"Well, Madame Lecacheur, have you a room for me?"
Astonished to find that I knew her name, she answered:
"That depends; everything is let; but, all the same, there will be no
harm in looking."
In five minutes we were in perfect accord, and I deposited my bag upon
the bare floor of a rustic room, furnished with a bed, two chairs, a
table, and a wash-stand. The room looked into the large and smoky
kitchen, where the lodgers took their meals with the people of the farm
and the farmer, who was a widower.
I washed my hands, after which I went out. The old woman fricasseed a
chicken for dinner in a large fireplace, in which hung the stew pot,
black with smoke.
"You have travelers, then, at the present time?" I said to her.
She answered, in an offended tone of voice:
"I have a lady, an English lady, who has attained to years of maturity.
She is going to occupy my other room."
I obtained, by means of an extra five sous a day, the privilege of
dining out in the court when the weather was fine.
My cover was then placed in front of the door, and I commenced to gnaw
with my teeth the lean members of the Normandy chicken, to drink the
clear cider, and to munch the hunk of white bread, which was four days
old, though excellent.
Suddenly, the wooden barrier which gave into the highway, was opened,
and a strange person directed her steps towards the house. She was very
slender, very tall, enveloped in a Scotch shawl with red borders, and
one might have believed that she had no arms, if one had not seen a long
hand appear just above the haunches, holding a white tourist umbrella.
The face of a mummy, surrounded with sausage rolls of plaited, gray
hair, which bounded at every step she took, made me think, I know not
why, of a sour herring adorned with curling papers. Lowering her eyes,
she passed quickly in front of me, and entered the house.
That singular apparition made me yearn. She undoubtedly was my
neighbor, the aged English lady of whom our hostess had spoken.
I did not see her again that day. The next day, when I had installed
myself to commence painting, at the end of that beautiful valley, which
you know, and which extends as far as Etretat, I perceived, in lifting
my eyes suddenly, something singularly attired, standing on the crest of
the declivity; one might indeed say, a pole decked out with flags. It
was she. On seeing me, she suddenly disappeared. I re-entered the house
at midday for lunch, and took my seat at the common table, so as to make
the acquaintance of this old original. But she did not respond to my
polite advances, was insensible even to my little attentions. I poured
water out for her with great alacrity; I passed her the dishes with
great eagerness. A slight, almost imperceptible movement of the head,
and an English word, murmured so low that I did not understand it, were
her only acknowledgments.
I ceased occupying myself with her, although she had disturbed my
thoughts.
At the end of three days, I knew as much about her as did Madame
Lecacheur herself.
She was called Miss Harriet. Seeking out a secluded village in which to
pass the summer, she had been attracted to Benouville, some six months
before, and did not seem disposed to quit it. She never spoke at table,
ate rapidly, reading all the while a small book, treating of some
protestant propaganda. She gave a copy of it to everybody. The curé
himself had received no less than four copies, conveyed by an urchin to
whom she had paid two sous' commission. She said sometimes to our
hostess, abruptly, without preparing her in the least for the
declaration:
"I love the Savior more than all; I admire him in all creation; I adore
him in all nature, I carry him always in my heart."
And she would immediately present the old woman with one of her
brochures which were destined to convert the universe.
In the village she was not liked. In fact, the schoolmaster had declared
that she was an atheist, and that a kind of reprobation weighed down on
her. The curé, who had been consulted by Madame Lecacheur, responded:
"She is a heretic, but God does not wish the death of the sinner, and I
believe her to be a person of pure morals."
These words, "Atheist," "Heretic," words which no one can precisely
define, threw doubts into some minds. It was asserted, however, that
this English woman was rich, and that she had passed her life in
traveling through every country in the world, because her family had
thrown her off. Why had her family thrown her off. Because of her
natural impiety?
She was, in fact, one of those people of exalted principles, one of
those opinionated puritans, of which England produces so many, one of
those good and insupportable old women who haunt the table d'hôtes of
every hotel in Europe, who spoil Italy, impoison Switzerland, render the
charming cities of the Mediterranean uninhabitable, carry everywhere
their fantastic manias, their petrified vestal manners, their
indescribable toilettes and a certain odor of India rubber, which makes
one believe that at night they slip themselves into a case of that
material.
When I encounter one of these people some fine day in a hotel, I act
like the birds, who see a manakin in a field.
This woman, however, appeared so singular that she did not displease me.
Madame Lecacheur, hostile by instinct to everything that was not rustic,
felt in her narrow soul a kind of hatred for the ecstatic extravagances
of the old girl. She had found a phrase by which to describe her, a
phrase assuredly contemptible, which she had got, I know not whence,
upon her lips, invented by I know not what confused and mysterious
travail of soul. She said: "That woman is a demoniac." This phrase,
culled by that austere and sentimental creature, seemed to me
irresistibly comic. I myself, never called her now anything else, but
"the demoniac," exercising a singular pleasure in pronouncing aloud this
word on perceiving her.