Marie Claire
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Marguerite Audoux >> Marie Claire
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I had never seen Eugene 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 takes
Away my precious life,
You'll know I died because you were
Another fellow's wife.[1]
Pauline always used to treat Eugene 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 Eugene 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. Eugene 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 maladresse
Un boulet m'emportera
Allons adieu chere maitresse
Je 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-Aimee, 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 Eugene
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 Eugene 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 Eugene
what M. Tirande had said to me. Eugene, 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, Eugene 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 Eugene'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 Eugene 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, Eugene 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 Eugene 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 Eugene 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 Eugene and Martine. None of us
spoke. Every now and then Eugene 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.
Eugene 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 Eugene and Martine were
walking hand in hand.
PART III
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 Eugene'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 Eugene. 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. Eugene 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 Adele. 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. Adele 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-Aimee, 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-Aimee 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-Aimee'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 Eugene 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-Aimee!" 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.
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