I had often noticed how kind Eugène was to everybody. Whenever the farmer had any difficulties with his men he always used to call his brother, who would settle everything with a few words. Eugène did the same work on the farm as Master Silvain did, but he always refused to go to market. He said that he would not know how to sell even a cheese. He walked slowly, rocking himself a little as he walked, as though he were trying to keep time with his oxen. He went to Sainte Montagne nearly every Sunday. When the weather was bad he would remain in the living-room at the farm house and read. I used to hope that he would leave his book behind him one day; but he never forgot it, and always took it to his room with him. One of my great troubles was that I could not find anything to read in the farm, and I used to pick up any bits of printed paper that I saw lying about. The farmer's wife had noticed this, and said that I should become a miser some day. One Sunday, when I had screwed up my courage and asked Eugène for a book, he gave me a book of songs. All through the summer I took it with me to the fields. I made up tunes for the songs which I liked best. Then I got tired of them, and when I was helping Pauline to clean up the farm for All Saints Day, I found several almanacks. Pauline told me to take them up to the garret, but I pretended to forget, and carried them off to read in secret, one after the other. They were full of amusing stories, and the winter went by without my ever noticing the cold.
When I took them up to the garret at last, I hunted about up there to see if I could not find any others. The only thing I found was a little book without any cover. The corners of the leaves were rolled up as if it had been carried about in somebody's pocket for a long time. The two first pages were missing, and the third page was so dirty that I could not read the print. I took it under the skylight, to see a little better, and I saw that it was called "The Adventures of Telemachus." I opened it here and there, and the few words that I read interested me so much that I put it in my pocket at once.
While I was on my way down from the garret, it suddenly occurred to me that Eugène might have put the book there, and that he might come and look for it at any time. So I put it back on the black rafter where I had found it. Every time I could manage to go to the garret I looked to see whether it was still in its place, and I read it as much and as often as ever I could.
Just about that time I had another sick sheep. Its flanks were hollow, as though it had not eaten for a long while. I went and asked the farmer's wife what I ought to do with it. She was plucking a chicken, and asked me whether the sheep was "drawn." I didn't answer at once. I didn't quite know what she meant. Then I thought that probably whenever a sheep was ill it was "drawn," and I said "Yes." And so as to make it quite clear, I added, "It is quite flat." Pauline began to laugh at me. She called Eugène, and said, "Eugène! One of Marie Claire's sheep is drawn and flat too." That made Eugène laugh. He said I was only a second-hand shepherdess, and explained to me that sheep were "drawn" when their stomachs were swollen.
Two days afterwards Pauline told me that she and Master Silvain saw that they would never make a good shepherdess of me, and that they were going to give me work to do in the house. Old Bibiche was not good for much, and Pauline could not do everything herself because of her baby. When they told me this, my first thought was that I should be able to go up to the garret more often, and I kissed Pauline and thanked her.
So I became a farm servant. I had to kill the chickens and the rabbits. I hated doing it, and Pauline could never understand why. She said I was like Eugène, who ran away when a pig was being killed. However, I wanted to try and kill a chicken so as to show that I did my best. I took it into the granary. It struggled in my hands, and the straw all round me got red. Then it became quite still, and I put it down for Bibiche to come and pluck it. But when she came she cackled with laughter because the chicken had got on to its feet again, and was in the middle of a basket of corn. It was eating greedily, as though it wanted to get well as quickly as possible after the way in which I had hurt it. Bibiche got hold of it, and when she had passed the blade of her knife across its neck the straw was much redder than it had been before.
Instead of going to sleep in the middle of the day, I used to go up to the garret to read. I opened the book anywhere, and every time I read it over again I found something new in it. I loved this book of mine. For me it was like a young prisoner whom I went to visit secretly. I used to imagine that it was dressed like a page, and that it waited for me on the black rafter. One evening I went on a lovely journey with it. I had closed the book, and was leaning on my elbows and looking out of the skylight in the garret. It was almost evening, and the pine trees looked less green. The sun was pushing its way into the white clouds which hollowed themselves and then swelled out again, like down and feathers do when you push something into a sackful of them.
Without quite knowing how, I found myself, all of a sudden, flying over a wood with Telemachus. He held me by the hand, and our heads touched the blue of the sky. Telemachus said nothing, but I knew that we were going up into the sun. Old Bibiche called to me from below. I recognized her voice, although it was so far off. She must be very angry, I thought, to be calling so loud. I didn't care. I saw nothing but the bright flakes of white down, which surrounded the sun and which were opening slowly to let us pass in. A tap on my arm brought me back with a rush into the garret. Old Bibiche was pulling me away from the skylight, and saying, "Why do you make me shout like that? I have called you at least twenty times to come and get your supper!" A little while later I missed the book from the rafter. But it had become a friend which I carried about in my heart, and I have always remembered it.
Two days before Christmas, Master Silvain got ready to kill a pig. He sharpened two big knives, and, after having made a litter of fresh straw in the middle of the yard, he sent for the pig, which made such a noise that I was sure he knew what was going to happen. Master Silvain roped up his four feet, and, while he fastened them to pegs which he had hammered into the ground, he said to his wife, "Hide the knives, Pauline. Don't let him see them!" Pauline gave me a sort of deep dish, which I was to hold carefully, so as not to lose a single drop of the blood which I was to catch in it. The farmer went to the pig, which had fallen on its side. He went down on one knee in front of him, and, after having felt his neck, he reached his hand out behind his back to his wife; she gave him the bigger of the two knives. He put the point on the place he had marked with his finger, and pressed it slowly in. The pig's cries were just like the cries of a baby. A drop of blood came from the wound and rolled slowly down in a long red line. Then two spurts ran up the knife and fell on the farmer's hand. When the blade was right in up to the handle. Master Silvain put his weight on it for a moment and drew it out again as slowly as he had put it in. When I saw the blade come out again all striped with red, I felt my mouth grow cold and dry. My fingers went limp, and the dish toppled over to one side. Master Silvain saw it. He gave me one look and said to his wife, "Take the dish away from her." I could not say a word, but I shook my head to say "No." The farmer's look had taken my nervousness away, and I held the dish quite steadily under the spurt of blood which came out from the pig's wound. When the pig was quite still, Eugène came up. He looked amazed at seeing me carefully catching the last red drops which were rolling down one by one like tears. "Do you mean to say you caught the blood?" he asked. "Yes," said the farmer; "that shows that she is not a chicken heart, like you." "It is quite true," said Eugène to me, "I hate seeing animals killed." "Nonsense," said Master Silvain. "Animals are made to feed us just as wood is made to warm us." Eugène turned away a little, as though he were ashamed of his weakness. His shoulders were thin, and his neck was as round as Martine's. Master Silvain used to say that he was the living portrait of their mother.
I had never seen Eugène angry. He hummed songs all day long. In the evening he used to come back from the fields sitting sideways on one of the oxen, and he nearly always sang the same song. It was the story of a soldier, who went back to the war after he had learned that the girl he had been engaged to marry had married another man. He used to dwell on the refrain, which finished like this—
And when a bullet comes and takesAway my precious life,You'll know I died because you wereAnother fellow's wife.[1]
Pauline always used to treat Eugène with much respect. She could never understand my freedom with him. The first evening that she saw me sitting next to him on the bench outside the door she made signs to me to come in. But Eugène called me back, saying, "Come and listen to the wood owl." We often used to be sitting on the bench, still, when everybody had gone to bed. The wood owl came quite near to an old elm tree which was by the door, and we used to think that it was saying "good night" to us. Then it would fly away, its great wings passing over us in silence. Sometimes a voice would sing on the hillside. I used to tremble when I heard it. The full voice coming out of the night reminded me of Colette. Eugène would get up to go in when the voice stopped singing, but I always used to stop, hoping to hear it again. Then he would say, "Come along in: it is all over."
[1] Quand par un tour de maladresseUn boulet m'emporteraAllons adieu chère maitresseJe m'en vais dans les combats.
And now that the winter was with us again, and we could no longer sit on the bench by the door, there seemed to be a sort of secret understanding between us. Whenever he was making fun of anybody, his queer little eyes used to look for mine, and whenever he gave an opinion he used to turn to me as though he expected me to approve or disapprove. It seemed to me that I had always known him, and deep down in my thoughts I used to call him my big brother. He was always asking Pauline if she was pleased with me. Pauline said that there was no need to tell him the same thing, over and over again. The only thing she reproached me with was that I had no system in my work. She used to say that I was just as likely to begin at the end of it as at the beginning. I had not forgotten Sister Marie-Aimée, but I was no longer as sick with longing for her as I used to be. And I was happy on the farm.
In the month of June the men came, as they came every year, to shear the sheep. They brought bad news with them. All over the country the sheep were falling ill as soon as they had been shorn, and numbers of them were dying. Master Silvain took his precautions, but in spite of all he could do, a hundred of the sheep fell sick. A doctor said that by bathing them in the river a good many of them might be saved. So the farmer got into the water up to his middle, and dipped the sheep in one by one. He was red hot, and the perspiration rolled down his forehead and fell in great drops into the river. That evening when he went to bed he was feverish, and next day he died of inflammation of the lungs. Pauline could not believe in her misfortune, and Eugène wandered about the stables and the outhouses with frightened eyes.
Soon after the farmer's death, the landlord of the farm came to see us. He was a little dry stick of a man, who never kept still for a minute, and if he did stand still he always seemed to be dancing on one foot. His face was clean-shaven, and his name was M. Tirande. He came into the living-room where I was sitting with Pauline. He walked round the room with his shoulders hunched up. Then he said, pointing to the baby, "Take him away. I want a talk with the goodwife." I went out into the yard, and managed to pass the window as often as I could. Pauline had not moved from her chair. Her hands lay on her knees, and she was bending her head forward as though she were trying to understand something very difficult. M. Tirande was talking without looking at her. He kept walking from the fireplace to the door and back again, and the noise of his heels on the tiled floor got mixed up with his broken little voice. He came out again as fast as he had come in, and I went and asked Pauline what he had said. She took the baby in her arms and, crying as she told me, she said that M. Tirande was going to take the farm away from her and give it to his son, who had just got married.
At the end of the week M. Tirande came back with his son and his daughter-in-law. They visited the outhouses first, and when they came into the house, M. Tirande stopped in front of me a minute, and told me that his daughter-in-law had made up her mind to take me into her service. Pauline heard him say so, and made a step towards me. But just then Eugène came in with a lot of papers in his hand, and everybody sat down round the table. While they were all reading the papers and signing, I looked at M. Tirande's daughter-in-law. She was a big, dark woman with large eyes and a bored look. She left the farm with her husband without having glanced at me once. When their cart had disappeared down the avenue of chestnut trees, Pauline told Eugène what M. Tirande had said to me. Eugène, who was leaving the room, turned to me suddenly. He looked very angry, and his voice was quite changed. He said that these people were disposing of me as though I were a bit of furniture which belonged to them. While Pauline was pitying me, Eugène told me that it was M. Tirande who had told Master Silvain to take me on the farm. He reminded Pauline how sorry the farmer had been because I was such a weakling, and he told me that he was very sorry not to be able to take me with them to their new farm. We were all three standing in the living-room. I could feel Pauline's sad eyes on my head, and Eugène's voice made me think of a hymn. Pauline was to leave the farm at the end of the summer.
I worked hard every day to put the linen in order. I didn't want Pauline to take away a single piece of torn linen with her, I worked hard with my darning-needle, as Bonne Justine had taught me, and I folded every piece as well as I could.
In the evening I found Eugène sitting on the bench by the door. The moon was shining on the roofs of the sheep-pens, and there was a white cloud over the dung-heap which looked like a tulle veil. There was no sound whatever from the cow-house. All that we heard was the squeaking of the cradle which Pauline was rocking to put her child to sleep.
As soon as the corn had been got in, Eugène began getting ready to go. The cowherd took away the cattle, and old Bibiche went off in the cart with all the birds of the poultry-yard. In a few days nothing was left at the farm but the two white oxen, which Eugène would trust to nobody but himself. He fastened them to the cart which was to take Pauline and her child. The little fellow was fast asleep in a basket full of straw, and Eugène put him into the cart without waking him up. Pauline covered him with her shawl, made the sign of the cross towards the house, took up the reins, and the cart went slowly off under the chestnut trees.
I wanted to go with them as far as the high-road, and I followed the cart, walking behind the oxen, between Eugène and Martine. None of us spoke. Every now and then Eugène gave the oxen a friendly pat. We were quite a long way on the road when Pauline saw that the sun was setting. She stopped the horse, and, when I had climbed on to the step to kiss her good-bye, she said sadly, "God be with you, my girl. Behave well." Then her voice filled with tears, and she added, "If my poor husband were living he would never have given you up." Martine kissed me, and smiled. "We may see one another again," she said. Eugène took his hat off. He held my hand in his for a long time, and said slowly, "Good-bye, dear little friend. I shall always remember you."
I walked a little way back, and turned round to see them again, and, although it was getting dark, I saw that Eugène and Martine were walking hand in hand.
The new farmers came next day. The farm hands and the serving women had come early in the morning, and when the masters arrived in the evening I knew that they were called Monsieur and Madame Alphonse. M. Tirande remained at Villevieille for two days, and went off after reminding me that I was in his daughter-in-law's service now, and that I should have to do no more outside work on the farm.
The very first week she was there Madame Alphonse had had Eugène's room turned into a linen-room, and she had set me to work at a big table on which were a number of pieces of linen which I was to make into sheets and other things. She came and sat down next to me, and worked at making lace. She would remain for whole days at a time without saying a word. Sometimes she talked to me about the linen presses which her mother had, full of all kinds of linen.
Her voice had no ring to it, and she scarcely moved her lips when she spoke. M. Tirande seemed very fond of his daughter-in-law. Every time he came he always asked her what she would like him to give her. She cared for nothing but linen, and he went off saying that he would get her some more.
M. Alphonse never appeared at all except at meal times. I should have found it very difficult to say what he did with his time. His face reminded me of the Mother Superior's face somehow. Like her, he had a yellow skin and his eyes glittered. He looked as though he carried a brazier inside him which might burn him up at any minute. He was very pious, and every Sunday he and Madame Alphonse went to mass in the village where M. Tirande lived. At first they wanted to take me in their cart, but I refused. I preferred going to Sainte Montagne, where I always hoped to meet Pauline or Eugène. Sometimes one of the farm hands came with me, but more often I would go alone by a little cross road, which made the way much shorter. It was a steep and stony bit of road which ran uphill through the broom. On the very top of it I always used to stop in front of Jean le Rouge's house. This house was low-roofed and spreading. The walls were as black as the thatch which covered it, and it was quite easy to pass by the house without seeing it at all, for the broom grew so high all round it. I used to go in for a chat with Jean le Rouge, whom I had known ever since I had been at Villevieille farm. He had always worked for Master Silvain, who thought very highly of him. Eugène used to say of him that one could set him to anything, and that whatever he did he did well.
Now M. Alphonse refused to employ him any more. He spoke of sending him away from the house on the hill. Jean le Rouge was so upset by the idea that he could talk of nothing else.
Directly after mass I used to go home by the same road. Jean's children would crowd round me to get the blessed bread, which I brought out of church for them. There were six of them, and the eldest was not yet twelve years old. There was hardly one mouthful of my blessed bread, so I used to give it to Jean's wife to divide up and give to the children in equal shares. While she was doing this, Jean le Rouge would set a stool for me in front of the fire and would seat himself on a log of wood, which he would roll to the fireplace with his foot. His wife put some twigs on the fire with a pair of heavy pincers, and as we sat and talked we watched the big yellow potatoes cooking in the pot which hung from a hook in the fireplace.
On the very first Sunday Jean le Rouge had told me that he, too, was a foundling. And little by little he had told me that when he was twelve he had been put to work with a woodcutter who used to live in the house on the hill. He had very soon learned how to climb up the trees to fasten a rope to the top branches so as to pull them over. When the day's work was done and he had his faggot of wood on his back, he would go on ahead so as to get to the house first. And there he used to find the woodcutter's little daughter cooking the soup for supper. She was of the same age as he was, and they had become the best of friends at once.
Then, one Christmas Eve, came the misfortune. The old woodcutter, who thought that the children were fast asleep, went off to midnight mass. But directly he had gone they got up. They wanted to prepare midnight supper for the old man's return, and they danced with glee at the surprise they were getting ready for him. While the little girl was cooking the chestnuts and putting the pot of honey and the jug of cider on the table, Jean le Rouge heaped great logs on to the fire. Time went on, the chestnuts were cooked, and the woodcutter had not yet come home. It seemed a long time. The children sat down on the floor in front of the fire to keep themselves warm, leaned up against one another, and fell asleep. Jean woke up at the little girl's screams. He could not understand at first why she was throwing her arms about and shrieking at the fire. He jumped to his feet to run away from her, and then he saw that she was ablaze. She had opened the door to the garden, and as she ran out she lit the trees up. Then Jean had caught hold of her and thrown her into the little well. The water had put the flames out, but when Jean tried to pull her out of the well he found her so heavy that he thought she must be dead. She made no movement, and it took him a long time to get her out. At last, when he did get her out, he had to drag her along like a bundle of sticks back to the house.
The logs had become great red embers. Only the biggest one, which was wet, went on smoking and crackling. The little girl's face was all bloated, and was black with violet veins in it. Her body, which was half naked, was covered with big red burns.
She was ill for many months, and when at last they thought she was cured, they found out that she had become dumb. She could hear perfectly well, she could even laugh like everybody else, but it was quite impossible for her to speak a single word.
While Jean le Rouge was telling me these things his wife used to look at him and move her eyes as if she were reading a book. Her face still bore deep burn marks, but one soon got accustomed to it, and remembered nothing of her face but the mouth with its white teeth, and her eyes, which were never still. She used to call her children with a long, low cry, and they came running up, and always understood all the signs she made to them. I was so sorry that they had to leave the house on the hill. They were the last friends I had left, and I thought of telling Madame Alphonse about them, hoping that she might get her husband to keep them on. I found an opportunity one day, when M. Tirande and his son had come into the linen-room talking about the changes they were going to make at the farm. M. Alphonse said he didn't want any cattle. He spoke of buying machinery, cutting down the pine trees and clearing the hillside. The stables would do for sheds for the machines, and he would use the house on the hill to store fodder in. I don't know whether Madame Alphonse was listening. She went on making lace, and seemed to be giving her full attention to it. As soon as the two men had gone I plucked up courage to talk of Jean le Rouge. I told her how useful he had been to Master Silvain. I told her how sorry he was to leave the house in which he had lived for so long, and when I stopped, trembling for the answer which was coming, Madame Alphonse took her needles out of the thread. "I believe I have made a mistake," she said. She counted up to nineteen, and said again, "What a nuisance it is. I shall have to undo a whole row." When I told Jean le Rouge about this, he was angry, and shook his fist at Villevieille. His wife put her hand on his shoulder and looked at him, and he was quiet at once.
Jean le Rouge left the house on the hill at the end of January, and I was very sad.
I had no friends left now. I hardly recognized the farm any more. All these new people had made themselves quite at home there, and I seemed to myself to be a new-comer. The serving-woman looked at me with distrust, and the ploughman avoided talking to me. The servant's name was Adèle. All day long you could hear her grumbling and dragging her wooden shoes after her as she walked. She made a noise even when she was walking on straw. She used to eat her meals standing, and answer her master and mistress quite rudely.
M. Alphonse had taken away the bench which was by the door, and had put up little green bushes with trellis-work round them. He cut down the old elm tree, too, to which the wood owl used to come on summer evenings.
Of course the old tree had not shaded the house for a long time. It only had one tuft of leaves right up on the top. It looked like a head which bent over to listen to what people underneath were saying. The woodcutters who came to cut it down said that it would not be an easy thing to do. They said there was some danger that when it fell it would crash through the roof of the house.
At last, after a lot of talk, they decided to rope it round and pull it over so that it fell on to the dung-heap. It took two men all day to cut it down, and just when we thought that it was going to drop nicely, one of the ropes worked loose, and the old elm jumped and fell to one side. It slipped down the roof, knocking down a chimney and a large number of tiles, bumped a piece out of the wall, and fell right across the door. Not one of its branches touched the dung-heap. M. Alphonse yelled with rage. He laid hold of the axe belonging to one of the woodcutters, and struck the tree so violent a blow that a piece of bark flew against the linen-room window and broke a pane.
Madame Alphonse saw the bits of glass fall on me. She jumped up in more excitement than I had ever seen her show, and with trembling hands and fearful eyes she examined closely every bit of the table-cloth which I was embroidering. But she did not see me wiping away the blood from my cheek, which had been cut by a bit of glass. She was so afraid that something might happen to the piles of linen which were beginning to grow that she took me off next day to her mother's to show me how the linen should be put into the closets.
Madame Alphonse's mother was called Madame Deslois, but when the ploughmen talked about her they always said "the good woman of the castle." She had only been to Villevieille once. She had come close up to me and looked at me with her eyes half shut. She was a big woman who walked bent double as if she were looking for something on the ground. She lived in a big house called the Lost Ford.
Madame Alphonse took me along by a path near a little river. It was the end of March, and the meadows were already in flower. Madame Alphonse walked straight along the path, but I got a lot of pleasure out of walking in the soft grass.
We soon came to the wood where the wolf had taken my lamb. I had always had a mysterious fear of this wood, and when we left the path by the river to go through it I shook with fear. And yet the road was a broad one. It must even have been a carriage road, for there were deep ruts in it.
Above our heads heaps of pine needles tickled one another and rustled. They made a gentle noise, not a bit like the whispering, with silences in between, which I used to hear in the forest when the snow was on it. But in spite of all I could not help looking behind me. We didn't walk very far through the wood. The road turned to the left and we got to the courtyard of the Lost Ford immediately. The little river ran behind the stables as it did at Villevieille, but here the meadows were quite close together, and the buildings looked as though they were trying to hide among the sapling pines. The living house didn't look anything like the farms thereabouts. The ground floor was built of very thick old walls, and the first floor looked as though it had been put on top of them as a makeshift. The house did not look a bit like a castle to me. It made me think of an old tree trunk out of which a baby tree had sprouted, and sprouted badly.
Madame Deslois came to the door when she heard us arrive. She winked her little eyes as she looked at me and said at once in a loud voice that she had dropped a halfpenny in the straw, and that it was very funny that nobody had found it, as it had been lost for a week. While she spoke she moved her foot about and stirred the straw which was in front of the door. Madame Alphonse cannot have heard her. Her big eyes were staring into the house, and she was almost excited when she said why we had come. Madame Deslois said that she would take me to the linen-room herself. She put the keys into the locks of the cupboards, and after having told me to be very careful, and to disarrange nothing, she left me alone.
It didn't take me long to open and close the great shining cupboards. I should have liked to go away at once. This big cold linen-room frightened me like a prison. My feet sounded on the tiles as though there were deep vaults underneath them. All of a sudden it seemed to me that I should never get out of this linen-room again. I listened to see whether I could hear any animals stirring, but I only heard Madame Deslois' voice. It was a rough, strong voice which went right through the walls, and could be heard everywhere. I was going to the window so as to feel a little less lonely, when a door which I had not noticed suddenly opened behind me. I turned round and saw a young man come in. He wore a long white smock and a grey cap. He stood standing as though he were surprised to see anybody there, and I went on looking at him without being able to take my eyes away. He walked right across the linen-room, and he and I stared and stared at one another. Then he went out, banging himself against the woodwork of the door. A moment afterwards he passed by the window and our eyes met again. I felt quite uncomfortable, and without knowing why, I went and shut the doors which he had left open.
Presently Madame Alphonse came and fetched me, and I went back to Villevieille with her.
Since M. Alphonse had taken Pauline's place I had got into the habit of going and sitting in a bush which had grown into the shape of a chair. It was in the middle of a shrubbery not far from the farm. Now that spring was beginning I used to go and sit there when the ploughmen were smoking their pipes at the stable doors. I used to sit there listening to the little noises of the evening, and I longed to be like the trees. That evening I thought of the man I had seen at Lost Ford. But every time I tried to remember the exact colour of his eyes they pierced into my own eyes so that they seemed to be lighting me all up inside.
The next Sunday was Easter Sunday. Adèle had gone to mass in M. Alphonse's cart. I remained alone, with one of the ploughmen, to look after the farm. After luncheon the ploughman went to sleep on a heap of straw in front of the door, and I went to my shrubbery to spend the afternoon. I tried to hear the bells ringing, but the farm was too far from the villages round, and I could hear none of them.
I began to think about Sister Marie-Aimée, and my thoughts went back to Sophie, who used to come and wake me up every year so that I should hear all the bells ringing in Easter together. One year she didn't wake up. She was so upset at that, that next year she put a big stone in her mouth to keep herself from sleeping. Every time she nodded off her teeth met on the stone, and she woke up.
I sat and thought about High Mass where Colette used to sing in her beautiful voice, and I could see our afternoon on the lawn, and Sister Marie-Aimée busy with the special dinner which they gave us on feast days. And that evening when dinner-time came I should see, instead of sister Marie-Aimée's sweet loving face, Madame Alphonse's hard face and her husband's glittering eyes, which frightened me so. And as I sat and thought how long I should still have to stay on the farm I felt deeply discouraged.
When I was tired of crying I saw with astonishment that the sun was quite low. Through the branches of my shrubbery I watched the long thin shadows of the poplar trees growing longer than ever on the grass, and quite close to me I saw a long shadow which was moving. It came forward, then stopped, and then came forward again. I understood at once that somebody was going to pass my hiding-place, and almost immediately the man in the white smock walked into the shrubbery, stooping to get out of the way of the branches. I felt cold all over. I soon got control of myself, but I could not help trembling nervously. He remained standing in front of me without saying a word. I sat and looked at his eyes, which were very gentle, and I began to feel warm again. I noticed that, as Eugène used to, he wore a coloured shirt and a cravat tied under the collar, and when he spoke it seemed to me that I had known his voice for a long time. He leaned against a big branch opposite me, and asked me if I had no relations. I said "No." His eye ran along the branch covered with young shoots, and without looking at me he said again, "Then you are all alone in the world." I answered quickly, "Oh no, I have Sister Marie-Aimée!" And without leaving him time to ask any more questions I told him how I had longed for her, and how impatiently I was waiting and hoping to see her again. Talking about her made me so happy that I could not stop talking. I told him of her beauty and of her intelligence, which seemed to me to be above everything in the world. I told him, too, how sorry she had been when I went away, and of the joy that I knew she would feel when she saw me come back.
While I talked his eyes were fixed on my face, but they seemed to look much further. After a silence he asked again, "Have you no friends here?" "No," I said; "all those whom I loved have gone;" and I added rather angrily, "They have even turned out Jean le Rouge." "And yet," he said, "Madame Alphonse is not unkind?" I told him that she was neither unkind, nor kind, and that I should leave her without any regret.
Then we heard the sound of M. Alphonse's cart-wheels, and I got up to go. He stood aside a little to let me pass him, and I left him alone in the shrubbery.
That evening I took advantage of the unusually good humour of Adèle to ask her if she knew any of the ploughmen at the Lost Ford. She said she only knew some of the old ones, for since Madame Deslois had been a widow the new ones never stayed with her. A sort of fear which I could not have explained kept me from mentioning the young man in the white smock, and Adèle added with a wag of her chin: "Fortunately her eldest son has come back from Paris. The farm hands will be happier."
Next day, while Madame Alphonse was working at her lace, I sewed and thought about the ploughman in the white smock. I could not in my mind help comparing him to Eugène. He spoke like Eugène did, and they seemed like one another somehow.
That evening I thought I saw him near the stables, and a moment later he came into the linen-room. His eyes just glanced at me and then he looked straight at Madame Alphonse. He held his head high and the left side of his mouth drooped a little. Madame Alphonse said, in a happy voice, when she saw him, "Why, there's Henri!" and she let him kiss her on both cheeks, and told him to bring a chair up next to her. But he sat sideways on the table, pushing the linen to one side. Adèle came into the room, and Madame Alphonse said, "If you see my husband, tell him that my brother is here."
It was some minutes before I understood. Then I realized suddenly that the young man in the white smock was Madame Deslois's eldest son. A sense of shame which I had never felt before made me blush fiercely, and I was ever so sorry that I had spoken about Sister Marie-Aimée. I felt that I had thrown the thing that I loved best to the winds, and do what I could, I could not keep back two big tears which tickled the corners of my mouth and then fell on the linen napkin I was hemming. Henri Deslois remained sitting on the corner of the table for a long time. I could feel that he was looking at me, and his eyes were like a heavy weight which prevented me from lifting up my head.
Two days afterwards I found him in the shrubbery. When I saw him sitting there my legs felt weak under me, and I stood still. He got up at once so that I should sit down; but I remained standing and looking at him. He had the same gentleness in his eyes that I had noticed the first time, and, as if he expected me to tell him another story, "Have you nothing to tell me this evening?" he asked. Words danced across my brain, but they did not seem to be worth speaking, and I shook my head to say no. He said, "I was your friend the other day." Recollection of what I had said the other day made me feel worse than ever, and I only said, "You are Madame Alphonse's brother." I left him and did not dare to go back to the shrubbery again. He often came back to Villevieille. I never used to look at him, but his voice always made me feel very uncomfortable.
Since Jean le Rouge had gone I had never known what to do with my time after mass. Every Sunday I used to pass the house on the hill. Sometimes I would look in through the gaps in the shutters, and when, as I sometimes did, I bumped my head, the noise it made used to frighten me. One Sunday I noticed that there was no lock on the door. I put my finger on the latch and the door fell open with a loud noise. I had not expected it to open so quickly, and I stood there longing to shut it and go away. Then as there was no more noise, and as the sun had streamed into the house making a big square of light, I made up my mind to go in, and went in, leaving the door open. The big fireplace was empty. There was no hook, there was no pot, and the big andirons had gone. The only things left in the room were the logs of wood which Jean le Rouge's children used to use as stools. The bark was worn off them, and the tops of them were polished, as if with wax, from the children sitting on them.
The second room was quite empty. There were no tiles on the floor, and the feet of the beds had made little holes in the beaten earth. There was no lock to the other door either, and I went out into the garden. There were a few winter vegetables in the beds still, and the fruit trees were all in flower. Most of them were very old. Some of them looked like hunchbacks, and their branches bent towards the ground, as though they found that even the flowers were too heavy for them to carry. At the bottom of the garden the hill ran down to an immense plain where the cattle used to graze, and right at the end a row of poplars made a sort of barrier which kept the sky out of the meadow land. Little by little I recognized one place after another. There was a little river at the bottom of the hill. I could not see the water, but the willows looked as though they were standing on one side to let it pass. The river disappeared behind the buildings of Villevieille farm. There the roofs were of the same colour as the chestnut trees, and the river went on on the other side of them. Here and there I could see it shining between the poplar trees. Then it plunged into the great pine wood, which looked quite black, in which the Lost Ford was hidden. That was the road I had taken with Madame Alphonse, when we went to her mother's house. Her brother must have come that way that day when he found me in the shrubbery. There was nobody on the road today. Everything was tender green, and I could see no white smock among the clumps of trees. I tried to see the shrubbery but the farm hid it. Henri Deslois had been in the shrubbery several times since Easter. I could not have told how I knew that he was there, but on those days I could never prevent myself from walking round that way.
Yesterday Henri Deslois had come into the linen-room while I was there alone. He had opened his mouth as though he were going to talk to me. I had looked at him as I had done the first time, and he went away without saying anything. And now that I was in the open garden surrounded by broom in flower I longed to be able to live there always. There was a big apple tree leaning over me, dipping the end of its branches in the spring. The spring came out of the hollow trunk of a tree, and the overflow trickled in little brooks over the beds. This garden of flowers and clear water seemed to me to be the most beautiful garden in the world. And when I turned my head towards the house, which stood open to the sunshine, I seemed to expect extraordinary people to come out of it. The house seemed full of mystery to me. Queer little sounds came out of it, and a few moments ago I thought that I had heard the same sound that Henri Deslois's feet made when he stepped into the linen-room at Villevieille.
I had been listening as though I expected to see him coming, but I had not heard his footstep again, and presently I noticed that the broom and the trees were making all kinds of mysterious sounds. I began to imagine that I was a little tree, and that the wind stirred me as it liked. The same fresh breeze which made the broom rock passed over my head and tangled my hair, and so as to do like the other trees did I stooped down and dipped my fingers in the clear waters of the spring.
Another sound made me look at the house again, and I was not in the least surprised when I saw Henri Deslois standing framed in the doorway. His head was bare, and his arms were swinging. He stepped out into the garden and looked far off into the plain. His hair was parted on the side, and was a little thin at the temples. He remained perfectly still for a long minute, then he turned to me. There were only two trees between us. He took a step forward, took hold of the young tree in front of him with one hand, and the branches in flower made a bouquet over his head. It grew so light that I thought the bark of the trees was glittering, and every flower was shining. And in Henri Deslois's eyes there was so deep a gentleness that I went to him without any shame. He didn't move when I stopped in front of him. His face became whiter than his smock, and his lips quivered. He took my two hands and pressed them hard against his temples. Then he said very low, "I am like a miser who has found his treasure again." At that moment the bell of Sainte Montagne Church began to ring. The sound of the bell ran up the hillsides, and after resting over our heads for a moment ran on and died away in the distance.
The hours passed, the day grew older, and the cattle disappeared from the plain. A white mist rose from the little river, then a stone slipped behind the barrier of poplar trees, and the broom flowers began to grow darker. Henri Deslois went back towards the farm with me. He walked in front of me on the narrow path, and when he left me just before we came to the avenue of chestnut trees I knew that I loved him even more than Sister Marie-Aimée.
The house on the hill became our house. Every Sunday I found Henri Deslois waiting there, and as I used to do when Jean le Rouge lived there, I took my blessed bread to the house on the hill after mass and we used to laugh as we divided it.
We both had the same kind of feeling of liberty which made us run races round the garden and wet our shoes in the brooklets from the spring. Henri Deslois used to say, "On Sundays I, too, am seventeen years old." Sometimes we would go for long walks in the woods which skirted the hill. Henri Deslois was never tired of hearing me talk about my childhood, and Sister Marie-Aimée. Sometimes we talked about Eugène, whom he knew. He used to say that he was one of those men whom one liked to have for a friend. I told him what a bad shepherdess I had been, and although I felt sure he would laugh at me, I told him the story of the sheep which was all swollen up. He didn't laugh. He put a finger on my forehead and said, "Love is the only thing that will cure that."