Green Mare

Three

Upon reaching the road which separated the Champ-Brule from his house, Honore Haudouin laid down his scythe on the cut corn and straightened his tall figure in the glaring sunlight. Sweat had caused his shirt to stick to his back and formed wide wet pockets under his armpits. He pushed back his rush-hat and with the back of his hand wiped away the beads forming at the fringe of his grey, close-cropped hair. Looking to his left he saw the postman in the act of leaving his house, the last one in the village on the road itself, at the point where the plain narrowed between the river and an outcropping of the wood.

“Deodat’s ready to start,” he reflected. “It must be after four.”

He wanted something cold to drink, and crossed the road. In the kitchen of his house, with its closed shutters, he could hear his wife scrubbing the floor. The room felt cool as a cellar. For a moment he stayed motionless, enjoying the chill and the darkness which soothed his eyes after the harsh light. He slipped off his sabots to cool his bare feet on the tiles. From the depths of the kitchen a low, metallic voice reached him, somewhat out of breath.

“Everything’s on the table,” Adelaide said. “You’ll find two peeled onions beside the loaf. I put the bottle to cool in the tub.”

“Good,” said Honore, “but why are you bothering to scrub the kitchen? Anyone would think there was nothing more important to do.”

“There's plenty, but if Ferdinand comes to-morrow with the family-”

“What makes you think he’s going to start examining the kitchen floor?”

“All the same, he likes his house to be clean.”

“Oh, I see—his house. .”

“You always behave as though it was yours.”

Honore nearly let himself be entrapped into the quarrel which Adelaide was seeking, largely for the sake of the distraction; but to drink was more important. He groped round for the tub of cold water, plunged his arms in and rinsed his face. Then he drank from the bottle as long as his breath would hold out. Having quenched his thirst he was better able to judge the quality of the beverage, which was a mixture of rough wine and an infusion of herbs, leaving behind it a rather disagreeable flavour.

“No danger of getting drunk on this stuff!” he said with a slight annoyance.

Adelaide reminded him that wine was at seven sous the litre and that the barrel must be made to last until the harvest. She added that men were all the same. They thought of nothing but their throats.

Withdrawn in a patient silence, Honore cut a piece off the stale loaf; then he went and sat on the window-ledge and began to chew an onion. His wife asked more gently: “Is there still a lot to dor”

“Not a terrible lot. I shall be finished by seven. I must sav, I chose the right moment for cutting. The ears are full and the stalks are still tender. The corn almost cuts itself, and soft as a girl’s hair.”

Silence again fell between them, and Honore thought as he gnawed his bread, “It almost cuts itself. . and yet you wonder if it’s worth cutting, the price it fetches. . ” But then he reflected that corn was always worth the cutting, since one ate it, and that however low the price at which he sold his surplus, it still represented a profit. The long hours under the sun did not count when there was pleasure in the toil. He had only to recall the first year of his marriage, when he had worked fourteen hours a day for twenty-five sous, to feel that things now could scarcely be better. His meditations lapsed into indolence, a state of contented lethargy in the diminished life of the room sheltered from sun and labour, in which there was no sound other than that of a wasp searching for a way back into the daylight, and the soft splash of the wet cloth which Adelaide was wringing out over her bucket of dirty water.

Seated between the two wings of the open window with his back against the shutters, Honore ate slowly to postpone the moment of departure. With eyes grown accustomed to the darkness he could now distinguish the huddled form of Adelaide at the far end of the kitchen. She was kneeling on the floor with her back to him, her raised posterior hiding her head, which was bowed down between her shoulders. An ample black under-skirt, narrowing at the calves, conferred upon this rear view dimensions which rather surprised Honore, since he seemed to be discovering in his wife an abundance he had not hitherto suspected, her skinniness having often caused him regret.

The under-skirt moved slowly, its vague undulations merging into the dense shadow at that end of the kitchen, and Honore watched it with attention, seeking to define more precisely an outline withheld from him by the darkness. He was stirred as though by a strange presence, an unhoped-for substitution. Adelaide had once again taken up her scrubbing-brush, and as she reached forward with her arms her posterior sank and was diminished, to increase once more in volume as with an ample and rapid movement she drew back, rounding it over her heels. Honore could not get over it. Now leaning forward, he followed the movements of the under-skirt as it advanced and retreated into the shadows. He heard the murmurs of summer beyond the shutters, and the questing wasp filled his ears with its urgent song. The cool kitchen, in which the dim light spread its mysteries, was like an ante-room, and its least sound pricked his flesh. He felt a little as he might have done at No. 17, Rue des Oiseaux, in Saint-Margelon, where he had been in the habit of going two or three times a year in his horse-trading days, and where a bevy of scented girls with pink bosoms and lavish thighs had offered themselves for his delight. There had been a tall one, he remembered, particularly well-rounded, whose behind the hussars had been much given to slapping. Honore saw her clearly, as though her image had been projected into the kitchen; then it gave way to another picture, that of a woman of Claquebue. He left the window, guided by the swish of the hard brush whose movements synchronised with the dance of the under-skirt. An unaccustomed shyness made him awkward. At first his hands grasped nothing but cloth.

Adelaide turned in surprise to look at him, her thin, tired face brightening into a smile. And he seemed even more surprised, as though taken aback by the sight of that familiar face. He murmured a few stumbling words to which she replied with fondness. Embarrassed, he still hesitated, then clasped her with both hands, to perceive at once that the appearance had led him astray, and that beneath the folds of material was only meagreness. So he drew back, retreating towards the window; and shrugging his shoulders, he muttered under his breath, but not so low that she could not catch the words:

“One somehow gets ideas. .”

Adelaide, no less disappointed, would not at first accept defeat and sought to restore the illusion that had melted beneath her husband’s hands. The dance of the under-skirt was resumed with calculated flurries and pauses; but Honore, now merely irritated by it, turned and partly opened the shutters. A band of light sprang across the kitchen, casting a splash of gold over the folds of black material; and at the sight of it he laughed and closed the shutters again. His wife, deeply mortified, asked sharply: “What were you up to just now? What did you want?” “That’s what I’m wondering,” he said, with a slight exasperation in his voice.

“Oh, so you’re wondering!”

“No, I’m not. I don’t want anything.”

“Well, I can tell you-”

“No, don’t. I haven’t time to listen.”

“I know what you want. You want women!”

“You’re talking nonsense.”

“Easy women — fat ones — that’s what you want, isn’t it?” She had taken him by the shoulders. He shook himself free and said impatiently:

“Why fat ones? One can do very well-”

“But vou’d prefer a far one! You’ve just proved it!” “Get along with you, you and your proofs! It’s just that I believe in doing tilings at the proper time. It’s only the rich who make love in the middle of the day.”

“I haven’t been as lucky as a lot of women.”

“You’re always grumbling.”

“It’s not so hard to be round and soft if your husband’s a vet earning enough money so you don’t have to work and you can haye all the clothes you want.”

“That wouldn’t make you beautiful,” said Honore.

“Even if you wore nothing but silk-”

“Silk!” exclaimed Adelaide. “There’s not much risk of that! W ith a man who couldn’t stay in business as a horse-dealer or even keep the house his father left him, there wouldn’t be much sense in me thinking about silk. If your brother turned us out of this house there’d be nothing for us to do except go and die in a ditch.”

“As good as dying in a bed, if the weather’s fine.” “Oh, I know you wouldn’t care, provided I went first!” “What!”

“You’re just waiting for it to happen!”

“I’ll black your eye if you don’t look out, and then I’ll give you a crack on the jaw that’ll stop you talking!”

“Honore, you’ve got to tell me-”

“Stop pawing me about!”

“\^Tour sister-in-law — you’ve got to tell me—”

Honore wished to hear no more. Calling his wife an old cow he stamped out, slamming the door and overlooking the fact that he was bare-headed beneath the sun. Adelaide stood distractedly in the kitchen, then noticed his hat lying on the table and ran after him with it.

“Honore, you forgot your hat! Fancy going out in this heat without a hat!”

Her voice, breathless with running, had a note of anxious affection.

“It’s true,” said Honore, stopping. “I forgot my hat.” “You didn’t think of it, did you? Y'ou quite forgot.”

He looked at her face, already that of an ageing woman, bony and wrinkled, the colourless lips which emotion had caused to tremble a little, the dark eyes in which tears gleamed. Moved to tenderness and overtaken bv remorse, he looked too at the black under-skirt with its sober folds, that for a moment had caused to spring up in the darkness of the kitchen a vision for which the regret still lingered in his flesh.

“One puts one’s hat down,” he said gentlv, “and then one forgets it.”

“It’s so dark in the kitchen. It’s so dark that you might think it was night-time. And when it's dark like that you get to thinking things. . and so that's why.

Honore smiled at his wife and touched her with the brim of his hat.

"Of course,” he said, moying off. “When it’s dark like that. .”

Standing in the middle of the yard she watched him cross the road, and murmured with a sigh:

“Such a fine man. you'd never think he was forty-five. Plenty of men his age, you'd think they were old!. .”

Just as he finished whetting his scythe, Honore heard the sound of wheels on the road. His brother Ferdinand, driving his gig, appeared round the corner, two hundred yards from the Champ-Brule. The vet was flogging his horse, which was moving at a long trot. Putting down the scythe, Honore went to the edge of the road, muttering to himself:

“Driving an animal like that in this weather! What does he think he’s up tor”

He saw Ferdinand raise his hat to a group of harvesters and understood that the horse was being made to show off its paces, because the vet never acted on impulse but always for a reason, like the sensible man he was. Honore looked the approaching animal over with an expert eye. It was a dark bay, too heavily built for his taste.

“Ferdinand may be a vet,” he reflected with satisfaction, “but he'll never really know a good animal. That’s a sturdy horse, all right, but it isn’t the trotter you want between the shaft of a gig. And what about that bulge of stomach between its front legs?”

As the gig drew up he asked a little anxiously, since the vet rarely came to Claquebue on a week-day:

“Is anything the matter?”

“No, nothing,” said Ferdinand, getting out. “I have to pay a visit near here so I thought I might as well come this way. We shan’t be able to come over to-morrow, as it happens. It’ll have to be the Sunday after.”

He held out his hand, contrary to the tacit understanding whereby the brothers dispensed with all forms of friendly demonstration when they were alone together. Honore touched it with a negligent gesture. He had no doubt at all as to what the unaccustomed hand-shake portended: his brother was going to ask him for something. And seeing the realisation in his elder brother’s eye, Ferdinand perceived that he had made a bad start. He flushed slightly, and to cover his embarrassment inquired with an exaggerated solicitude after the children.

Honore replied briefly while he patted the horse’s neck. Clotilde and Gustave, the two little ones, were at school. They should be home by now, but they always dawdled on the way. Alexis was looking after the cows on the common; he would be back at school in the autumn. While she waited to get married, and she had plenty of time, Juliette was working in the fields like a man: it was very necessary, now that her brother was doing his military service.

“As for Ernest, he’s still at Epinal. You must read his last letter. He says his sergeant thinks a lot of him. I’m beginning to wonder whether he’s thinking of re-enlisting— Alphonse put so many ideas into his head. Have you heard anything from Alphonse?”

Ferdinand shook his head. He did not like to be reminded of this unworthy brother, and Honore was well aware of the fact.

“Poor Alphonse, he hasn’t had much luck. You won’t find a better-hearted man anywhere.”

Ferdinand pursed his lips, looking severe.

“Don’t you agree?” said Honore.

“Yes, of course,” said Ferdinand with an effort.

“I often think of poor old Alphonse. I wonder if he’s still at Lyons, and how many children he has now. It’s two years since we last heard from him.” Honore paused, and then went on with an unkind satisfaction: “But you know what he’s like. One of these days he’ll turn up without warning and plant himself and his whole family on you for a couple of months. It’ll be nice to see him again.”

Ferdinand, to whom this alarming possibility had not occurred, felt his cheeks grow red with anger while a savage light gleamed in his eyes. However, he refrained from making any derogatory remark about Alphonse, since this might prejudice the important discussion upon which he was about to embark with Honore, and which he had been meditating since the previous evening. After a slightly uncomfortable silence he asked after Philibert Messelon, the major of Claquebue.

“I haven’t had time to go and see him,” said Honore, “but I sent Juliette round yesterday evening. He’s not getting on at all well, worn-out as he is. You’d say he couldn’t last more than another couple of weeks. Well, he’s an old man, no getting away from it.”

“A pitv all the same,” said Ferdinand sighing. “He was a good man, Philibert, and he made a good mayor. .

But talking of that-”

Mistaking what he had in mind, Honore said:

“I’ve already told you I don’t want to be mayor or even deputy-mavor. It’s quite enough, being on the Council.” Ferdinand clicked his tongue, and his thin face with its thrusting chin became suddenly animated. He seemed to have been given the cue he wanted.

“You won’t let me finish. It’s a matter of choosing another candidate, and since you have so much influence. .”

Honore did indeed possess a certain influence both on the Municipal Council and in general throughout Claquebue. It gratified him to hear his brother say so, and he listened with a better grace.

“The other evening,” Ferdinand went on, “the Deputy came to dinner with us while he was waiting between trains. Valtier has been a friend to both you and me. He has done us services before now, and he’ll do us others.” “I don’t owe Valtier anything and I don’t want anything from him, but go on.”

“You can never be sure about that. Anyway at dinner the subject of Philibert Messelon came up, and Valtier gave me to understand that there’s someone he wants to make mayor when he goes. I need hardly say that he’s quite convinced that the man he has in mind will serve the best interests of the commune. Valtier is a man of the highest integrity, a fact which is generally acknowledged in Paris. I have no need to sing his praises. He-”

“Well, if his candidate is suitable. .” said Honore. Ferdinand uttered a slightly apologetic laugh.

“I’m afraid it’ll come as a bit of a shock to you, and I don’t mind admitting that I had a job to get used to the idea myself. The man he has in mind is Zephe Maloret.” Honore gave a long whistle, as though amazed by his brother’s temerity in even speaking the name. He glanced at him and said:

“You don’t even seem to be indignant!”

“Well, of course, at first sight-”

“The thing that really astonishes me is that Valtier should have picked on one of the worst reactionaries in the district — a priest-lover like Zephe! How did it happen?”

Ferdinand was not comfortable. He replied cautiously: “I don’t really know. . Well, what I mean is, it’s not easy to explain. As I’m sure you realise, the political background is exceptional. General Boulanger’s programme has served to reconcile a good many adversaries, and it can even be a link between apparently opposed parties. In a period of anarchy such as we’re living through at present, such a link is highly desirable. The facts of the situation

— h’m. . — lead one to the conclusion that-”

“Listen,” said Honore. “I don’t know anything about Boulanger’s programme or the facts of the situation or anything else; but I do know Claquebue, and I can tell you that if Zephe is made mayor you’ll be making fools of the Republic and the Republican Party, and you can’t get over it by talking about Boulanger!”

“To tell you the truth, I think Valtier may be on friendly terms with some member of the Maloret family. He said something about personal reasons. . ”

“Personal reasons? Wait a minute! Would that be Zephe’s daughter? Yes, Marguerite, the one that went to

Paris two years ago. A pretty wench, she is, and typical of the family by all accounts!”

Ferdinand turned and tightened a strap of the bay’s harness to avoid the necessity of replying.

“I know you’re going to remind me,” he said, “that the Malorets were always against our father.”

“A fat lot I care about that!” said Honore with scorn. “You aren’t going to hold that old sharpshooter story against Zephe — a thing that happened fifteen years ago! It would be foolish as well as ungenerous, as you will be the first to admit.”

Honore was silent. Turning his back on his brother, he drew open the horse’s lips, pretending to examine its teeth. But sheer rage made him clumsy, and the bay broke away with a brisk jerk of its head. Ferdinand saw that he had touched upon the crux of the matter, and in his anxiety to get his way he was driven to exclaim:

“If one kept count of all the tiffs one has had with people over twenty years, one would be left without a single friend! However much in the wrong Zephe may have been, you can surelv forgive him now.”

“No,” said Honore.

“Oh, but really! After all, you didn’t die of it.”

Honore shrugged his shoulders. Wanting to keep the horse’s head down, he jerked the bit with a nervous movement which caused it to give a snort of pain. Ferdinand could no longer suppress his impatience.

“And anyway how much truth is there in that sharpshooter story? The whole thing’s so vague. It was never even talked about in the neighbourhood.”

Honore turned suddenly and gripped his brother by the arm.

“No, you’ve never heard it talked about. Would you like to know why?”

“Not particularly. I don’t care-”

“Well, you’re going to know. Do you hear? And after that perhaps you’ll stop annoying me!”

Honore was pale, and Ferdinand felt apprehensive. He tried to draw away, but Honore thrust him towards the ditch and compelled him to sit beside him at its edge. Finding itself ignored by the two men, the bay pulled the gig as far as the farmyard and came to rest in the shade of a walnut tree.

“When the Prussians came. said Honore.

He broke off, looked Ferdinand in the eyes and exclaimed violently:

“There’s no reason why I should keep it to myself! You’re going to hear the whole thing!”

He controlled himself and went on more quietly:

“I was one of a crowd who drifted round the countryside without much knowing what to do. When we heard that they’d arrived in Claquebue we hid in the fringe of the woods. It was a silly thing to do, but we’d spent the night getting drunk in an inn at Rouilleux. We were trying to be clever, and the fact is we were all sorry we hadn’t gone back with the troops of the line who were holding the heights of Bellechaume. I was just at the edge of the Champ-Brule, behind a hornbeam thicket that stood out into the flatland. They’ve cut it down since. It was just over there.”

He pointed to a part of the woods five or six hundred yards away.

“At about two in the afternoon I saw their pointed helmets coming over the crest of the Montee-Rouge. You could hear their pipes squealing. The tune they were playing, even now when I think of it I seem to feel it in my guts. I watched the swine coming across the fields, and what with keeping an eye on the house you can understand that I was pretty well choking with fright. About a dozen yards away from me there was a kid of eighteen called Toucheur. Not a bad boy but young and still hadn’t learnt any sense. I couldn’t see him, but I heard him say in a queer sort of voice, ‘The Prussians have just gone into the Raicart woods.’ At first I wanted to tell him to hold his jaw, but then I thought that in the mob we had with us there’d be bound to be at least one or two who’d be fools enough to start shooting, and half Claquebue would end up with their throats cut. ‘It’s true,’ I said to him. ‘They’re going to try and corner us between the two ponds.’ Toucheur was on my left, but five minutes later the story came back to me from my right that the sausage-eaters were trying to surround us between the ponds. And everything went just the way I expected. The boys began to get ready to break out, brave as lions, and I, knowing what it was ail about, well I was just in a cold sweat, to put it no worse. And also I wasn’t going to sit there by myself watching the Prussians, so I started to move off, meaning to go deeper into the woods. . ”

“Deserting your post in the face of the enemy,” said Ferdinand.

“Tripe! I moved round a bit to the left, and as I reached a path near the edge I saw Toucheur leave the wood and jump down into that sunken lane that runs to the house, you know the one I mean. I went after him, and when I got down into the lane I saw him running like mad straight towards our place. I called out his name at the top of my voice, but if I’d been yelling right in his ear he wouldn’t have taken any notice. All he wanted was to defend the first house the Germans were coming for — our house, in fact. Well, you know what it would have meant, a sharpshooter in our house, the mayor’s house — it would have been enough to get the whole village shot. So there was I trying to catch the boy, who had a hundred yards start of me and half out of his wits into the bargain. He’d already got inside the house by the time I reached the road, and that’s where I passed Zephe Maloret. Naturally, I didn’t waste time stopping to talk to him.”

“In fact, you’re not even sure that Zephe was the only person who saw the two of you?”

“He admitted it himself — one day when I shoved his face into a heap of muck.”

Honore uttered a satisfied chuckle as he recalled that avowal. Ferdinand remarked for the second time that the matter was not very serious, since after all no one had been hurt.

“Just let me finish. So I went into our house, and there I found the kid in tears, hanging round the neck of our mother, who was trying to comfort him. They were in the kitchen. I grabbed young Toucheur by the neck and sent him staggering over to the door. I ought to have cleared off with him at once, but you know how it is, Mother was there all by herself because Adelaide and the children were with you, and father had been at the

Council Offices all the morning waiting for the Prussians. I had to stop and give the old woman a hug and say a few words to her. Toucheur went and tried to hide in the corner by the clock, with his chin between his knees and his heels sticking into his bottom, huddled up in a blue funk. By the time I’d got him back on his feet and kicked him a few times to get him to pull himself together, there were the Prussians just coming round the corner. It seems they were Bavarians, the worst kind of Prussians, the worst of the whole lot. There were about fifteen of them, with a sergeant. Well, I say a sergeant — he could have been an officer for all I know. Their N.C.Os. don’t wear stripes on their sleeves or even on their caps. You may say it’s a minor detail, but just the same it’s one of the things that prove they’re no better than savages. From where they were they could see all the front and one side of the house — no chance of getting away into the barn. It was even risky to get out by the back window, although I’d have tried it if I’d been alone. But with Toucheur there was no chance at all, he was clinging to my coat with his teeth chattering. Mother didn’t lose her head, she opened the bedroom door so we could go in and hide under the bed. Toucheur asked nothing better, it was all he wanted, you couldn’t so much as hear him breathe. As for me, I wasn’t worrying too much. Why should they search the bedrooms? We could stay there and clear out after dark. Mother went back to the kitchen, leaving the door open. I heard her say, ‘Honore, they’re stopping. The leader’s talking to Zephe.’ At that moment I must admit I didn’t think anything of it; it never occurred to me that. . ‘Now they’re coming on again,’ mother said. . Then suddenly I didn’t hear any more because she shut the bedroom door. And then there was the sound of boots on the kitchen tiles. God Almighty! I lay there stiff as a corpse under the mattress!. . The sergeant said, ‘You’ve got some sharpshooters hiding here.’ You ought to have heard the kind of French he talked, the sod! Mother argued like mad and swore she’d never even seen a sharpshooter, but he said he was sure of it. Well, in the end the voices died down and I didn’t hear anything more for a bit. Then the sergeant started talking to his men in their lingo — probably ordering them to search the barn and the hay lofts. .

Ferdinand was afraid to hear any more. He wanted to bring this recital to an end.

“All the same, in the end you got away all right. That’s all that matters.”

“Whatever way I die, I hope to God it won’t be through being caught flat on my stomach underneath a bed!. . But before I could get out the door opened. I saw the bottom of mother’s skirts, and behind them— what do you think? — the sergeant’s boots. At first I didn’t realise. . But then I saw the skirts being pulled up.

“Honore!. .” said Ferdinand in a stifled voice.

“And I heard what went on on the mattress above my head, and there was nothing I could do about it. It wasn’t my skin I was thinking of, but even if I could have fixed the whole thing with a rifle-shot I couldn’t have brought myself to do it — I mean, I couldn’t have shown myself— I just couldn’t. . ”

Ferdinand wiped away the sweat that was running down from under his hat.

“It’s not a thing to talk about,” he muttered. “You shouldn’t have told me.”

“Well, now you know why it wasn’t talked about in Claquebue. Anything father may have told you could only be as much as he was told himself. I was the only one who knew the truth. Toucheur was killed a week later, and that was a great relief to me. After the war I could have settled with Zephe Maloret — shot him from behind a bush. Dead men tell no tales. But while mother was alive I wanted it to look as though I didn’t even remember. And anyway, shooting a man like that, it’s not the kind of thing I like doing, even if it meant ridding the world of Zephe Maloret.”

“He certainly behaved badly,” murmured Ferdinand.

He was silent for a moment, unable to prevent himself from recalling his conversation with Valtier, from which it had been clear that the Deputy was particularly anxious to get Zephe elected mayor. Valtier was, in fact, very much taken with Marguerite Maloret. There could be no better wav of obliging him than bv enabling him to oblige her; and Ferdinand could see much to be gained from his friendship. Setting aside personal ambition, he had to consider the career of his elder son, Frederic, who might, \\ ith the help of Valuer's influence, be given a splendid start.

“Listen, Honore. I agree that Zephe behaved extremely badly. All the same, one mav suppose that he did so in a moment of panic. To find oneself held up on the road by a detachment of Prussians-”

"I know Zephe. He’s cautious and he doesn’t like being knocked about, but I'm sure he’s not a coward. It would have taken more than that-”

“In any case,” said Ferdinand, “there’s no question of our forgiving him. I would never go as far as that. But personal grievances have nothing to do w ith the matter we’re discussing. In our own interest, in the interests of the familv as a whole, it is necessarv that Zephe should become mayor. That’s how we have to look at it.’’

“When it comes to interests I’m sure you know a lot more about it than I do, but the fact remains that Zephe forced your mother to let herself be rogered by a Prussian.”

The gross word caused Ferdinand to blush. He was revolted by a freedom of speech which insulted the victim's memory.

“You should at least have some respect for the dead!”

“Oh, the dead don't need anyone to feel sorrv for them. If it was only a question of the dead I wouldn’t give a damn. But I was there under the bed, don’t forget, and I’m not dead! And the Maloret who sent that Prussian to have his fun over my head, he isn’t dead either. And that’s what matters.”

“Of course. I agree. But one has to accept things as they are, and since Valtier-”

“That’ll do,” said Honore in a harsh voice. “I thought I’d said all that was needed. You can take it from me that Zephe will never become mayor of Claquebue so long as I’m able to prevent it.”

Feridnand realised that he was up against a fixed resolve which no amount of persuasion could alter. He saw his son’s whole future compromised by an idiotic grudge.

Exasperated by his powerlessness to reason with Honore, he looked round for a bludgeoning argument, a means of forcing him. His pallid eyes turned towards the house — the house which was his property, out of which he might turn his brother at little more than a day’s notice. In his rage he came very near to uttering the threat, but with an effort of reflection he assessed the risks it entailed. Honore would not hesitate to go, and it was important to Ferdinand that he should continue to occupy the Hau-douin house, since he served his political interests in Claquebue. Moreover, Honore looked after the property as though it were his own. So Ferdinand suppressed the words that were rising to his lips; but seeing his expression and noting the direction of his gaze, Honore guessed what was passing through his mind. He answered it directly:

“I’ll go whenever you want me to, you know. Perhaps I shan’t wait to be told.”

“No, no, no!” said Ferdinand. “What on earth are you talking about? Good Heavens, I’m quite ready to give you a written undertaking-”

“As for written undertakings, you can stuff them you know where!”

Ferdinand stammered a confused protest to the effect that he had never had the smallest intention of taking advantage of his position as owner, and that so long as he lived his brother could be quite sure. .

Honore was scarcely listening. He was looking at the sun which hung suspended over the far end of Claquebue before it sank behind the Montee-Rouge. Half-blinded by its light he lowered his eyes and repeated in a soft and lingering voice:

“You know where.”

Of all the Haudouins Honore was my favourite. I owe it to him, perhaps, that I was able to master the despair engendered by my fruitless obsessions and mv two-dimensional lusts. From that gay and gentle-hearted man I learned the secret of a spacious eroticism which found its truest satisfaction beyond the confines of realitv. This is not to say that he had any hankering after physical chastity: he caressed his wife and was not indifferent to any woman. But his true pleasure in love bore no resemblance to those rational felicities which the devotees of moral hygiene extol with an austere freedom; neither had it anything in common with the dismal conjugal duties which Ferdinand never performed without a secret sense of shame. It was born sometimes of a ray of sunshine, and at other times was distracted from the moment of its own consummation by the passage of a cloud. When Honore made love to his wife he was embracing the cornfields as well, and the river and the Raicart woods.

On a certain Sunday when he was eighteen, being alone in the dining-room with the maidservant, she made advances to him in a manner which caused him to respond. The countryside beyond the window was buried in snow, and a sudden burst of sunshine lent a momentary brilliance to this cold coverlet. All the colours of the rainbow-seemed to spring to life in a whirling dance. Honore felt this snow-carnival as though it were a tingle in his blood, and abruptly abandoning a diversion which had already reached an advanced stage, he went and opened the window to laugh at the dancing rays of the sun. In my seventy years I have known many lovers, but never another ready to abandon his pleasure so near to its fulfilment, and at the bidding of beaut}’ alone. It was the privilege of that particular Haudouin to be able to preserve without effort the most precious illusions. On the other hand it must be admitted that he sometimes fell from grace. Out in the fields, at the sight of the tall corn swaying in the breeze or at the scent of the gashed earth, he would sometimes pause at his work while desire swept through his body, a longing for a huge embrace. It was as though a whole world in ecstasv pressed down upon his limbs grown sluggish with a wholesome weariness. And then the desire would lose its wide splendour, would more meagrely define itself to become reduced, at length, to a single point on his horizon, and Honore would resume his labour picturing the bosom of some girl in Claquebue.

Adelaide had never been beautiful. Even in the davs when Honore had paid his court to her, her figure had already foretold the thin, hard, peasant-woman’s bodv, all bone and muscle. Never from the day of their marriage had he tried to pretend to himself that there was anything in his wife’s bodice to please the exploring hand. He knew also that she was of a quarrelsome disposition, and that she would not be long in losing all her teeth. He laughed as though at a practical joke he had played on himself, and told Adelaide that he had picked on a rum specimen. He would have liked her to have all imaginable attractions, but once she had become his wife there was no point in crying for the moon, and he loved her in any case. In his heart (he did not tell her this, and indeed sometimes talked to her severely about the inadequacy of her behind) he loved her for being what she was. He was certainly not going to make himself wretched over an insufficiency of bosom and buttocks. He made the best of what was there, and skinny though she was, when his hands reached out to her in their bed he could always find ways of seeming to have his arms full. Occasionally he reflected that he was lucky to have a vfife like Adelaide, who v'ould serve him throughout the thirty or forty years he had to live, as he would her; lucky also inasmuch as lie loved lier solidly, without even feeling the need to he unfaithful to her; and luekv, finally, in understanding nothing of all this. But for the most part lie did not think about it at all. He whistled on the plain as he guided his plough, stopped to piss and then went on again, spat downwind, talked to his oxen, stroking them now with the grain and now against it, laughed aloud, peeled a wand of green wood or carved a whistle for his lads, laughed again, kept his furrow straight and marvelled that life should be so good.

Honore’s joy in life was to the cure a highly distressing phenomenon, and one which aroused in him a strong feeling of professional jealousy. It seemed to him a lamentable object-lesson that a man should contrive to be so blatantly happy without the connivance of the Church. He had no personal animosity for Honore, and indeed liked him and pitied him for being sunk in error; but he was first and foremost a tactician in the battle for souls. He knew only too well that the souls of Claquebue, instead of constantly aspiring upward to the paths of Heaven, moved much more readily upon the level of the earth, where with the bodies they risked taking permanent root. It was necessary to keep them suitably poised, always ready for the leap skywards. So he multiplied his warnings, pasting his ban across the loins of women—“Danger— beware!” or at the best, “Do not linger!” To give them a greater substance he added the threat of punishment, not merely in the next world but in this very vale of tears. In their hearts, as he knew, the people of Claquebue did not trouble themselves overmuch as to the vicissitudes of the future life. The terrors of hell would never prevent them from sinning; but they would have stayed chaste a year on end if they had believed the harvest would be ruined by their failure to do so. This was the sort of bargain he offered them. In order to preserve their souls in a state of readiness for eternal beatitude, he had to make them anxious about the cattle and the harvest. The necessity was humiliating, but there it was, and after all the result was what counted.

But the mere presence of Honore in Claquebue was calculated to upset this result. Despite the notorious fact that he cared nothing for the cure's bans, his eyes were clear and his skin healthy, his animals did not die and his happiness shone undiminished from one year to the next. The cure dared not even suggest that he would suffer in the next world, since he was generally held, even by the most devout, to be such a good man that no one would have believed it. In short, the cure was reduced to maintaining that God withheld his wrath from Honore in consideration of the merits of Adelaide, who was a good Catholic; and he did his best by subtle stratagems to stir up discord in the Haudouin household, exhorting the wife when he had her in the confessional to refuse her husband’s embraces as often as she could, thereby winning indulgence for them both. Adelaide could never bring herself to make this sacrifice: but after her failures to do so she always made a point of saying a prayer, or two, as the case required. In matters of love she was far from adopting the passive attitude of her mother-in-law, and sometimes took the initiative with a boldness which Honore considered almost anarchic and certainly unsuitable on the part of a wife. Despite what the cure surmised, he remained very largely attached to the family traditions. Darkness was more favourable to his ardour; he held that male caprice had the force of law, and he disdained the pleasure of women. Adelaide did not at all see eve to eye with him, and this was a cause of frequent quarrels between them. She wanted her share, she wanted to be humoured, sometimes even by daylight. She pursued him with her importunities, resorting positively to gestures, and was invariably rebuffed by Honore, often with hot words.

Honore, however, by no means observed the family traditions to the letter. He had never paid any attention to his father’s strictures regarding the conservation of virility, but followed his humour entirely, unlike Ferdinand. It was not the only point of difference between the brothers. From their infancy Honore had recoiled instinctively from the calculating child who hid himself to watch men make water, and had learned the shame of sin before he knew its substance. And Ferdinand on his side was slightly afraid of the elder brother whose frankness was a con-

stant reproach to him; but he seldom gave him excuse for a rebuke.

During the warm weather their mother had been accustomed to wash her feet on the first Sunday of every month. She dragged her tub to the middle of the kitchen, choosing a time when the family was gathered together, so that the tedium of this necessary business might be relieved by conversation. Jules Haudouin and his two elder sons addressed her with eyes averted from her bare legs, while Ferdinand played silently by himself. On one of these Sundays Honore had noticed that Ferdinand, then aged nine, kept sending his marbles in the direction of the tub, and following the gaze of the boy’s half-closed eyes he caught him covertly peering beneath his mother’s thin cotton petticoat. “Ferdinand!” The younger boy jumped to his feet, blushing furiously. “You deserve a good clout!” said Honore. The incident had a permanent effect upon the relationship between the two brothers. Ferdinand never forgot it. He was always slightly ill-at-ease with Honore, as though standing at the seat of judgment. Neither age nor a successful career could alter this: he was always on the defensive. Honore, of course, forgot the incident almost immediately, but fresh reasons were always arising to reinforce his early aversion for his brother. Ferdinand’s exaggerated Puritanism seemed to him to conceal an unpleasant mystery, and this impression was the more disagreeable inasmuch as he had a warm friendship for his sister-in-law, Helene, and a secret admiration for her. He imagined her enduring with distaste the furtive onslaughts of that shamefaced male, as with irritating precautions, he gave rein to his sickly desires, wrapping them about with a morbid sense of propriety. His contempt for his brother was so far apparent in their conversation as to cause Helene to notice it. She asked Ferdinand the reason, and he replied with accusations rendered suspect by their very vehemence. Honore’s chief pastime, he maintained, was the pursuit of women, and the scorn he displayed for himself was nothing more than a treacherous manoeuvre whereby he hoped to disrupt a virtuous household and execute an abominable design. Ferdinand was in fact convinced of his brother’s profligacy, having been led into this error bv his freedom of speech.

Honore was never unfaithful to his wife except when he went with a party of his fellow horsctraders to the house in the Rue des Oiseaux, in Saint-.Margelon: but this could be regarded as virtually a professional necessitv, and in any case he considered that prostitutes belonged to a world that was not quite real. His attentions to the maidservant. in the days when thev had one, mav be equally discounted. It was quite customary, in respectable country households, for the confidential serving-maid to join with the wife in ministering to the master’s pleasure, and Adelaide never considered it a matter for serious reproach. H onore’s conduct in the village gave her no grounds for complaint. The village wives w ere virtuous on the whole, and loving his own, he would not have wished to shame her in the eves of the neighbours.

Adelaide was worthy of the consideration he showed her. Only once did she fall from grace: but this solitary lapse gave her so much pleasure that she acquired signal merit in not repeating it. On a winter's afternoon, when she happened to be alone in the house with the maid, a tramp aged about forty asked permission to sleep in the cowshed. The maid went with him to get him a bale of straw, and came back complaining that he had tried to put her on her back. The tale left Adelaide thoughtful, filled with a sense of oppression, while her cheeks grew flushed with commiserating warmth. She went to the shed. The man was already stretched on the straw between two warm cows who lav chewing the cud. She sat down beside him, reaching out charitable hands, and presently bent over him. The man did not move, fearful of alarming the head that hung poised above him. He was a poor man without tradition, who did not allow shame to trouble his pleasure. He murmured tender oaths while Adelaide moaned softly and the cow s breathed over them.

When Adelaide made her confession the cure was at first delighted. Although he was sorry for Honore, he considered it a matter for rejoicing that the devil should thus serve the cause of Christianity in Claquebue. The worm was in the fruit, and the scandalous happiness of the black sheep who enjoyed God’s gifts unscathed was approaching its end. But a vcar passed without Adelaide’s confessing to anv further act of adultery. The cure grew anxious. Whenever a tramp knocked at his door he gave him a crust of bread and, apologising on the grounds that he himself had no room, directed him to Honore’s house, where he could count on finding shelter for the night. But Adelaide never weakened again, and Honore acquired a reputation for being wonderfully charitable to tramps.

A few years previously I had witnessed, in the same house, an act of adultery which was however more in the nature of an honourable sacrifice, since the elder Mme. Haudouin, in yielding to a Bavarian non-commissioned officer, did so in order to save her son’s life. She had reached the age when women have little more to expect of masculine desire, and the Bavarian was one of those candid, fresh-cheeked young men who see more of mystery than of reality in a well-filled bodice. Mme. Hau-douin’s bodice was impressive, particularly in the half-light of the kitchen; he was struck by it directly he entered, and did not take his eves off it all the time he was questioning her. Confronted by the frightened, suppliant woman, the chance seemed to him so tempting that he did not hesitate, despite the risk of being shot by his own people if he was caught. After sending his men to search the outhouses he kissed.Mme. Haudouin on the lips and thrust her towards the bedroom. The youthful kiss, such as age and propriety had long forbidden her to hope for, did not leave her unmoved: but the anguish of knowing that her son was in the room had a chilling effect upon this first tremor of emotion. She shut her eyes as she lay on the bed, then opened them again as she perceived the voung man’s clumsiness. There was no time to be lost, since they might be surprised at any moment; she wanted to help him, but her married life had furnished her with little experience of value at that moment. They set out together as it were upon a voyage of discovery, apologising with smiles for their respective shortcomings. Despite herself.Mme. Haudouin gave rein to a curiosity which her husband’s nocturnal activities had left unsatisfied; and when matters had been satisfactorily adjusted she felt a first melting of her hitherto unaroused flesh. The sense of guilt still burdened her, but when he was about to draw away she clung to him impulsively and drew his face to her own. Then, when she sought to thrust him from her, ashamed of having yielded, it was he who persisted. And now a smile was forced from her, of gratitude and complicity; her drowsy body, stiffened with age, was pierced by a sharp twinge of rapture and she stifled a long cry of amazement. The young Bavarian got up quickly from the bed, afraid of having stayed too long already, and as he adjusted his uniform he reached out a hand to help her to her feet. Then he saw that she was an old woman; he had been tricked into an act of betrayal by an old woman’s bosom; and a wry smile rose to his lips at the thought that he might have died an ignominious death.

Alme. Haudouin confessed within the week. She was a person of orderly habits who never fell behind in her duties. She went with an easy conscience to confession, feeling no great remorse for an action to which circumstances had compelled her. She told the story rapidly, giving for decency’s sake no more than the bare outline, and maintaining all the dignity of a woman who has sacrificed herself in a noble cause.

“Yes,” said the cure, “but did you enjoy it?”

And at this the poor soul stammered an avowal and began to tremble. The cure said nothing to reassure her, being on the contrary only too happy to demonstrate that the most devoted sacrifices become the blackest of sins when the devil is their witness, and that we run hideous risks in consummating the act of the flesh, no matter how just the cause. Mme. Haudouin bitterly repented her lapse, so much so, indeed, that she died of it in less than three years.