"God keep you from the she-wolf, and from your heart's deep desire!"
My mother said that again to me when I came home that night from my
fishing; and she said it to me often as the days went on. She saw the
change that had come to me, and she knew what was in my soul. It is
not wonderful, when you stop to think about it, that a man's mother
should know what is in his soul: for the body in which that soul is,
the living home of it, is a part of her own. And she grew sad and
weary-looking when she found that her words had no hold on me, and
there came into her eyes the sorrowful look that comes into the eyes of
old people who are soon to die.
But Magali's eyes were the only eyes that I cared for then, and they
seemed to me to grow brighter and brighter every day. When she and I
walked in the olive-orchards together in the starlight the glow of them
outshone the star-glow. It seemed to light up my heart.
I do not think that we talked much in those walks. I do not seem to
remember our talking. But we understood each other, and we were agreed
about what we were to do. I was old enough to marry as I pleased, but
Magali was not--she could not marry without my mother's word. We meant
to force that word. Some day we would go off in my boat together--over
to Les Saintes Maries, perhaps; or perhaps to Marseille. It did not
matter where we went. When we came back again, at the end of two or
three days, my mother no longer could deny us--she would have to give
in. And no one would think the worse of Magali: for that is our common
way of settling a tangled love-matter here in Provence.
But I did not take account of Jan in my plans, and that was where I
made a mistake. Jan had just as strong a will as I had, and every
bit of his will was set upon keeping Magali for himself. I wanted
her to break with him entirely, but that she would not do. She was a
true Provençale--and I never yet knew one of our women who would rest
satisfied with one lover when she could have two. If she can get more
than two, that is better still. While I hung back from her, Magali was
more than ready to come to me; but when she found me eager after her,
and knew that she had a grip on me, she danced away.
And so, before long, Jan again had his walks with her in the
olive-orchards by starlight just as I did, and likely enough her eyes
glowed for him just as they did for me. When they were off that way
together I would get into a wild-beast rage over it. Sometimes I would
follow them, fingering my knife. I suppose that he felt like that when
the turn was mine. Anyhow, the love-making chances which she gave
him--even though in my heart I still was sure of her--kept me always
watching him; and I could see that he always was watching me. Very
likely he felt sure of her too, and that was his reason--just as it was
my reason--for not bringing our matter to a fighting end. I was ready
enough to kill him, God knows. Unless his eyes lied when he looked at
me, he was ready to kill me.
And in that way the summer slipped past and the autumn came, and
neither of us gained anything. I was getting into a black rage over
it all. Down inside of me was a feeling like fire in my stomach that
made me not want to eat, and that made what I did eat go wrong. My poor
mother had given up trying to talk to me. She saw that she could not
change my way--and, too, I suppose that she pretty well understood it
all: for she had lived her life, and she knew the ways of our men and
of our women when love stings them here in Provence. Only, her sadness
grew upon her with her hopelessness. What I remember most clearly as
I think of her in those last days is her pale old face and the dying
look in her sorrowful eyes.
But seeing her in that way grief-struck only made my black rage
blacker and the fire in my stomach burn hotter. I had the feeling that
there was a devil down there who all the time was getting bigger and
stronger: and that before long he and I would take matters in hand
together and settle them for good and all. As for keeping on with
things as they were, it was not to be thought of. Better than much more
of such a hell-life would be ending everything by killing Jan.
What made me hang back from that was the certainty that if I did kill
him--even in a fair fight, with his chance as good as mine--I would
lose Magali beyond all hope: for the gendarmes would have me away in a
whiff to jail--and then off would go my head, or, what would be just
as bad, off I would go head and all to Cayenne. It was no comfort to
me to know that Magali would almost cry her eyes out over losing me.
Of course she would do that, being a Provençale. But before her eyes
were quite out she would stop crying; and then in a moment she would
be laughing again; and in another moment she would be freshly in love
once more--with some man who was not murdered and who was not gone for
his lifetime over seas. And all that, also, would be because she was a
Provençale.
V
All the devils are let loose on earth on All Souls Eve--that is a fact
known to everybody here in Provence. But whether it was one of those
loosed devils, or the devil that had grown big in my own inside, that
made me do what I did I do not know. What I do know, certainly, is that
about dusk on All Saints Day the thought of how I could force things to
be as I wanted them to be came into my heart.
My thought was not a new thought, exactly. It was only that I would do
what we had planned to do to make my mother give in to us: get Magali
into my boat and carry her off with me for a day or two to Les Saintes.
But it came to me with the new meaning that in that way I could make
Magali give in to me too. When we came back she would be ready enough
to marry me, and my mother would be for hurrying our marrying along.
It all was as plain and as sure as anything could be. And, as I have
said, nobody would think the worse of Magali afterward; because that
way of cutting through such difficulties is a common way with us in
Provence.
And All Souls Eve was the time of all times for doing it. The whole
town is in commotion then. In the churches, when the Vespers of All
Saints are finished, the Vespers of the Dead are said. Then, just
after sunset, the streets are crowded with our people hurrying to
the graveyard with their lanterns for the graves. Nothing is thought
about but the death-fires. From all the church towers--in Jonquières,
in the Isle, in Ferrières--comes the sad dull tolling of bells. After
that, for an hour or more, the town is almost deserted. Only the very
old, and the very young, and the sick with their watchers, and the
bell-ringers in the towers, are left there. Everybody else is in the
graveyard, high up on the hill-side: first busied in setting the lights
and in weeping over dead loved ones; and then, when the duty to the
dead ones is done with, in walking about through the graveyard to see
the show. In Provence we take a great interest in every sort of show.
Magali and I had no death-fires to kindle, for in the graveyard were
no dead of ours. Our people were of Les Saintes Maries, and there
their graves were--and my father, who was drowned at his fishing, had
no grave at all. But we went always to the graveyard on All Souls
Eve, and most times together, that we might see the show with the
others and enjoy the bustle of the crowd. And so there was nothing out
of the common when I asked her to come with me; and off we started
together--leaving my old mother weeping at home for my dead father, who
could have no death-fire lit for him because his bones were lying lost
to us far away in the depths of the sea.
Our house was in the eastern quarter of the town, in Jonquières. To
reach the graveyard we had to cross the Isle, and go through Ferrières,
and then up the hill-side beyond. But I did not mean that we should do
that; and when we had crossed the Canal du Roi I said to Magali that we
would turn, before we went onward, and walk down past the Fish-market
to the end of the Isle--that from there we might see the lights glowing
in the dusk on the slope rising above us black against the western sky.
We had done that before--it is a pretty sight to see all those far-off
glittering points of light above, and then to see their glittering
reflections near by in the water below--and she willingly came with me.
But I had more in view. Down at the end of the Isle, along with the
other boats moored at the wharf there to be near the Fish-market, my
boat was lying; and when we were come close to her I said suddenly, as
though the thought had entered my head that minute, that we would go
aboard of her and run out a little way--and so see the death-fires more
clearly because they would be less hidden by the shoulder of the hill.
I did not have to speak twice. Magali was aboard of the boat on the
instant, and was clapping her hands at the notion--for she had, as all
our women have, a great pleasure in following any sudden fancy which
promises something amusing and also a little strange. And I was quick
after her, and had the lines cast off and began to get up the sail.
"Oh," she said, "won't the oars do? Need we bother with the sail for
such a little way?"
But I did not answer her, and went on with what I was doing, while
the boat drifted quickly out from land before the gusts of wind which
struck us harder and harder as we cleared the point of the Isle. Until
then I had not thought about the weather--my mind had been full of the
other and bigger thought. The gusts of wind waked me up a little, and
as I looked at the sky I began to have doubts that I could do what I
wanted to do; for it was plain that a gale was rising which would make
ticklish work for me even out on the Gulf of Fos--and would make pretty
near impossible my keeping on to Les Saintes over the open sea. And I
had about made up my mind that we must go back, and that I must carry
out my plan some other time, when there came a hail to us from the
shore.
"Where are you going?" called a voice--and as we turned our looks
shoreward there was Jan. He had been following us, I suppose--just as I
sometimes had followed him.
Before I could answer him, Magali spoke. "We are going out on the water
to see the death-fires, Jan," she said. "We are going only a very
little way."
Her words angered me. There was something in them that seemed to show
that he had the right to question her. That settled me in my purpose.
Storm or no storm, on I would go. And I brought the boat up to the
wind, so as to lay our course straight down the Étang de Caronte, and
called out to him: "We are going where you cannot follow. Good-bye!"
And then a gust of wind heeled us over, and we went on suddenly with
a dash--as a horse goes when you spur him--and the water boiled and
hissed under our bows. In another half-minute we were clear of the
shelter of the point, and then the wind came down on us off the hills
in a rush so strong that I had to ease off the sheet sharply--and I had
a queer feeling about what was ahead of me out on the Gulf of Fos.
"Marius! Marius! What are you doing?" Magali cried in a shiver of
fright: for she knew by that time that something was back of it all in
my mind. As she spoke I could see through the dusk that Jan was running
up the sail of his boat, and in a minute more would be after us.
"I am doing what I ought to have done long ago," I said. "I am taking
you for my own. There is nothing to fear, dear Magali. You shall not
be in danger. I had meant to take you to Les Saintes. But a gale is
rising and we cannot get to Les Saintes to-night. We will run across
the Gulf of Fos and anchor in the Grau de Gloria. There is a shepherd's
hut near the Grau. I will make a fire in it and you can sleep there
comfortably, while I watch outside. After all, it makes no difference
where we go. I shall have carried you off--when we go back you must be
my wife."
She did not understand at first. She was too much frightened with the
suddenness of it all, and with the coming of Jan, and with the boat
flying on through the rushing of the wind. I looked back and saw that
Jan had got away after us. Dimly I could make out his sail through the
dusk that lay thick upon the water. Beyond it and above it was a broad
patch of brightness where all the death-fires were burning together in
the graveyard. We had come too far to see any longer those many points
of light singly. In a mass, they made against the black hill-side a
great bright glow.