone, was seen Felicite
Gauvrit. She was the one he sought. She knew it; she had foreseen her
triumph. No sooner had she observed Mathurin Lumineau sitting on the
family bench in church, then she had said to herself: "He has come for
me. I will hide away by the Michelonnes' house, and he will follow
me." For she was gratified to have it seen that he still loved her,
the girl to whom, handsome though she was, no suitors came. The women
with whom she had been talking had prudently moved away; she stood
alone, under the Michelonnes' window, looking like a lay figure from
some museum in her costume of heavy stiff material, the braids of her
lustrous brown hair shining under the small coif, her dazzlingly white
complexion and uncovered throat. Erect, with arms pendant on either
side of the moire apron, she watched her former lover coming towards
her between the double row of inquisitive lookers-on. The many faces
bent upon the girl in nowise intimidated her. Perhaps in the suit and
cravat Mathurin was wearing she recognised the very ones he had worn
at the time of the accident; any way, she remained calm and unabashed,
her face even wore a slight smile. He drew nearer, leaning on his
crutches, his eyes fixed, not on the path, but on Felicite Gauvrit.
What the poor fellow wanted was to see her once again; to make her
understand that health was returning, that hope was awakening out of
his misery, that the heart of Mathurin Lumineau had never wavered.
All this his sad eyes told her as he drew near, offering in piteous
pleading the bodily and mental suffering he had endured to her who had
been their cause. But his strength was unequal to the effort, he grew
deadly white; and when the insolent beauty, the first to speak, said
calmly before all the throng:
"Good day, Mathurin," he could not answer. To have seen the smile on
those rosy lips, to be so near to her, and to hear her address him in
the same easy tones as if they had but parted the day before, was more
than he could bear.
He grew faint, leant heavily on his crutches, and slightly turned his
tawny head to Driot, who was behind him, as if to say: "Take me away,"
and the younger brother understanding the appeal, passed the suffering
man's arm under his and led him away, saying as he did so, to divert
the attention of the crowd:
"Good day to yourself, Felicite. It is an age since I have seen you.
You are not a bit altered."
"Nor are you," she retorted.
A few laughed; but among those assembled there were many who were
deeply touched, even disposed to tears. Some of the girls of
Sallertaine pitied the poor fellow so exhausted and confused, led away
on his brother's arm; they sorrowed that he could never enjoy that
love which each, in the recesses of her heart, hoped some day to share
with the yet unknown swain. One of them murmured:
"It is not only in body that he is afflicted, his mind, too, seems
gone, poor fellow!"
Many women, mothers going home with their children, walked more
sedately as they saw the group on the way to Chalons: old farmer
Toussaint, Andre and Mathurin, with Marie-Rose bringing up the rear.
They recalled with a shudder what a magnificent youth the poor cripple
once had been, and thought: Heaven send that no such calamity befall
our boys when they grow up!
Felicite Gauvrit began to be affected in her turn, but in a different
manner. The departure of the Lumineaus had turned attention away from
her. Some of the men surrounded the district crier, who was calling
out the list of lost articles and farms to be let; others repaired to
the inns. The girls collected in little companies to seek the homeward
way. Every minute five or six white coifs were to be seen bowing and
bending in farewell salute, separating from the others, and going off
to the right hand or the left. Felicite, left alone for some minutes,
joined one of the groups going west of Sallertaine, towards the high
Marais; she was received with some embarrassment, as one whom they did
not want to fall out with, yet who was somewhat compromising, and
whose company their mothers did not desire for them.
Young men drinking together in the inns called after her the slighting
remarks men make on girls for whom they have little respect. She did
not answer them back, but with her companions descended the hilly
road bordered with houses, and thence on to the open Marais in the
direction of Perrier.
At that time of the year, before autumn rains had set in, many of the
farms could be reached on foot without the aid of boats. A raised
path, rough and ill-kept, flanked by dykes on either side, led across
the meadows; grey-green grass covered the level plain until the
uniform tint dissolved in brownish hue in the distant horizon. Horses
grazing, stretched out their necks, and looked at the little group
clad in black and white, breaking the continuity of grey-green plain.
Ducks, at the sound of their footsteps, ran in among the rushes that
trembled on the edge. From time to time a shelving embankment branched
off the path, and one of the girls, separating from the group, would
make her way by it to some distant house, only marked by the customary
cluster of poplar-trees; and Felicite Gauvrit, roused for a moment
from her abstraction, would say "Good-bye," and then walk on silently
as before.
Soon she was left alone on the path that stretches to the sea. Then
slackening her pace, she gave herself up without restraint to her
thoughts. She was not happy at home. At sixty-five her father had
married again a woman of thirty of loose character, whom he had met at
Barre-de-Mont, and to whom in virtue of her youth he had made over the
most realisable part of his property. The young stepmother was not
kind to Felicite. One reproached the other with extravagance and
ruining the home. The eldest brother, in the Customs at Sables
d'Olonne, a gambler and hard drinker, was perpetually threatening the
old man with a summons for falsified accounts, and by thus
intimidating him drained still further the diminished capital of the
Gauvrits. The old family, once so respected in the Marais, was rapidly
declining, and this Felicite knew too well. The young men of
Sallertaine and the neighbouring parishes came readily enough to
dances at La Seuliere; they danced, drank, joked with her, but not one
of them offered to marry her. The impending ruin, the family
divisions, kept suitors away.
Yet another reason, more real, and one that appealed more strongly to
sentiment than any other, held back the sons of farmers, and even
farm-labourers from asking the hand of Felicite Gauvrit in marriage;
and this was the tie, binding only in honour, the debt of fidelity,
rendered even more sacred by misfortune, which public opinion
obstinately maintained as still existing between La Seuliere and La
Fromentiere. In everybody's opinion Felicite Gauvrit remained one of
the Lumineau household; a girl who had not the right to withdraw her
betrothal promise, and who was not to be sought in marriage by any
other while Mathurin was living. Some men even had a superstitious
dread of her; they would have been afraid to set up housekeeping with
a girl whose first love had met so unhappy a fate. All the advances
she had made had come to nought. Soured and embittered, in her rage
she had gone so far as to regret that the cripple had not been killed
on the spot. Had the poor wretch, who was scarcely to be called
living, died then and there, she would have recovered her liberty, the
past would have been quickly forgotten; while now, it was kept in
everyone's memory by the sight of the maimed man on crutches, hanging
about the farmstead of which he should have been master. She had found
that Death is sometimes long in claiming its victims. Then courage had
returned; in her astuteness Felicite had recognised that public
opinion holding her as belonging to the Lumineau family, by them only
could she realise her ambition: to go away from La Seuliere, escape
the domination of her stepmother, and become the mistress of a large
farm, with more means and freedom than ever she had possessed at home.
Never having loved her former betrothed, actuated only by vanity, as
is sometimes the case in country surroundings, she had said to
herself:
"I will bide my time. I will make them long the more for me by not
going to La Fromentiere. One day Mathurin will come to me, or will
call me to him. I am positive that he has not forgotten me. Stupid of
him; but it will help my ends. Thanks to him, I shall see them all
again; the old man who mistrusts me, the young men who will admire me
for my beauty. And I shall marry either Francois or Andre, and shall
be the mistress of a farm as I ought to be, and of the richest farm
in the whole parish."
Now Francois, whom she had tried to captivate, had gone away. But, on
the other hand, Mathurin had come to her; at the cost of terrible
fatigue and suffering he had dragged himself to Sallertaine to greet
her publicly; while Andre, before all the girls, had said: "It is an
age since I saw you. You are not a bit altered."
Felicite had gathered one of the yellow irises that grew so profusely
on the Marais. Half laughing she thought over her recent triumph, the
iris lightly held between her lips; her arms swinging as she walked
caused the full sleeves to rustle against the moire of her apron; her
smiling gaze was directed to the distant meadows. She was thinking
that Andre would make a handsome husband, better looking than ever
Mathurin had been; that, after all, he was one year younger than
herself, that he had engaging manners, and had not been wanting in
audacity either to have said: "You have not altered." And she went on
to think: "The first opportunity that offers, I will invite them to a
dance at home. I am sure that Andre will come."
Slowly she walked along the raised path in the burning rays of the
mid-day sun. Grasshoppers were chirping; every now and again the acrid
scent of fading rushes was in the air. Wholly absorbed in her
daydream, Felicite Gauvrit did not perceive that she had nearly
reached home. The white buildings of La Seuliere, standing out in the
meadow, came as an unwelcome surprise. At the same moment a doubt
crossed her mind, disturbing, unbidden ending to her dream. Suppose
Andre too were to go away? Or that Mathurin, elated as he was sure to
be by the least sign of remembrance, and made thereby more eager, more
jealous, were to guess what was in the wind?
Felicite had stopped in the middle of the bridge that led from the
path to the farm. The tall, supple young woman raised her arms above
her head, scowled impatiently, and snapped the stem of the yellow
iris, which fell prone into the dyke, then following it with her eyes
for a second, she looked at her own reflection in the water, and
smiled again. "I shall succeed," she said. And descending the slope of
the bridge she reached La Seuliere by the cross road.