A FEBRUARY NIGHT.
When Rousille had crossed the courtyard and taken the road to
Sallertaine, the farmer, having taken the pot off the fire, left the
barn. He found the man sitting in the chimney-corner, pushing together
the half-dead twigs that had fallen from the fire-dogs with the points
of his sabots. At the far end of the room, Mathurin was moving
restlessly about on his crutches, with crimsoned face, utterly unable
to keep his nerves under control. He did not speak to his father, did
not appear to have heard him enter. But after a minute, as the farmer,
bending down, was speaking in a low voice to the man, he exclaimed
violently:
"And Rousille, what had you to say to her that kept you so long in the
barn?"
Before replying, Toussaint Lumineau followed with his eyes the
movements of the unhappy young man, a prey to a species of madness
produced by rage and pain, such as was too well known at La
Fromentiere--since Andre's departure the paroxysms had become more
frequent--and the father was moved to pity. Ignoring the insolence of
the question, he said simply:
"Your sister will come back later, Mathurin. Where she has gone I have
sent her."
"I am not to know where she is, then?" cried the cripple still more
violently. "Everything is hidden from me here, and she is told all!"
At a sign from the farmer the man took out a couple of potatoes with
his knife from the saucepan, slipped them into his coat pocket, cut a
slice of bread from the loaf on the table, and carrying off his
supper, went out into the yard.
The father and son were alone. Toussaint Lumineau, standing erect in
the firelight, said:
"On the contrary, you are going to know all, Mathurin. Your brother
Francois refuses to come home to us."
"I thought so."
The cripple had drawn back into a dark corner between the two beds,
out of the range of the lamplight; there, as though on the watch for
the words spoken, he listened; his trembling hands resting on the
crutches shook the bed-curtains.
"La Fromentiere cannot go on as it is now," resumed the farmer. "I
have bidden Rousille take a message to the Michelonnes. One or the
other of the sisters, whether it be Adelaide or Veronique matters not,
is to go to the Bocage to bring back Jean Nesmy."
"Ah! you are marrying Rousille?"
"Yes, my friend."
"To a dismissed farm-servant!"
"I am taking him back."
"A _Boquin_! A man not of these parts!"
"A good worker, Mathurin, and one who always loved our soil."
"And he is to live at La Fromentiere?"
"Of course. I need help. I need a son to stand by me."
Mathurin's tawny head was thrust out from darkness.
"And me," he cried, "what are you going to do with me?"
In his look was a concentrated reproach, all pent-up suffering and
wrath of years.
"So I, the eldest, the rightful heir, am only to bear my suffering and
submit to the will of others?"
"My son," replied his father gently, "you will continue to live with
us as now; you will do what you can, and no one will expect more. No
work will be undertaken here without your having first been consulted,
that I promise you. The farmstead will be your home after my death as
now."
"No. I will not be ordered about by a man who does not bear my name. A
Lumineau, and a Lumineau only, must be master here!"
"It is the sorrow of my life, Mathurin, that this cannot be."
"I could have borne with Francois, even with Andre," continued the
cripple, with equal vehemence, "but Rousille and her _Boquin_ shall
never be the masters here. It is my home, and, I tell you, it is my
turn!"
"But, my poor boy, you cannot take the management."
The serge curtains shook, and the unhappy man, suffocating with rage,
made a few uncertain steps forward.
"I cannot tell what is good ploughing?" he gasped.
"Yes."
"I cannot buy a pair of oxen?"
"Yes."
"I cannot have myself drawn about in a cart, or punt a boat? Answer,
if you please."
"Yes, my son."
"Then what further do I need for the management of a farm? Labourers I
can hire. A wife?"
His father dared not say Yes.
"I will bring one!" Mathurin had reached the corner of the table and
was now leaning upon it, the upper part of his body swaying and
struggling to maintain its equilibrium. "One who has more heart than
all of you put together! She knows that I shall get well. She has
almost given me her promise to marry me as I am ... when I shall have
persuaded her."
"Do not trust to what the girls tell you, my poor lad. It is only
fathers and mothers who love and cherish those afflicted as you
are.... You are ill this evening. See, your limbs are failing you.
Come to bed, I will help you."
The cripple did not try to answer. His eyes closed, his head sank on
to his shoulder; the crutches slipped from under the arms that
stretched out as those of a drowning man seeking help. He would have
fallen to the ground had not the farmer rushed forward to support him.
The giddiness did not last long. It was a sharp but short attack.
Hardly had his father got him into a recumbent position on the chest
at the foot his bed than Mathurin opened his eyes. He looked at his
father, raised himself unaided, and putting hand to the back of his
neck, said:
"You see, it is nothing. The pain you caused did it.... I am not ill."
All trace of anger had disappeared, but the misery in his face was the
same, mingled with that kind of horror men experience when they have
been at the very verge of death.
"Would you like me to help you?" asked his father.
With a shrug of the shoulders the cripple began to undress himself,
and taking off his coat, folded it, and laid it on the chest.
"No. I will get to bed by myself. I want to be left in peace." His
voice trembled as much as his hands. "You had better go to meet
Rousille. She will have her news to tell you--and, moreover, it is
pitch dark, the roads are not too safe----"
Toussaint Lumineau, who knew the danger of opposing his son in such an
attack, made no demur.
"I will go as far as the road, Mathurin, and will tell the man to be
at hand in the bakery in case you need him."
He did not go even as far as the road. He was too uneasy. He went some
hundred yards along the wall of La Fromentiere in the rain, turned
back, and then not wishing to go in too soon as to allow Mathurin time
to calm down, he went into the stables to look to the animals, and see
that none had broken loose.
But, all unsuspected, Mathurin had slipped out after him. The farmer
had not gone ten paces beyond the gate ere the cripple had come out
into the courtyard, cautiously shut the outer door, and was making his
way towards the threshing-floor in order to reach the meadow by the
short cut.
His marvellous energy, and the diseased state of nervous excitability
he was in, sustained him. A mad fancy, born of all his misery and all
his dreams, forced him out on that cruel night to his doom. He would
seek his lost love; would appeal by all the slights, all the
suffering, all the affronts he had endured, to her who had been and
still was the arbitress of his life; would say to her: "All forsake
me; I have only you. Tell me that you love me, and they will scorn me
no more. Save me, Felicite Gauvrit!"
Despite the dark night, the slippery ground, the two fences he had to
climb, he went quickly along the track which bordered the park. Like a
naughty child fearing pursuit, he turned his head every now and then
to listen. Many a sound came to him, but it was only the whistling of
the wind among the elms; the rain crashing down upon the slates; the
roll of a distant train, probably on the way to Chalons. Mathurin
descended the sloping meadow; the darkness was so dense that he had to
turn back twice before he found the landing-stage. Feeling for a punt
with his crutch he threw himself into the first one, and with a stroke
of the pole pushed it out, not into the canal which led direct to Le
Perrier and La Seuliere, but to the left into a dyke rarely made use
of by the occupants of the farm.
The bottom of the boat was full of water; at each movement it washed
over the limbs of the cowering man, but he heeded it not. What
mattered the wet boat, the icy rain that was falling, the pitch
darkness, the weeds that checked his progress many a time, the length
of the way, the fatigue. He must reach her, did he strain his last
nerve and die in the effort.
The darkness was so great that Mathurin could scarce see the bow of
his boat. Since sundown the wind had been driving the fog into the
Marais; in its length and breadth it was full of it, covering whole
spaces with its swaying mass; it lay over the inundated meadows, the
embankments, and islets, shrouding them all in its malarial folds. It
dripped in poisonous drops down poplars and willows, from the thatched
roofs of hovels on the edge of the great sea shore where men,
condemned to live in them, drank in fever without the power of
struggling against it.
On such a deadly night was it that Mathurin, already a prey to the
malady hanging over him, the blood surging to his head, found his
strength ebbing away. In vain he threw himself from side to side of
the punt, unable to distinguish which way to go. Sometimes his breath
failed, he grew unconscious, and the puntsman would sit leaning
forward motionless in the boat; then the cold would restore him, and
with a shake he would continue his course.
As he went on further into the wildest part of the Marais, the shades
of night grew peopled with forms. Birds, more and more numerous, rose
as he brushed past the quivering willows. It was the time of their
flight. Plovers, wild duck, bernacles, snipe, flew up, uttering their
shrill or plaintive cry, soaring in invisible flocks, now high up in
the icy fog, now close down to the sides of the boat. At each flight
the cripple shuddered: "Why do you cry thus at me, ye birds of
ill-omen?" he thought. "Leave me in peace, I am going to Felicite--she
will consent--we shall make preparation again for our wedding--we
will live at La Fromentiere."
But his strength was exhausted. Little by little the torpor increased.
His efforts relaxed; his sight failed. He continued touching the banks
with the punt pole but fitfully, and not knowing where it struck. All
suddenly the boat, which drifted across an embankment into the middle
of a submerged meadow, stopped. Water was all around. Mathurin's hands
relaxed their hold of the pole, his eyes opened wide with terror; he
felt Death creeping up from limbs to brain. Raising himself, he cried
out into the night with a loud voice: "Felicite! Father!" Then his
body swayed backwards and forwards, his hand made the sign of the
cross, and with mouth still open he sank lifeless to the bottom of the
boat.
Through the labyrinth of dykes another punt was being rapidly
propelled; at its bow a lantern was slung, just clearing the water,
its tiny flame swaying with a rapid movement, and shaken by the wind.
The farmer had discovered Mathurin's flight, and was seeking him.
Around him, too, coveys of birds arose. White wings fluttered in the
light of the lantern.
"Ye birds," murmured the farmer, "tell me where to find him!"
Did the thousands of voices make answer?
At each crossway of the canals the father stood in the stern of his
boat, and turning successively to the four winds of heaven, he called
out with all his strength the name of his son. Twice men returning to
their island homes from wild duck shooting, or belated farmers, had
opened their windows to cry in the darkness:
"What do you want?"
"My son."
The voices had given no reply. The third time Toussaint Lumineau
thought he distinguished a feeble cry, very distant, coming through
the icy fog, and leaving the canal which runs straight to Perrier, he
turned off to the left. From time to time he called again, but hearing
no further sound, and fearing to have taken a wrong direction, he
unfastened the lantern, and drew up to the side to see if there were
traces of a punt pole. Some hundred yards further on he detected by
newly-made marks in the mud that the bank had been grazed; a punt had
certainly passed that way. Was it Mathurin's? He followed it. The punt
had made the circuit of a meadow, but on which side had it gone out?
In vain the farmer, forcing his way through the rushes, tried the
different canals that cut it at right angles, each time he came back
baffled; all traces had disappeared. He was about to turn back when,
by the light of his lantern, he caught sight of a piece of floating
wood. He stooped to catch it; a presentiment of the truth flashed
across him; it was one of the Fromentiere punt poles, drifting,
carried by the wind towards the spot where the banks under water had
converted meadow and dyke into one great lake.
The farmer thought his son's boat had upset.
"Hold on, Mathurin!" he cried. "I am coming. Hold on!" and with a
stroke of the pole he pushed on into the channel. "Where are you,
Mathurin?"
In the chopping waves of the open water he had made some thirty yards,
when he was suddenly thrown forward. Stooping over the side, he felt
about, and caught hold of another boat, which he drew alongside his
own. Then turning the lantern upon it, he saw at the bottom of the
punt his son, lying motionless. Toussaint Lumineau threw himself on
his knees, nearly sending the boat under water; he felt his son's
temples, there was no pulsation; his hands, they were icy cold; he put
his mouth to the dead man's ear, and twice called him by name.
"Answer me, my son," he implored. "Answer! Move but a finger to show
me you are still living."
But his son's fingers did not move; the lips clothed by the tawny
beard remained motionless, open as when the last cry proceeded from
them.
"My God!" groaned Lumineau, still kneeling. "Grant that he may not be
called away before his Easter Communion. Grant that he be not dead!"
And taking off his coat he covered his son in it, like a bed, and
leaving his own punt he got into the one where Mathurin lay, and
pushed off. A shade of hope sustained him, giving renewed vigour to
his old arms. He must find help. Standing upright, endeavouring to
find out where he was in the pitch darkness, the father had punted on
some distance before he detected the light of a farmhouse. Then, to
the right, a ray of light pierced through the fog. The punt glided on
more rapidly through the dyke, it neared the building, and Toussaint
could make out that it was a farm from the shape of the doors and the
lighted windows. Alas! it was La Seuliere, and a dance was going in.
The noise of laughter, songs, the muffled notes of an accordeon
plainly audible within, died away in the wind without.
The farmer went on past the brown hillock, but even while he punted
with all speed he watched to see if the great dark shade cast by
Mathurin had not stirred; then seeing it motionless, thought to
himself: "My son is dead!"
Some five hundred yards away on the other side of the canal, he knew
now that there was another house, and he made all haste to reach it.
For this time it was Terre-Aymont, the farm of Massonneau le Glorieux,
his friend. And soon the farmer, throwing his boat-chain round a
willow, had sprung to land, and going to the farmhouse door, was
crying: "Glorieux! Glorieux! Help!"
Soon lights were moving along the muddy slopes between the farm and
the willow to which the boat had been attached, and men and women
were hurrying to and fro with tears, laments, and low-voiced prayers.
The whole sleeping household had been quickly roused, and were
assembled on the bank. Massonneau would have had Mathurin carried into
the house-place of La Terre-Aymont and have sent to fetch the doctor
of Chalons, but Toussaint Lumineau, having once more examined and felt
over his son's body, said:
"No, Glorieux. His sufferings are at an end. I will take him back to
La Fromentiere."
Then the farmer of La Terre-Aymont turned to two young lads standing
in the background, who with arms round each other's necks, their brown
heads touching, seemed to be looking on death for the first time.
"My lads," he said, "go and fetch our large punt."
Disappearing in the fog, they ran to fetch the boat which was kept in
a meadow close by La Seuliere, and as they passed they told the
merrymakers what had happened.
It was nearly ten at night when the body of Mathurin Lumineau was
reverently placed by friendly hands in the great punt used for
carrying forage, and which had so often been seen returning from the
meadows laden with hay, one of the Terre-Aymont children perched on
the top, singing.
The body was laid in the middle of the boat, covered with a white
sheet by the hands of Mere Massonneau; on it she placed a copper
crucifix.
Toussaint Lumineau took his place in the stern at his son's head.
Standing in the bow with their punt poles were the two sons of
Glorieux de la Terre-Aymont, two lanterns at their feet to light them
on their way.
The boat left the bank amid the laments of those present, and
proceeded slowly down the Grand Canal, the wind driving the mists of
the Marais towards it as it advanced.
When at a short distance from La Seuliere, a voice from land
exclaimed:
"There it is! I hear the punt poles; I see the lights!"
The doors of both rooms were thrown open; the lamplight shone out,
illuminating the hillock on which the house stood; the stunted trees
on the edge of the dyke looked silvery out of the darkness. Now all
those present at the dance, young men and maidens, came forth in long
procession down to the bank to greet the mournful convoy. In their
gala dresses they knelt on the muddy bank, their coifs and aprons
blown about in the wind. Silently they watched the approach of the
white shroud covering the remains of the cripple, their senior by so
few years, and the poor old father sitting bent double in the stern,
his head almost touching his knees, motionless as the dead son he was
guarding.
Behind the others knelt a tall girl supported by two of her companions
kneeling on either side of her, the blue kerchief and gold chain she
wore conspicuous in the light that streamed from the house. All were
silent. All followed with their eyes the boat as it slowly glided away
again into the darkness. The sound of the punt poles, as they dipped
the water, gradually died away; the ripples left on the smooth surface
of the water subsided. The white shroud had passed away into the
ever-deepening fog. There remained only a glimmer of light, the faint
reflection of the lanterns passing across the meadows; soon nothing
could be distinguished from out the enveloping darkness into which the
punt had disappeared.
"Poor eldest Lumineau! the handsomest of us all!"
In the solitude of the Marais, whither the pity of his fellow
creatures could not accompany him, the old father wept as he looked on
the burden at his feet; he wept, too, when lifting up his head his
eyes lighted on the stalwart lads plying the punt poles, who, faithful
to their home and soil, were keeping on the straight course.