For a week or two nothing occurred. The father went fishing; Jean, with
his mother’s help, was furnishing and settling himself; Pierre, very
gloomy, never was seen excepting at meal-times.
His father having asked him one evening: “Why the deuce do you always
come in with a face as cheerful as a funeral? This is not the first
time I have remarked it.”
The doctor replied: “The fact is I am terribly conscious of the burden
of life.”
The old man did not have a notion what he meant, and with an aggrieved
look he went on: “It really is too bad. Ever since we had the good luck
to come into this legacy, every one seems unhappy. It is as though some
accident had befallen us, as if we were in mourning for some one.”
“I am in mourning for some one,” said Pierre.
“You are? For whom?”
“For some one you never knew, and of whom I was too fond.”
Roland imagined that his son alluded to some girl with whom he had had
some love passages, and he said:
“A woman, I suppose.”
“Yes, a woman.”
“Dead?”
“No. Worse. Ruined!”
“Ah!”
Though he was startled by this unexpected confidence, in his wife’s
presence too, and by his son’s strange tone about it, the old man made
no further inquiries, for in his opinion such affairs did not concern a
third person.
Mme. Roland affected not to hear; she seemed ill and was very pale.
Several times already her husband, surprised to see her sit down as if
she were dropping into her chair, and to hear her gasp as if she could
not draw her breath, had said:
“Really, Louise, you look very ill; you tire yourself too much with
helping Jean. Give yourself a little rest. Sacristi! The rascal is in
no hurry, as he is a rich man.”
She shook her head without a word.
But to-day her pallor was so great that Roland remarked on it again.
“Come, come,” said he, “this will not do at all, my dear old woman. You
must take care of yourself.” Then, addressing his son, “You surely must
see that your mother is ill. Have you questioned her, at any rate?”
Pierre replied: “No; I had not noticed that there was anything the
matter with her.”
At this Roland was angry.
“But it stares you in the face, confound you! What on earth is the good
of your being a doctor if you cannot even see that your mother is out
of sorts? Why, look at her, just look at her. Really, a man might die
under his very eyes and this doctor would never think there was
anything the matter!”
Mme. Roland was panting for breath, and so white that her husband
exclaimed:
“She is going to faint.”
“No, no, it is nothing—I shall get better directly—it is nothing.”
Pierre had gone up to her and was looking at her steadily.
“What ails you?” he said. And she repeated in an undertone:
“Nothing, nothing—I assure you, nothing.”
Roland had gone to fetch some vinegar; he now returned, and handing the
bottle to his son he said:
“Here—do something to ease her. Have you felt her heart?”
As Pierre bent over her to feel her pulse she pulled away her hand so
vehemently that she struck it against a chair which was standing by.
“Come,” said he in icy tones, “let me see what I can do for you, as you
are ill.”
Then she raised her arm and held it out to him. Her skin was burning,
the blood throbbing in short irregular leaps.
“You are certainly ill,” he murmured. “You must take something to quiet
you. I will write you a prescription.” And as he wrote, stooping over
the paper, a low sound of choked sighs, smothered, quick breathing and
suppressed sobs made him suddenly look round at her. She was weeping,
her hands covering her face.
Roland, quite distracted, asked her:
“Louise, Louise, what is the mater with you? What on earth ails you?”
She did not answer, but seemed racked by some deep and dreadful grief.
Her husband tried to take her hands from her face, but she resisted
him, repeating:
“No, no, no.”
He appealed to his son.
“But what is the matter with her? I never saw her like this.”
“It is nothing,” said Pierre, “she is a little hysterical.”
And he felt as if it were a comfort to him to see her suffering thus,
as if this anguish mitigated his resentment and diminished his mother’s
load of opprobrium. He looked at her as a judge satisfied with his
day’s work.
Suddenly she rose, rushed to the door with such a swift impulse that it
was impossible to forestall or to stop her, and ran off to lock herself
into her room.
Roland and the doctor were left face to face.
“Can you make head or tail of it?” said the father.
“Oh, yes,” said the other. “It is a little nervous disturbance, not
alarming or surprising; such attacks may very likely recur from time to
time.”
They did in fact recur, almost every day; and Pierre seemed to bring
them on with a word, as if he had the clew to her strange and new
disorder. He would discern in her face a lucid interval of peace and
with the willingness of a torturer would, with a word, revive the
anguish that had been lulled for a moment.
But he, too, was suffering as cruelly as she. It was dreadful pain to
him that he could no longer love her nor respect her, that he must put
her on the rack. When he had laid bare the bleeding wound which he had
opened in her woman’s, her mother’s heart, when he felt how wretched
and desperate she was, he would go out alone, wander about the town, so
torn by remorse, so broken by pity, so grieved to have thus hammered
her with his scorn as her son, that he longed to fling himself into the
sea and put an end to it all by drowning himself.
Ah! How gladly now would he have forgiven her. But he could not, for he
was incapable of forgetting. If only he could have desisted from making
her suffer; but this again he could not, suffering as he did himself.
He went home to his meals, full of relenting resolutions; then, as soon
as he saw her, as soon as he met her eye—formerly so clear and frank,
now so evasive, frightened, and bewildered—he struck at her in spite of
himself, unable to suppress the treacherous words which would rise to
his lips.
This disgraceful secret, known to them alone, goaded him up against
her. It was as a poison flowing in his veins and giving him an impulse
to bite like a mad dog.
And there was no one in the way now to hinder his reading her; Jean
lived almost entirely in his new apartments, and only came home to
dinner and to sleep every night at his father’s.
He frequently observed his brother’s bitterness and violence, and
attributed them to jealousy. He promised himself that some day he would
teach him his place and give him a lesson, for life at home was
becoming very painful as a result of these constant scenes. But as he
now lived apart he suffered less from this brutal conduct, and his love
of peace prompted him to patience. His good fortune, too, had turned
his head, and he scarcely paused to think of anything which had no
direct interest for himself. He would come in full of fresh little
anxieties, full of the cut of a morning-coat, of the shape of a felt
hat, of the proper size for his visiting-cards. And he talked
incessantly of all the details of his house—the shelves fixed in his
bed-room cupboard to keep linen on, the pegs to be put up in the
entrance hall, the electric bells contrived to prevent illicit visitors
to his lodgings.
It had been settled that on the day when he should take up his abode
there they should make an excursion to Saint Jouin, and return after
dining there, to drink tea in his rooms. Roland wanted to go by water,
but the distance and the uncertainty of reaching it in a sailing boat
if there should be a head-wind, made them reject his plan, and a break
was hired for the day.
They set out at ten to get there to breakfast. The dusty high road lay
across the plain of Normandy, which, by its gentle undulations, dotted
with farms embowered in trees, wears the aspect of an endless park. In
the vehicle, as it jogged on at the slow trot of a pair of heavy
horses, sat the four Rolands, Mme. Rosémilly, and Captain Beausire, all
silent, deafened by the rumble of the wheels, and with their eyes shut
to keep out the clouds of dust.
It was harvest-time. Alternating with the dark hue of clover and the
raw green of beet-root, the yellow corn lighted up the landscape with
gleams of pale gold; the fields looked as if they had drunk in the
sunshine which poured down on them. Here and there the reapers were at
work, and in the plots where the scythe had been put in the men might
be seen see-sawing as they swept the level soil with the broad,
wing-shaped blade.
After a two-hours’ drive the break turned off to the left, past a
windmill at work—a melancholy, gray wreck, half rotten and doomed, the
last survivor of its ancient race; then it went into a pretty inn yard,
and drew up at the door of a smart little house, a hostelry famous in
those parts.
The mistress, well known as “La belle Alphonsine,” came smiling to the
threshold, and held out her hand to the two ladies who hesitated to
take the high step.
Some strangers were already at breakfast under a tent by a grass-plot
shaded by apple trees—Parisians, who had come from Étretat; and from
the house came sounds of voices, laughter, and the clatter of plates
and pans.
They were to eat in a room, as the outer dining-halls were all full.
Roland suddenly caught sight of some shrimping nets hanging against the
wall.
“Ah! ha!” cried he, “you catch prawns here?”
“Yes,” replied Beausire. “Indeed it is the place on all the coast where
most are taken.”
“First-rate! Suppose we try to catch some after breakfast.”
As it happened it would be low tide at three o’clock, so it was settled
that they should all spend the afternoon among the rocks, hunting
prawns.
They made a light breakfast, as a precaution against the tendency of
blood to the head when they should have their feet in the water. They
also wished to reserve an appetite for dinner, which had been ordered
on a grand scale and to be ready at six o’clock when they came in.
Roland could not sit still for impatience. He wanted to buy the nets
specially constructed for fishing prawns, not unlike those used for
catching butterflies in the country. Their name on the French coast is
_lanets_; they are netted bags on a circular wooden frame, at the end
of a long pole. Alphonsine, still smiling, was happy to lend them. Then
she helped the two ladies to make an impromptu change of toilet, so as
not to spoil their dresses. She offered them skirts, coarse worsted
stockings and hemp shoes. The men took off their socks and went to the
shoemaker’s to buy wooden shoes instead.
Then they set out, the nets over their shoulders and creels on their
backs. Mme. Rosémilly was very sweet in this costume, with an
unexpected charm of countrified audacity. The skirt which Alphonsine
had lent her, coquettishly tucked up and firmly stitched so as to allow
of her running and jumping fearlessly on the rocks, displayed her ankle
and lower calf—the firm calf of a strong and agile little woman. Her
dress was loose to give freedom to her movements, and to cover her head
she had found an enormous garden hat of coarse yellow straw with an
extravagantly broad brim; and to this, a bunch of tamarisk pinned in to
cock it on one side, gave a very dashing and military effect.
Jean, since he had come into his fortune, had asked himself every day
whether or no he should marry her. Each time he saw her he made up his
mind to ask her to be his wife, and then, as soon as he was alone
again, he considered that by waiting he would have time to reflect. She
was now less rich than he, for she had but twelve thousand francs a
year; but it was in real estate, in farms and lands near the docks in
Havre; and this by-and-bye might be worth a great deal. Their fortunes
were thus approximately equal, and certainly the young widow attracted
him greatly.
As he watched her walking in front of him that day he said to himself:
“I must really decide; I cannot do better, I am sure.”
They went down a little ravine, sloping from the village to the cliff,
and the cliff, at the end of this comb, rose about eighty metres above
the sea. Framed between the green slopes to the right and left, a great
triangle of silvery blue water could be seen in the distance, and a
sail, scarcely visible, looked like an insect out there. The sky, pale
with light, was so merged into one with the water that it was
impossible to see where one ended and the other began; and the two
women, walking in front of the men, stood out against the bright
background, their shapes clearly defined in their closely-fitting
dresses.
Jean, with a sparkle in his eye, watched the smart ankle, the neat leg,
the supple waist, and the coquettish broad hat of Mme. Rosémilly as
they fled away from him. And this flight fired his ardour, urging him
on to the sudden determination which comes to hesitating and timid
natures. The warm air, fragrant with sea-coast odours—gorse, clover,
and thyme, mingling with the salt smell of the rocks at low
tide—excited him still more, mounting to his brain; and every moment he
felt a little more determined, at every step, at every glance he cast
at the alert figure; he made up his mind to delay no longer, to tell
her that he loved her and hoped to marry her. The prawn-fishing would
favour him by affording him an opportunity; and it would be a pretty
scene too, a pretty spot for love-making—their feet in a pool of limpid
water while they watched the long feelers of the shrimps lurking under
the wrack.
When they had reached the end of the comb and the edge of the cliff,
they saw a little footpath slanting down the face of it; and below
them, about half-way between the sea and the foot of the precipice, an
amazing chaos of enormous boulders tumbled over and piled one above the
other on a sort of grassy and undulating plain which extended as far as
they could see to the southward, formed by an ancient landslip. On this
long shelf of brushwood and grass, disrupted, as it seemed, by the
shocks of a volcano, the fallen rocks seemed the wreck of a great
ruined city which had once looked out on the ocean, sheltered by the
long white wall of the overhanging cliff.
“That is fine!” exclaimed Mme. Rosémilly, standing still. Jean had come
up with her, and with a beating heart offered his hand to help her down
the narrow steps cut in the rock.
They went on in front, while Beausire, squaring himself on his little
legs, gave his arm to Mme. Roland, who felt giddy at the gulf before
her.
Roland and Pierre came last, and the doctor had to drag his father
down, for his brain reeled so that he could only slip down sitting,
from step to step.
The two young people who led the way went fast till on a sudden they
saw, by the side of a wooden bench which afforded a resting-place about
half-way down the slope, a thread of clear water, springing from a
crevice in the cliff. It fell into a hollow as large as a washing basin
which it had worn in the stone; then, falling in a cascade, hardly two
feet high, it trickled across the footpath which it had carpeted with
cresses, and was lost among the briers and grass on the raised shelf
where the boulders were piled.
“Oh, I am so thirsty!” cried Mme. Rosémilly.
But how could she drink? She tried to catch the water in her hand, but
it slipped away between her fingers. Jean had an idea; he placed a
stone on the path and on this she knelt down to put her lips to the
spring itself, which was thus on the same level.
When she raised her head, covered with myriads of tiny drops, sprinkled
all over her face, her hair, her eye-lashes, and her dress, Jean bent
over her and murmured: “How pretty you look!”
She answered in the tone in which she might have scolded a child:
“Will you be quiet?”
These were the first words of flirtation they had ever exchanged.
“Come,” said Jean, much agitated. “Let us go on before they come up
with us.”
For in fact they could see quite near them now Captain Beausire as he
came down, backward, so as to give both hands to Mme. Roland; and
further up, further off, Roland still letting himself slip, lowering
himself on his hams and clinging on with his hands and elbows at the
speed of a tortoise, Pierre keeping in front of him to watch his
movements.
The path, now less steep, was here almost a road, zigzagging between
the huge rocks which had at some former time rolled from the hill-top.
Mme. Rosémilly and Jean set off at a run and they were soon on the
beach. They crossed it and reached the rocks, which stretched in a long
and flat expanse covered with sea-weed, and broken by endless gleaming
pools. The ebbed waters lay beyond, very far away, across this plain of
slimy weed, of a black and shining olive green.
Jean rolled up his trousers above his calf, and his sleeves to his
elbows, that he might get wet without caring; then saying: “Forward!”
he leaped boldly into the first tide-pool they came to.
The lady, more cautious, though fully intending to go in too,
presently, made her way round the little pond, stepping timidly, for
she slipped on the grassy weed.
“Do you see anything?” she asked.
“Yes, I see your face reflected in the water.”
“If that is all you see, you will not have good fishing.”
He murmured tenderly in reply:
“Of all fishing it is that I should like best to succeed in.”
She laughed: “Try; you will see how it will slip through your net.”
“But yet—if you will?”
“I will see you catch prawns—and nothing else—for the moment.”
“You are cruel—let us go a little farther, there are none here.”
He gave her his hand to steady her on the slippery rocks. She leaned on
him rather timidly, and he suddenly felt himself overpowered by love
and insurgent with passion, as if the fever that had been incubating in
him had waited till to-day to declare its presence.
They soon came to a deeper rift, in which long slender weeds,
fantastically tinted, like floating green and rose-coloured hair, were
swaying under the quivering water as it trickled off to the distant sea
through some invisible crevice.
Mme. Rosémilly cried out: “Look, look, I see one, a big one. A very big
one, just there!” He saw it too, and stepped boldly into the pool,
though he got wet up to the waist. But the creature, waving its long
whiskers, gently retired in front of the net. Jean drove it towards the
sea-weed, making sure of his prey. When it found itself blockaded it
rose with a dart over the net, shot across the mere, and was gone. The
young woman, who was watching the chase in great excitement, could not
help exclaiming: “Oh! Clumsy!”
He was vexed, and without a moment’s thought dragged his net over a
hole full of weed. As he brought it to the surface again he saw in it
three large transparent prawns, caught blindfold in their hiding-place.
He offered them in triumph to Mme. Rosémilly, who was afraid to touch
them, for fear of the sharp, serrated crest which arms their heads.
However, she made up her mind to it, and taking them up by the tip of
their long whiskers she dropped them one by one into her creel, with a
little seaweed to keep them alive. Then, having found a shallower pool
of water, she stepped in with some hesitation, for the cold plunge of
her feet took her breath away, and began to fish on her own account.
She was dextrous and artful, with the light hand and the hunter’s
instinct which are indispensable. At almost every dip she brought up
some prawns, beguiled and surprised by her ingeniously gentle pursuit.
Jean now caught nothing; but he followed her, step by step, touched her
now and again, bent over her, pretended great distress at his own
awkwardness, and besought her to teach him.
“Show me,” he kept saying. “Show me how.”
And then, as their two faces were reflected side by side in water so
clear that the black weeds at the bottom made a mirror, Jean smiled at
the face which looked up at him from the depth, and now and then from
his finger-tips blew it a kiss which seemed to light upon it.
“Oh! how tiresome you are!” she exclaimed. “My dear fellow, you should
never do two things at once.”
He replied: “I am only doing one—loving you.”
She drew herself up and said gravely:
“What has come over you these ten minutes; have you lost your wits?”
“No, I have not lost my wits. I love you, and at last I dare to tell
you so.”
They were at this moment both standing in the salt pool wet half-way up
to their knees and with dripping hands, holding their nets. They looked
into each other’s eyes.
She went on in a tone of amused annoyance.
“How very ill-advised to tell me here and now! Could you not wait till
another day instead of spoiling my fishing?”
“Forgive me,” he murmured, “but I could not longer hold my peace. I
have loved you a long time. To-day you have intoxicated me and I lost
my reason.”
Then suddenly she seemed to have resigned herself to talk business and
think no more of pleasure.
“Let us sit down on that stone,” said she, “we can talk more
comfortably.” They scrambled up a rather high boulder, and when they
had settled themselves side by side in the bright sunshine, she began
again:
“My good friend, you are no longer a child, and I am not a young girl.
We both know perfectly well what we are about and we can weigh the
consequences of our actions. If you have made up your mind to make love
to me to-day I must naturally infer that you wish to marry me.”
He was not prepared for this matter-of-fact statement of the case, and
he answered blandly:
“Why, yes.”
“Have you mentioned it to your father and mother?”
“No, I wanted to know first whether you would accept me.”
She held out her hand, which was still wet, and as he eagerly clasped
it:
“I am ready and willing,” she said. “I believe you to be kind and
true-hearted. But remember, I should not like to displease your
parents.”
“Oh, do you think that my mother has never foreseen it, or that she
would not be as fond of you as she is if she did not hope that you and
I should marry?”
“That is true. I am a little disturbed.”
They said no more. He, for his part, was amazed at her being so little
disturbed, so rational. He had expected pretty little flirting ways,
refusals which meant yes, a whole coquettish comedy of love chequered
by prawn-fishing in the splashing water. And it was all over; he was
pledged, married with twenty words. They had no more to say about it
since they were agreed, and they now sat, both somewhat embarrassed by
what had so swiftly passed between them; a little perplexed, indeed,
not daring to speak, not daring to fish, not knowing what to do.
Roland’s voice rescued them.
“This way, this way, children. Come and watch Beausire. The fellow is
positively clearing out the sea!”
The captain had, in fact, had a wonderful haul. Wet above his hips he
waded from pool to pool, recognizing the likeliest spots at a glance,
and searching all the hollows hidden under sea-weed, with a steady slow
sweep of his net. And the beautiful transparent, sandy-gray prawns
skipped in his palm as he picked them out of the net with a dry jerk
and put them into his creel. Mme. Rosémilly, surprised and delighted,
remained at his side, almost forgetful of her promise to Jean, who
followed them in a dream, giving herself up entirely to the childish
enjoyment of pulling the creatures out from among the waving
sea-grasses.
Roland suddenly exclaimed:
“Ah, here comes Mme. Roland to join us.”
She had remained at first on the beach with Pierre, for they had
neither of them any wish to play at running about among the rocks and
paddling in the tide-pools; and yet they had felt doubtful about
staying together. She was afraid of him, and her son was afraid of her
and of himself; afraid of his own cruelty which he could not control.
But they sat down side by side on the stones. And both of them, under
the heat of the sun, mitigated by the sea-breeze, gazing at the wide,
fair horizon of blue water streaked and shot with silver, thought as if
in unison: “How delightful this would have been—once.”
She did not venture to speak to Pierre, knowing that he would return
some hard answer; and he dared not address his mother, knowing that in
spite of himself he should speak violently. He sat twitching the
water-worn pebbles with the end of his cane, switching them and turning
them over. She, with a vague look in her eyes, had picked up three or
four little stones and was slowly and mechanically dropping them from
one hand into the other. Then her unsettled gaze, wandering over the
scene before her, discerned, among the weedy rocks, her son Jean
fishing with Mme. Rosémilly. She looked at them, watching their
movements, dimly understanding, with motherly instinct, that they were
talking as they did not talk every day. She saw them leaning over side
by side when they looked into the water, standing face to face when
they questioned their hearts, then scrambled up the rock and seated
themselves to come to an understanding. Their figures stood out very
sharply, looking as if they were alone in the middle of the wide
horizon, and assuming a sort of symbolic dignity in that vast expanse
of sky and sea and cliff.
Pierre, too, was looking at them, and a harsh laugh suddenly broke form
his lips. Without turning to him Mme. Roland said:
“What is it?”
He spoke with a sneer.
“I am learning. Learning how a man lays himself out to be cozened by
his wife.”
She flushed with rage, exasperated by the insinuation she believed was
intended.
“In whose name do you say that?”
“In Jean’s, by Heaven! It is immensely funny to see those two.”
She murmured in a low voice, tremulous with feeling: “O Pierre, how
cruel you are! That woman is honesty itself. Your brother could not
find a better.”
He laughed aloud, a hard, satirical laugh:
“Ha! hah! Hah! Honesty itself! All wives are honesty itself—and all
husbands are—betrayed.” And he shouted with laughter.
She made no reply, but rose, hastily went down the sloping beach, and
at the risk of tumbling into one of the rifts hidden by the sea-weed,
of breaking a leg or an arm, she hastened, almost running, plunging
through the pools without looking, straight to her other son.
Seeing her approach, Jean called out:
“Well, mother? So you have made the effort?”
Without a word she seized him by the arm, as if to say: “Save me,
protect me!”
He saw her agitation, and greatly surprised he said:
“How pale you are! What is the matter?”
She stammered out:
“I was nearly falling; I was frightened at the rocks.”
So then Jean guided her, supported her, explained the sport to her that
she might take an interest in it. But as she scarcely heeded him, and
as he was bursting with the desire to confide in some one, he led her
away and in a low voice said to her:
“Guess what I have done!”
“But—what—I don’t know.”
“Guess.”
“I cannot. I don’t know.”
“Well, I have told Mme. Rosémilly that I wish to marry her.”
She did not answer, for her brain was buzzing, her mind in such
distress that she could scarcely take it in. She echoed: “Marry her?”
“Yes. Have I done well? She is charming, do not you think?”
“Yes, charming. You have done very well.”
“Then you approve?”
“Yes, I approve.”
“But how strangely you say so! I could fancy that—that you were not
glad.”
“Yes, indeed, I am—very glad.”
“Really and truly?”
“Really and truly.”
And to prove it she threw her arms round him and kissed him heartily,
with warm motherly kisses. Then, when she had wiped her eyes, which
were full of tears, she observed upon the beach a man lying flat at
full length like a dead body, his face hidden against the stones; it
was the other one, Pierre, sunk in thought and desperation.
At this she led her little Jean farther away, quite to the edge of the
waves, and there they talked for a long time of this marriage on which
he had set his heart.
The rising tide drove them back to rejoin the fishers, and then they
all made their way to the shore. They roused Pierre, who pretended to
be sleeping; and then came a long dinner washed down with many kinds of
wine.