Green Mare

Fifteen

Happy to think that his cheeks were newly shaven, Honore leaned out of the window and greeted Marguerite with a wide smile of welcome.

“The Deputy has written to say he isn’t coming,” announced Juliette in a voice trembling with anger, “but Marguerite wanted to come just the same. She’s as bad as Zephe — and that’s saying something!”

Suddenly disquieted by her flushed cheeks and hot eyes, Honore repeated:

“Zephe?”

“Ask his daughter! Perhaps she’ll tell you!”

Juliette departed for the barn where her mother was soaping a tubful of clothes while she awaited developments.

“What happened?” demanded Honore. “My God, if I thought-”

“Nothing at all happened,” said Marguerite. “You’ve no need to worry. Noel may have pinched her arm while I had my back turned. Certainly it was nothing serious. Aren’t you going to ask me in? It’s hot out here.”

Without awaiting Honore’s reply she joined him in the dining-room, pushed the bolt on the door and shut the window.

“I’m not closing the shutters,” she said. “I like to see what I’m doing.”

Honore forgot the questions that had been on his lips an instant before. He had become as helpless as an animal. Marguerite took off her dress, her petticoat and her bodice while he regarded her without speaking. She was left scantily clad in stays from which emerged a transparent chemise tied with blue ribbon, and very short drawers beneath the frills of which her stockings were visible almost above the knee. Honore moved towards her with his arms extended, but she slipped away from him.

“I’m going to wind up the clock. You never seem to bother. I like to know what time it is!”

He followed her, his gaze fixed upon the lines of the corset.

“I’d never have thought you were so well filled-out,” he murmured.

Marguerite raised the glass cover and felt for the key behind the figure of Agriculture.

“I daresay it’s lost,” said Honore. “Leave it alone.”

“Perhaps someone’s put it underneath.”

She put her hand under the clock and brought out an envelope.

“So now I’m the postman!” she said, and laughed because the thought of the real postman had crossed her mind, doing his job so steadily.

Honore took the letter, somewhat put out by this diversion. He looked at it while Marguerite, having found the key, started to wind the clock.

“My dear Honore, — The black horse was taken with colic at the beginning of the week. . ”

The first line told him what it was, and he put it in his pocket. Dumbfounded at first, and then tempted to laugh at the circumstances in which the discovery had been made, he regarded Marguerite with a greater detachment. The tail of her chemise hung out behind through a parting in her drawers, like a spaniel’s tail, and he suppressed a smile. He had become sufficiently master of himself to look coldly on his weakness of a moment before. He recalled Juliette’s anger, and the few words she had spoken. Perhaps the Malorets had displayed a greater audacity than Zephe’s daughter had chosen to admit. In any case, Juliette’s manner had told him a good deal. He began to feel somewhat ashamed of his readiness to accommodate this wench in underclothes, reflecting that with the Malorets one must not give way to lightheartedness, but must keep tight hold of one’s wrath.

He considered the bare arms and shoulders, the stays so snugly fitting the slim waist, the drawers puffed out over the buttocks, and he shrugged his shoulders. Whether they had really done anything to Juliette or not, they need not suppose that the outrage could be paid back on this little slut. It would be too easy! So brazen a trollop that the whole countryside knew and even her own family was ashamed — she did not count as a Maloret!

“I’m setting it at two o’clock,” said Marguerite.

“As you please,” said Honore, and he pursued the course of his reflections. To think that he had so nearly let himself be caught! Ernest had had more sense. He had seen that it wouldn’t mean anything. .

Marguerite replaced the glass cover and turned towards him.

“Good news?”

“Just an old letter that had been left lying about.”

She smiled, and pressing herself against him with her head thrown back, put her bare arms round his neck. He was taken unawares by a strong scent of armpits and lily-of-the-valley, and he thought, “. . the same as if I was at Seventeen, Rue des Oiseaux!. He felt the soft warmth of the arms round his neck, and was near to giving way. But then, looking over the girl’s shoulder, he gazed through the window and far out over the plain. He saw the fields and the work he did there with Adelaide and the children. He thought of his daughter, the first after his eldest son, standing so sturdily at his side, whether to toil with the flail or to take revenge, the good partner that she was. He thought of his wife as well, not pretty and already grown old what with working in the fields and at the wash-tub, and never had been beautiful, come right down to it, but who had given him the children he had, between one washing-day and the next, taking to her bed only for the time it took to bear them. And considering his work and the hard lives of his women, Honore could not be proud of the white arms round his neck. He felt ashamed as he looked over the plain. Yet the girl was young and pretty, with her belly and thighs pressed hard against him. He made a ponderous effort such as one makes to prevent oneself dying, and pushed her gently away and said:

“You might as well get dressed again, seeing that your chap’s not coming.”

He went to the door. Seeing him draw the bolt she ran after him, clung to him with arms and legs, and moaned. But Honore, now strong with the fortitude of all the saints in the knowledge that he had a toiling, devoted wife who never spared herself and a daughter no less sturdy, carried her on his back right out into the passage; and would have carried her into the sunshine if she had not ended by letting go and running back to put on her clothes. .

Out in the barn Adelaide was bent over her wash-board while Juliette, clearing the straw off the threshing-floor with a fork, told her what had happened at the Alalorets’ house. At moments Adelaide stood upright snorting with indignation, to fling herself upon her washing again and rub till she nearly took the skin off her hands.

“And look,” said Juliette, pulling up her skirt, “he tore my petticoat, the good one Aunt Helene gave me.”

“They’ll find out what that costs!” said Adelaide furiously. But then she remarked in a more matter-of-fact voice: “It’s not a week-day petticoat. I don’t know why you were wearing it.”

She made the comment in passing, without attaching tny importance to it, but Juliette was so put out that she stood silent, her fork waving in the air, while she sought for an explanation.

And at this point Honore appeared, glowing with fortitude and nobility, to tell them what had happened, and to add that if they wanted to see the artful little piece take her departure they had only to watch through the doorway. And indeed a moment later Zephe’s daughter walked rapidly across the yard, but not so rapidly that Adelaide’s loud laughter did not reach her ears, to which, however, she made no reply.

“She’s a very pretty girl,” murmured Honore, “as you’ve got to admit.”

“A disgraceful hussy!” retorted Adelaide. “A fly-by-night who makes no more bones about it than a bitch in heat! You needn’t give yourself such airs! If Juliette hadn't warned you just now, we shouldn’t have seen you coming out of the house so soon!”

She looked at him with eyes blazing, and Honore said that this was a bit hard. Look how he’d behaved, and all she did was storm at him!

“Well, it’s true and you can’t deny it — Juliette had to show you what was right. You'd never have seen for yourself that Zcphe doesn’t care what happens to Marguerite any more than if it was Dur’s daughter or Corenpot’s. You were too stupid to think of that, weren’t you? Or perhaps you just pretended not to think of it, eh? — to suit yourself!. . No, you needn’t start arguing! As though you weren’t as bad as the worst of them! You’ve stayed awake at nights thinking about that slut, and then you let your own daughter go alone to their house, and if it hadn’t been for the postman-”

“God Almighty! If you’d stop shouting perhaps I’d be able to find out what happened when she went to their house!”

Adelaide told the tale, and with enlargements, overlooking nothing and dwelling upon the details. Indeed, so warm did she grow in the telling that she would have carried the tale further than it really went, had not Juliette intervened.

“No, Mother. . Because that’s when Deodat arrived.” “Yes, but only by accident!”

“Never mind,” cut in Honore. “He arrived at the right moment, and that’s what counts. Mark you, I’m not saying that to excuse the Malorets. We shall see what we shall see.”

“And what shall we see? All you do is talk!”

“Yes, what are you going to do about it?”

“That’s for me to decide. I shall do what I think-”

“I know! In a month of Sundays!”

“When the chickens have grown teeth!”

“And meanwhile they’ve always got that much satisfaction, that Noel tore her petticoat. I expect he’d have torn her drawers too, in another minute, if Deodat-”

“And it was a brand-new petticoat!”

“The one her Aunt Helene gave her.”

“And I’m sure I must have bruises on my thighs!”

“The way those two brutes grabbed hold of her-”

“Well, only Noel, but Zephe was egging him on. .

“— by the legs and anywhere else he fancied — and what else did he do, darling?”

“I don’t want to say any more.”

“You can tell us.”

“There are things one doesn’t like talking about.”

“Never mind what you like!”

“I’m not going to tell you any more!”

“Well, at least you can see what they did to her!”

“It wasn’t any use my struggling-”

“Your own daughter!”

“— because even if Zephe didn’t actually-”

“Your own daughter — and you don’t care in the least!” “— not to mention that Noel hurt me!”

“It’s a waste of time telling your father that, my dear— he’ll only laugh!”

“Your father’s such a nice man, you see — so kind to other people!”

“— and Noel… If Deodat hadn’t arrived. . Well, perhaps he didn’t really arrive, after all!”

“You’re only making your father laugh!”

“He could easily have been a bit slower on his round.” “While Noel was doing just what he liked with you!” “Perhaps Deodat hadn’t really got a letter for them at all!”

“And I shouldn’t wonder if Zephe wasn’t really there too, helping, only you haven’t liked to say so. And AnaTs looking on!”

“Yes, and Marguerite and Tintin, as well!”

“It’s a great pity your father couldn’t have joined in the fun!”

“After all, there’s no reason why Deodat should have gone there, if he hadn’t got a letter for them.

“And so there you were, poor child, at the mercy of the whole lot of them!”

“Five of them!”

“And they could do just what they liked with you, and that’s how our daughters get treated!”

“Children!” cried Adelaide, her voice now raised to the highest pitch. “Now look what you’ve done! The girl’s going to have a child by the Malorets!”

“If only,” said Honore patiently, “someone would tell me what really did happen!”

“Good heavens, what more do you want? Don’t you hear me telling you that your daughter’s in the family way?”

Honore gazed at his two women and read in his daughter’s eyes that the postman really and truly had arrived at the right moment. But then he went out of the bam into the yard, and thinking it all over under the hot sun he concluded that after all he might very easily not have arrived. His intervention had, as it appeared, been so miraculously timed that the whole affair had about it an air of unreality: which made it not at all difficult for him to adopt the supposition, for the time being, that his daughter had been got w'ith child by the Maloret family. He w'ent back into the barn and said:

“All right then, supposing Juliette’s in the family way— all the same, the Malorets were only plotting against us the way I w^Tas plotting against them. You can’t say I’m any better. Well, for instance, suppose she hadn’t told me any-

thing — not said a word — what do you think would have happened then?”

“Even in that case you surely wouldn’t have done what Marguerite wanted?”

“I don’t think so. But still, it was no way to behave, to sit there waiting for her behind the shutters. It was you who put that idea into my head, and it was a woman’s idea. I feel ashamed of it now.”

He went through the motions of spitting into Adelaide’s wash-tub by way of indicating that he renounced his wife’s methods.

“You’re being very noble,” said Juliette. “But I might be in the family way, and the Malorets have got that letter.”

“Yes, that’s very true,” said Honore. “Yes, of course— the letter. .”

And he surreptitiously felt the envelope in his pocket as he spoke.

Adelaide left the barn abruptly, and drying her hands on her apron went into the dining-room. At the sound of the clock’s ticking her sudden suspicion took clearer shape. She picked up the cover. .

“So you wound the clock?” she said to Honore when he came back.

“I? No, I didn’t.”

“Well, someone has. Was it Marguerite?”

“Well, I–I suppose it might have been. I have an idea she was looking at the clock when I left the room. Why do you ask?”

“It doesn’t matter.”

Juliette had already left the barn. She, too, made straight for the figures of Agriculture and Industry. .

Honore, who was meditating bold and summary vengeance, needed all the anger of his women to support him. Later, while he busied himself in the yard, it gave him pleasure to hear their voices strident with fury and malice as they exclaimed to one another.

“They’ve certainly got that letter!”

“And they’ll keep it — you’ll see!”

“They’ll make us swallow every kind of insult!”

“Zephe’s only waiting to be made mayor, and then he’ll spread it all over the district!”

“The shame of it! People will treat us as though we were worse than Marguerite!”

“And simply because of that letter!”. .

Until in the end Honore himself was clenching his fists, while his eyes blazed with fury.

“They’re going to give me back that letter! By God, I’ll see that they do!”

The posthumous renown of Murdoire has led to my appearing in art exhibitions all over Europe. I have thus been able to see for myself how the people in the great cities make love and make ready for love, and I have for them nothing but pity. Whether it preys upon their minds, upon the nobler impulses of their hearts, or, as is most often the case, upon the appropriate regions of their bodies, love to them is no more than a gnat-swarm of desires, a succession of torments, a pursuit without end. They are consumed with petty lusts for which they seek solace wherever they go, in the street, in the folds of a skirt, in their dwellings, at the theatre, in the workshop and office, in books, in ink-pots. The ardent lovers and the virtuous husbands and wives imagine themselves to be faithful to a grand passion, stormy or tranquil as the case may be, for an object which changes in aspect, or which simply changes, an incalculable number of times a day. A man will swear that he is in love with a woman, that he knows none more alluring, very much as he might say, “It is at So-and-So’s Restaurant that one dines best and most inexpensively.” He sets out for So-and-So’s fully intending to get there in good time. But should he take the wrong turning and chance upon some other establishment, seeming more attractive, he will very likely not get there at all. And if he does dine at So-and-So’s it will be with a secret regret in his heart for the place that was dearer, the place that was more crowded, the unknown. In the cities there is no true concupiscence, merely a diffused hankering after sexual love, a restless resolve to gratify each least desire. For three weeks, while I took part in an exhibition of Murdoire’s works, I hung opposite a well-known canvas entitled, “The Lonely Rider.” It depicted a man passing between two rows of women of all descriptions, beautiful and plain, young and old, fat and thin. He was staring straight in front of him, seeing nothing, his face tense with twinges of suffering and longing and regret, but with his nose still sniffing the air, his hands still ready to grasp. In his sombre eyes, witless and despairing, Murdoire had depicted a tiny gleam like a plaintive cry, desiring but without hope: the cry of the Wandering Jew doomed to squander through all eternity the small change of life. In the towns — I have seen it — each man walks between two rows of women, husbands, bachelors, lovers, young men and old, whole men and cripples, invalids, imbeciles, brutes and lofty spirits — thus do they continue to walk to the very end, to the moment of their death. The women, a little wiser, wait for them to make up their minds: but they too, even in the moment of surrender, with sobbing breath and eves half-closed, they too continue to watch the procession and sometimes give a sign that they are still free. So it is in the towns.

It was not like this in Claquebue. No doubt the Durs, the Berthiers and the Corenpots were also lonely riders: but there were the families, or better still the households, drawing their sustenance from the place where they had their being, like the trees with their roots thrust deep into the earth. Their desires were not mere shifting inclinations, furtive itches; they were enrooted, coiled, slowly digested, preserved by memories that did not waver. Each separate individual, father, mother, child, might ride alone, live separate lives; but the house kept watch, and each partook of the desires of all.

The words “carnal concupiscence,” sounding like a heavy, elastic-limbed toad, can achieve their true meaning only when applied to families whose growth springs directly from the earth itself. The deep coils of sensual appetite, the huge lusts and longings pent-up through the years, can exist only in the country places, where the households are separate entities, observing one another,

hating one another, but breathing the same air and brought together, obliged to rub shoulders, in the daily labour of the soil. At Claquebue these family lusts did not always find an outlet, but they were always in search of one. I may cite, among many instances, the case of the Corenpots and the Rousseliers, who had hated one another through countless generations. On a winter’s evening Corenpot and his two sons burst in upon the Rousseliers and ravished all the female members of the household. Thenceforward there was a marked improvement in the relations between the two houses, as though by this act the age-old quarrel had been determined, the last word spoken.

Among the Haudouins and the Malorets it was rare, and certainly accidental, for any individual to become consciously aware of the store of sensual violence accumulated within his house. The separate members of Honore’s family each sought his or her pleasure in love without being in any way obsessed with the existence of the Malorets: the case of Juliette and Noel was in this respect quite fortuitous. The households as a whole, primitive entities endowed with sexuality, having a composite substance that scarcely varied and a separate, composite will, did not resemble any one of the variable, contradictory individuals of which they were composed: the household drew its energies from all its members, stirring them together, compounding and hoarding them, and upon occasion restoring them to the individual in a dynamic form.

The cure of Claquebue well understood the worth of these family accumulations, to which he assigned a disciplinary value. He knew, and did his utmost to assist the process, that the “lonely riders” might here find outlet for a restlessness that was always dangerous to religion. But he knew also that the family reservoir sometimes burst its bounds, with resulting scandal. Such explosions were not uncommon, and if they did not always take a form as violent as in the case of the Corenpots and the Rousseliers, the danger was one that had to be borne in mind. Vanquished by the Corenpots, the Rousseliers, whom the cure had hitherto classed in the category of safe Catholics, allowed themselves to be corrupted by the abominable influence of their conquerors, nearly all deniers of God, and there-

after attended Mass only from force of habit. On the other hand, there had been cases of edifying returns to the fold. It was necessary, in short, for the cure to have an intimate knowledge of the sexual tendencies of each family if he was to direct these along channels serving the good of his flock as a whole. He was led, in consequence, to the consideration of problems of the utmost delicacy. For example, in the case of a sexual attraction between two families, was it to be assumed that they were of opposite sexes? And if so, how was one to distinguish between the female household and the male?

I knew nothing of the results of the cure's researches, and he can no longer be asked, since after an exemplary life of labour and authority the poor man has fallen into his dotage and now walks the lanes of Claquebue uttering obscene words and preaching universal brotherhood. God grant that he may die in peace, and we too!. . And so, being ignorant of the conclusions he may have arrived at, I have sought on my own account to solve this problem of the sex of the different households — I flatter myself, not without success. I have naturally devoted especial consideration to the case of the Haudouins and the Malorets.

There lies at the root of the problem an error into which a simple mind, such as my own, was bound to fall, and which consists in regarding the family as the sum of the individuals composing it: by which reckoning the household containing more men than women is to be considered male. I thought to enhance this reasoning by taking individual temperaments into account. Without going into details, I must give in outline the result of my observations. Honore and his sons showed a greater boldness in their approach to women than did the Maloret men; their anger was more prompt, their language more outspoken. Zephe and his sons, although they pursued their pleasure with a persistence that took little account of scruple, did not hold even the most beautiful woman to be worth an acre of land. Cautious and patient, they secretly whetted their desires until the moment was propitious; but on the other hand, they had a great deal more authority over their women than the Haudouin men had over theirs. These qualities in them, some of which are held to be predomi-

nantly male, cause me a good deal of perplexity’. Nor were their erotic habits and preferences any more conclusive. Did the tradition of incest among the Malorets bear witness to the virility of the head of the household, or did it merely point to an incapacity to find satisfaction elsewhere?

I came at length to the conclusion that simplicity alone would avail me. A family is a solid, childlike entity, quickly surveyed. I had already observed how easy it is to discern those habits and characteristics which by their repetition determine the features of a composite whole. One says of a town that it is friendly and lively and that its cooking is good, adding two or three lines of corroborative detail. Of a province one speaks even more broadly, saying, for example, that the people of Normandy are redfaced, sly and great drinkers of cider; and of a nation one simply says, “The Gauls had fair hair.” Accordingly I adjusted my sights to see the Haudouins and the Malorets in a broad perspective, as though they were Gauls.

The Haudouins averaged five feet eight inches, had dark chestnut hair, grey eyes, strong-featured faces, slender but muscular limbs and high insteps. Though their manner in general was inclined to melancholy, they were at times overtaken by great gusts of laughter which kept them quivering for a week on end. They liked work, stewed meat, deep draughts of wine and row'dy conversation. They yielded readily to the temptations of the flesh but their hearts were warm and generous.

The Malorets had small feet and were thick-set and sallow-faced, with black hair. They loved money but had no love of work. By nature austere, they disdained good food and wine. They had one smile for the light of every day and another for its darkness. Incapable of great outbursts of anger, they lived in a constant state of cold rage which they maintained at a useful pressure. Their hatred for the Haudouins occupied their last minutes before sleeping, causing them to lie with clenched teeth, their flesh in readiness.

In short neither of the two households, while thev possessed physical attributes, tastes and habits in sharp contrast one to the other, could be said to possess a specific sexual aspect. I finally concluded that in this sense they were sexless. It was a daring assumption, but one which explained the long accumulation of sensual desire in each house. The household hoarded its desire, having no means of consummating it. Nor had it any vital need of sex, since the family, barring accidents, was a permanent entity which did not reproduce itself, delegating this function to the individuals of which it was composed.

It was pleasing to me to reflect that in Claquebue physical love was something more than a snare set for the preservation of the race, and that it existed in its own right, without needing any pretext. It is the pride of my mare’s existence, frustrate, two-dimensional creature that I am, that I should have made this rich discovery. The village appeared to me as a sort of magnetic field in which the individual, in so far as he was susceptible to its mysterious energising forces, absorbed them at his own rate, those possessing sexual means expending them as rapidly as they were charged, while the rest accumulated reserves. When the family had reached its erotic saturation-point it made use of its individual males or females to procure a release of tension. The Haudouin family, after considerable wavering as between male and female, had at length settled this matter.

I think I have now said all I need say regarding the attitude to love of the Haudouins. Much might certainly be added, but I am restrained from entering into greater detail by my regard for decency and my desire to offend no one. For I have no purpose, in recording this modest fruit of my observations, except to serve the cause of good. Novelists are frivolous people: they tell tales and leave morals to look after themselves. I say it without undue pride: it is a fortunate circumstance that a Green Mare should have been present to point in a sturdy and straightforward fashion the moral of this tale, namely that there can be no enduring love, rooted in true happiness, except within the family.