Last Tales (14 page)

Of the people who had come in the carriages and on horseback, two ladies and a couple of nurses were occupied in bathing three young children in the river, and were talking loudly and laughing over it. The children’s clothes were strewn upon the grass, together with the ladies’ sunshades, thrown upside down, as fine as a flower bed. The young ladies in their slim bodices and voluminous skirts were themselves like peonies on slender stems, gracefully flung upside down upon the riverside.

The mother of the three children, a tall and willowy young woman with a narrow face and big starlike dark eyes, had tied a lace handkerchief round her head, and was holding her naked little son down in the water, and scolding a sturdy young woman in the peasant’s dress of the province, who was standing barefooted in the middle of the stream to receive the child. The little boy stared at his mother with her own big dark eyes, very skeptical about the undertaking, and wondering whether the women really did mean him to go.

The two bigger children, little girls of five and six, the one fair and the other dark, were running laughing down the river, their hair all done up in curl papers. The one of them was pulling off the shaggy dark pink flowers of the wild hemp that grew on the sides of the stream, the other was splashing down the river, from time to time throwing herself down flat on her stomach, and beating the water with her feet.

The second young lady, who for driving her smart phaeton had put on an elegant frock in tartan colors—which were highly fashionable—and cut somehow in the style of a young cavalier’s costume, walked alongside on the sward like a hen with ducklings, laughing at the children and holding her handkerchief to her mouth. She was a school friend of the
young mother, and the widow of a neighbor, and had come from her own house to join the party in the forest.

Meanwhile the two men of the party, who were the husband and the young brother of the dark lady, had walked together slowly to the farther end of the glade. They were neighbors, and had met here to discuss a question of their boundaries, which a change in the course of the river had slightly altered. The ladies had profited by the occasion to make a picnic in the woods. They were talking about poachers, and were waiting for the arrival of the old keeper whom they had summoned here to meet them. A gang of gypsies and poachers had for some time given them much trouble.

“If only,” said Philippe, the eldest, “we could get rid of the miller’s widow at Masse Bleue. I remember the first time I saw her, eight years ago, when she was only a child. I met her in the forest, and because she was such an uncommonly graceful child I tried to stop her and make her talk with me. It really seems to me now, when I think of the scene, that I was holding out my stick to a smooth little viper that was trying to get round it, indeed she was hissing at me, maneuvering to the right and the left.”

As he was speaking, the old keeper arrived, accompanied by the two spotted long-haired dogs. He had to cross the river; in the middle of it he took off his cap to them. They walked down together, and came from the mellow golden light of the glade into the green and cool shade of the forest. After they had discussed the question of the stream, Philippe addressed a few questions to the old man on the gypsies. The old servant’s face grew dark.

“If only,” he said, “we could get rid of the miller’s widow of Masse Bleue. It was a strange thing in the old miller to go and marry a gypsy girl, and the whole pack is thick as inkle-weavers. Where a snake gets its head in, it will soon get the whole body. They all know that she will shelter them if they get into trouble, and she has many guests down at the old mill.” He stole a glance at Philippe, not daring to give course
to his feelings about the gypsies, fed by a life-long struggle, for he knew that the young lady of the manor held a protecting hand over the tribe. The gypsies possessed a position of their own on the estate. Although they came and went, and had no real home, a certain section or tribe reckoned themselves, and were reckoned by the masters of Champmeslé, as belonging to their land. They gave much trouble, but still their lords would have allowed no one from the outside to interfere with them, as if they were a nuisance strictly their own.

“Tell me, Claude,” said Philippe thoughtfully, “do you believe that the people had anything to do with the disappearance of old Father Bernhard?”

The keeper wiped his face. “As God liveth, my lord,” he said, “they caused his death. But if you can say that they killed him, that the devil only knows. This is how it was: These people, who do not believe in the Lord, do no more wait for His hour, but when they are tired of their life, they just finish it, as it pleases themselves. They dig a grave in the forest, and before sunrise they go to it with their sons and friends, and some of them even blow airs on a flute, and they lie down in it. They spread a goatskin over their face, and as the sun comes up, the others fill in the earth. They will remain there, lying on the grave, without eating or drinking, with their face upon the sod, till the sun is down, for they do not believe that the old man in the grave will have died till then. Then they go back, and eat and drink, having buried their father, and think no more of it.

“Now it was said that they had buried, in this way, an old woman who came from a country in the East, and indeed I think that she was the grandmother of the miller’s widow. Father Bernhard also heard of it, and was terrified that such ungodliness should be going on in the parish.

“I said to him: ‘It is the same to me whether, of the people, the living are buried or the dead choose to walk about. As to
its happening in my forest, I do not like it, but many things go on in a forest which you may not like.’

“Then he went to the people himself. ‘Father Bernhard,’ they said to him, ‘you settled people chase us from one place to the other. You fine us and whip us and put us in prison and hang us. Do you now also grudge us a little earth to put into our mouths? Wait a little, and you will yourself come running after us, to ask us to bury you for the sake of your peace.’

“Shortly after this, as it was that time of the year, they all went away, and I did not see any one of them for a long time. Now you know, sir, that Father Bernhard, who was a pious man, was not learned, and had difficulty in reading. From this time he began to read all day, and to carry his book with him everywhere. One day, when I was out, it was the market day of Sarlat, and they were driving pigs to the fair. I found Father Bernhard at the side of the road, very pale and panting.

“ ‘Who do you think, Claude,’ he said, ‘just passed me? You would never guess. The swine of the Gadarenes,’ he said, ‘all the herd of them. Why, they may arise as well as other things in the Scripture, and the people have sent them here. The devils are in them still, but they are tired by now of being in swine, and are looking for someone to enter into. It is hard that an old man like me shall have to be, now, night and day in the mountain, cutting myself with stones.’

“I said nothing to him; what can one answer to things out of the Holy Book?

“Then, again, a fortnight later, I met him. ‘Will the people not be back soon, Claude?’ he asked me. ‘When will they be back?’

“Only the Thursday of that same week he was gone altogether, and nobody saw him after that. And you will remember, sir, that as he had last been seen near the mill, they swept the seine for him in the mill pond. There were then two little gypsy children, who stood by. ‘Sweep with a harrow,’
they said.” The old man stopped, swore an oath deep in his chest, and sighed.

“But Claude,” said his master, smiling a little, “they can have nothing to do with the misfortune of poor Father Bernhard. You tell me yourself that they were far away by that time.”

“Yes, they were certainly not here,” the old man said with deep bitterness. “They would take care about that, the crafty devils. But what is she about at night, at Masse Bleue, making the wheel turn, when she has no grain to grind? Is that right, to have the water and the wheel work for her for nothing, just making fools of them? Ask her yourself, my lord.”

Seeing the young woman in the tartan frock coming down toward them the men changed the subject of their talk, and the keeper again took off his cap.

“Am I interrupting an important debate?” she asked them, smiling. “Childerique sends me to ask you to take a glass of wine with us. You too, Claude.” She nodded to the old man.

They all walked up to where the young mother, having finished the task of bathing her children, still blushing from the effort, was instructing the servants to spread a tablecloth upon the turf, and to bring wine and glasses. Out of the carriage the groom lifted baskets of cherries, deep orange speckled with crimson, and rich black, through the skin of which the red blood shone. The children had milk and cake served to them upon a rug, a little way off, and were silent under the novelty of the treat.

The conversation of the party ran upon horses. They were all of them horse-breeders and traders, and keen equestrians. Childerique had given up hunting after the birth of her little boy; she had lost her own mother when she had been a baby, and would not have her children run any risk. But it had been a great sacrifice, and a horse was still to her what a bottle is to an old reformed drunkard; also her team of horses
was only a substitute. She was driving it today to break it in, in the hope of selling it well to a very rich neighbor, who had lately come to the district. The old nobility of the Province was much taken up with this man, as with the first person capable of making a fortune whom they had never met face to face. They founded many speculations upon him.

“Surely, Delphine,” said Childerique to her friend, “you could sell Paribanu to Monsieur Tutein for me. You are his formulary in the manners of good society, and have only to tell him that a true gentleman is ever known by his off thill-horse.”

The young widow blushed a little. “If I really have the honor,” she said, “of playing mentor to Monsieur Tutein’s social Telemaque, I shall have more conscience than to drive him straight into the arms of Circe. You must ask him to your birthday party at Champmeslé, and do the bewitching yourself.”

They began to discuss this party, which was to be given in honor of Childerique’s twenty-fifth birthday, and was to take place in a week. Childerique got up with her husband and went off to look at the children, leaving the two others to discuss various festival arrangements, which were to be a surprise for herself.

On the way she squeezed her husband’s arm a little, and said, low: “There is a bite.”

She was planning a match between her brother and her friend. That the young widow was five years older than the projected bridegroom she thought a fortunate circumstance. She was six years older than the boy herself, and would have disapproved and been jealous of any quite youthful feminine influence in his life. Her mind was running pleasantly on the prospect of presenting to the young couple a green set of Sèvres porcelain, which had come to Champmeslé nearly a hundred years ago with a young bride from Delphine’s own estate of Azat. She came near to communicating
her thought to her husband, but restrained herself, suspicious of his laughter at her old manner of anticipating the course of events.

The nurse was teasing the little boy by pushing him back on the rug every time he tried to get up; the child was hiccoughing with laughter, clear as a shrill little bell. At the sight of his father he gave such a shout of exultation as did, in the mast, Columbus’ watchman at the first sight of a new continent. The young man lifted him onto his shoulders, and the child looked down majestically at the green world below him, and at his big sisters, suddenly so very small.

Children whose parents have been very much in love develop a fearlessness toward life unknown to the breed shot in cold beds. They are indeed like those cherubs of old Relievi who are represented riding on lions, spurring the mighty lord of the desert with their little rosy heels, and pulling his dark mane. The dangerous powers of life have kept watch round their cradles; the lion has been their guardian and friend, and when they meet him again in life they recognize him, laughing, as their old playmate.

“What was Claude preaching about?” Childerique asked her husband. “I suppose it was of the gypsies.”

“There are so many of them just now,” said Philippe, “he wants us to chase them off the land, and tells me that Monsieur Tutein has done so on his estate.”

“Yes, Monsieur Tutein,” said she with disdain, “what does he know about them? Grandmama once told me that in ’93 they hid Grandpapa from the soldiers when he came back home to see his wife. At that time Monsieur Tutein’s people were very likely with the troops of the mountain. When I was a little girl I often wished to be a gypsy child and to wander about with them. Did you never want that?”

“But I did it,” said her husband, “when I was living in Canada, with my father. As a child, I was friendly with many of the red Indians, and went about with them for long whiles.
They were good people, kind to me, and taught me many things. Sometimes these people remind me of them. It is curious, for instance, about that young woman of the mill. I knew an old Indian woman, whose tribe believed her to be a witch. She was a hundred years old, and hideous to look at. Still those two are alike. I have wondered whether it is the brand, the witch’s mark, which they have in common. An old Indian told me that once a woman has turned to witchcraft there is nothing in the world that can turn her off it, not love, children, nor virtue. I have wondered …” he stopped.

“I know,” said Childerique, “you have been told that old Udday, her father, once laid a curse upon my father and all his descendants. But my mother liked them.” This was always the last word with her. Her piety to the memory of her dead mother tolerated no argument.

“And besides,” she cried, “where is the curse on me? Where is the curse?” Laughing she dragged down her little son from his father’s shoulders, played with him and blew into his face. “Where is our curse?”

“Childerique,” cried Delphine from her seat on the grass, “I must go back or I shall be too late. The two old sisters De Maré are coming to play cards, and I must pick up the Abbé on my way to make a fourth.”