The next afternoon the Avocat visited old Farette. Farette was polishing
a gun, mumbling the while. Sitting on some bags of meal was Parpon, with
a fierce twinkle in his eye. Monsieur Garon told Farette briefly what
the Seigneur had left him. With a quick, greedy chuckle Farette threw
the gun away.
"Man alive!" said he; "tell me all about it. Ah, the good news!"
"There is nothing to tell: he left it; that is all."
"Oh, the good Seigneur," cried Farette, "the grand Seigneur!"
Some one laughed scornfully in the doorway. It was Julie.
"Look there," she cried; "he gets the land, and throws away the gun!
Brag and coward, miller! It is for me to say 'the grand Seigneur!'"
She tossed her head: she thought the old Seigneur had relented towards
her. She turned away to the house with a flaunting air, and got her hat.
At first she thought she would go to the House with the Tall Porch, but
she changed her mind, and went to the Bois Noir instead. Parpon followed
her a distance off. Behind, in the mill, Farette was chuckling and
rubbing his hands.
Meanwhile, Armand was making his way towards the Bois Noir. All at once,
in the shade of a great pine, he stopped. He looked about him
astonished.
"This is the old place. What a fool I was, then!" he said.
At that moment Julie came quickly, and lifted her hands towards him.
"Armand--beloved Armand!" she said.
Armand looked at her sternly, from her feet to her pitted forehead, then
wheeled, and left her without a word.
She sank in a heap on the ground. There was a sudden burst of tears, and
then she clinched her hands with fury.
Some one laughed in the trees above her--a shrill, wild laugh. She
looked up frightened. Parpon presently dropped down beside her.
"It was as I said," whispered the dwarf, and he touched her shoulder.
This was the full cup of shame. She was silent.
"There are others," he whispered again. She could not see his strange
smile; but she noticed that his voice was not as usual. "Listen," he
urged, and he sang softly over her shoulder for quite a minute. She was
amazed.
"Sing again," she said.
"I have wanted to sing to you like that for many years," he replied; and
he sang a little more. "He cannot sing like that," he wheedled, and he
stretched his arm around her shoulder.
She hung her head, then flung it back again as she thought of Armand.
"I hate him!" she cried; "I hate him!"
"You will not throw meal on me any more, or call me idiot?" he pleaded.
"No, Parpon," she said.
He kissed her on the cheek. She did not resent it. But now he drew
away, smiled wickedly at her, and said: "See, we are even now, poor
Julie!" Then he laughed, holding his little sides with huge hands.
"Imbecile!" he added, and, turning, trotted away towards the Rock of Red
Pigeons.
She threw herself, face forward, in the dusty needles of the pines.
When she rose from her humiliation, her face was as one who has seen the
rags of harlequinade stripped from that mummer Life, leaving only naked
being. She had touched the limits of the endurable; her sordid little
hopes had split into fragments. But when a human soul faces upon its
past, and sees a gargoyle at every milestone where an angel should be,
and in one flash of illumination--the touch of genius to the smallest
mind--understands the pitiless comedy, there comes the still stoic
outlook.
Julie was transformed. All the possible years of her life were gathered
into the force of one dreadful moment--dreadful and wonderful. Her mean
vanity was lost behind the pale sincerity of her face--she was sincere at
last. The trivial commonness was gone from her coquetting shoulders and
drooping eyelids; and from her body had passed its flexuous softness.
She was a woman; suffering, human, paying the price.
She walked slowly the way that Parpon had gone. Looking neither to right
nor left, she climbed the long hillside, and at last reached the summit,
where, bundled in a steep corner, was the Rock of Red Pigeons. As she
emerged from the pines, she stood for a moment, and leaned with
outstretched hand against a tree, looking into the sunlight. Slowly her
eyes shifted from the Rock to the great ravine, to whose farther side the
sun was giving bastions of gold. She was quiet. Presently she stepped
into the light and came softly to the Rock. She walked slowly round it
as though looking for some one. At the lowest side of the Rock, rude
narrow hollows were cut for the feet. With a singular ease she climbed
to the top of it. It had a kind of hollow, in which was a rude seat,
carved out of the stone. Seeing this, a set look came to her face: she
was thinking of Parpon, the master of this place. Her business was with
him.
She got down slowly, and came over to the edge of the precipice.
Steadying herself against a sapling, she looked over. Down below was a
whirlpool, rising and falling-a hungry funnel of death. She drew back.
Presently she peered again, and once more withdrew. She gazed round, and
then made another tour of the hill, searching. She returned to the
precipice. As she did so she heard a voice. She looked and saw Parpon
seated upon a ledge of rock not far below. A mocking laugh floated up to
her. But there was trouble in the laugh too--a bitter sickness. She did
not notice that. She looked about her. Not far away was a stone, too
heavy to carry but perhaps not too heavy to roll!
Foot by foot she rolled it over. She looked. He was still there. She
stepped back. As she did so a few pebbles crumbled away from her feet
and fell where Parpon perched. She did not see or hear them fall. He
looked up, and saw the stone creeping upon the edge. Like a flash he was
on his feet, and, springing into the air to the right, caught a tree
steadfast in the rock. The stone fell upon the ledge, and bounded off
again. The look of the woman did not follow the stone. She ran to the
spot above the whirlpool, and sprang out and down.
From Parpon there came a wail such as the hills of the north never heard
before. Dropping upon a ledge beneath, and from that to a jutting tree,
which gave way, he shot down into the whirlpool. He caught Julie's body
as it was churned from life to death: and then he fought. There was a
demon in the whirlpool, but God and demon were working in the man.
Nothing on earth could have unloosed that long, brown arm from Julie's
drenched body. The sun lifted an eyelid over the yellow bastions of
rock, and saw the fight. Once, twice, the shaggy head was caught beneath
the surface--but at last the man conquered.
Inch by inch, foot by foot, Parpon, with the lifeless Julie clamped in
one arm, climbed the rough wall, on, on, up to the Rock of Red Pigeons.
He bore her to the top of it. Then he laid her down, and pillowed her
head on his wet coat.
The huge hands came slowly down Julie's soaked hair, along her blanched
cheek and shoulders, caught her arms and held them. He peered into her
face. The eyes had the film which veils Here from Hereafter. On the
lips was a mocking smile. He stooped as if to kiss her. The smile
stopped him. He drew back for a time, then he leaned forward, shut his
eyes, and her cold lips were his.
Twilight-dusk-night came upon Parpon and his dead--the woman whom an
impish fate had put into his heart with mockery and futile pain.