“It seems you have dismissed Pierre,” I began. “Will you kindly tell me
why?”
He was a little taken aback by my anger, though I tried to moderate it.
“You didn’t want to keep a dirty drunkard, did you, Sir? A fellow who
led all our best men into mischief!”
“It’s my business to know the men I want to keep, not yours.”
“A regular waster! No-one knew where he came from. It gave the place
a bad name.... If he had set fire to the barn one night, you mightn’t
have been so pleased, Sir.”
“That’s my affair, I tell you. It’s my farm, isn’t it? I mean to manage
it in my own way. In future, be so good as to give me your reasons
before dismissing people.”
Bocage, as I have told you, had known me since my childhood. However
wounding my tone, he was too much attached to me to be much offended.
He did not, in fact, take me sufficiently seriously. The Normandy
peasant is too often disinclined to believe anything of which he cannot
fathom the motive--that is to say, anything not prompted by interest.
Bocage simply considered this quarrel as a piece of absurdity.
I did not want, however, to break off the conversation on a note
of blame; feeling I had been too sharp with him, I cast about for
something pleasant to add.
“Isn’t your son Charles coming back soon?” I ended by asking after a
moment’s silence.
“I thought you had quite forgotten him, Sir; you seemed to trouble your
head about him so little,” said Bocage, still rather hurt.
“Forget him, Bocage! How could I, after all we did together last year?
I’m counting on him in fact to help me with the farms....”
“You’re very good, Sir. Charles is coming home in a week’s time.”
“Well, I’m glad to hear it, Bocage,” and I dismissed him.
Bocage was not far wrong; I had not of course forgotten Charles, but
I now cared very little about him. How can I explain that after such
vehement camaraderie, my feeling for him now should be so flat and
spiritless? The fact is my occupations and tastes were no longer the
same as last year. My two farms, I must admit, did not interest me so
much as the people employed on them; and if I wanted to foregather with
them, Charles would be very much in the way. He was far too reasonable
and too respectable. So notwithstanding the vivid and delightful
memories I kept of him, I looked forward with some apprehension to his
return.
He returned. Oh, how right I had been to be apprehensive--and how
right Ménalque was to repudiate all memories! There entered the room
in Charles’s place an absurd individual with a bowler hat. Heavens!
how changed he was! Embarrassed and constrained though I felt, I tried
not to respond too frigidly to the joy he showed at seeing me again;
but even his joy was disagreeable to me; it was awkward, and I thought
insincere. I received him in the drawing-room, and as it was late
and dark, I could hardly distinguish his face; but when the lamp was
brought in, I saw with disgust he had let his whiskers grow.
The conversation that evening was more or less dreary; then, as I knew
he would be continually at the farms, I avoided going down to them
for almost a week, and fell back on my studies and the society of my
guests. And as soon as I began to go out again, I was absorbed by a
totally new occupation.
Wood-cutters had invaded the woods. Every year a part of the timber on
the estate was sold; the woods were marked off into twelve equal lots
which were cut in rotation and every year furnished, besides a few
fully grown trees, a certain amount of twelve-year-old copse wood for
faggots.
This work was done in the winter, and the wood-cutters were obliged by
contract to have the ground cleared before spring. But old Heurtevent,
the timber-merchant who directed operations, was so slack that
sometimes spring came upon the copses while the wood was still lying on
the ground; fresh, delicate shoots could then be seen forcing their way
upwards through the dead branches, and when at last the wood-cutters
cleared the ground, it was not without destroying many of the young
saplings.
That year old Heurtevent’s remissness was even greater than we had
looked for. In the absence of any other bidder, I had been obliged to
let him have the copse wood exceedingly cheap; so that being assured in
any case of a handsome profit, he took very little pains to dispose of
the timber which had cost him so little. And from week to week he put
off the work with various excuses--a lack of labourers, or bad weather,
or a sick horse, or an urgent call for work elsewhere, etc. etc.--with
the result that as late as the middle of summer, none of it had been
removed.
The year before, this would have irritated me to the highest degree;
this year it left me fairly calm; I saw well enough the damage
Heurtevent was causing me; but the devastated woods were beautiful; it
gave me pleasure to wander in them, tracking and watching the game,
startling the vipers, and sometimes sitting by the hour together on one
of the fallen trunks which still seemed to be living on, with green
shoots springing from its wounds.
Then suddenly, about the middle of the last fortnight in August,
Heurtevent made up his mind to send his men. Six of them came with
orders to finish the work in ten days. The part of the woods that had
been cut was that bordering on La Valterie; it was arranged that the
wood-cutters should have their food brought them from the farm, in
order to expedite the work. The labourer chosen for this task was a
curious young rascal called Bute; he had just come back from a term of
military service which had utterly demoralized him; but physically, he
was in admirable condition; he was one of the farm hands I most enjoyed
talking to. By this arrangement I was able to see him without going
down to the farm. For it was just at that time that I began going out
again. For a few days I hardly left the woods except for my meals at
La Morinière, and I was very often late for them. I pretended I had to
superintend the work, though in reality, I only went to see the workers.
Sometimes two of Heurtevent’s sons joined the batch of six men; one was
about twenty, the other about fifteen years old, long-limbed, wiry,
hard-featured young fellows. They had a foreign look about them, and
I learnt later that their mother was actually a Spanish woman. I was
astonished at first that she should have travelled to such distant
parts, but Heurtevent had been a rolling stone in his youth and had,
it appears, married her in Spain. For this reason he was rather looked
askance at in the neighbourhood. The first time I saw the younger
of the sons was, I remember, on a rainy day; he was alone, sitting
on a very high cart, on the top of a great pile of faggots. He was
lolling back among the branches, and singing, or rather shouting, a
kind of extraordinary song, which was like nothing I had ever heard
in our parts. The cart-horses knew the road and followed it without
any guidance from him. I cannot tell you the effect this song had on
me; for I had never heard its like except in Africa.... The boy looked
excited--drunk; when I passed, he did not even glance at me. The next
day, I learnt he was a son of Heurtevent’s. It was in order to see him,
or rather in the hopes of seeing him, that I spent so much time in the
copse. The men by now had very nearly finished clearing it. The young
Heurtevents came only three times. They seemed proud and I could not
get a word out of them.
Bute, on the other hand, liked talking; I soon managed to make him
understand that there was nothing it was not safe to say to me. Upon
this he let himself go and soon stripped the countryside of every rag
of respectability. I lapped up his mysterious secrets with avidity.
They surpassed my expectation and yet at the same time failed to
satisfy me. Was this what was really grumbling below the surface of
appearances or was it merely another kind of hypocrisy? No matter!
I questioned Bute as I had questioned the uncouth chronicles of the
Goths. Fumes of the abyss rose darkly from his stories and as I
breathed them uneasily and fearfully, my head began to turn. He told me
to begin with that Heurtevent had relations with his daughter. I was
afraid if I showed the slightest disapprobation I should put an end to
his confidences; curiosity spurred me on.
“And the mother? Doesn’t she object?”
“The mother! She has been dead full twelve years.... He used to beat
her.”
“How many are there in the family?”
“Five children. You’ve seen the eldest son and the youngest. There’s
another of sixteen who’s delicate and wants to turn priest. And then
the eldest daughter has already had two children by the father.”
And little by little, I learnt a good deal more, so that do what I
would, my imagination began to circle round the lurid attractions of
Heurtevent’s house like a blow-fly round a putrid piece of meat. One
night the eldest son had tried to rape a young servant girl, and as
she struggled, the father had intervened to help his son and had held
her with his huge hands; while the second son went piously on with his
prayers on the floor above, and the youngest looked on at the drama as
an amused spectator. As far as the rape is concerned, I imagine it was
not very difficult, for Bute went on to say that not long after, the
servant girl, having acquired a taste for this sort of thing, had tried
to seduce the young priest.
“And hasn’t she succeeded?” I asked.
“He hasn’t given in so far, but he’s a bit wobbly,” answered Bute.
“Didn’t you say there was another daughter?”
“Yes; she picks up as many fellows as she can lay hold of. And all for
nothing too. When she’s set on it, she wouldn’t mind paying herself.
But you mustn’t carry on at her father’s. He would give you what for.
He says you can do as you like in your own house, but don’t let other
people come nosing round! Pierre the farm hand you sent away, got a
nasty knock on the head one night, though he held his tongue about it.
Since then, she has her chaps in the home woods.”
“Have you had a go yourself?” I asked with an encouraging look.
He dropped his eyes for form’s sake and said, chuckling:
“Every now and then.” Then, raising his eyes quickly, “So has old
Bocage’s boy,” he added.
“What boy is that?”
“Alcide, the one who sleeps in the farm. Surely you know him, Sir?”