VI
Hollis looked smiling into the box. He had lately made a dash home
through the Canal. He had been away six months, and only joined us
again just in time for this last trip. We had never seen the box
before. His hands hovered above it; and he talked to us ironically,
but his face became as grave as though he were pronouncing a powerful
incantation over the things inside.
"Every one of us," he said, with pauses that somehow were more
offensive than his words--"every one of us, you'll admit, has been
haunted by some woman . . . And . . . as to friends . . . dropped by
the way . . . Well! . . . ask yourselves . . ."
He paused. Karain stared. A deep rumble was heard high up under the
deck. Jackson spoke seriously--
"Don't be so beastly cynical."
"Ah! You are without guile," said Hollis, sadly. "You will learn . . .
Meantime this Malay has been our friend . . ."
He repeated several times thoughtfully, "Friend . . . Malay. Friend,
Malay," as though weighing the words against one another, then went on
more briskly--
"A good fellow--a gentleman in his way. We can't, so to speak, turn
our backs on his confidence and belief in us. Those Malays are
easily impressed--all nerves, you know--therefore . . ."
He turned to me sharply.
"You know him best," he said, in a practical tone. "Do you think he is
fanatical--I mean very strict in his faith?"
I stammered in profound amazement that "I did not think so."
"It's on account of its being a likeness--an engraved image,"
muttered Hollis, enigmatically, turning to the box. He plunged his
fingers into it. Karain's lips were parted and his eyes shone. We
looked into the box.
There were there a couple of reels of cotton, a packet of needles, a
bit of silk ribbon, dark blue; a cabinet photograph, at which Hollis
stole a glance before laying it on the table face downwards. A
girl's portrait, I could see. There were, amongst a lot of various
small objects, a bunch of flowers, a narrow white glove with many
buttons, a slim packet of letters carefully tied up. Amulets of white
men! Charms and talismans! Charms that keep them straight, that drive
them crooked, that have the power to make a young man sigh, an old man
smile. Potent things that procure dreams of joy, thoughts of regret;
that soften hard hearts, and can temper a soft one to the hardness of
steel. Gifts of heaven--things of earth . . .
Hollis rummaged in the box.
And it seemed to me, during that moment of waiting, that the cabin
of the schooner was becoming filled with a stir invisible and living
as of subtle breaths. All the ghosts driven out of the unbelieving
West by men who pretend to be wise and alone and at peace--all the
homeless ghosts of an unbelieving world--appeared suddenly round the
figure of Hollis bending over the box; all the exiled and charming
shades of loved women; all the beautiful and tender ghosts of ideals,
remembered, forgotten, cherished, execrated; all the cast-out and
reproachful ghosts of friends admired, trusted, traduced, betrayed,
left dead by the way--they all seemed to come from the inhospitable
regions of the earth to crowd into the gloomy cabin, as though it had
been a refuge and, in all the unbelieving world, the only place of
avenging belief. . . . It lasted a second--all disappeared. Hollis was
facing us alone with something small that glittered between his
fingers. It looked like a coin.
"Ah! here it is," he said.
He held it up. It was a sixpence--a Jubilee sixpence. It was gilt; it
had a hole punched near the rim. Hollis looked towards Karain.
"A charm for our friend," he said to us. "The thing itself is of great
power--money, you know--and his imagination is struck. A loyal
vagabond; if only his puritanism doesn't shy at a likeness . . ."
We said nothing. We did not know whether to be scandalized, amused, or
relieved. Hollis advanced towards Karain, who stood up as if startled,
and then, holding the coin up, spoke in Malay.
"This is the image of the Great Queen, and the most powerful thing the
white men know," he said, solemnly.
Karain covered the handle of his kriss in sign of respect, and stared
at the crowned head.
"The Invincible, the Pious," he muttered.
"She is more powerful than Suleiman the Wise, who commanded the genii,
as you know," said Hollis, gravely. "I shall give this to you."
He held the sixpence in the palm of his hand, and looking at it
thoughtfully, spoke to us in English.
"She commands a spirit, too--the spirit of her nation; a masterful,
conscientious, unscrupulous, unconquerable devil . . . that does a
lot of good--incidentally . . . a lot of good . . . at times--and
wouldn't stand any fuss from the best ghost out for such a little
thing as our friend's shot. Don't look thunderstruck, you fellows.
Help me to make him believe--everything's in that."
"His people will be shocked," I murmured.
Hollis looked fixedly at Karain, who was the incarnation of the very
essence of still excitement. He stood rigid, with head thrown back;
his eyes rolled wildly, flashing; the dilated nostrils quivered.
"Hang it all!" said Hollis at last, "he is a good fellow. I'll give
him something that I shall really miss."
He took the ribbon out of the box, smiled at it scornfully, then with
a pair of scissors cut out a piece from the palm of the glove.
"I shall make him a thing like those Italian peasants wear, you know."
He sewed the coin in the delicate leather, sewed the leather to the
ribbon, tied the ends together. He worked with haste. Karain watched
his fingers all the time.
"Now then," he said--then stepped up to Karain. They looked close into
one another's eyes. Those of Karain stared in a lost glance, but
Hollis's seemed to grow darker and looked out masterful and
compelling. They were in violent contrast together--one motionless and
the colour of bronze, the other dazzling white and lifting his arms,
where the powerful muscles rolled slightly under a skin that gleamed
like satin. Jackson moved near with the air of a man closing up to a
chum in a tight place. I said impressively, pointing to Hollis--
"He is young, but he is wise. Believe him!"
Karain bent his head: Hollis threw lightly over it the dark-blue
ribbon and stepped back.
"Forget, and be at peace!" I cried.
Karain seemed to wake up from a dream. He said, "Ha!" shook himself as
if throwing off a burden. He looked round with assurance. Someone on
deck dragged off the skylight cover, and a flood of light fell into
the cabin. It was morning already.
"Time to go on deck," said Jackson.
Hollis put on a coat, and we went up, Karain leading.
The sun had risen beyond the hills, and their long shadows stretched
far over the bay in the pearly light. The air was clear, stainless,
and cool. I pointed at the curved line of yellow sands.
"He is not there," I said, emphatically, to Karain. "He waits no more.
He has departed forever."
A shaft of bright hot rays darted into the bay between the summits of
two hills, and the water all round broke out as if by magic into a
dazzling sparkle.
"No! He is not there waiting," said Karain, after a long look over the
beach. "I do not hear him," he went on, slowly. "No!"
He turned to us.
"He has departed again--forever!" he cried.
We assented vigorously, repeatedly, and without compunction. The great
thing was to impress him powerfully; to suggest absolute safety--the
end of all trouble. We did our best; and I hope we affirmed our faith
in the power of Hollis's charm efficiently enough to put the matter
beyond the shadow of a doubt. Our voices rang around him joyously in
the still air, and above his head the sky, pellucid, pure, stainless,
arched its tender blue from shore to shore and over the bay, as if to
envelop the water, the earth, and the man in the caress of its light.
The anchor was up, the sails hung still, and half-a-dozen big boats
were seen sweeping over the bay to give us a tow out. The paddlers in
the first one that came alongside lifted their heads and saw their
ruler standing amongst us. A low murmur of surprise arose--then a
shout of greeting.
He left us, and seemed straightway to step into the glorious splendour
of his stage, to wrap himself in the illusion of unavoidable success.
For a moment he stood erect, one foot over the gangway, one hand on
the hilt of his kriss, in a martial pose; and, relieved from the fear
of outer darkness, he held his head high, he swept a serene look over
his conquered foothold on the earth. The boats far off took up the cry
of greeting; a great clamour rolled on the water; the hills echoed it,
and seemed to toss back at him the words invoking long life and
victories.
He descended into a canoe, and as soon as he was clear of the side we
gave him three cheers. They sounded faint and orderly after the wild
tumult of his loyal subjects, but it was the best we could do. He
stood up in the boat, lifted up both his arms, then pointed to the
infallible charm. We cheered again; and the Malays in the boats
stared--very much puzzled and impressed. I wondered what they thought;
what he thought; . . . what the reader thinks?
We towed out slowly. We saw him land and watch us from the beach. A
figure approached him humbly but openly--not at all like a ghost with
a grievance. We could see other men running towards him. Perhaps he
had been missed? At any rate there was a great stir. A group formed
itself rapidly near him, and he walked along the sands, followed by a
growing cortege and kept nearly abreast of the schooner. With our
glasses we could see the blue ribbon on his neck and a patch of white
on his brown chest. The bay was waking up. The smokes of morning fires
stood in faint spirals higher than the heads of palms; people moved
between the houses; a herd of buffaloes galloped clumsily across a
green slope; the slender figures of boys brandishing sticks appeared
black and leaping in the long grass; a coloured line of women, with
water bamboos on their heads, moved swaying through a thin grove of
fruit-trees. Karain stopped in the midst of his men and waved his
hand; then, detaching himself from the splendid group, walked alone to
the water's edge and waved his hand again. The schooner passed out to
sea between the steep headlands that shut in the bay, and at the same
instant Karain passed out of our life forever.
But the memory remains. Some years afterwards I met Jackson, in the
Strand. He was magnificent as ever. His head was high above the crowd.
His beard was gold, his face red, his eyes blue; he had a wide-brimmed
gray hat and no collar or waistcoat; he was inspiring; he had just
come home--had landed that very day! Our meeting caused an eddy in the
current of humanity. Hurried people would run against us, then walk
round us, and turn back to look at that giant. We tried to compress
seven years of life into seven exclamations; then, suddenly appeased,
walked sedately along, giving one another the news of yesterday.
Jackson gazed about him, like a man who looks for landmarks, then
stopped before Bland's window. He always had a passion for firearms;
so he stopped short and contemplated the row of weapons, perfect and
severe, drawn up in a line behind the black-framed panes. I stood by
his side. Suddenly he said--
"Do you remember Karain?"
I nodded.
"The sight of all this made me think of him," he went on, with his
face near the glass . . . and I could see another man, powerful and
bearded, peering at him intently from amongst the dark and polished
tubes that can cure so many illusions. "Yes; it made me think of him,"
he continued, slowly. "I saw a paper this morning; they are fighting
over there again. He's sure to be in it. He will make it hot for the
caballeros. Well, good luck to him, poor devil! He was perfectly
stunning."
We walked on.
"I wonder whether the charm worked--you remember Hollis's charm, of
course. If it did . . . Never was a sixpence wasted to better
advantage! Poor devil! I wonder whether he got rid of that friend of
his. Hope so. . . . Do you know, I sometimes think that--"
I stood still and looked at him.
"Yes . . . I mean, whether the thing was so, you know . . . whether it
really happened to him. . . . What do you think?"
"My dear chap," I cried, "you have been too long away from home. What
a question to ask! Only look at all this."
A watery gleam of sunshine flashed from the west and went out between
two long lines of walls; and then the broken confusion of roofs, the
chimney-stacks, the gold letters sprawling over the fronts of houses,
the sombre polish of windows, stood resigned and sullen under the
falling gloom. The whole length of the street, deep as a well and
narrow like a corridor, was full of a sombre and ceaseless stir. Our
ears were filled by a headlong shuffle and beat of rapid footsteps and
by an underlying rumour--a rumour vast, faint, pulsating, as of
panting breaths, of beating hearts, of gasping voices. Innumerable
eyes stared straight in front, feet moved hurriedly, blank faces
flowed, arms swung. Over all, a narrow ragged strip of smoky sky wound
about between the high roofs, extended and motionless, like a soiled
streamer flying above the rout of a mob.
"Ye-e-e-s," said Jackson, meditatively.
The big wheels of hansoms turned slowly along the edge of side-walks;
a pale-faced youth strolled, overcome by weariness, by the side of his
stick and with the tails of his overcoat flapping gently near his
heels; horses stepped gingerly on the greasy pavement, tossing their
heads; two young girls passed by, talking vivaciously and with shining
eyes; a fine old fellow strutted, red-faced, stroking a white
moustache; and a line of yellow boards with blue letters on them
approached us slowly, tossing on high behind one another like some
queer wreckage adrift upon a river of hats.
"Ye-e-es," repeated Jackson. His clear blue eyes looked about,
contemptuous, amused and hard, like the eyes of a boy. A clumsy string
of red, yellow, and green omnibuses rolled swaying, monstrous and
gaudy; two shabby children ran across the road; a knot of dirty men
with red neckerchiefs round their bare throats lurched along,
discussing filthily; a ragged old man with a face of despair yelled
horribly in the mud the name of a paper; while far off, amongst the
tossing heads of horses, the dull flash of harnesses, the jumble of
lustrous panels and roofs of carriages, we could see a policeman,
helmeted and dark, stretching out a rigid arm at the crossing of the
streets.
"Yes; I see it," said Jackson, slowly. "It is there; it pants, it
runs, it rolls; it is strong and alive; it would smash you if you
didn't look out; but I'll be hanged if it is yet as real to me as
. . . as the other thing . . . say, Karain's story."
I think that, decidedly, he had been too long away from home.
THE IDIOTS
We were driving along the road from Treguier to Kervanda. We passed at
a smart trot between the hedges topping an earth wall on each side of
the road; then at the foot of the steep ascent before Ploumar the
horse dropped into a walk, and the driver jumped down heavily from the
box. He flicked his whip and climbed the incline, stepping clumsily
uphill by the side of the carriage, one hand on the footboard, his
eyes on the ground. After a while he lifted his head, pointed up the
road with the end of the whip, and said--
"The idiot!"
The sun was shining violently upon the undulating surface of the land.
The rises were topped by clumps of meagre trees, with their branches
showing high on the sky as if they had been perched upon stilts. The
small fields, cut up by hedges and stone walls that zig-zagged over
the slopes, lay in rectangular patches of vivid greens and yellows,
resembling the unskilful daubs of a naive picture. And the landscape
was divided in two by the white streak of a road stretching in long
loops far away, like a river of dust crawling out of the hills on its
way to the sea.
"Here he is," said the driver, again.
In the long grass bordering the road a face glided past the carriage
at the level of the wheels as we drove slowly by. The imbecile face
was red, and the bullet head with close-cropped hair seemed to lie
alone, its chin in the dust. The body was lost in the bushes growing
thick along the bottom of the deep ditch.
It was a boy's face. He might have been sixteen, judging from the
size--perhaps less, perhaps more. Such creatures are forgotten by
time, and live untouched by years till death gathers them up into its
compassionate bosom; the faithful death that never forgets in the
press of work the most insignificant of its children.
"Ah! there's another," said the man, with a certain satisfaction in
his tone, as if he had caught sight of something expected.
There was another. That one stood nearly in the middle of the road in
the blaze of sunshine at the end of his own short shadow. And he stood
with hands pushed into the opposite sleeves of his long coat, his head
sunk between the shoulders, all hunched up in the flood of heat. From
a distance he had the aspect of one suffering from intense cold.
"Those are twins," explained the driver.
The idiot shuffled two paces out of the way and looked at us over his
shoulder when we brushed past him. The glance was unseeing and
staring, a fascinated glance; but he did not turn to look after us.
Probably the image passed before the eyes without leaving any trace on
the misshapen brain of the creature. When we had topped the ascent I
looked over the hood. He stood in the road just where we had left him.
The driver clambered into his seat, clicked his tongue, and we went
downhill. The brake squeaked horribly from time to time. At the foot
he eased off the noisy mechanism and said, turning half round on his
box--
"We shall see some more of them by-and-by."
"More idiots? How many of them are there, then?" I asked.
"There's four of them--children of a farmer near Ploumar here. . . .
The parents are dead now," he added, after a while. "The grandmother
lives on the farm. In the daytime they knock about on this road, and
they come home at dusk along with the cattle. . . . It's a good farm."
We saw the other two: a boy and a girl, as the driver said. They were
dressed exactly alike, in shapeless garments with petticoat-like
skirts. The imperfect thing that lived within them moved those beings
to howl at us from the top of the bank, where they sprawled amongst
the tough stalks of furze. Their cropped black heads stuck out from
the bright yellow wall of countless small blossoms. The faces were
purple with the strain of yelling; the voices sounded blank and
cracked like a mechanical imitation of old people's voices; and
suddenly ceased when we turned into a lane.
I saw them many times in my wandering about the country. They lived on
that road, drifting along its length here and there, according to the
inexplicable impulses of their monstrous darkness. They were an
offence to the sunshine, a reproach to empty heaven, a blight on the
concentrated and purposeful vigour of the wild landscape. In time the
story of their parents shaped itself before me out of the listless
answers to my questions, out of the indifferent words heard in wayside
inns or on the very road those idiots haunted. Some of it was told by
an emaciated and sceptical old fellow with a tremendous whip, while we
trudged together over the sands by the side of a two-wheeled cart
loaded with dripping seaweed. Then at other times other people
confirmed and completed the story: till it stood at last before me, a
tale formidable and simple, as they always are, those disclosures of
obscure trials endured by ignorant hearts.
When he returned from his military service Jean-Pierre Bacadou found
the old people very much aged. He remarked with pain that the work of
the farm was not satisfactorily done. The father had not the energy of
old days. The hands did not feel over them the eye of the master.
Jean-Pierre noted with sorrow that the heap of manure in the courtyard
before the only entrance to the house was not so large as it should
have been. The fences were out of repair, and the cattle suffered from
neglect. At home the mother was practically bedridden, and the girls
chattered loudly in the big kitchen, unrebuked, from morning to night.
He said to himself: "We must change all this." He talked the matter
over with his father one evening when the rays of the setting sun
entering the yard between the outhouses ruled the heavy shadows with
luminous streaks. Over the manure heap floated a mist, opal-tinted and
odorous, and the marauding hens would stop in their scratching to
examine with a sudden glance of their round eye the two men, both lean
and tall, talking in hoarse tones. The old man, all twisted with
rheumatism and bowed with years of work, the younger bony and
straight, spoke without gestures in the indifferent manner of
peasants, grave and slow. But before the sun had set the father had
submitted to the sensible arguments of the son. "It is not for me that
I am speaking," insisted Jean-Pierre. "It is for the land. It's a pity
to see it badly used. I am not impatient for myself." The old fellow
nodded over his stick. "I dare say; I dare say," he muttered. "You may
be right. Do what you like. It's the mother that will be pleased."
The mother was pleased with her daughter-in-law. Jean-Pierre brought
the two-wheeled spring-cart with a rush into the yard. The gray horse
galloped clumsily, and the bride and bridegroom, sitting side by side,
were jerked backwards and forwards by the up and down motion of the
shafts, in a manner regular and brusque. On the road the distanced
wedding guests straggled in pairs and groups. The men advanced with
heavy steps, swinging their idle arms. They were clad in town clothes;
jackets cut with clumsy smartness, hard black hats, immense boots,
polished highly. Their women all in simple black, with white caps and
shawls of faded tints folded triangularly on the back, strolled
lightly by their side. In front the violin sang a strident tune, and
the biniou snored and hummed, while the player capered solemnly,
lifting high his heavy clogs. The sombre procession drifted in and out
of the narrow lanes, through sunshine and through shade, between
fields and hedgerows, scaring the little birds that darted away in
troops right and left. In the yard of Bacadou's farm the dark ribbon
wound itself up into a mass of men and women pushing at the door with
cries and greetings. The wedding dinner was remembered for months. It
was a splendid feast in the orchard. Farmers of considerable means
and excellent repute were to be found sleeping in ditches, all along
the road to Treguier, even as late as the afternoon of the next day.
All the countryside participated in the happiness of Jean-Pierre. He
remained sober, and, together with his quiet wife, kept out of the
way, letting father and mother reap their due of honour and thanks.
But the next day he took hold strongly, and the old folks felt a
shadow--precursor of the grave--fall upon them finally. The world is
to the young.
When the twins were born there was plenty of room in the house, for
the mother of Jean-Pierre had gone away to dwell under a heavy stone
in the cemetery of Ploumar. On that day, for the first time since his
son's marriage, the elder Bacadou, neglected by the cackling lot of
strange women who thronged the kitchen, left in the morning his seat
under the mantel of the fireplace, and went into the empty cow-house,
shaking his white locks dismally. Grandsons were all very well, but he
wanted his soup at midday. When shown the babies, he stared at them
with a fixed gaze, and muttered something like: "It's too much."
Whether he meant too much happiness, or simply commented upon the
number of his descendants, it is impossible to say. He looked offended
--as far as his old wooden face could express anything; and for days
afterwards could be seen, almost any time of the day, sitting at the
gate, with his nose over his knees, a pipe between his gums, and
gathered up into a kind of raging concentrated sulkiness. Once he
spoke to his son, alluding to the newcomers with a groan: "They will
quarrel over the land." "Don't bother about that, father," answered
Jean-Pierre, stolidly, and passed, bent double, towing a recalcitrant
cow over his shoulder.
He was happy, and so was Susan, his wife. It was not an ethereal joy
welcoming new souls to struggle, perchance to victory. In fourteen
years both boys would be a help; and, later on, Jean-Pierre pictured
two big sons striding over the land from patch to patch, wringing
tribute from the earth beloved and fruitful. Susan was happy too, for
she did not want to be spoken of as the unfortunate woman, and now she
had children no one could call her that. Both herself and her husband
had seen something of the larger world--he during the time of his
service; while she had spent a year or so in Paris with a Breton
family; but had been too home-sick to remain longer away from the
hilly and green country, set in a barren circle of rocks and sands,
where she had been born. She thought that one of the boys ought
perhaps to be a priest, but said nothing to her husband, who was a
republican, and hated the "crows," as he called the ministers of
religion. The christening was a splendid affair. All the commune came
to it, for the Bacadous were rich and influential, and, now and then,
did not mind the expense. The grandfather had a new coat.
Some months afterwards, one evening when the kitchen had been swept,
and the door locked, Jean-Pierre, looking at the cot, asked his wife:
"What's the matter with those children?" And, as if these words,
spoken calmly, had been the portent of misfortune, she answered with
a loud wail that must have been heard across the yard in the pig-sty;
for the pigs (the Bacadous had the finest pigs in the country) stirred
and grunted complainingly in the night. The husband went on grinding
his bread and butter slowly, gazing at the wall, the soup-plate
smoking under his chin. He had returned late from the market, where he
had overheard (not for the first time) whispers behind his back. He
revolved the words in his mind as he drove back. "Simple! Both of
them. . . . Never any use! . . . Well! May be, may be. One must see.
Would ask his wife." This was her answer. He felt like a blow on his
chest, but said only: "Go, draw me some cider. I am thirsty!"
She went out moaning, an empty jug in her hand. Then he arose, took up
the light, and moved slowly towards the cradle. They slept. He looked
at them sideways, finished his mouthful there, went back heavily, and
sat down before his plate. When his wife returned he never looked up,
but swallowed a couple of spoonfuls noisily, and remarked, in a dull
manner--
"When they sleep they are like other people's children."
She sat down suddenly on a stool near by, and shook with a silent
tempest of sobs, unable to speak. He finished his meal, and remained
idly thrown back in his chair, his eyes lost amongst the black rafters
of the ceiling. Before him the tallow candle flared red and straight,
sending up a slender thread of smoke. The light lay on the rough,
sunburnt skin of his throat; the sunk cheeks were like patches of
darkness, and his aspect was mournfully stolid, as if he had
ruminated with difficulty endless ideas. Then he said, deliberately--
"We must see . . . consult people. Don't cry. . . . They won't all be
like that . . . surely! We must sleep now."
After the third child, also a boy, was born, Jean-Pierre went about
his work with tense hopefulness. His lips seemed more narrow, more
tightly compressed than before; as if for fear of letting the earth he
tilled hear the voice of hope that murmured within his breast. He
watched the child, stepping up to the cot with a heavy clang of sabots
on the stone floor, and glanced in, along his shoulder, with that
indifference which is like a deformity of peasant humanity. Like the
earth they master and serve, those men, slow of eye and speech, do not
show the inner fire; so that, at last, it becomes a question with them
as with the earth, what there is in the core: heat, violence, a force
mysterious and terrible--or nothing but a clod, a mass fertile and
inert, cold and unfeeling, ready to bear a crop of plants that sustain
life or give death.
The mother watched with other eyes; listened with otherwise expectant
ears. Under the high hanging shelves supporting great sides of bacon
overhead, her body was busy by the great fireplace, attentive to the
pot swinging on iron gallows, scrubbing the long table where the field
hands would sit down directly to their evening meal. Her mind remained
by the cradle, night and day on the watch, to hope and suffer. That
child, like the other two, never smiled, never stretched its hands to
her, never spoke; never had a glance of recognition for her in its
big black eyes, which could only stare fixedly at any glitter, but
failed hopelessly to follow the brilliance of a sun-ray slipping
slowly along the floor. When the men were at work she spent long days
between her three idiot children and the childish grandfather, who sat
grim, angular, and immovable, with his feet near the warm ashes of the
fire. The feeble old fellow seemed to suspect that there was something
wrong with his grandsons. Only once, moved either by affection or by
the sense of proprieties, he attempted to nurse the youngest. He took
the boy up from the floor, clicked his tongue at him, and essayed a
shaky gallop of his bony knees. Then he looked closely with his misty
eyes at the child's face and deposited him down gently on the floor
again. And he sat, his lean shanks crossed, nodding at the steam
escaping from the cooking-pot with a gaze senile and worried.
Then mute affliction dwelt in Bacadou's farmhouse, sharing the breath
and the bread of its inhabitants; and the priest of the Ploumar parish
had great cause for congratulation. He called upon the rich landowner,
the Marquis de Chavanes, on purpose to deliver himself with joyful
unction of solemn platitudes about the inscrutable ways of
Providence. In the vast dimness of the curtained drawing-room, the
little man, resembling a black bolster, leaned towards a couch, his
hat on his knees, and gesticulated with a fat hand at the elongated,
gracefully-flowing lines of the clear Parisian toilette from which the
half-amused, half-bored marquise listened with gracious languor. He
was exulting and humble, proud and awed. The impossible had come to
pass. Jean-Pierre Bacadou, the enraged republican farmer, had been to
mass last Sunday--had proposed to entertain the visiting priests at
the next festival of Ploumar! It was a triumph for the Church and for
the good cause. "I thought I would come at once to tell Monsieur le
Marquis. I know how anxious he is for the welfare of our country,"
declared the priest, wiping his face. He was asked to stay to dinner.
The Chavanes returning that evening, after seeing their guest to the
main gate of the park, discussed the matter while they strolled in the
moonlight, trailing their long shadows up the straight avenue of
chestnuts. The marquise, a royalist of course, had been mayor of the
commune which includes Ploumar, the scattered hamlets of the coast,
and the stony islands that fringe the yellow flatness of the sands. He
had felt his position insecure, for there was a strong republican
element in that part of the country; but now the conversion of
Jean-Pierre made him safe. He was very pleased. "You have no idea how
influential those people are," he explained to his wife. "Now, I am
sure, the next communal election will go all right. I shall be re-
elected." "Your ambition is perfectly insatiable, Charles," exclaimed
the marquise, gaily. "But, ma chere amie," argued the husband,
seriously, "it's most important that the right man should be mayor
this year, because of the elections to the Chamber. If you think it
amuses me . . ."
Jean-Pierre had surrendered to his wife's mother. Madame Levaille was
a woman of business, known and respected within a radius of at least
fifteen miles. Thick-set and stout, she was seen about the country, on
foot or in an acquaintance's cart, perpetually moving, in spite of her
fifty-eight years, in steady pursuit of business. She had houses in
all the hamlets, she worked quarries of granite, she freighted
coasters with stone--even traded with the Channel Islands. She was
broad-cheeked, wide-eyed, persuasive in speech: carrying her point
with the placid and invincible obstinacy of an old woman who knows her
own mind. She very seldom slept for two nights together in the same
house; and the wayside inns were the best places to inquire in as to
her whereabouts. She had either passed, or was expected to pass there
at six; or somebody, coming in, had seen her in the morning, or
expected to meet her that evening. After the inns that command the
roads, the churches were the buildings she frequented most. Men of
liberal opinions would induce small children to run into sacred
edifices to see whether Madame Levaille was there, and to tell her
that so-and-so was in the road waiting to speak to her about potatoes,
or flour, or stones, or houses; and she would curtail her devotions,
come out blinking and crossing herself into the sunshine; ready to
discuss business matters in a calm, sensible way across a table in the
kitchen of the inn opposite. Latterly she had stayed for a few days
several times with her son-in-law, arguing against sorrow and
misfortune with composed face and gentle tones. Jean-Pierre felt the
convictions imbibed in the regiment torn out of his breast--not by
arguments but by facts. Striding over his fields he thought it over.
There were three of them. Three! All alike! Why? Such things did not
happen to everybody--to nobody he ever heard of. One--might pass. But
three! All three. Forever useless, to be fed while he lived and . . .
What would become of the land when he died? This must be seen to. He
would sacrifice his convictions. One day he told his wife--
"See what your God will do for us. Pay for some masses."
Susan embraced her man. He stood unbending, then turned on his heels
and went out. But afterwards, when a black soutane darkened his
doorway, he did not object; even offered some cider himself to the
priest. He listened to the talk meekly; went to mass between the two
women; accomplished what the priest called "his religious duties" at
Easter. That morning he felt like a man who had sold his soul. In the
afternoon he fought ferociously with an old friend and neighbour who
had remarked that the priests had the best of it and were now going to
eat the priest-eater. He came home dishevelled and bleeding, and
happening to catch sight of his children (they were kept generally out
of the way), cursed and swore incoherently, banging the table. Susan
wept. Madame Levaille sat serenely unmoved. She assured her daughter
that "It will pass;" and taking up her thick umbrella, departed in
haste to see after a schooner she was going to load with granite from
her quarry.
A year or so afterwards the girl was born. A girl. Jean-Pierre heard
of it in the fields, and was so upset by the news that he sat down on
the boundary wall and remained there till the evening, instead of
going home as he was urged to do. A girl! He felt half cheated.
However, when he got home he was partly reconciled to his fate. One
could marry her to a good fellow--not to a good for nothing, but to a
fellow with some understanding and a good pair of arms. Besides, the
next may be a boy, he thought. Of course they would be all right. His
new credulity knew of no doubt. The ill luck was broken. He spoke
cheerily to his wife. She was also hopeful. Three priests came to that
christening, and Madame Levaille was godmother. The child turned out
an idiot too.
Then on market days Jean-Pierre was seen bargaining bitterly,
quarrelsome and greedy; then getting drunk with taciturn earnestness;
then driving home in the dusk at a rate fit for a wedding, but with a
face gloomy enough for a funeral. Sometimes he would insist on his
wife coming with him; and they would drive in the early morning,
shaking side by side on the narrow seat above the helpless pig, that,
with tied legs, grunted a melancholy sigh at every rut. The morning
drives were silent; but in the evening, coming home, Jean-Pierre,
tipsy, was viciously muttering, and growled at the confounded woman
who could not rear children that were like anybody else's. Susan,
holding on against the erratic swayings of the cart, pretended not to
hear. Once, as they were driving through Ploumar, some obscure and
drunken impulse caused him to pull up sharply opposite the church. The
moon swam amongst light white clouds. The tombstones gleamed pale
under the fretted shadows of the trees in the churchyard. Even the
village dogs slept. Only the nightingales, awake, spun out the thrill
of their song above the silence of graves. Jean-Pierre said thickly to
his wife--
"What do you think is there?"
He pointed his whip at the tower--in which the big dial of the clock
appeared high in the moonlight like a pallid face without eyes--and
getting out carefully, fell down at once by the wheel. He picked
himself up and climbed one by one the few steps to the iron gate of
the churchyard. He put his face to the bars and called out
indistinctly--
"Hey there! Come out!"
"Jean! Return! Return!" entreated his wife in low tones.
He took no notice, and seemed to wait there. The song of nightingales
beat on all sides against the high walls of the church, and flowed
back between stone crosses and flat gray slabs, engraved with words of
hope and sorrow.
"Hey! Come out!" shouted Jean-Pierre, loudly.
The nightingales ceased to sing.
"Nobody?" went on Jean-Pierre. "Nobody there. A swindle of the crows.
That's what this is. Nobody anywhere. I despise it. Allez! Houp!"
He shook the gate with all his strength, and the iron bars rattled
with a frightful clanging, like a chain dragged over stone steps. A
dog near by barked hurriedly. Jean-Pierre staggered back, and after
three successive dashes got into his cart. Susan sat very quiet and
still. He said to her with drunken severity--
"See? Nobody. I've been made a fool! Malheur! Somebody will pay for
it. The next one I see near the house I will lay my whip on . . . on
the black spine . . . I will. I don't want him in there . . . he only
helps the carrion crows to rob poor folk. I am a man. . . . We will
see if I can't have children like anybody else . . . now you
mind. . . . They won't be all . . . all . . . we see. . . ."
She burst out through the fingers that hid her face--
"Don't say that, Jean; don't say that, my man!"
He struck her a swinging blow on the head with the back of his hand
and knocked her into the bottom of the cart, where she crouched,
thrown about lamentably by every jolt. He drove furiously, standing
up, brandishing his whip, shaking the reins over the gray horse that
galloped ponderously, making the heavy harness leap upon his broad
quarters. The country rang clamorous in the night with the irritated
barking of farm dogs, that followed the rattle of wheels all along the
road. A couple of belated wayfarers had only just time to step into
the ditch. At his own gate he caught the post and was shot out of the
cart head first. The horse went on slowly to the door. At Susan's
piercing cries the farm hands rushed out. She thought him dead, but he
was only sleeping where he fell, and cursed his men, who hastened to
him, for disturbing his slumbers.
Autumn came. The clouded sky descended low upon the black contours of
the hills; and the dead leaves danced in spiral whirls under naked
trees, till the wind, sighing profoundly, laid them to rest in the
hollows of bare valleys. And from morning till night one could see all
over the land black denuded boughs, the boughs gnarled and twisted, as
if contorted with pain, swaying sadly between the wet clouds and the
soaked earth. The clear and gentle streams of summer days rushed
discoloured and raging at the stones that barred the way to the sea,
with the fury of madness bent upon suicide. From horizon to horizon
the great road to the sands lay between the hills in a dull glitter of
empty curves, resembling an unnavigable river of mud.
Jean-Pierre went from field to field, moving blurred and tall in the
drizzle, or striding on the crests of rises, lonely and high upon the
gray curtain of drifting clouds, as if he had been pacing along the
very edge of the universe. He looked at the black earth, at the
earth mute and promising, at the mysterious earth doing its work of
life in death-like stillness under the veiled sorrow of the sky. And
it seemed to him that to a man worse than childless there was no
promise in the fertility of fields, that from him the earth escaped,
defied him, frowned at him like the clouds, sombre and hurried above
his head. Having to face alone his own fields, he felt the inferiority
of man who passes away before the clod that remains. Must he give up
the hope of having by his side a son who would look at the turned-up
sods with a master's eye? A man that would think as he thought, that
would feel as he felt; a man who would be part of himself, and yet
remain to trample masterfully on that earth when he was gone? He
thought of some distant relations, and felt savage enough to curse
them aloud. They! Never! He turned homewards, going straight at the
roof of his dwelling, visible between the enlaced skeletons of trees.
As he swung his legs over the stile a cawing flock of birds settled
slowly on the field; dropped down behind his back, noiseless and
fluttering, like flakes of soot.
That day Madame Levaille had gone early in the afternoon to the house
she had near Kervanion. She had to pay some of the men who worked in
her granite quarry there, and she went in good time because her little
house contained a shop where the workmen could spend their wages
without the trouble of going to town. The house stood alone amongst
rocks. A lane of mud and stones ended at the door. The sea-winds
coming ashore on Stonecutter's point, fresh from the fierce turmoil of
the waves, howled violently at the unmoved heaps of black boulders
holding up steadily short-armed, high crosses against the tremendous
rush of the invisible. In the sweep of gales the sheltered dwelling
stood in a calm resonant and disquieting, like the calm in the centre
of a hurricane. On stormy nights, when the tide was out, the bay of
Fougere, fifty feet below the house, resembled an immense black pit,
from which ascended mutterings and sighs as if the sands down there
had been alive and complaining. At high tide the returning water
assaulted the ledges of rock in short rushes, ending in bursts of
livid light and columns of spray, that flew inland, stinging to death
the grass of pastures.
The darkness came from the hills, flowed over the coast, put out the
red fires of sunset, and went on to seaward pursuing the retiring
tide. The wind dropped with the sun, leaving a maddened sea and a
devastated sky. The heavens above the house seemed to be draped in
black rags, held up here and there by pins of fire. Madame Levaille,
for this evening the servant of her own workmen, tried to induce them
to depart. "An old woman like me ought to be in bed at this late
hour," she good-humouredly repeated. The quarrymen drank, asked for
more. They shouted over the table as if they had been talking across a
field. At one end four of them played cards, banging the wood with
their hard knuckles, and swearing at every lead. One sat with a lost
gaze, humming a bar of some song, which he repeated endlessly. Two
others, in a corner, were quarrelling confidentially and fiercely
over some woman, looking close into one another's eyes as if they had
wanted to tear them out, but speaking in whispers that promised
violence and murder discreetly, in a venomous sibillation of subdued
words. The atmosphere in there was thick enough to slice with a knife.
Three candles burning about the long room glowed red and dull like
sparks expiring in ashes.
The slight click of the iron latch was at that late hour as unexpected
and startling as a thunder-clap. Madame Levaille put down a bottle she
held above a liqueur glass; the players turned their heads; the
whispered quarrel ceased; only the singer, after darting a glance at
the door, went on humming with a stolid face. Susan appeared in the
doorway, stepped in, flung the door to, and put her back against it,
saying, half aloud--
"Mother!"
Madame Levaille, taking up the bottle again, said calmly: "Here you
are, my girl. What a state you are in!" The neck of the bottle rang on
the rim of the glass, for the old woman was startled, and the idea
that the farm had caught fire had entered her head. She could think of
no other cause for her daughter's appearance.
Susan, soaked and muddy, stared the whole length of the room towards
the men at the far end. Her mother asked--
"What has happened? God guard us from misfortune!"
Susan moved her lips. No sound came. Madame Levaille stepped up to her
daughter, took her by the arm, looked into her face.
"In God's name," she said, shakily, "what's the matter? You have been
rolling in mud. . . . Why did you come? . . . Where's Jean?"
The men had all got up and approached slowly, staring with dull
surprise. Madame Levaille jerked her daughter away from the door,
swung her round upon a seat close to the wall. Then she turned
fiercely to the men--
"Enough of this! Out you go--you others! I close."
One of them observed, looking down at Susan collapsed on the seat:
"She is--one may say--half dead."
Madame Levaille flung the door open.
"Get out! March!" she cried, shaking nervously.
They dropped out into the night, laughing stupidly. Outside, the two
Lotharios broke out into loud shouts. The others tried to soothe them,
all talking at once. The noise went away up the lane with the men, who
staggered together in a tight knot, remonstrating with one another
foolishly.
"Speak, Susan. What is it? Speak!" entreated Madame Levaille, as soon
as the door was shut.
Susan pronounced some incomprehensible words, glaring at the table.
The old woman clapped her hands above her head, let them drop, and
stood looking at her daughter with disconsolate eyes. Her husband had
been "deranged in his head" for a few years before he died, and now
she began to suspect her daughter was going mad. She asked,
pressingly--
"Does Jean know where you are? Where is Jean?"
"He knows . . . he is dead."
"What!" cried the old woman. She came up near, and peering at her
daughter, repeated three times: "What do you say? What do you say?
What do you say?"
Susan sat dry-eyed and stony before Madame Levaille, who
contemplated her, feeling a strange sense of inexplicable horror creep
into the silence of the house. She had hardly realised the news,
further than to understand that she had been brought in one short
moment face to face with something unexpected and final. It did not
even occur to her to ask for any explanation. She thought:
accident--terrible accident--blood to the head--fell down a trap door
in the loft. . . . She remained there, distracted and mute, blinking
her old eyes.
Suddenly, Susan said--
"I have killed him."
For a moment the mother stood still, almost unbreathing, but with
composed face. The next second she burst out into a shout--
"You miserable madwoman . . . they will cut your neck. . . ."
She fancied the gendarmes entering the house, saying to her: "We want
your daughter; give her up:" the gendarmes with the severe, hard faces
of men on duty. She knew the brigadier well--an old friend, familiar
and respectful, saying heartily, "To your good health, Madame!" before
lifting to his lips the small glass of cognac--out of the special
bottle she kept for friends. And now! . . . She was losing her head.
She rushed here and there, as if looking for something urgently
needed--gave that up, stood stock still in the middle of the room, and
screamed at her daughter--
"Why? Say! Say! Why?"
The other seemed to leap out of her strange apathy.
"Do you think I am made of stone?" she shouted back, striding towards
her mother.
"No! It's impossible. . . ." said Madame Levaille, in a convinced
tone.
"You go and see, mother," retorted Susan, looking at her with blazing
eyes. "There's no money in heaven--no justice. No! . . . I did not
know. . . . Do you think I have no heart? Do you think I have never
heard people jeering at me, pitying me, wondering at me? Do you know
how some of them were calling me? The mother of idiots--that was my
nickname! And my children never would know me, never speak to me. They
would know nothing; neither men--nor God. Haven't I prayed! But the
Mother of God herself would not hear me. A mother! . . . Who is
accursed--I, or the man who is dead? Eh? Tell me. I took care of
myself. Do you think I would defy the anger of God and have my house
full of those things--that are worse than animals who know the hand
that feeds them? Who blasphemed in the night at the very church door?
Was it I? . . . I only wept and prayed for mercy . . . and I feel the
curse at every moment of the day--I see it round me from morning to
night . . . I've got to keep them alive--to take care of my misfortune
and shame. And he would come. I begged him and Heaven for mercy. . . .
No! . . . Then we shall see. . . . He came this evening. I thought to
myself: 'Ah! again!' . . . I had my long scissors. I heard him
shouting . . . I saw him near. . . . I must--must I? . . . Then take!
. . . And I struck him in the throat above the breastbone. . . . I
never heard him even sigh. . . . I left him standing. . . . It was a
minute ago. How did I come here?"
Madame Levaille shivered. A wave of cold ran down her back, down her
fat arms under her tight sleeves, made her stamp gently where she
stood. Quivers ran over the broad cheeks, across the thin lips, ran
amongst the wrinkles at the corners of her steady old eyes. She
stammered--
"You wicked woman--you disgrace me. But there! You always resembled
your father. What do you think will become of you . . . in the other
world? In this . . . Oh misery!"
She was very hot now. She felt burning inside. She wrung her
perspiring hands--and suddenly, starting in great haste, began to
look for her big shawl and umbrella, feverishly, never once glancing
at her daughter, who stood in the middle of the room following her
with a gaze distracted and cold.
"Nothing worse than in this," said Susan.
Her mother, umbrella in hand and trailing the shawl over the floor,
groaned profoundly.
"I must go to the priest," she burst out passionately. "I do not know
whether you even speak the truth! You are a horrible woman. They will
find you anywhere. You may stay here--or go. There is no room for
you in this world."
Ready now to depart, she yet wandered aimlessly about the room,
putting the bottles on the shelf, trying to fit with trembling hands
the covers on cardboard boxes. Whenever the real sense of what she had
heard emerged for a second from the haze of her thoughts she would
fancy that something had exploded in her brain without, unfortunately,
bursting her head to pieces--which would have been a relief. She blew
the candles out one by one without knowing it, and was horribly
startled by the darkness. She fell on a bench and began to whimper.
After a while she ceased, and sat listening to the breathing of her
daughter, whom she could hardly see, still and upright, giving no
other sign of life. She was becoming old rapidly at last, during those
minutes. She spoke in tones unsteady, cut about by the rattle of
teeth, like one shaken by a deadly cold fit of ague.
"I wish you had died little. I will never dare to show my old head in
the sunshine again. There are worse misfortunes than idiot children. I
wish you had been born to me simple--like your own. . . ."
She saw the figure of her daughter pass before the faint and livid
clearness of a window. Then it appeared in the doorway for a second,
and the door swung to with a clang. Madame Levaille, as if awakened by
the noise from a long nightmare, rushed out.
"Susan!" she shouted from the doorstep.
She heard a stone roll a long time down the declivity of the rocky
beach above the sands. She stepped forward cautiously, one hand on
the wall of the house, and peered down into the smooth darkness of the
empty bay. Once again she cried--
"Susan! You will kill yourself there."
The stone had taken its last leap in the dark, and she heard nothing
now. A sudden thought seemed to strangle her, and she called no more.
She turned her back upon the black silence of the pit and went up the
lane towards Ploumar, stumbling along with sombre determination, as if
she had started on a desperate journey that would last, perhaps, to
the end of her life. A sullen and periodic clamour of waves rolling
over reefs followed her far inland between the high hedges sheltering
the gloomy solitude of the fields.
Susan had run out, swerving sharp to the left at the door, and on the
edge of the slope crouched down behind a boulder. A dislodged stone
went on downwards, rattling as it leaped. When Madame Levaille called
out, Susan could have, by stretching her hand, touched her mother's
skirt, had she had the courage to move a limb. She saw the old woman
go away, and she remained still, closing her eyes and pressing her
side to the hard and rugged surface of the rock. After a while a
familiar face with fixed eyes and an open mouth became visible in the
intense obscurity amongst the boulders. She uttered a low cry and
stood up. The face vanished, leaving her to gasp and shiver alone in
the wilderness of stone heaps. But as soon as she had crouched down
again to rest, with her head against the rock, the face returned, came
very near, appeared eager to finish the speech that had been cut short
by death, only a moment ago. She scrambled quickly to her feet and
said: "Go away, or I will do it again." The thing wavered, swung to
the right, to the left. She moved this way and that, stepped back,
fancied herself screaming at it, and was appalled by the unbroken
stillness of the night. She tottered on the brink, felt the steep
declivity under her feet, and rushed down blindly to save herself from
a headlong fall. The shingle seemed to wake up; the pebbles began to
roll before her, pursued her from above, raced down with her on both
sides, rolling past with an increasing clatter. In the peace of the
night the noise grew, deepening to a rumour, continuous and violent,
as if the whole semicircle of the stony beach had started to tumble
down into the bay. Susan's feet hardly touched the slope that seemed
to run down with her. At the bottom she stumbled, shot forward,
throwing her arms out, and fell heavily. She jumped up at once and
turned swiftly to look back, her clenched hands full of sand she had
clutched in her fall. The face was there, keeping its distance,
visible in its own sheen that made a pale stain in the night. She
shouted, "Go away!"--she shouted at it with pain, with fear, with all
the rage of that useless stab that could not keep him quiet, keep him
out of her sight. What did he want now? He was dead. Dead men have no
children. Would he never leave her alone? She shrieked at it--waved
her outstretched hands. She seemed to feel the breath of parted lips,
and, with a long cry of discouragement, fled across the level bottom
of the bay.
She ran lightly, unaware of any effort of her body. High sharp rocks
that, when the bay is full, show above the glittering plain of blue
water like pointed towers of submerged churches, glided past her,
rushing to the land at a tremendous pace. To the left, in the
distance, she could see something shining: a broad disc of light in
which narrow shadows pivoted round the centre like the spokes of a
wheel. She heard a voice calling, "Hey! There!" and answered with a
wild scream. So, he could call yet! He was calling after her to stop.
Never! . . . She tore through the night, past the startled group of
seaweed-gatherers who stood round their lantern paralysed with fear at
the unearthly screech coming from that fleeing shadow. The men leaned
on their pitchforks staring fearfully. A woman fell on her knees, and,
crossing herself, began to pray aloud. A little girl with her ragged
skirt full of slimy seaweed began to sob despairingly, lugging her
soaked burden close to the man who carried the light. Somebody said:
"The thing ran out towards the sea." Another voice exclaimed: "And the
sea is coming back! Look at the spreading puddles. Do you hear--you
woman--there! Get up!" Several voices cried together. "Yes, let us
be off! Let the accursed thing go to the sea!" They moved on, keeping
close round the light. Suddenly a man swore loudly. He would go and
see what was the matter. It had been a woman's voice. He would go.
There were shrill protests from women--but his high form detached
itself from the group and went off running. They sent an unanimous
call of scared voices after him. A word, insulting and mocking, came
back, thrown at them through the darkness. A woman moaned. An old man
said gravely: "Such things ought to be left alone." They went on
slower, shuffling in the yielding sand and whispering to one another
that Millot feared nothing, having no religion, but that it would end
badly some day.
Susan met the incoming tide by the Raven islet and stopped, panting,
with her feet in the water. She heard the murmur and felt the cold
caress of the sea, and, calmer now, could see the sombre and confused
mass of the Raven on one side and on the other the long white streak
of Molene sands that are left high above the dry bottom of Fougere Bay
at every ebb. She turned round and saw far away, along the starred
background of the sky, the ragged outline of the coast. Above it,
nearly facing her, appeared the tower of Ploumar Church; a slender and
tall pyramid shooting up dark and pointed into the clustered glitter
of the stars. She felt strangely calm. She knew where she was, and
began to remember how she came there--and why. She peered into the
smooth obscurity near her. She was alone. There was nothing there;
nothing near her, either living or dead.
The tide was creeping in quietly, putting out long impatient arms of
strange rivulets that ran towards the land between ridges of sand.
Under the night the pools grew bigger with mysterious rapidity, while
the great sea, yet far off, thundered in a regular rhythm along the
indistinct line of the horizon. Susan splashed her way back for a few
yards without being able to get clear of the water that murmured
tenderly all around and, suddenly, with a spiteful gurgle, nearly took
her off her feet. Her heart thumped with fear. This place was too big
and too empty to die in. To-morrow they would do with her what they
liked. But before she died she must tell them--tell the gentlemen in
black clothes that there are things no woman can bear. She must
explain how it happened. . . . She splashed through a pool, getting
wet to the waist, too preoccupied to care. . . . She must explain. "He
came in the same way as ever and said, just so: 'Do you think I am
going to leave the land to those people from Morbihan that I do not
know? Do you? We shall see! Come along, you creature of mischance!'
And he put his arms out. Then, Messieurs, I said: 'Before
God--never!' And he said, striding at me with open palms: 'There is no
God to hold me! Do you understand, you useless carcase. I will do what
I like.' And he took me by the shoulders. Then I, Messieurs, called to
God for help, and next minute, while he was shaking me, I felt my long
scissors in my hand. His shirt was unbuttoned, and, by the candle-
light, I saw the hollow of his throat. I cried: 'Let go!' He was
crushing my shoulders. He was strong, my man was! Then I thought: No!
. . . Must I? . . . Then take!--and I struck in the hollow place. I
never saw him fall. . . . The old father never turned his head. He is
deaf and childish, gentlemen. . . . Nobody saw him fall. I ran out
. . . Nobody saw. . . ."
She had been scrambling amongst the boulders of the Raven and now
found herself, all out of breath, standing amongst the heavy shadows
of the rocky islet. The Raven is connected with the main land by a
natural pier of immense and slippery stones. She intended to return
home that way. Was he still standing there? At home. Home! Four
idiots and a corpse. She must go back and explain. Anybody would
understand. . . .
Below her the night or the sea seemed to pronounce distinctly--
"Aha! I see you at last!"
She started, slipped, fell; and without attempting to rise, listened,
terrified. She heard heavy breathing, a clatter of wooden clogs. It
stopped.
"Where the devil did you pass?" said an invisible man, hoarsely.
She held her breath. She recognized the voice. She had not seen him
fall. Was he pursuing her there dead, or perhaps . . . alive?
She lost her head. She cried from the crevice where she lay huddled,
"Never, never!"
"Ah! You are still there. You led me a fine dance. Wait, my beauty, I
must see how you look after all this. You wait. . . ."
Millot was stumbling, laughing, swearing meaninglessly out of pure
satisfaction, pleased with himself for having run down that
fly-by-night. "As if there were such things as ghosts! Bah! It took an
old African soldier to show those clodhoppers. . . . But it was
curious. Who the devil was she?"
Susan listened, crouching. He was coming for her, this dead man. There
was no escape. What a noise he made amongst the stones. . . . She saw
his head rise up, then the shoulders. He was tall--her own man! His
long arms waved about, and it was his own voice sounding a little
strange . . . because of the scissors. She scrambled out quickly,
rushed to the edge of the causeway, and turned round. The man stood
still on a high stone, detaching himself in dead black on the glitter
of the sky.
"Where are you going to?" he called, roughly.
She answered, "Home!" and watched him intensely. He made a striding,
clumsy leap on to another boulder, and stopped again, balancing
himself, then said--
"Ha! ha! Well, I am going with you. It's the least I can do. Ha! ha!
ha!"
She stared at him till her eyes seemed to become glowing coals that
burned deep into her brain, and yet she was in mortal fear of making
out the well-known features. Below her the sea lapped softly against
the rock with a splash continuous and gentle.
The man said, advancing another step--
"I am coming for you. What do you think?"
She trembled. Coming for her! There was no escape, no peace, no hope.
She looked round despairingly. Suddenly the whole shadowy coast, the
blurred islets, the heaven itself, swayed about twice, then came to a
rest. She closed her eyes and shouted--
"Can't you wait till I am dead!"
She was shaken by a furious hate for that shade that pursued her in
this world, unappeased even by death in its longing for an heir that
would be like other people's children.
"Hey! What?" said Millot, keeping his distance prudently. He was
saying to himself: "Look out! Some lunatic. An accident happens soon."
She went on, wildly--
"I want to live. To live alone--for a week--for a day. I must explain
to them. . . . I would tear you to pieces, I would kill you twenty
times over rather than let you touch me while I live. How many times
must I kill you--you blasphemer! Satan sends you here. I am damned
too!"
"Come," said Millot, alarmed and conciliating. "I am perfectly alive!
. . . Oh, my God!"
She had screamed, "Alive!" and at once vanished before his eyes, as if
the islet itself had swerved aside from under her feet. Millot rushed
forward, and fell flat with his chin over the edge. Far below he saw
the water whitened by her struggles, and heard one shrill cry for help
that seemed to dart upwards along the perpendicular face of the rock,
and soar past, straight into the high and impassive heaven.
Madame Levaille sat, dry-eyed, on the short grass of the hill side,
with her thick legs stretched out, and her old feet turned up in their
black cloth shoes. Her clogs stood near by, and further off the
umbrella lay on the withered sward like a weapon dropped from the
grasp of a vanquished warrior. The Marquis of Chavanes, on horseback,
one gloved hand on thigh, looked down at her as she got up
laboriously, with groans. On the narrow track of the seaweed-carts
four men were carrying inland Susan's body on a hand-barrow, while
several others straggled listlessly behind. Madame Levaille looked
after the procession. "Yes, Monsieur le Marquis," she said
dispassionately, in her usual calm tone of a reasonable old woman.
"There are unfortunate people on this earth. I had only one child.
Only one! And they won't bury her in consecrated ground!"
Her eyes filled suddenly, and a short shower of tears rolled down the
broad cheeks. She pulled the shawl close about her. The Marquis leaned
slightly over in his saddle, and said--
"It is very sad. You have all my sympathy. I shall speak to the Cure.
She was unquestionably insane, and the fall was accidental. Millot
says so distinctly. Good-day, Madame."
And he trotted off, thinking to himself: "I must get this old woman
appointed guardian of those idiots, and administrator of the farm. It
would be much better than having here one of those other Bacadous,
probably a red republican, corrupting my commune."
