Colas Breugnon/Chapter 5
V
BELETTE
Three months ago I got an order from the château of Asnois for a dresser and a chest, but I would not begin to work on them until I was able to see the room and the place where they were to stand; for according to my idea, furniture is like wall fruit. A good apple comes from a good tree; and there is no use in telling me that a beautiful thing is beautiful no matter where it is, like a wayside Venus, who sells herself to the highest bidder. True art is an expression of our inmost selves; it is the spirit of home and of the fireside, our domestic deity; and to know him you must know the house where he dwells. He is so made for man, and his work meant to fulfil and complete man's existence, that nothing can be really beautiful unless it is in its proper setting.
I set off early, then, to see where my chest was to stand, and what with the walk and my dinner, it took up nearly half a day; but man must eat to live, and everything was so much to my mind, that I was in the best of spirits when I at last started back towards home. The path to Clamecy ran straight enough, but when I came to the crossroads, I could not help glancing down a by-way, which went wandering across the meadows, between the blossoming hedges.
Said I to myself, "How nice it would be to leave the stupid highroad, and follow that little path; the day is yet young, and anyhow it would never do to get home ahead of the sun, and early or late the wife will have something to say to me. . . . I really must go a step or two farther, and have a look at that dear little pear tree; surely those are not snowflakes? no, of course not, they are the white petals blown off by the wind. Listen to the birds! and the tinkling of the brook, sliding along under the grass, like a kitten chasing a ball. . . . I have a great mind to follow it, and see if the roots of this oak will not stop it; where can it have gone? well, upon my word! it has squeezed its way under the big gouty knees of yonder elm,—did you ever see such impudence? I might as well go and find out where this path does lead."
It was all very well to saunter along thus at the heels of my vagrant shadow, but in the back of my head I knew perfectly well where that beguiling footway would take me. Like Ulysses, I tried to play the hypocrite with myself, but the truth is, that I made up my mind where I meant to go from the moment I left the gates of Asnois. An old flame of mine lived at a mill down in these parts, and I had a fancy to go and surprise her,—or perhaps surprise myself, who knows? It was many a long day since I had set eyes on Céline, or "Belette" as they called her, and the chances were that her saucy face would be changed out of knowledge. Ah! Belette, I am not afraid of you now! Those little teeth of yours can no longer hurt this poor old dried-up heart! Perhaps the teeth are gone too? I can see them now, and hear your charming laughter! What a fool she did make of you, Breugnon; you were a mere toy in those hands of hers; but, after all, why not? if she could get some fun out of such a country blockhead as I was then. I learned the noble art of wood-carving from Master Médard Lagneau, and I can see myself now leaning over the wall of his place, gazing with my mouth open. The wall ran between the yard where we worked and a big kitchen garden, planted with lettuce, strawberries, pink radishes, cucumbers, and melons; and there, at all hours of the day, I could see a tall active slip of a girl, balancing two great watering pots in her strong brown hands, as she carefully sprinkled the thirsty borders. She wore a coarse chemise of unbleached linen, which showed her bare arms and long throat; her feet too were bare, and her short skirt was tucked up to her knees, which were round and strong like a boy's. The first thing you noticed about her was the heavy mass of her twisted reddish hair. I literally could not take my eyes off her as she came and went emptying her watering pots, going back to fill them at the well, carrying them steadily and carefully along the narrow paths, where her long bare toes felt their own way cleverly in the damp earth between the strawberry plants. She did not seem to know that I was there, keeping steadily on with her work; but when she came close, all at once she turned her head and shot a look at me. Ouch!—I can still feel the hook in my gills, and the net around me. "A woman's eye catches the fly," as the proverb has it. I struggled of course, but what was the use? There was the silly fly on the wall, with his wings stuck together.
She paid no more attention to me, and squatted down on her heels to plant her cabbage, but from time to time she stole a look to make sure that her prey was still there. There was no use in my saying to myself, "She is trying to make a fool of you, my lad!" I could see her snickering, and that made me grin too:—what an ass I must have looked! At last up she jumped, ran across the garden, came back, stuck her feet wide apart over the edge of the border, caught at a floating spray of bloom, and said, waving her arm at me, "Another good fellow gone!" As she spoke she thrust her flower in the front of her dress. "That's where I should like to be," said I, for though I may have been a fool at that age, I was no laggard in an affair of this kind.
She put her arms akimbo and burst out laughing. "Not for the likes of you," cried she. "Greedy!" . . . That was the beginning of my acquaintance with the pretty gardener Belette, on a warm August evening.
The nickname of "Weasel" suited her long body, with the small head and pointed nose, and wide prominent mouth; just the mouth to crack nuts and hearts, and made too for laughter. Oh, her eyes! dark blue like thunder-clouds, and her wildcat smiling lips!—What chance had the poor prey, once in her toils?
I did very little work after this, but spent most of my time gawking over the wall, till Master Lagneau would come behind, and dislodge me with a vigorous kick. Belette got tired of me sometimes, and would tell me to stop staring at her and get out; but I often told her, with a wink, that you cannot know either a woman or a melon just by looking. How much I should have liked to try a slice of her! But perhaps another fruit would have served my turn then equally well; for I was at the age when a man could fall in love with the eleven thousand virgins. Did I love Belette really?—there are times when a boy like me will love anybody;—but no, Breugnon, that is all humbug, and you know it; your first love is the real article, your fate, marked out for you by the stars in their courses, and it is perhaps because I missed my destiny that my whole life long I have gone unsatisfied.
We understood one another at half a word; though we did nothing but tease. Both of us had glib tongues, and I would give her back as good as she sent, quick as lightning. Sometimes we nearly died of laughing, and when she thought that she had got the better of me, she would throw herself down and roll over and over on the ground with joy, among her beets and onions. She would come too and stand under my wall, and talk to me in the warm twilight evenings. How well I remember her once, as she stood there laughing, her bright eyes looking into mine,—she could see my heart at the bottom of them,—and I can see her now, as she reached up and pulled down a branch of the cherry tree, the ripe fruit resting like jewels on her hair, and then she did not pick the cherries, she just bit off the flesh of them, leaving the stones on the stem. Ah! eternal eager youth, with your lips at the fountain!—When I have been carving on a panel, how many a time since have I drawn the lines of her beautiful arms, her breast, her throat with the head thrown back, her full rich mouth! . . . I bent over the wall, and drew the branch towards me, putting the moist stones to my lips, where I could still feel the touch of hers.
On Sundays we walked over to Beaugy, and there we used to dance; though I was a perfect stick at it in spite of what they say, that love lends wings, and would give grace to the very bean-poles. She was always at me, and never for a moment did we cease our sparring; she liked to laugh at my long crooked nose, my big mouth like an oven, my scrubby beard, and all the rest of it. They say we are made in the likeness of God, but I hope not, for His sake. . . . Belette at least never stopped laughing at my queer looks, and I did my best to get even.
This kind of thing went on till we both of us took fire. I shall never forget the vintage that year; Belette and I worked side by side, bent double among the poles, our heads nearly touching, and sometimes as I stripped the vines my hand would brush against her, and then she would rear up like a young colt and give me a smart slap, or squeeze a bunch of grapes in my face. Naturally I retorted with another, till the red juice ran down over her sunburned bosom. You never saw such a little devil as she was, but I could not catch her off her guard. We always kept a wary eye on each other, for she knew well enough what I was after; but she always seemed to be saying, "Don't you wish you may get it?" On my side, I was just like a cat with his eyes half shut, watching a mouse and ready to pounce at the right moment. "Wait till I catch you, my lady!" I thought.
One afternoon in this very month of May,—our summers must have been hotter in those days,—the air was like an oven, a furnace seven times heated; for hours black threatening clouds had been coming up, big with the storm which still held off, so that we melted under the heat, and the very tools stuck to our fingers. Belette had been singing in her garden, but after a while I could neither see nor hear her, till at last I caught sight of her sitting on a stone under the shed roof, asleep; her lips parted, her head leaning back against the door-post, one arm resting on the big water-can, as if she were overcome by sudden lassitude. There she lay, half exposed, defenseless like Danaë, and I her Jupiter!—I dropped over the wall, crushing the cabbages and lettuce in my haste, and took her in my arms, putting my mouth to hers. How sweet she was! all warm and half-asleep! She seemed to yield, and returned my kisses, but without opening her blue eyes.—My blood burned in my veins, and I strained her to my breast with delight; at last, the ripe fruit had dropped into my longing mouth!—but in spite of my joy, some strange scruple now restrained me; I don't know what queer notions held me back,—great fool that I was!—but I felt that I loved her too much,—I could not take advantage of her so,—half asleep, not knowing what she did. My proud beauty! I would not have her unconsenting, and so,—I tore myself away from my happiness, untwining our linked arms and our lips, not without trouble, for man is fire, and woman tow: but I left her trembling, like that other simpleton you have heard of, who conquered Antiope. I too conquered, that is, I took to my heels:—I fairly blush when I think of it, at thirty-five years' distance. Foolish boy! yes, but what would I not give to be capable now of such folly?
From that time Belette treated me as if she were possessed of the devil, never twice was she in the same mind; one day she would launch some insult at me, or ignore my very existence, and the next she would meet me with languishing sheep's eyes, and cajoling laughter. When my back was turned, she would hide behind a tree, and hurl lumps of sod at my neck, or hit me on the nose with a plum; and worse than all were her goings on with any man that she could pick up, when we were out on Sundays. She took it into her head, — chiefly to annoy me, I do believe, — to flirt with Quiriace Pinon, a great chum of mine. He and I were like Orestes and Pylades, you never saw one without the other, and wherever there was anything going on, a fair, a fight, or a wedding, there we were in the midst of it. He was short and thickset, as sturdy as an oak, a good straightforward worker, and as for friendship! it would have gone hard with any one who interfered with me when he was by.
Belette singled him out from all the rest of her admirers, knowing well enough what it would mean to me; and she had no trouble at all with him, you may be sure. — A few smiles and glances out of those eyes of hers were quite enough to do his business. What son of Adam can resist the wiles of these serpents? She would put on her innocent unconscious air, turn her long neck and glance at him under her fringed eyelashes, flash her white teeth, lick her red lips with her little pointed tongue, then walk away, her whole supple body swaying as she moved.
Pinon lost his head completely, and so Belette soon had the two of us stuck up on the wall, watching her every step. She drew us both on, so it was not long before we were ready to fly at each other's throats; but when she thought the thing had gone far enough, she would throw a little cold water on the pair of us. Much as this last trick angered me, I could not help laughing at her, clever little cat! but it drove Pinon half out of his wits; — (a joke was always a sealed book to him, but he would roar at one that no one else could make head or tail of.) — When she was cold to him, he would lose his temper, stamp and swear at her like a madman, and she rather liked this rough sort of wooing, so different from my way with her.
She and I were really of the same Gallic breed — there was much more affinity between us than there was between her and Pinon, who was simply a ramping, stamping sort of a brute; but from pure caprice, or perhaps to vex me, she showed him the greatest favor, smiling at him with lips and eyes full of the sweetest promises; but when it came to keeping them, and he was ready to burst with pride in his conquest, then she would turn and march off, leaving him in the lurch.
All this was droll enough to me, but Pinon could not see the joke, and would turn on me like a tiger, because, forsooth! I was taking his girl away from him! It came to such a pass, that he actually told me to take myself out of the way; I replied that the very same words had been on the tip of my tongue.
"Well then, I shall have to punch your head for you!"
"It may come to that," said I, "but I should hate to do it."
"Me too," said he. "Now, Breugnon, one cock is enough in a farmyard; do you get out of this, like a sensible fellow."
"By all means," said I, "only you are the one to quit the premises, she was mine before you ever saw her."
This made him furious, and he called me a lowdown liar, and swore that Belette was his, and that I should never touch a hair of her head.
"Do you ever look at yourself in the glass, my poor friend? " said I. "She is meat for your masters, in other words for me, so go back where you came from and dig turnips."
"Listen to me, Breugnon," said he. "She loves me best." — I shook my head. "Will you leave it to her?" he persisted, "and promise to get out if she takes me?"
"Agreed!" said I, and held out my hand.
It is one thing to tell a girl to choose, but it is quite another to make her do it; there is much more fun for her in keeping two suitors on the string; so she merely laughed in our faces, and went off, when we told her of our bargain. We were really fond of one another, but now, there was nothing else for it, we had to fight. Back we went to the shop, and pulled our coats off.
"Hold on a second," said Pinon, and gave me a great kiss on both cheeks. Then we went at it in earnest, for when it comes to real fighting, friendship has to go to the wall, and in five minutes Pinon had nearly knocked my head off, while I battered at his stomach, till the blood literally poured off both of us. How it would have ended, no one knows, for by this time we were as savage as a couple of bulldogs; but my Master Lagneau and some of the neighbors heard the row and rushed in. A hard time they had to pull us apart, and at last Lagneau had even to take his horsewhip to us, but they finally made us let go, and a sight we were to behold when it was over! At this crisis the third party made his appearance; he was a miller named Jean eyes like a wild boar's, and fat puffy cheeks. He laughed at the pair of us; and told us we were fools to knock each other about for a little hussy like that, who was only amusing herself at our expense, just for the inn of trailing a pack of lovers at her heels.
"I will tell you what," said, he; "she is only making game of you; so now, just shake hands and go off somewhere together, that will turn the laugh on her, and when she finds that you are gone out of her reach, she will be forced to choose, one way or the other, and let the best man win! Now then ! get out with you! and the sooner the better. You may rely on me while you are gone, to keep an eye on the lady, and if anything new turns up, you shall know it. Come on and have a drink, and forget all about it!"
We did drink, I can tell you, — my word, but we were thirsty! — and that very night we started off together for nowhere in particular; proud enough of ourselves, God knows why! and with hearts full of gratitude towards our friend the miller, who laughed when he took leave of us till his little eyes almost disappeared under his fat eyelids.
The next morning, though we did not like to admit it, we felt a little less cocky — and we sat and thought of this precious plan of attacking a place by running away from it, and as the sun rose higher in the heavens, our respect for ourselves sank lower, till by nightfall we were watching each other like two cats, though we still kept up a show of indifference. In the back of our minds was the notion of stealing off alone to the village, but neither of us dared to take his eye off the other for a second. Each tried all sorts of unsuccessful dodges to get rid of the other man, but finally we lay down on our straw mattresses, pretending to fall asleep and snore loudly, though love and fleas chased rest from our eyelids.
At last Pinon could bear it no longer, and jumped up, declaring that he was going back. "All right then," said I, "I'm with you!"
It took us a whole day to walk home; but we got there about sunset, and hid in the woods till dark, as we were not particularly anxious for any one to see us, — it would have been rather awkward, and then we wanted to surprise Belette; — we pictured her in tears, reproaching herself, sighing for her lost lover; — which one? — but you can guess what answer each of us gave to that question.
Our hearts beat fast as we stole down to the end of her garden; the moonlight shone full on the cottage, and what do you think I saw hanging on an apple-tree just outside of her open window? Not an apple, no, it was a hat belonging to Giffard, the miller!
There is no need to dwell on what followed, though of course every one but ourselves would have thought it killingly funny. I stayed where I was, but Quiriace made one jump, swung himself up the tree, ran along the branch, and leaped in at the window.
In a moment the air was rent with screams, curses, yells, and vituperations, noise of breaking furniture, smashed china and glass, groans, blows, shrieks, and growls, as if a cage full of wild beasts were fighting. As you may imagine, the row soon woke up the entire neighborhood; I did not wait to see the end of it, but made off as fast as I could, half laughing, — for it was funny when you came to think of it, — but with the tears running down my cheeks all the same.
"You are well out of that. Colas my boy," said I to myself, but in my heart I was not so sure of it. I tried to laugh at all the row-de-dow, and mimic the girl, Quiriace, and the miller. " But oh! Belette," cried I, "this will break my heart!"
I didn't really know if I was glad or sorry, but on the whole I came near to regretting my escape; for if I had married her, and she had betrayed me? At least she would have been mine, and love is well worth any price you must pay for it.
For at least a month I was drawn to and fro between rage and relief; while the whole village split its sides laughing at me, and sometimes, when the thought of Belette came over me I could have dashed my head against the wall. Fortunately such feelings do not last; we are not meant to die for love, but to live by it; and then you do not often find a hero of romance in Burgundy; life is too sweet to us for that; and since our permission was not asked before we were born, we feel that we may as well make the best of it now that we are here. We need the world, or the world needs us, I was never quite sure which; but at all events we always hold on till the last gasp, draining every drop of the cup, and when it is empty, we can fill it up again from our bounteous hillsides. No native of Burgundy is in a hurry to die; but when it comes to suffering, we can bear it as well as the best.
Well, for as much as six months, I was deucedly unhappy; but time flows along, and sweeps our sorrows away with it. Now that it is all over, I can find consolation, but oh, my Belette! if only I had not missed you! — and that pig-faced miller, with his flour bags! to think that all these years she has belonged to him! — thirty years ago he married her!
They tell me that he began to neglect her almost from the first day, (he was just the kind of animal that bolts his food, and so gets no flavor out of it); and they say too that he would not have married her at all, if Pinon had not caught him that night, and forced him, so to speak, into a wedding ring, which was too tight for him and her too; for when things were not to his liking, he naturally took it out of his wife. So there was an end of one, two and three, Pinon, Belette, and poor old Breugnon, who has been trying, ever since, to make a joke of it. . . . I could scarcely believe my eyes when at a turn in the path, I saw her house not twenty yards away; was it possible that I had been walking for hours among those old memories? There was the red roof, and the white walls of the cottage, half covered with the rich foliage of a grapevine, its thick stem winding upwards like a serpent. The door stood open; before it in the shade of a walnut tree was a stone trough running over with clear water. A woman was stooping over it and my knees gave way under me when I saw her again after all these years. My first impulse was to run, but she had seen me, and as she dipped her pail in the trough she still kept her eyes on me, and I felt that she knew who I was, though she was far too proud to show it. The next moment the bucket slipped from her fingers as she straightened herself up, and then she called out, "Better late than never!"
"That sounds as if you had been waiting for me!"
"What an idea! I don't believe that I have given you one thought in twenty years."
"Nor I either," said I, "but all the same, it does me good to see you."
"And me too," she answered, crossing her wet arms, and looking at me as I stood there in my shirt-sleeves. Our eyes met and yet we could not seem to look each other in the face; between us the water filled and ran over the rim of the bucket, and at last she spoke again, "Come in and sit down a minute."
"I must be getting on, thank you," I said, "as I am rather in a hurry."
"Slow to come, and quick to go," said she. "I don't see why you came at all, then?"
"I was only taking a stroll about here," said I calmly.
"Money and time must be cheap where you come from."
"Oh ! when I get an idea in my head I never count the cost."
"The same old looney still I see!" said she.
laughing, and "Once a fool, always a fool!" was my answer. We walked slowly in, and she closed the yard gate behind us, shutting us in alone, among the hens which clucked about our feet. She crossed over and shut, — or maybe opened, — the big doors of the barn, and spoke a word to the watch-dog, but I saw that it was to cover her embarrassment, and that all the men were off in the fields. I talked as fast as I could, about farming, chicken raising, pigeons, ducks, pigs, and all the creatures that ever came out of the ark; but all at once she stopped me.
"Breugnon! "My breath came short as I looked at her. "Breugnon," she said again, and then, "Kiss me!" My lips were on hers, before the words were well off them, and though at our age there is not much to be got out of kissing, it is always a pleasure, and it fairly brought the tears to my eyes to feel her soft wrinkled cheeks against mine.
"Old silly! " said I to myself; "what is there to cry for?"
"You are as bristly as a hedgehog!" she said, laughing.
"Excuse me! I would have given myself an extra shave this morning if I had known the pleasure that was in store for me, but it is a fact that my beard was softer thirty years ago when I would, and you wouldn't, you Httle minx of a shepherdess!"
"Do you ever think now of those old times?"
"No, I have forgotten all about them." We laughed, but neither could look at the other.
"You are something like me," she said. "As proud as a peacock, as stubborn as a mule, and what is more, I can see you are the kind that will never grow old. You were no beauty in your best days, my friend, and when a man has nothing, you can't take it away from him; perhaps your nose may be rather thicker, and you have plenty of wrinkles, but on the whole you are not much the worse for wear. I always say that the main thing is to keep the hair on one's head, and yours is not white yet, and as thick as ever."
"Numskull keeps the thatch full," said I.
"You men are so aggravating, you never let anything bother you, but we poor creatures grow old, because we have all the weight thrown on our shoulders; see what a wreck I am! once I was like a fresh peach to look at, and to touch too, if you remember? Such hair as I had! such skin, such a figure, and where has it all gone now? Own up now, you would not have known me if you had met me in the street?"
"I would have known you anywhere out of all the women in the world, with my eyes shut."
"Perhaps so, but if they were open? I have lost teeth, my cheeks have fallen in, I have red eyes, and a sharp nose; while as for my throat and all the rest of it, I am nothing but an old meal sack, and that's the truth!"
"In my eyes you are always young."
"You must be blind, then."
"No, Belette, my sight at least is as keen as ever. Do you remember? You were called that because you were like a little weasel, and here you are, run to earth, after all your doublings and turnings, and you still have your little sharp nose, and bright eyes like your namesake, shining up at me out of your burrow."
"It's safe enough now, at any rate, for the old fox to come near me. Well, love has not made you any thinner."
"Why should it?" said I, laughing. "The creature has to be fed!"
"Perhaps it would do as well to give him something to drink," said she, so we went into the farmhouse, and sat down at the table. The Lord knows what it was that she placed before me! I was too much taken up with other things to notice, but all the time I plied a good knife and fork as usual, while she sat opposite with her elbows on the table, and when our eyes met, she gave me a smile.
"Are you feeling a little better?"
"Stomach empty, heart heavy, belly full, heart light! that's what the old song tells us," said I. She was silent, but her big clever mouth twitched at the corners, and I kept on talking of the first thing that came into my head, while we looked at one another, and thought of all that had passed between us.
"Breugnon," said she, at last," I can tell you, now that it does not matter, it was you I was in love with."
"I knew it all the time," said I calmly.
"And if you knew so much, why did you say nothing about it?"
"Because, of course, you would have been just perverse enough to contradict me."
"What difference would that have made, if you had been sure of the contrary? You kiss people's lips, not the words that come out of them!"
" Something more than words used to come out of your lips, on occasion. — Do you remember that night we caught you with the miller? "
"It was all your fault," she said, " or mine, if you like to say so, but, Colas, you that have so much penetration, did you know one thing? I took him out of pure spite, because you went off that time with Pinon? I had been angry with you for a long time, ever since that evening, — I don't know if you recollect it, — when you despised me."
"I? Never in the world!"
"Yes, you, surely you remember one evening when I fell asleep in the garden, and you came and picked me up, but dropped me like a hot potato?"
"Belette," said I earnestly, "let me tell you all about it."
"Don't trouble yourself," said she, "but how if it were to do over again?"
"I think that I should do just the same."
"What a mutton-head it is !" cried she. "But on my soul! I believe that is the reason why I loved you, — still I thought I would have some fun with you, after that; you deserved to suffer a little, and who could have thought that you would be fool enough to go away from the hook, instead of swallowing it?"
"Much obliged!" said I; "but hooks have sharp points to them."
She laughed, and looked at me in the old way under her lashes. Well, when I heard of your fight with that other blockhead, whose name I have forgotten, (I was down by the river washing my clothes, when I heard some one say that he was tearing you to pieces), I dropped the basket and let everything float away in the water, and ran off just as I was in my bare feet, trampling on everybody in my way. I was all out of breath, but I wanted to call out that I loved you, that I could not bear to have that great brute bite you to pieces, that I wanted a whole husband not the remains of one; — but when I got there the fight was over, and my fine gentlemen were guzzling in the tavern, on the best of terms. Then the lamb and the wolf ran away together, leaving me in such a fury! It seems ridiculous now when I look at you, but at that moment I should have liked to tear the skin off your back; and since I could not get at you to punish you, I punished myself. In my rage I took up with the first man who came along; — the miller. Revenge is sweet, but I swear that it was you that I thought of all the time when — "
"1 know what you mean," said I.
"Well," she continued, "I kept thinking that I hoped Breugnon's ears would burn when he heard it, that it served him right, that I wished that he would come back now; and you did come back, rather sooner than I intended and, — you know what happened, so there I was, tied for life to my donkey, and here we are both of us."
After a pause I said, "I hope at least that you get on pretty well with him?"
"About as well as he does with me," she answered, with a shrug of her shoulders.
I could not help saying, "Your home must be Paradise."
"You've hit the mark," said she, laughing.
After that we changed the conversation, and talked of everything on earth; farms, cattle, and children, but try as we would, we could not keep away from the old subject. I thought perhaps that it would interest her to hear all about me and mine; but I soon found that she was too much of a woman not to have known long ago all that I could tell her; so we went on from one thing to another, up and down, in and out, just for the sake of talking. We were both great at puns, and jokes of that kind; and it would have taken your breath away to hear the cross fire of wit between us; and quick! — we fairly snatched the words out of each other's mouths, and laughed till the tears ran down our cheeks.
All at once six strokes sounded from the clock in the corner. "Six already!" said I; "it is time that I was going."
"Plenty of time," said she.
"I suppose your husband will be here in a few moments," said I, "and to tell the truth, I am not so very anxious to meet him."
"That's just the way I feel," she answered.
I looked out of the kitchen window at the meadows, all golden now with the rays of the setting sun which shone between the long grass blades. Down by the stream two cows were standing in the water, and a little bird hopped about on the shining pebbles. A black horse, with a star on his forehead, and a dapple gray were standing there; the black with his head resting on the back of the other. The fresh scent of hay and lilacs blew through the open door; the room was dark and the least bit musty; and I could just sniff the good cherry brandy from the mug before me. "You have a nice place of it here," I could not help saying.
"How much nicer if you had been in it all this time " she said, putting her hand over mine as it lay on the table. It made me almost sorry that I had come, for of course I did not want her to be unhappy.
"Belette," said I, "perhaps on the whole things are better as they are; we get along well enough like this for an hour or two, but if we had had to spend our lives together, you know that there would have been trouble. Surely you must have heard that I have turned out rather badly: a dreamer, a talker, always dawdling about, backbiting and quarreling, and sticking my nose into other folk's business. I am an idler too, and drink more than is good for me; all this would have made you unhappy, and then you would have taken up with some one else; it makes my hair stand on end only to think of it! So you see all is really for the best."
She heard me to the end, and then said seriously: "Yes, I know you are a perfect good-for-nothing, (she did not believe a word of it); probably you would have beaten me, and perhaps I should have taken a lover, but if that was our destiny, it might as well have come to us through each other." I nodded my head." You don't seem to be of my mind?"
"I am, of course," said I, "but, you see that kind of happiness was not for us; so now, Belette, there is no use in self-reproaches, or regrets either. It would have been all the same by this time, whatever we had done; we are at the end of our string now, you know, and love or no love, it is all past like a tale that is told."
"Liar!" said she, and I felt that she spoke the truth, even as I looked at her.
I kissed her once more, and left her; she leaned against the door-post looking after me, under the great spreading branches of the walnut-tree, but I did not turn my head till I got round the corner, where I was sure that I could not see her; then I stopped to take breath a minute, and enjoy the scent of the honeysuckle. Down in the meadows I could see the white oxen still grazing as I left the path and took a short cut up the hillside and through the vines, until I got into the wood, where I turned aside for a moment. This was not the shortest way to continue my journey, but, there I stood for as much as half an hour, leaning against the trunk of a big oak tree, with my eyes fixed on vacancy, thinking, thinking. I could see the last red reflections of the western sky die out on the fresh vine leaves, which shone as if varnished, and hear the first faint note of a nightingale singing. I remembered an evening when my love and I were climbing side by side, up the steep vineyard, laughing and talking as we went, vigorous as the young life around us; but in the midst of our mirth, suddenly we fell silent, my hand closed on hers and there we stood motionless. Was it the sound of the Angelus, the evening breeze sighing about us, or the soft moonlight? From the shadowy vine leaves all at once arose the voice of a nightingale singing to keep himself awake, so that the treacherous tendrils might not twine about his poor little feet, and hold him prisoner, singing his eternal love-song; and I held Belette's hand, saying: "The tendrils are around us, and like them we cling to each other."
Then we went back down the hill again, still hand in hand, till we reached her cottage.
That was the last time that our fingers clung thus together, but the nightingale's note still sounds, the vine puts forth its branches, and love still twists young hearts in its supple tendrils. Night came on, as I stood there, gazing up at the silvered treetops. I could not tear myself away from that magic shadow which dimmed my homeward path, and even destroyed the wish to find it. Three times I tried, but found myself back where I started, so I gave it up, and took a lodging for that night at the sign of the Moonbeam. It was not a very good inn to sleep in: I lay there turning over the pages of my life, thinking of what I had done and left undone, and of the dreams from which I had awakened. In such dark hours what sadness rises from the depths of our hearts, what vanished hopes! — How far off seem the bright visions of early boyhood, and how poor and bare the reality looks. I thought of all my expectations, and the small results of my labors; of my wife, who certainly cannot be called either goodnatured or good-looking, of my sons who hardly seem to belong to me, with whom I have nothing in common: — of the faithlessness and folly of those around us, of our poor France torn by civil wars and religious persecutions; of my works of art scattered, life itself a handful of ashes, soon to be blown away by the breath of the Destroyer. — I put my face close up against the oak-tree, and lay there weeping quietly all among the big roots which cradled me like a father's arms; and I felt that he listened, and consoled me, for when, many hours later, I awoke, I found myself snoring with my nose in a tuft of moss, with nothing remaining of my troubles but a sore feeling in my heart, and a slight cramp in the calf of my leg.
The sun was just rising, and the tree above me was so full of birds that it dripped with their singing like a ripe bunch of grapes. The robin, the linnet, and my special favorite, the thrush, sang as if to bursting. — I like Master Thrush because he does not care for any weather, is the first to begin singing, and the last to stop, and like me, is always in a good humor. — They had all passed safely through the dangers of the night, which darkens their little lives every twenty-four hours, but as soon as the curtain begins to rise, and the first ray of dawn puts fresh color into life — Twee-ee, twee, twee, twee, tweet! with what sweet cries and transports of joy they greet the new day. In the glory of the morning all is forgotten, the dark night, the cold and the terrors. If only the birds could teach us the secret of their unalterable faith, through which they are born afresh with every dawning day!
All this merry whistling cheered me up wonderfully, and lying there on my back, I began to whistle too, the same tune; pretty soon from the wood where he was hiding came the cry of the cuckoo. I could lie still no longer, and jumped gaily to my feet; a hare near by followed my example, seeming to laugh at me as he passed; (you know he once split his lip open by too much laughter). Then at last I started off towards home, singing at the top of my lungs. All is good, the sky, the wood. Oh ! my friends the world is round, if you can't swim, you will be drowned. Throw open all the windows of your five senses, and let the great earth in. What is the use of sulking because everything does not come your way? The more you sulk, the less you get. I do not suppose that the Duke, the King, or even God Himself, has all the desire of his heart; ought I to groan and struggle, because I cannot exceed the limits set for me? Should I even be better off if I could get outside of them? No, no, I have nothing to complain of in this world, and I mean to stay here as long as I possibly can. Suppose that I had never been born? I really cannot bear to think of a world without Breugnon, or what is perhaps even worse, Breugnon without the world! A plague on all such nonsense! things are well enough as they are, and you may be sure that I shall hold tight to all that belongs to me.
When I got back to Clamecy, I was a whole day behind time, and you may guess what sort of a welcome I had, and also how little I minded. I just shut myself up in the garret, and put it all down on paper, as you see. There was no one there to listen, so if the fancy took me I could speak out loud, going over in retrospect all that happened, both pleasures and pains, and the pleasure that we get out of pain, for —
"That which breaks the heart to bear,
Is sometimes sweet to tell and hear."