Green Mare

Eleven

The two pairs of boots were almost exactly similar, in thick, hard leather, the uppers wrinkled, the soles iron-shod from toe to heel. But the postman’s feet were somewhat longer and wider than the soldier’s, and Deodar drew Ernest’s attention to this with a certain pride.

“It looks as though mine were a bit bigger than yours.”

They stopped in the middle of the road and made scrupulous comparisons, right foot against right foot.

“A good three sizes bigger!” said Deodat.

They resumed their steady march in the direction of Claquebue. keeping step as before. Ernest was a little downcast about his feet. He said with a false air of detachment:

“It may be because you walk like a dismounted gendarme.”

Deodat misunderstood the allusion and was at first rather gratified:

“No one has ever told me that before. A gendarme gets oyer the ground pretry well, eyen when he is dismounted.”

“Oh, yes, he gets along all right. It’s just the way he walks that's a bit comic.”

Ernest then went on to talk about something else, confident of haying shaken his companion. Deodat scarcely listened. He was anxiously studying his own feet and those at his side.

“Well, but then how do you think a dismounted gendarme walks?”

“He conics down on his heel, as anyone will tell you, instead of — well, w atch the way I walk.”

Ernest went ahead a few paces, and said over his shoulder:

“You see what I mean? My toe comes down first and the heel afterwards, and then I use the toe to carrv me on. The gendarme puts his whole foot down at once. It’s a thing you have to learn. One gets all sorts in the regiment. I’ve seen auxiliaries that were completelv flat-footed.”

"But I'm not flat-footed!”

“Em not saying you are. I’m just saying some feet are different from others.”

They continued in silence, and doubt now gnawed at Deodat. Perhaps he didn’t know how to walk after all. For an instant he regretted never having been in the armv. An infantryman was bound to know all about feet on account of seeing so many and having to take care of them. Ernest meanwhile was gazing ahead at the crest of the Montee-Rouge, w here the point of the Claquebue church spire and the tops of its highest trees were just appearing. Deodat nudged him with his elbow^r,

“I’ve heard it said that men often get sore feet in the army.”

“That’s true enough.”

“Well, I’ve never had a sore foot in mv life! I sweat just the right amount and no more, and as for getting blisters or anything of the kind — no, mv bov, never! So there vou are!”'

As they reached the first houses they encountered Honore, who had come to meet his son, very happy at his arrival. He hugged him, looked him in the eyes for an instant, and then stood back the better to admire him. Deodat remarked:

“He’s come home on leave.”

The three of them w^rent on together. Honore did not march in step, and the other two were slightly put out by it. After a brief silence Ernest said to him:

“The wife of General Meuble died yesterday morn; g. We heard the news yesterday evening. She was fifty-three.”

“That’s not old,” said Honore.

“Not at all old,’" said Deodar. “Well, I must leave you here. I've got letters for quite a lot of houses.”

Being alone with his father, Ernest asked after the family. Honore gave him the latest news briefly, and with a kind of impatience which rather surprised him. When they came to the fork in the road they paused and argued about which way to go. Ernest wanted to make a detour to pass by the Vinards’ house.

“You won’t find Germaine at home,” said Honore. “The Vinards are all out saving the corn.”

“But I'm sure she'll be there. I wrote to tell her I was coming.”

‘'Do you write to her often?” asked Honore, with a troubled glance at him.

“Well, I write to her.”

“And does she answer?”

“Yes.”

Honore digested this. So now the lad was writing letters, him and his epaulettes!

“When you’re serious about a girl I’ve a right to say what I think, haven’t I?”

“I was going to talk to you about her.”

“Well, that’s all right. But you can see her later. First you must come and see your mother, it’s the least vou can do.”

Ernest could not refuse. He followed his father with some reluctance.

“I told you I'd put my shoulder out, didn’t I?”

“Yes,” said Honore, remorseful at not having mentioned it himself. “Is it all right now?”

“Yes, it’s quite all right, but it hurt a bit the first few days.”

Ernest described the accident in detail. It was the adjutant, whose gloves he had been fetching when he slipped on the stairs, who had got him his five days’ leave.

“The sick-bay corporal told me the major didn’t want to let me have it. He said farmers are all the same. If you let them go home on sick leave they strain themselves working in the fields and come back worse than when they left.”

“Well, he’s right, I daresay. But don’t you worry, you haven’t come home to work.”

“You don’t think I’m just going to stand around and watch you getting in the corn when there’s nothing more the matter with me?”

“None of that!” said Honore jovially. “You’re here to enjoy yourself. A young chap your age wants a bit of fun now and then, and I’m not the one to stop you.”

He went on to talk about the seductive attractions of uniform, and the coolness and shade of the woods. His son said calmly:

“Doing a bit of work won’t stop me going to see Germaine. She has her work too, you know.”

Exasperated by this unresponsiveness, Honore said angrily:

“Zephe’s daughter’s just arrived for a stay of three weeks. A pretty bit of goods she is, and plenty in her bodice and knows what she wants, you’ve only got to look at her! Well, I’d like to know why they gave you epaulettes, if you can’t even. .”

Ernest was not uninterested. He gazed over the river-meadows, the woods crowding down upon the ponds gleaming like metal in the sunshine; the green and yellow fields between the river and the woods, where the trees swelled up like the breasts of women. He had never before observed it in this way, even since he had been at Epinal. Honore stopped still and muttered beneath the sun:

“To be twenty!. . That’s what I’d like, to be able to go back!. . I’m telling you about the Maloret girl just so you’ll know — so you won’t pass by without even seeing her, the pretty wench that she is — and if the sight of her doesn’t warm you up a bit then what’s the good of you being the age you are?.

Ernest gazed at his father in astonishment. If he thought of him at all in relation to sexual love, it was simply in terms of hearth and home, father and mother, an everyday matter, a domestic fact suitably and finally bestowed in its own corner of the house. But now he saw him suddenly possessed by an amorous dream which he flaunted upon the highroad, cherished outside the home, and with so much youthfulness that the very look of the countryside seemed changed.

“I’m sure she’s pretty,” he said with a little sigh. “Even before she went to Paris-”

“That was nothing. There’s no comparison,” Honore said.

Taking his son by the arm he described Marguerite to him in detail and with rapture.

“And so. . well, what more do you want?. . You know all the Maloret women look good to us!”

Then he dropped the subject. They went on to talk about the family, the harvest and life in the army, talking now without constraint and without calculation. And Ernest was happy, finding at length the happiness he had expected upon his return to Claquebue. Honore joined in his gaiety, laughing at the woods and the river as though to say:

“This is my son, my eldest son, in uniform! Twenty years ago that I got him, and now here he is, strong as a voung man of twenty, and clever with his hands like he is with his head — able to drive you a six-in-hand just with whistling to them! It’s me that taught him everything, and now he thinks he can teach it all back to me, and that’s a young man all over!”

When they met anyone it was Honore who talked of Epinal and life in barracks, he who had never so much as seen the place, as though he were the one who had just come back; and it was Ernest who talked of the corn-harvest and the worry it had given them because of the mildness of the winter. They stole a fragment of the other’s life and preoccupations, the corn, the barracks, as though it were a game between them; and the men they passed on the road, Berthier or Corenpot, Dur or Rous-selier, tugged at their moustaches, thinking:

“So Honore’s on his way home with his eldest son!”

And the two walked on, happy to be together in the familiar landscape and on the way home. And people called to them (those in the distance, for whom they had no time to wait):

“So you’ve got your son with you!”

“That’s right,” Honore called back, loud enough for all the world to hear. “He’s just arrived from Epinal.” And he turned, beaming, to Ernest and said: “That was Ber-thier.” (Or Corenpot, or Roussclier.)

Presently they saw Zephe Maloret’s daughter walking along a pathway fifty yards from the road. She turned her head towards them, with her bosom in silhouette.

“Out for a walk?” called Honore.

“I’m on my way home,” said Marguerite smiling. “And you’re going home with Ernest?”

“He’s back from Epinal on leave, and we’re hurrying to get in by dinner-time because his mother’s waiting for him, as you can imagine. . ”

“Well it’s true, she’s pretty, all right,” said Ernest when they had lost sight of her.

When they reached the house he did not respond to the family greetings quite as warmly as might have been expected, after so long an absence. Directly the meal was over he got up and took his cap off Gustave’s head.

“I shall be back in an hour.” he said. “I’ll come and find you in the fields.”

“You don’t have to worry about us,” said Honore. “You know what I told you.”

After the boy had gone he shrugged his shoulders.

“He’s off to see Germaine Vinard. In a hurry, wasn’t he?”

“They were friendly before he went into the army,” said Adelaide.

“You can’t have anything against her!” said Juliette, flaring up suddenly.

“Who said I had?” demanded Honore.

“I thought perhaps her grandfather might have quarrelled with our grandfather forty years ago over a game of skittles! That’s all it takes to prevent a marriage!”

She laughed bitterly and he gave her a glance filled with reproach; but she only laughed more loudly, and he flushed and cried, leaning across the table:

“For God’s sake marry your young cub! If you want my consent, you’ve got it! You can do what you like! Go on — marry him!”

Juliette was silent, her eyes now distressed; but carried away by his wrath Honore repeated the challenge:

“\ou're perfectly free. Get married as soon as you like, the sooner the better!”

He regretted the words the moment he had uttered them. Juliette's chin went up.

“Thank you. \\ ell, I'll marry him as soon as we possibly can, the very moment he's readv!”

“And who are you going to marry?” demanded Adelaide. “I hope I'm to be told before the wedding-day!” Honore gazed fixedly at his daughter, still hoping that the name would not be spoken, and that this scene would have no sequel. But Juliette answered, carefully articulating every syllable:

“I’m going to marry Noel Maloret.”

Alexis ran out of the kitchen swearing. Adelaide, her arms hanging limply at her sides, stared at Juliette as though she had taken leave of her senses. She uttered no word of reproach, but quietly removed her apron and said as she went towards the door:

“I’m going to have a word with the Malorets.”

Honore did not move. After a minute he called, “Adelaide!” She had already crossed the yard, and he saw her through the window vanishing down the road beneath the middav sun. He followed, with Gustave and Blackie behind him. Juliette remained in the kitchen with Clotilde. She heaved a sigh, and Clotilde, raising her head, said in a low voice:

“Are they cross with you, too?”

“No, silly, they aren’t really cross with anyone. They’re cross because of the letter, and so am I. If it hadn’t been for that everything xvould be all right.”

Suddenly Juliette felt hot tears falling on her hands, and saw Clotilde’s shoulders shaken with sobs. She questioned her gentlv, taking her in her arms. For a little while the child clung to her without answering, and then she stood up, taking Juliette’s hand. Juliette let herself be led as though they were playing a game. Clotilde took her into the dining-room, bolted the door behind them and led her to the chimney-piece. Juliette was growing intrigued. She watched her sister stand on tip-toe, lift off the glass cover protecting the clock and slip her fingers beneath its pedestal, which bore two imposing bronze gilt figures representing Agriculture and Industry in some sort of ballet dress.

“Here you are,” said Clotilde, holding out a letter.

Juliette guessed instantly that it was the missing letter, even before she recognised her uncle’s handwriting. It had been opened. She got it out and read: “My dear Honore — The black horse was taken with colic at the beginning of the week. .

When she had read it all she stood uncertainly, holding it between two fingers. Her face was flushed. At length she said in a low voice to Clotilde:

“Put it back where it was and don’t say a word to anyone.”

As they left the room together Clotilde nudged her with her elbow:

“Did you read the part about Grandmother and the Prussian?. .”

When Juliette joined her father, who after fetching Adelaide back was now harnessing the oxen, he said with a glance of mingled anger and tenderness, “Obstinate little devil!” Juliette stood still.

“You’ve given your consent,” she said, “but I’ve been thinking. I wouldn’t want to seem to be marrying Noel just to get that letter back We’ll leave things as they are until you’ve got it back yourself. . ”

At three o’clock Ernest appeared in the field where they were harvesting. He had just left Germaine, and he found her more desirable than Marguerite Maloret. She was a thick-set girl, short in the legs but warm and full-fleshed; in her number nine shoes she would stand sturdily erect through all the winds that blew and do him loyal service,

“What do you think you’re up to?” cried Honore, “You’re not supposed to be here! Go and put your uniform on again!”

“Not supposed to be here? Just you look at those sheaves, how loose they are! The room they’ll take up, you won’t get the stuff away in six cart-loads, not counting that they’ll fall apart when you pitch them and it’ll all have to be raked up. This isn’t a job for Alexis!”

Ernest set to work trussing, while Alexis laid the loose swathes ready on the binders and Honore, helped by Adelaide and Juliette, loaded them in a workmanlike fashion on the cart. The work went at a good pace, and he was filled with pride in his son: a real worker, his son: he put aside the soldier’s trimmings and came along to the field and whacked into it harder than anyone!

“Now watch,” said Ernest to Alexis. “It isn’t strength you need to make a good sheaf. The thing is, once you’ve got it in position, not to let it slacken off when you’re tying it. If you try to pull on the binder, instead of twisting it at once, the straw swells out again and you’ve had your trouble for nothing. Look. A sharp push with your knee — and twist!”

At a moment when the boys were working near the cart, Zephe’s daughter passed along the track leading to the Raicart wood. She was clad in pink muslin and bore over her shoulder a sunshade matching it in colour. Putting down her fork, Adelaide murmured furiously:

“The baggage! So now it’s a sunshade!”

From his place on top of the loaded cart Honore gazed in fascination after that shimmer of wispy pink moving towards the shadow of the wood. Then he looked to see what Ernest thought of it. But Ernest had not even looked up. He was bent over the sheaves, trussing assiduously. And Honore shrugged his shoulders in sudden fury. A worker, by God!. . The infernal boy worked as though he were on a picnic: and when a pretty girl in a flimsy frock passed between him and the sun he never so much as gave her a glance! What it came down to was that he was no better than his Uncle Ferdinand!

“Perhaps she’s got the letter in her bodice,” said Juliette jestingly.

Ernest picked up another sheaf, paying no attention. “Will you look at her, God Almighty!” roared Honore. “You don’t see girls like that at Epinal, however high and mighty you may think you are!”

Ernest did so and said indifferently:

“She’s all right, I’m not saying she isn’t. But what’s the use of that sort except to show their legs in a cabaret?” “Listen to him! Did you hear that? He wants to know what’s the use of her! By God, it’s Ferdinand all over again!”

“Well, if that’s the way he is,” said Adelaide, “you might as well leave him alone.”

Ferdinand was deeply apprehensive concerning the effect upon his children of their cousins’ companionship, and even that of their Uncle Honore. The lively and unrestrained diversions of the village children of Claquebue, from which he himself in his day had culled only a meagre and shameful booty, filled him with misgivings. On the Sundays when he took his family to his brother’s house he would have liked to block their ears and put a gag on Honore’s mouth. He imagined Alexis pouring infamous suggestions into the ears of Antoine, Juliette robbing Frederic of his virginity (with that swaying of the behind that went on when she carried a bucket of water: he pictured it only too vividly, and then was furious with Juliette, with his son and with Honore — how dared parents allow their daughters to have such behinds!) and the two youngest staging exhibitions of priapic frenzy for Lucienne’s benefit. The dangers threatening well brought-up children on that plain, warm and tender as a waiting woman, were as it seemed to him beyond computation; and at the edge of the plain stood the great woods bordering half the horizon: dense and without end, filled with moist shades wherein were harboured those wanton dreams of which some emanation, a scent, a murmur, was borne by the breeze over the fields. . Disgusting!. . And this was where he brought his children on Sundays, respectable, properly-supervised children whose evil impulses wasted away all through the week in the lugubrious silence of the privy! It was he himself who opened up to them that lush, ensnaring prospect, surrendering them for a whole day to the mercies of a shameless joy among people living w ith their animals in a state of rut and abomination!. . No; he was not exaggerating. With his own eyes and something more than his eyes (he wasn’t made of wood after all, however he might wish he were!) — with his own eyes he had seen his brother's entire family, the little ones in front, gathered in the farmyard round Etendard the bull while he was covering a cow. He had come upon them unexpectedly, but no one had paid him the slightest attention. They had been absorbed in the snorting, bellowing, heaving spectacle, and when Honore had stepped forward to render such assistance as was needed he had been accompanied by a murmur of sympathy and admiration. Ferdinand had been a witness of many such encounters, but in a strictly professional capacity. Surprise and the emotion of the onlookers had on this occasion given him a curious shock, infecting him with something like enthusiasm. In his mortification at the disgraceful weakness he had blamed Claquebue and the gross unrestraint of Honore's family. Even if Lucienne had been there, he reflected, it would not have made the slightest difference! The thought made him shudder. What an appalling experience for a voung girl frequenting the chaste halls of the Demoiselles Hermeline! (Poor ladies! Little did they dream in their refinement that such hideous physical manifestations could exist, still less that the uncle of their best Conscience Scrutiny pupil took a hand in them with positiye delight!) Fortunately Etendard rested from his labours on Sundays, securely tied up in his stall. But Honore's children were not tied up, and Ferdinand never ceased to surmise in anguish at the snares they might be devising for the perdition of his own young.

In all this, however, he worried himself unduly. His children derived no soul-destroying instruction from their visits to Claquebue; at the worst they only risked hearing a greater freedom of speech than their father considered nice. Sunday was a day of pause in Honore's household no less than for the countryside as a whole, a yawn, as it were, in the consciousness of everyday. The flatland of ploughed fields and meadows lost for a day a certain wholeness of life bestowed upon it during the week by the coming and going of men at work, the voices crying to the beasts, the grunts of toil, the creaking of the carts. When Honore steered the plough over his land he had only to raise his head to see other men of the village doing the same, multiplying his image, so to speak, into the far distance; and there was for him a sense of security in being thus a part of the great community of labour on the soil. But on Sundays life was disrupted: people looked at the plain from inside their houses and saw no more than their own property, their enclosed fields. The Lord’s day was the property-owner’s day, and those possessing none made a poor showing: a day of balancing the accounts, when one was always a little terrified at the money that had been spent: a day of hoarding and withdrawal on which one had no impulse to render anything to love or friendship. In any case there were the Sunday clothes, not propitious to love-making or even to talk about it. Each one died a little of that oppressive Sunday despair that hung like a threat over the empty countryside.

The faithful wandered among the graves talking of the dead who were never quite dead, and when the hour for Mass sounded went to see to the burial of their sins. The cure entered his pulpit and denounced the perverse inconstancy of fashion, the danger of supping with the devil with too short a spoon. Curiosity and self-indulgence were harmful to work, to riches. He cited examples from the neighbourhood, naming names. The Journiers at their wedding-feast had thought to take over-lavish advantage of God’s sanction: and now look at them, grown so poor that they dared not even show themselves at Mass! It was what one might expect. God has nowhere given a specific ruling as to the fitting number of conjugal embraces, but that is precisely how he catches you out! Extras must be dearly paid for, on earth as in Heaven, but especially on earth. The best course to pursue, the most prudent and far-sighted, is one of abstinence so far as one is able. Davs well filled with toil, said the cure, and at night a praver to send you off to sleep: thus does one enhance one’s worldv estate and at the same time one’s hope of Paradise. The faithful as they listened to him counted their possessions,

pictured them dissipated by loose living, associated in terrifying cause-and-effect the nights of abandonment, the prospects of the harvest and the wrath of God. Fear and regret lent to their devotions a flavour of sour melancholv. Throughout Sunday God withdrew his presence from the fields to mstal himself in the heart of his flock. More than one of the men straggling along the roads when Church was over felt the fatigue of the davs of toil bear down upon his limbs beneath their drab Sundav garments, while the lifelessness of the plain clutched at his heart.

All Honore's family felt this Sundav oppression, even Honore himself, who went onlv twice a vear to Mass, at Christmas and on All Saints' Dav. He prided himself on believing in neither God nor the Devil and held the cure to be a man of ill-will: nevertheless he felt accountable to him for his moments of rapture and secretly suffered from not going to Church. He had an obscure feeling that the cure committed him to Heaven in his absence, and in doing so robbed him in some measure of his virility. When he was alone in the house on a Sundav morning he sometimes amused himself by carving phallic images in an apple or a potato: shaping them unconsciously to meet the threat, and without admitting to himself that he was indulging in magical practices as common in the town as in the countrv. His sense of danger in any case quite lacked the coarse explicitness which comes onlv too readily to my pen: it was kept purposelv vague to orfer no loophole for rational examination. Honore felt that he had expressed it well enough when he said that he was bored. But he rarelv risked anv overt defiance of that Sunday threat nor did the atmosphere of the house encourage him to do so.

On week-davs Adelaide had no strong religious feeling, and Honore’s jokes about priests and their vows of chastity did not trouble her. But on Sundays she was assailed with terror at the thought of all the calamities by which a familv mav be overtaken. Attendance at Mass, encircled bv her five children, left her imbued for the day with the sense of her importance in the eyes of God. and her vulnerabilitv: and the Devil would be banished from her thoughts until the morrow.

To Alexis, Gustave and Clotilde, Sunday was a day of merely negative interest, the one on which one did not go to school. Otherwise it was a day of emptiness and perfection, a bad copy of the other days, as dreary as those first days in the Bible when men were not yet sheltered from the gaze of le bon Dieu, who kept a sharp eye on them round the corner of a cloud or perhaps watched from Heaven through a telescope. They contrived to enjoy themselves notwithstanding, but with a sense of doing so beneath the eye of a supervisor who missed nothing. There could be no question of indulging in forbidden games.

Ferdinand’s children, arriving at Claquebue, were most especially conscious of escaping from the paternal privy. The empty spaces of the countryside conveyed to them no feeling of life held in suspense: they saw on the contrary a great expanse of freedom, and felt a mild intoxication by which their cousins were somewhat shocked. The very sight of the woods and the river was enough to make Frederic and Antoine believe a little in nymphs and dryads. The thought that, flitting among the trees, there might be divinities eager to rob schoolboys of their innocence, was a pleasant change from the blowsy mysteries of the pink corset, and in Uncle Honore’s house they thought of the policeman’s wife only with distaste. They were never to find any nymphs. They never seriously expected to do so. Yet when they went out into the woods in the afternoon in search of mushrooms or violets, blackberries, wild strawberries or lilies of the valley, it was in something the state of hopefulness of a soldier leaving barracks with a midnight pass. Alexis found this absurd, and teased them indulgently; he was a great deal more put out by the interest they displayed in the girls of Claquebue. In church or leaving church they could scarcely take their eyes off them. Alexis was embarrassed because he thought it wholly improbable that any girl could take a fancy to boys so uncouth, who were, moreover, not dressed like the country boys, and who answered in correct French when addressed in the local dialect. The things they said were almost meaningless and merely showed how little these college-boys understood of the atmosphere of a Sunday. Alexis was in no way unfriendly to them, nor did he despise them for their inexperience; but they had a way of talking about the girls and asking to be introduced to them (introduced!) which caused him acute discomfort. Accordingly, overlooking the fact that the day before he had rumpled a girl in the long grass down bv the river, he would assume the pious airs of a curate straved into dissolute company.

To Lucienne the days at Claquebue brought a happy sense of release. At home, or beneath the roof of the Demoiselles Hermeline, the exploration of the forbidden mysteries was a difficult undertaking. Every least sign of curiosity had to be concealed from her parents and her teachers. It was a matter of patiently garnering hints and observations, choosing between hypotheses, rejecting preconceived notions, interpreting scraps of conversation: and all this without laying herself open to the charge of perseverance in sin. But in Claquebue it seemed to her that the book mysteries lay open for everyone to read; she heard the flutter of its pages in the breeze blowing over the plain, and seemed at every instant to be on the threshold of discovery. In fact, however, she never discovered anything.

Ferdinand, who passed most of the day in the company of Honore, which afforded him so many grounds for outrage, had no notion of his nephews’ extreme restraint in their dealings with their cousins, and being accustomed to think the worst conjured up abominations which made him go hot and cold all over. He was confirmed in his misgivings by certain covert smiles which he surprised between Juliette and Frederic. But here, too, things were not nearly as bad as he imagined. Frederic, always far-sighted, had formed the habit at a tender age of putting his hand on Juliette’s breast. Since she was then perfectly flat the gesture had given rise to no apprehension. But when she reached the age of fourteen he began to reap the reward of his persistence, and a few years later she began to enjoy it herself. Her cousin had a pretty boy’s face which she liked kissing, but she never made any large concessions. Apart from a few familiarities the gulf between them was as wide as that which separated their families as a whole.