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CATHERINE, going downstairs, found Peyrol still at the well. He seemed to be looking into it with extreme interest.
"Your coffee is ready, Peyrol," she shouted to him from the doorway.
He turned very sharply like a man surprised and came along smiling.
"That's pleasant news, Mademoiselle Catherine," he said. "You are down early."
"Yes," she admitted, "but you too, Peyrol. Is Michel about? Let him come and have some coffee too."
"Michel's at the tartane. Perhaps you don't know that she is going to make a little voyage." He drank a mouthful of coffee and took a bite out of a slice of bread. He was hungry. He had been up all night and had even had a conversation with Citizen Scevola. He had also done some work with Michel after daylight; however, there had not been much to do because the tartane was always kept ready for sea. Then after having again locked up Citizen Scevola, who was extremely concerned as to what was going to happen to him but was left in a state of uncertainty, he had come up to the farm, had gone upstairs where he was busy with various things for a time, and then had stolen down very cautiously to the well, where Catherine, whom he had not expected downstairs so early, had seen him before she went into Lieutenant Réal's room. While he enjoyed his coffee he listened without any signs of surprise to Catherine's comments upon the disappearance of Scevola. She had looked into his den. He had not slept on his pallet last night, of that she was certain, and he was nowhere to be seen, not even in the most distant field, from the points of vantage around the farm. It was inconceivable that he should have slipped away to Madrague, where he disliked to go, or to the village, where he was afraid to go. Peyrol remarked that whatever happened to him he was no great loss, but Catherine was not to be soothed.
"It frightens a body," she said. "He may be hiding somewhere to jump on one treacherously. You know what I mean, Peyrol."
"Well, the lieutenant will have nothing to fear, as he's going away. As to myself, Scevola and I are good friends. I had a long talk with him quite recently. You two women can manage him perfectly; and then, who knows, perhaps he has gone away for good."
Catherine stared at him, if such a word as stare can be applied to a profound contemplative gaze. "The lieutenant has nothing to fear from him," she repeated cautiously.
"No, he is going away. Didn't you know it?" The old woman continued to look at him profoundly. "Yes, he is on service."
For another minute or so Catherine continued silent in
her contemplative attitude. Then her hesitation came to an end. She
could not resist the desire to inform Peyrol of the events of the
night. As she went on Peyrol forgot the half-full bowl of coffee and
his half-eaten piece of bread. Catherine's voice flowed with
austerity. She stood there, imposing and solemn like a
peasant- For a moment longer Peyrol continued to look at the
coffee in the bowl, then without warning got up with such violence
that the chair behind him was thrown back upon the flagstones.
"Where is he, that honest man?" he shouted
suddenly in stentorian tones which not only caused Catherine to raise
her hands, but frightened himself, and he dropped at once to a mere
forcible utterance. "Where is that man? Let me see him."
Even Catherine's hieratic composure was disturbed.
"Why," she said, looking really disconcerted, "he will
be down here directly. This bowl of coffee is for him."
Peyrol made as if to leave the kitchen, but Catherine
stopped him. "For God's sake, Monsieur Peyrol," she said,
half in entreaty and half in command, "don't wake up the child.
Let her sleep. Oh, let her sleep! Don't wake her up. God only knows
how long it is since she has slept properly. I could not tell you. I
daren't think of it." She was shocked by hearing Peyrol declare:
"All this is confounded nonsense." But he sat down again,
seemed to catch sight of the coffee bowl and emptied what was left in
it down his throat.
"I don't want her on my hands more crazy than she
has been before," said Catherine, in a sort of exasperation but
in a very low tone. This phrase in its selfish form expressed a real
and profound compassion for her niece. She dreaded the moment when
that fatal Arlette would wake up and the dreadful complications of
life which her slumbers had suspended would have to be picked up
again. Peyrol fidgeted on his seat.
"And so he told you he was going? He actually did
tell you that?" he asked.
"He promised to go before the child wakes up. . .
. At once."
"But, sacré nom d'un chien, there is never
any wind before eleven o'clock," Peyrol exclaimed in a tone of
profound annoyance, yet trying to moderate his voice, while
Catherine, indulgent to his changing moods, only compressed her lips
and nodded at him soothingly. "It is impossible to work with
people like that," he mumbled.
"Do you know, Monsieur Peyrol, that she has been
to see the priest?" Catherine was heard suddenly, towering above
her end of the table. The two women had had a talk before Arlette had
been induced by her aunt to lie down. Peyrol gave a start.
"What? Priest? . . . Now look here,
Catherine," he went on with repressed ferocity, "do you
imagine that all this interests me in the least?"
"I can think of nothing but that niece of mine.
We two have nobody but each other in the world," she went on,
reproducing the very phrase Arlette had used to Réal. She
seemed to be thinking aloud, but noticed that Peyrol was listening
with attention. "He wanted to shut her up from everybody,"
and the old woman clasped her meagre hands with a sudden gesture.
"I suppose there are still some convents about the world."
"You and the patronne are mad together,"
declared Peyrol. "All this only shows what an ass the
curé is. I don't know much about these things, though I have
seen some nuns in my time, and some very queer ones too, but it seems
to me that they don't take crazy people into convents. Don't you be
afraid. I tell you that." He stopped because the inner door of
the kitchen came open and Lieutenant Réal stepped in. His
sword hung on his forearm by the belt, his hat was on his head. He
dropped his little valise on the floor and sat down in the nearest
chair to put on his shoes which he had brought down in his other
hand. Then he came up to the table. Peyrol, who had kept his eyes on
him, thought: "Here is one who looks like a moth scorched in the
fire." Réal's eyes were sunk, his cheeks seemed hollowed
and the whole face had an arid and dry aspect.
"Well, you are in a fine state for the work of
deceiving the enemy," Peyrol observed. "Why, to look at
you, nobody would believe a word you said. You are not going to be
ill, I hope. You are on service. You haven't got the right to be ill.
I say, Mademoiselle Catherine, produce the bottle you know, my
private bottle. . . ." He snatched it from Catherine's hand,
poured some brandy into the lieutenant's coffee, pushed the bowl
towards him and waited. "Nom de nom!" he said forcibly,
"don't you know what this is for? It's for you to drink."
Réal obeyed with a strange, automatic docility. "And
now," said Peyrol, getting up, "I will go to my room and
shave. This is a great day the day we are going to see the
lieutenant off."
Till then Réal had not uttered a word, but
directly the door closed behind Peyrol he raised his head.
"Catherine!" His voice was like a rustle in
his throat. She was looking at him steadily and he continued:
"Listen, when she finds I am gone you tell her I will return
soon. To-morrow. Always to-morrow."
"Yes, my good Monsieur," said Catherine in
an unmoved voice but clasping her hands convulsively. "There is
nothing else I would dare tell her!"
"She will believe you," whispered
Réal wildly.
"Yes! She will believe me," repeated
Catherine in a mournful tone.
Réal got up, put the sword-belt over his head,
picked up the valise. There was a little flush on his cheeks.
"Adieu," he said to the silent old woman.
She made no answer, but as he turned away she raised her hand a
little, hesitated, and let it fall again. It seemed to her that the
women of Escampobar had been singled out for divine wrath. Her niece
appeared to her like the scapegoat charged with all the murders and
blasphemies of the Revolution. She herself too had been cast out from
the grace of God. But that had been a long time ago. She had made her
peace with Heaven since. Again she raised her hand and, this time,
made in the air the sign of the cross at the back of Lieutenant
Réal.
Meanwhile upstairs Peyrol, scraping his big flat cheek
with an English razor-blade at the window, saw Lieutenant Réal
on the path to the shore; and high above there, commanding a vast
view of sea and land, he shrugged his shoulders impatiently with no
visible provocation. One could not trust those epaulette-wearers.
They would cram a fellow's head with notions either for their own
sake or for the sake of the service. Still, he was too old a bird to
be caught with chaff; and besides, that long-legged stiff beggar
going down the path with all his officer airs, was honest enough. At
any rate he knew a seaman when he saw one, though he was as
cold-blooded as a fish. Peyrol had a smile which was a little awry.
Cleaning the razor-blade (one of a set of twelve in a
case) he had a vision of a brilliantly hazy ocean and an English
Indiaman with her yards braced all ways, her canvas blowing loose
above her bloodstained decks overrun by a lot of privateersmen and
with the island of Ceylon swelling like a thin blue cloud on the far
horizon. He had always wished to own a set of English blades and
there he had got it, fell over it as it were, lying on the floor of a
cabin which had been already ransacked. "For good steel it
was good steel," he thought looking at the blade fixedly. And
there it was, nearly worn out. The others too. That steel! And here
he was holding the case in his hand as though he had just picked it
up from the floor. Same case. Same man. And the steel worn out.
He shut the case brusquely, flung it into his sea-chest
which was standing open, and slammed the lid down. The feeling
which was in his breast and had been known to more articulate men
than himself, was that life was a dream less substantial than the
vision of Ceylon lying like a cloud on the sea. Dream left astern.
Dream straight ahead. This disenchanted philosophy took the shape of
fierce swearing. "Sacré nom de nom de nom. . . . Tonnerre
de bon Dieu!"
While tying his neckcloth he handled it with fury as
though he meant to strangle himself with it. He rammed a soft cap on
to his venerable locks recklessly, seized his cudgel but before
leaving the room walked up to the window giving on the east. He could
not see the Petite Passe on account of the lookout hill, but to the
left a great portion of the Hyères roadstead lay spread out
before him, pale grey in the morning light, with the land about Cape
Blanc swelling in the distance with all its details blurred as yet
and only one conspicuous object presenting to his sight something
that might have been a lighthouse by its shape, but which Peyrol knew
very well was the English corvette already under way and with all her
canvas set.
This sight pleased Peyrol mainly because he had
expected it. The Englishman was doing exactly what he had expected he
would do, and Peyrol looked towards the English cruiser with a smile
of malicious triumph as if he were confronting her captain. For some
reason or other he imagined Captain Vincent as long-faced, with
yellow teeth and a wig, whereas that officer wore his own hair and
had a set of teeth which would have done honour to a London belle and
was really the hidden cause of Captain Vincent appearing so often
wreathed in smiles.
That ship at this great distance and steering in his
direction held Peyrol at the window long enough for the increasing
light of the morning to burst into sunshine, colouring and filling-in
the flat outline of the land with tints of wood and rock and field,
with clear dots of buildings enlivening the view. The sun threw a
sort of halo around the ship. Recollecting himself, Peyrol left the
room and shut the door quietly. Quietly too he descended the stairs
from his garret. On the landing he underwent a short inward
struggle, at the end of which he approached the door of Catherine's
room and opening it a little, put his head in. Across the whole width
of it he saw Arlette fast asleep. Her aunt had thrown a light
coverlet over her. Her low shoes stood at the foot of the bed. Her
black hair lay loose on the pillow; and Peyrol's gaze became arrested
by the long eyelashes on her pale cheek. Suddenly he fancied she
moved, and he withdrew his head sharply, pulling the door to. He
listened for a moment as if tempted to open it again, but judging it
too risky, continued on his way downstairs. At his reappearance in
the kitchen Catherine turned sharply. She was dressed for the day,
with a big white cap on her head, a black bodice and a brown skirt
with ample folds. She had a pair of varnished sabots on her feet over
her shoes.
"No signs of Scevola," she said, advancing
towards Peyrol. "And Michel too has not been here yet."
Peyrol thought that if she had been only shorter, what
with her black eyes and slightly curved nose she would have looked
like a witch. But witches can read people's thoughts, and he looked
openly at Catherine with the pleasant conviction that she could not
read his thoughts. He said:
"I took good care not to make any noise upstairs,
Mademoiselle Catherine. When I am gone the house will be empty and
quiet enough."
She had a curious expression. She struck Peyrol
suddenly as if she were lost in that kitchen in which A she had
reigned for many years. He continued:
"You will be alone all the morning."
She seemed to be listening to some distant sound, and
after Peyrol had added, "Everything is all right now," she
nodded and after a moment said in a manner that for her was
unexpectedly impulsive:
"Monsieur Peyrol, I am tired of life."
He shrugged his shoulders and with somewhat sinister
jocosity remarked:
"I will tell you what it is; you ought to have
been married."
She turned her back on him abruptly.
"No offence," Peyrol excused himself in a
tone of gloom rather than of apology. "It is no use to attach
any importance to things. What is this life? Phew! Nobody can
remember one-tenth of it. Here I am; and, you know, I would bet that
if one of my old-time chums came along and saw me like this, here
with you I mean one of those chums that stand up for a fellow in a
scrimmage and look after him should he be hurt well, I bet,"
he repeated, "he wouldn't know me. He would say to himself
perhaps, 'Hullo! here's a comfortable married couple.' "
He paused. Catherine, with her back to him and calling
him, not "Monsieur," but "Peyrol," tout court,
remarked, not exactly with displeasure, but rather with an ominous
accent that this was no time for idle talk. Peyrol, however,
continued, though his tone was very far from being that of idle talk:
"But you see, Mademoiselle Catherine, you were
not like the others. You allowed yourself to be struck all of a heap,
and at the same time you were too hard on yourself."
Her long thin frame, bent low to work the bellows
under the enormous overmantel, she assented: "Perhaps! We
Escampobar women were always hard on ourselves."
"That's what I say. If you had had things happen
to you which happened to me. . . ."
"But you men, you are different. It doesn't
matter what you do. You have got your own strength. You need not be
hard on yourselves. You go from one thing to another
thoughtlessly."
He remained looking at her searchingly with something
like a hint of a smile on his shaven lips, but she turned away to the
sink where one of the women working about the farm had deposited a
great pile of vegetables. She started on them with a broken-bladed
knife, preserving her sibylline air even in that homely occupation.
"It will be a good soup, I see, at noon
to-day," said the rover suddenly. He turned on his heels and went
out through the salle. The whole world lay open to him, or at any
rate the whole of the Mediterranean, viewed down the ravine between
the two hills. The bell of the farm's milch-cow, which had a talent
for keeping herself invisible, reached him from the right, but he
could not see as much as the tips of her horns, though he looked for
them. He stepped out sturdily. He had not gone twenty yards down the
ravine when another sound made him stand still as if changed into
stone. It was a faint noise resembling very much the hollow rumble an
empty farm-cart would make on a stony road, but Peyrol looked up at
the sky, and though it was perfectly clear, he did not seem pleased
with its aspect. He had a hill on each side of him and the placid
cove below his feet. He muttered "H'm! Thunder at sunrise. It
must be in the west. It only wanted that!" He feared it would
first kill the little breeze there was and then knock the weather up
altogether. For a moment all his faculties seemed paralyzed by that
faint sound. On that sea ruled by the gods of Olympus he might have
been a pagan mariner subject to Jupiter's caprices; but like a
defiant pagan he shook his fist vaguely at space which answered him
by a short and threatening mutter. Then he swung on his way till he
caught sight of the two mastheads of the tartane, when he stopped to
listen. No sound of any sort reached him from there, and he went on
his way thinking, "Go from one thing to another thoughtlessly!
Indeed! . . . That's all old Catherine knows about it." He had
so many things to think of that he did not know which to lay hold of
first. He just let them lie jumbled up in his head. His feelings too
were in a state of confusion, and vaguely he felt that his conduct
was at the mercy of an internal conflict. The consciousness of that
fact accounted perhaps for his sardonic attitude towards himself and
outwardly towards those whom he perceived on board the tartane; and
especially towards the lieutenant whom he saw sitting on the deck
leaning against the head of the rudder, characteristically aloof from
the two other persons on board. Michel, also characteristically, was
standing on the top of the little cabin scuttle, obviously looking
out for his "maître." Citizen Scevola, sitting on
deck, seemed at first sight to be at liberty, but as a matter of fact
he was not. He was loosely tied up to a stanchion by three turns of
the mainsheet with the knot in such a position that he could not get
at it without attracting attention; and that situation seemed also
somewhat characteristic of Citizen Scevola with its air of half
liberty, half suspicion and, as it were, contemptuous restraint. The
sans-culotte, whose late experiences had nearly unsettled his reason,
first by their utter incomprehensibility and afterwards by the
enigmatical attitude of Peyrol, had dropped his head and folded his
arms on his breast. And that attitude was dubious too. It might have
been resignation or it might have been profound sleep. The rover
addressed himself first to the lieutenant.
"Le moment approche," said Peyrol with a
queer twitch at a corner of his lip, while under his soft woollen cap
his venerable locks stirred in the breath of a suddenly warm air.
"The great moment eh?"
He leaned over the big tiller, and seemed to be
hovering above the lieutenant's shoulder.
"What's this infernal company?" murmured the
latter without even looking at Peyrol.
"All old friends quoi?" said Peyrol in a
homely tone. "We will keep that little affair amongst ourselves.
The fewer the men the greater the glory. Catherine is getting the
vegetables ready for the noonday soup and the Englishman is coming
down towards the Passe where he will arrive about noon too, ready to
have his eye put out. You know, lieutenant, that will be your job.
You may depend on me for sending you off when the moment comes. For
what is it to you? You have no friends, you have not even a petite
amie. As to expecting an old rover like me oh no, lieutenant! Of
course liberty is sweet, but what do you know of it, you
epaulette-wearers? Moreover, I am no good for quarter-deck talks and
all that politeness."
"I wish, Peyrol, you would not talk so
much," said Lieutenant Réal, turning his head slightly.
He was struck by the strange expression on the old rover's face.
"And I don't see what the actual moment matters. I am going to
look for the fleet. All you have to do is to hoist the sails for me
and then scramble ashore."
"Very simple," observed Peyrol through his
teeth, and then began to sing:
but interrupted himself suddenly to hail Scevola:
"Hé! Citoyen!" and then remarked
confidentially to Réal: "He isn't asleep, you know, but
he isn't like the English, he has a sacré mauvais
caractère. He got into his head," continued Peyrol, in a
loud and innocent tone, "that you locked him up in this cabin
last night. Did you notice the venomous glance he gave you just
now?"
Both Lieutenant Réal and the innocent Michel
appeared surprised at his boisterousness; but all the time Peyrol was
thinking: "I wish to goodness I knew how that thunderstorm is
getting on and what course it is shaping. I can't find that out
unless I go up to the farm and get a view to the westward. It may be
as far as the Rhône Valley; no doubt it is and it will come out
of it too, curses on it. One won't be able to reckon on half an hour
of steady wind from any quarter." He directed a look of ironic
gaiety at all the faces in turn. Michel met it with a faithful-dog
gaze and innocently open mouth. Scevola kept his chin buried on his
chest. Lieutenant Réal was insensible to outward impressions
and his absent stare made nothing of Peyrol. The rover himself
presently fell into thought. The last stir of air died out in the
little basin, and the sun clearing Porquerolles inundated it with a
sudden light in which Michel blinked like an owl.
"It's hot early," he announced aloud but
only because he had formed the habit of talking to himself. He would
not have presumed to offer an opinion unless asked by Peyrol.
His voice having recalled Peyrol to himself, he
proposed to masthead the yards and even asked Lieutenant Réal
to help in that operation which was accomplished in silence except
for the faint squeaking of the blocks. The sails, however, were kept
hauled up in the gear.
"Like this," said Peyrol, "you have
only to let go the ropes and you will be under canvas at once."
Without answering Réal returned to his position
by the rudder-head. He was saying to himself "I am sneaking
off. No, there is honour, duty. And of course I will return. But
when? They will forget all about me and I shall never be exchanged.
This war may last for years, " and illogically he wished he
could have had a God to whom he could pray for relief in his anguish.
"She will be in despair," he thought, writhing inwardly at
the mental picture of a distracted Arlette. Life, however, had
embittered his spirit early, and he said to himself: "But in a
month's time will she even give me a thought?" Instantly he felt
remorseful with a remorse strong enough to lift him to his feet as if
he were morally obliged to go up again and confess to Arlette this
sacrilegious cynicism of thought. "I am mad," he muttered,
perching himself on the low rail. His lapse from faith plunged him
into such a depth of unhappiness that he felt all his strength of
will go out of him. He sat there apathetic and suffering. He
meditated dully: "Young men have been known to die suddenly; why
should not I? I am, as a matter of fact, at the end of my endurance.
I am half dead already. Yes! but what is left of that life does not
belong to me now."
"Peyrol," he said in such a piercing tone
that even Scevola jerked his head up; but he made an effort to reduce
his shrillness and went on speaking very carefully: "I have left
a letter for the Secretary General at the Majorité to pay
twenty-five hundred francs to Jean you are Jean, are you not?
Peyrol, price of the tartane in which I sail. Is that right?"
"What did you do that for?" asked Peyrol
with an extremely stony face. "To get me into trouble?"
"Don't be a fool, gunner, nobody remembers your,
name. It is buried under a stack of blackened paper. I must ask you
to go there and tell them that you have seen with your own eyes
Lieutenant Réal sail away on his mission."
The stoniness of Peyrol persisted but his eyes were
full of fury. "Oh, yes, I see myself going there. Twenty-five
hundred francs! Twenty-five hundred fiddlesticks." His tone
changed suddenly. "I heard some one say that you were an honest
man, and I suppose this is a proof of it. Well, to the devil with
your honesty." He glared at the lieutenant and then thought:
"He doesn't even pretend to listen to what I say" and
another sort of anger, partly contemptuous and with something of dim
sympathy in it, replaced his downright fury. "Pah!" he
said, spat over the side, and walking up to Réal with great
deliberation, slapped him on the shoulder. The only effect of this
proceeding was to make Réal look up at him without any
expression whatever.
Peyrol then picked up the lieutenant's valise and
carried it down into the cuddy. As he passed by, Citizen Scevola
uttered the word "Citoyen" but it was only when he came
back again that Peyrol condescended to say, "Well?"
"What are you going to do with me?" asked
Scevola.
"You would not give me an account of how you came
on board this tartane," said Peyrol in a tone that sounded
almost friendly, "therefore I need not tell you what I will do
with you."
A low muttering of thunder followed so close upon his
words that it might have come out of Peyrol's own lips. The rover
gazed uneasily at the sky. It was still clear overhead, and at the
bottom of that little basin surrounded by rocks there was no view in
any other direction; but even as he gazed there was a sort of flicker
in the sunshine succeeded by a mighty but distant clap of thunder.
For the next half hour Peyrol and Michel were busy ashore taking a
long line from the tartane to the entrance of the little basin where
they fastened the end of it to a bush. This was for the purpose of
hauling the tartane out into the cove. Then they came aboard again.
The bit of sky above their heads was still clear, but while walking
with the hauling line near the cove Peyrol had got a glimpse of the
edge of the cloud. The sun grew scorching all of a sudden, and in the
stagnating air a mysterious change seemed to come over the quality
and the colour of the light. Peyrol flung his cap on the deck, baring
his head to the subtle menace of the breathless stillness of the air.
"Phew! Ça chauffe,' he muttered, rolling
up the sleeves of his jacket. He wiped his forehead with his mighty
forearm upon which a mermaid with an immensely long fishtail was
tattooed. Perceiving the lieutenant's belted sword lying on the deck,
he picked it up and without any ceremony threw it down the cabin
stairs. As he was passing again near Scevola, the sans-culotte raised
his voice.
"I believe you are one of those wretches
corrupted by English gold," he cried like one inspired. His
shining eyes, his red cheeks, testified to the fire of patriotism
burning in his breast, and he used that conventional phrase of
revolutionary time, a time when, intoxicated with oratory, he used to
run about dealing death to traitors of both sexes and all ages. But
his denunciation was received in such profound silence that his own
belief in it wavered. His words had sunk into an abysmal stillness
and the next sound was Peyrol speaking to Réal.
"I am afraid you will get very wet, lieutenant,
before long," and then, looking at Réal, he thought with
great conviction: "Wet! He wouldn't mind getting drowned."
Standing stock-still he fretted and fumed inwardly, wondering where
precisely the English ship was by this time and where the devil that
thunderstorm had got to: for the sky had become as mute as the
oppressed earth. Réal asked:
"Is it not time to haul out, gunner?" And
Peyrol said:
"There is not a breath of wind anywhere for
miles." He was gratified by the fairly loud mutter rolling
apparently along the inland hills. Over the pool a little ragged
cloud torn from the purple robe of the storm floated, arrested and
thin like a bit of dark gauze.
Above at the farm Catherine had heard too the ominous
mutter and came to the door of the salle. From there she could see
the purple cloud itself, convoluted and solid, and its sinister
shadow lying over the hills. The oncoming of the storm added to her
sense of uneasiness at finding herself all alone in the house. Michel
had not come up. She would have welcomed Michel, to whom she hardly
ever spoke, simply as a person belonging to the usual order of
things. She was not talkative, but somehow she would have liked
somebody to speak to just for a moment. This cessation of all sound,
voices or footsteps, around the buildings was not welcome; but
looking at the cloud, she thought that there would be noise enough
presently. However, stepping back into the kitchen, she was met by a
sound that made her regret the oppressive silence, by its piercing
and terrifying character; it was a shriek in the upper part of the
house where, as far as she knew, there was only Arlette asleep. In
her attempt to cross the kitchen to the foot of the stairs the weight
of her accumulated years fell upon the old woman. She felt suddenly
very feeble and hardly able to breathe. And all at once the thought,
"Scevola! Was he murdering her up there?" paralyzed the
last remnant of her physical powers. What else could it be? She fell,
as if shot, into a chair under the first shock and found herself
unable to move. Only her brain remained active, and she raised her
hands to her eyes as if to shut out the image of the horrors
upstairs. She heard nothing more from above. Arlette was dead. She
thought that now it was her turn. While her body quailed before the
brutal violence, her weary spirit longed ardently f or the end. Let
him come! Let all this be over at last, with a blow on the head or a
stab in the breast. She had not the courage to uncover her eyes. She
waited. But after about a minute it seemed to her interminable
she heard rapid footsteps overhead. Arlette was running here and
there. Catherine uncovered her eyes and was about to rise when she
heard at the top of the stairs the name of Peyrol shouted with a
desperate accent. Then, again, after the shortest of pauses, the cry
of: "Peyrol, Peyrol!" and then the sound of feet running
downstairs. There was another shriek, "Peyrol!" just
outside the door before it flew open. Who was pursuing her? Catherine
managed to stand up. Steadying herself with one hand on the table
she presented an undaunted front to her niece who ran into the
kitchen with loose hair flying and the appearance of wildest
distraction in her eyes.
The staircase door had slammed to behind her. Nobody
was pursuing her; and Catherine, putting forth her lean brown arm,
arrested Arlette's flight with such a jerk that the two women swung
against each other. She seized her niece by the shoulders.
"What is this, in Heaven's name? Where are you
rushing to?" she cried, and the other, as if suddenly exhausted,
whispered:
"I woke up from an awful dream."
The kitchen grew dark under the cloud that hung over
the house now. There was a feeble flicker of lightning and a faint
crash, far away.
The old woman gave her niece a little shake.
"Dreams are nothing," she said. "You
are awake now. . . ." And indeed Catherine thought that no dream
could be so bad as the realities which kept hold of one through the
long waking hours.
"They were killing him," moaned Arlette,
beginning to tremble and struggle in her aunt's arms. "I tell
you they were killing him."
"Be quiet. Were you dreaming of Peyrol?"
She became still in a moment and then whispered:
"No. Eugène."
She had seen Réal set upon by a mob of men and
women, all dripping with blood, in a livid cold light, in front of a
stretch of mere shells of houses with cracked walls and broken
windows, and going down in the midst of a forest of raised arms
brandishing sabres, clubs, knives, axes. There was also a man
flourishing a red rag on a stick, while another was beating a drum
which boomed above the sickening sound of broken glass falling like
rain on the pavement. And away round the corner of an empty street
came Peyrol whom she recognized by his white head, walking without
haste, swinging his cudgel regularly. The terrible thing was that
Peyrol looked straight at her, not noticing anything, composed,
without a frown or a smile, unseeing and deaf, while she waved her
arms and shrieked desperately to him for help. She woke up with the
piercing sound of his name in her ears and with the impression of the
dream so powerful that even now, looking distractedly into her aunt's
face, she could see the bare arms of that murderous crowd raised
above Réal's sinking head. Yet the name that had sprung to her
lips on waking was the name of Peyrol. She pushed her aunt away with
such force that the old woman staggered backwards and to save herself
had to catch hold of the overmantel above her head. Arlette ran to
the door of the salle, looked in, came back to her aunt and shouted:
"Where is he?"
Catherine really did not know which path the
lieutenant had taken. She understood very well that "he"
meant Réal.
She said: "He went away a long time ago"
grasped her niece's arm and added with an effort to steady her voice:
"He is coming back, Arlette for nothing will keep him away
from you."
Arlette, as if mechanically, was whispering to herself
the magic name, "Peyrol, Peyrol!" then cried: "I want
Eugène now. This moment."
Catherine's face wore a look of unflinching patience.
"He has departed on service," she said. Her niece looked at
her with enormous eyes, coal-black, profound, and immovable, while in
a forcible and distracted tone she said: "You and Peyrol have
been plotting to rob me of my reason. But I will know how to make
that old man give him up. He is mine!" She spun round wildly
like a person looking for a way of escape from a deadly peril, and
rushed out blindly.
About Escampobar the air was murky but calm, and the
silence was so profound that it was possible to hear the first heavy
drops of rain striking the ground. In the intimidating shadow of the
storm-cloud, Arlette stood irresolute for a moment, but it was to
Peyrol, the man of mystery and power, that her thoughts turned. She
was ready to embrace his knees, to entreat and to scold.
"Peyrol, Peyrol!" she cried twice, and lent her ear as if
expecting an answer. Then she shouted: "I want him back."
Catherine, alone in the kitchen, moving with dignity,
sat down in the armchair with the tall back, like a senator in his
curule chair awaiting the blow of a barbarous fate.
Arlette flew down the slope. The first sign of her
coming was a faint thin scream which really the rover alone heard and
understood. He pressed his lips in a particular way, showing his
appreciation of the coming difficulty. The next moment he saw, poised
on a detached boulder and thinly veiled by the first perpendicular
shower, Arlette, who, catching sight of the tartane with the men on
board of her, let out a prolonged shriek of mingled triumph and
despair: "Peyrol! Help! Peyrol!"
Réal jumped to his feet with an extremely
scared face, but Peyrol extended an arresting arm. "She is
calling to me," he said, gazing at the figure poised on the
rock. "Well leaped! Sacré nom! . . . Well leaped!"
And he muttered to himself soberly: "She will break her legs or
her neck."
"I see you, Peyrol," screamed Arlette, who
seemed to be flying through the air. "Don't you dare."
"Yes, here I am," shouted the rover,
striking his breast with his fist.
Lieutenant Réal put both his hands over his
face. Michel looked on open-mouthed, very much as if watching a
performance in a circus; but Scevola cast his eyes down. Arlette came
on board with such an impetus that Peyrol had to step forward and
save her from a fall which would have stunned her. She struggled in
his arms with extreme violence. The heiress of Escampobar with her
loose black hair seemed the incarnation of pale fury.
"Misérable! Don't you dare!" A roll of thunder
covered her voice, but when it had passed away she was heard again in
suppliant tones. "Peyrol, my friend, my dear old friend. Give
him back to me," and all the time her body writhed in the arms
of the old seaman. "You used to love me, Peyrol," she cried
without ceasing to struggle, and suddenly struck the rover twice in
the face with her clenched fist. Peyrol's head received the two blows
as if it had been made of marble, but he felt with fear her body
become still, grow rigid in his arms. A heavy squall enveloped the
group of people on board the tartane. Peyrol laid Arlette gently on
the deck. Her eyes were closed, her hands remained clenched; every
sign of life had left her white face. Peyrol stood up and looked at
the tall rocks streaming with water. The rain swept over the tartane
with an angry swishing roar to which was added the sound of water
rushing violently down the folds and seams of the precipitous shore
vanishing gradually from his sight, as if this had been the beginning
of a destroying and universal deluge the end of all things.
Lieutenant Réal, kneeling on one knee,
contemplated the pale face of Arlette. Distinct, yet mingling with
the faint growl of distant thunder, Peyrol's voice was heard saying:
"We can't put her ashore and leave her lying in
the rain. She must be taken up to the house." Arlette's soaked
clothes clung to her limbs while the lieutenant, his bare head
dripping with rain water, looked as if he had just saved her from
drowning. Peyrol gazed down inscrutably at the woman stretched on the
deck and at the kneeling man. "She has fainted from rage at her
old Peyrol," he went on rather dreamily. "Strange things
do happen. However, lieutenant, you had better take her under the
arms and step ashore first. I will help you. Ready? Lift."
The movements of the two men had to be careful and
their progress was slow on the lower, steep part of the slope. After
going up more than two-thirds of the way, they rested their
insensible burden on a flat stone. Réal continued to sustain
the shoulders but Peyrol lowered the feet gently.
"Ha!" he said. "You will be able to
carry her yourself the rest of the way and give her up to old
Catherine. Get a firm footing and I will lift her and place her in
your arms. You can walk the distance quite easily. There. . . . Hold
her a little higher, or her feet will be catching on the
stones."
Arlette's hair was hanging far below the lieutenant's
arm in an inert and heavy mass. The thunderstorm was passing away,
leaving a cloudy sky. And Peyrol thought with a profound sigh:
"I am tired."
"She is light," said Réal.
"Parbleu, she is light. If she were dead, you
would find her heavy enough. Allons, lieutenant. No! I am not coming.
What's the good? I'll stay down here. I have no mind to listen to
Catherine's scolding."
The lieutenant, looking absorbed into the face resting
in the hollow of his arm, never averted his gaze not even when
Peyrol, stooping over Arlette, kissed the white forehead near the
roots of the hair, black as a raven's wing.
"What am I to do?" muttered Réal.
"Do? Why, give her up to old Catherine. And you
may just as well tell her that I will be coming along directly. That
will cheer her up. I used to count for something in that house.
Allez. For our time is very short."
With these words he turned away and walked slowly down
to the tartane. A breeze had sprung up. He felt it on his wet neck
and was grateful for the cool touch which recalled him to himself, to
his old wandering self which had known no softness and no hesitation
in the face of any risk offered by life.
As he stepped on board, the shower passed away.
Michel, wet to the skin, was still in the very same attitude gazing
up the slope. Citizen Scevola had drawn his knees up and was holding
his head in his hands; whether because of rain or cold or for some
other reason, his teeth were chattering audibly with a continuous and
distressing rattle. Peyrol flung off his jacket, heavy with water,
with a strange air as if it was of no more use to his mortal
envelope, squared his broad shoulders and directed Michel in a deep,
quiet voice to let go the lines holding the tartane to the shore. The
faithful henchman was taken aback and required one of Peyrol's
authoritative "Allez" to put him in motion. Meantime the
rover cast off the tiller lines and laid his hand with an air of
mastery on the stout piece of wood projecting horizontally from the
rudder-head about the level of his hip. The voices and the movements
of his companions caused Citizen Scevola to master the desperate
trembling of his jaw. He wriggled a little in his bonds and the
question that had been on his lips for a good many hours was uttered
again.
"What are you going to do with me?"
"What do you think of a little promenade at
sea?" Peyrol asked in a tone that was not unkindly.
Citizen Scevola, who had seemed totally and completely
cast down and subdued, let out a most unexpected screech.
"Unbind me. Put me ashore."
Michel, busy forward, was moved to smile as though he
had possessed a cultivated sense of incongruity. Peyrol remained
serious.
"You shall be untied presently," he assured
the blood-drinking patriot, who had been for so many years the
reputed possessor not only of Escampobar, but of the Escampobar
heiress that, living on appearances, he had almost come to believe in
that ownership himself. No wonder he screeched at this rude
awakening. Peyrol raised his voice: "Haul on the line,
Michel."
As, directly the ropes had been let go, the tartane
had swung clear of the shore, the movement given her by Michel
carried her towards the entrance by which the basin communicated with
the cove. Peyrol attended to the helm, and in a moment, gliding
through the narrow gap, the tartane carrying her way, shot out almost
into the middle of the cove.
A little wind could be felt, running light wrinkles
over the water, but outside the overshadowed sea was already speckled
with white caps. Peyrol helped Michel to haul aft the sheets and then
went back to the tiller. The pretty spick-and-span craft that had
been lying idle for so long began to glide into the wide world.
Michel gazed at the shore as if lost in admiration. Citizen Scevola's
head had fallen on his knees while his nerveless hands clasped his
legs loosely. He was the very image of dejection.
"Hé, Michel! Come here and cast loose the
citizen. It is only fair that he should be untied for a little
excursion at sea."
When his order had been executed, Peyrol addressed
himself to the desolate figure on the deck.
"Like this, should the tartane get capsized in a
squall, you will have an equal chance with us to swim for your
life."
Scevola disdained to answer. He was engaged in biting
his knee with rage in a stealthy fashion.
"You came on board for some murderous purpose.
Who you were after unless it was myself, God only knows. I feel quite
justified in giving you a little outing at sea. I won't conceal from
you, citizen, that it may not be without risk to life or limb. But
you have only yourself to thank for being here."
As the tartane drew clear of the cove, she felt more
the weight of the breeze and darted forward with a lively motion. A
vaguely contented smile lighted up Michel's hairy countenance.
"She feels the sea," said Peyrol, who
enjoyed the swift movement of his vessel. "This is different
from your lagoon, Michel."
"To be sure," said Michel with becoming
gravity.
"Doesn't it seem funny to you, as you look back
at the shore, to think that you have left nothing and nobody
behind?"
Michel assumed the aspect of a man confronted by an
intellectual problem. Since he had become Peyrol's henchman he had
lost the habit of thinking altogether. Directions and orders were
easy things to apprehend; but a conversation with him whom he called
"notre maître" was a serious matter demanding great
and concentrated attention.
"Possibly," he murmured, looking strangely
self-conscious.
"Well, you are lucky, take my word for it,"
said the rover, watching the course of his little vessel along the
head of the peninsula. "You have not even a dog to miss
you."
"I have only you, Maître Peyrol."
"That's what I was thinking," said Peyrol
half to himself, while Michel, who had good sea-legs, kept his
balance to the movements of the craft without taking his eyes from
the rover's face.
"No," Peyrol exclaimed suddenly, after a
moment of meditation, "I could not leave you behind." He
extended his open palm towards Michel.
"Put your hand in there," he said.
Michel hesitated for a moment before this
extraordinary proposal. At last he did so, and Peyrol, holding the
bereaved fisherman's hand in a powerful grip, said:
"If I had gone away by myself, I would have left
you marooned on this earth like a man thrown out to die on a desert
island." Some dim perception of the solemnity of the occasion
seemed to enter Michel's primitive brain. He connected Peyrol's words
with the sense of his own insignificant position at the tail of all
mankind; and, timidly, he murmured with his clear, innocent glance
unclouded, the fundamental axiom of his philosophy:
"Somebody must be last in this world."
"Well, then, you will have to forgive me all that
may happen between this and the hour of sunset."
The tartane, obeying the helm, fell off before the
wind, with her head to the eastward.
Peyrol murmured: "She has not forgotten how to
walk the seas." His unsubdued heart, heavy for so many days, had
a moment of buoyancy the illusion of immense freedom.
At that moment Réal, amazed at finding no
tartane in the basin, was running madly towards the cove, where he
was sure Peyrol must be waiting to give her up to him. He ran out on
to the very rock on which Peyrol's late prisoner had sat after his
escape, too tired to care, yet cheered by the hope of liberty. But
Réal was in a worse plight. He could see no shadowy form
through the thin veil of rain which pitted the sheltered piece of
water framed in the rocks. The little craft had been spirited away.
Impossible! There must be something wrong with his eyes! Again the
barren hillsides echoed the name of "Peyrol," shouted with
all the force of Réal's lungs. He shouted it only once, and
about five minutes afterwards appeared at the kitchen-door, panting,
streaming with water as if he had fought his way up from the bottom
of the sea. In the tall-backed armchair Arlette lay, with her limbs
relaxed, her head on Catherine's arm, her face white as death. He saw
her open her black eyes, enormous and as if not of this world; he saw
old Catherine turn her head, heard a cry of surprise, and saw a sort
of struggle beginning between the two women. He screamed at them like
a madman: "Peyrol has betrayed me!" and in an instant, with
a bang of the door, he was gone.
The rain had ceased. Above his head the unbroken mass
of clouds moved to the eastward, and he moved in the same direction
as if he too were driven by the wind up the hillside, towards the
lookout. When he reached the spot and, gasping, flung one arm round
the trunk of the leaning tree, the only thing he was aware of during
the sombre pause in the unrest of the elements was the distracting
turmoil of his thoughts. After a moment he perceived through the
rain the English ship with her topsails lowered on the caps, forging
ahead slowly across the northern entrance of the Petite Passe. His
distress fastened insanely on the notion of there being a connection
between that enemy ship and Peyrol's inexplicable conduct. That old
man had always meant to go himself! And when a moment after, looking
to the southward, he made out the shadow of the tartane coming round
the land in the midst of another squall, he muttered to himself a
bitter: "Of course!" She had both her sails set. Peyrol
was indeed pressing her to the utmost in his shameful haste to
traffic with the enemy. The truth was that from the position in which
Réal first saw him, Peyrol could not yet see the English ship,
and held confidently on his course up the middle of the strait. The
man-of-war and the little tartane saw each other quite unexpectedly
at a distance that was very little over a mile. Peyrol's heart flew
into his mouth at finding himself so close to the enemy. On board the
Amelia at first no notice was taken. It was simply a tartane
making for shelter on the north side of Porquerolles. But when Peyrol
suddenly altered his course, the master of the man-of-war, noticing
the manuvre, took up the long glass for a look. Captain Vincent
was on deck and agreed with the master's remark that "there was
a craft acting suspiciously." Before the Amelia could
come round in the heavy squall, Peyrol was already under the battery
of Porquerolles and, so far, safe from capture. Captain Vincent had
no mind to bring his ship within reach of the battery and risk damage
in his rigging or hull for the sake of a small coaster. However, the
tale brought on board by Symons of his discovery of a hidden craft,
of his capture, and his wonderful escape, had made every tartane an
object of interest to the whole ship's company. The Amelia
remained hove to in the strait while her officers watched the lateen
sails gliding to and fro under the protecting muzzles of the guns.
Captain Vincent himself had been impressed by Peyrol's manuvre.
Coasting craft as a rule were not afraid of the Amelia. After
taking a few turns on the quarter-deck he ordered Symons to be called
aft.
The hero of a unique and mysterious adventure, which
had been the only subject of talk on board the corvette for the last
twenty-four hours, came along rolling, hat in hand, and enjoying a
secret sense of his importance.
"Take the glass," said the captain,
"and have a look at that vessel under the land. Is she anything
like the tartane that you say you have been aboard of?"
Symons was very positive. "I think I can swear to
those painted mastheads, your honour. It is the last thing I remember
before that murderous ruffian knocked me senseless. The moon shone on
them. I can make them out now with the glass." As to the fellow
boasting to him that the tartane was a dispatch-boat and had already
made some trips, well, Symons begged his honour to believe that the
beggar was not sober at the time. He did not care what he blurted
out. The best proof of his condition was that he went away to fetch
the soldiers and forgot to come back. The murderous old ruffian!
"You see, your honour," continued Symons, "he thought
I was not likely to escape after getting a blow that would have
killed nine out of any ten men. So he went away to boast of what he
had done before the people ashore; because one of his chums, worse
than himself, came down thinking he would kill me with a dam' big
manure fork, saving your honour's presence. A regular savage he
was."
Symons paused, staring, as if astonished at the
marvels of his own tale. The old master, standing at his captain's
elbow, observed in a dispassionate tone that, anyway, that peninsula
was not a bad jumping-off place for a craft intending to slip through
the blockade. Symons, not being dismissed, waited hat in hand while
Captain Vincent directed the master to fill on the ship and stand a
little nearer to the battery. It was done, and presently there was a
flash of a gun low down on the water's edge and a shot came skipping
in the direction of the Amelia. It fell very short, but
Captain Vincent judged the ship was close enough and ordered her to
be hove to again. Then Symons was told to take a look through the
glass once more. After a long interval he lowered it and spoke
impressively to his captain:
"I can make out three heads aboard, your honour,
and one is white. I would swear to that white head anywhere."
Captain Vincent made no answer. All this seemed very
odd to him; but after all it was possible. The craft had certainly
acted suspiciously. He spoke to the first lieutenant in a half-vexed
tone.
"He has done a rather smart thing. He will dodge
here till dark and then get away. lt is perfectly absurd. I don't
want to send the boats too close to the battery. And if I do he may
simply sail away from them and be round the land long before we are
ready to give him chase. Darkness will be his best friend. However,
we will keep a watch on him in case he is tempted to give us the slip
late in the afternoon. In that case we will have a good try to catch
him. If he has anything aboard I should like to get hold of it. It
may be of some importance, after all."
On board the tartane Peyrol put his own interpretation
on the ship's movements. His object had been attained. The corvette
had marked him for her prey. Satisfied as to that, Peyrol watched
his opportunity and taking advantage of a long squall, with rain
thick enough to blur the form of the English ship, he left the
shelter of the battery to lead the Englishman a dance and keep up his
character of a man anxious to avoid capture.
Réal, from his position on the lookout, saw in
the thinning downpour the pointed lateen sails glide round the north
end of Porquerolles and vanish behind the land. Some time afterwards
the Amelia made sail in a manner that put it beyond doubt that
she meant to chase. Her lofty canvas was shut off too presently by
the land of Porquerolles. When she had disappeared Réal turned
to Arlette.
"Let us go," he said.
Arlette, stimulated by the short glimpse of
Réal at the kitchen door, whom she had taken for a vision of a
lost man calling her to follow him to the end of the world, had torn
herself out of the old woman's thin, bony arms which could not cope
with the struggles of her body and the fierceness of her spirit. She
had run straight to the lookout, though there was nothing to guide
her there except a blind impulse to seek Réal wherever he
might be. He was not aware of her having found him until she seized
hold of his arm with a suddenness, energy and determination of which
no one with a clouded mind could have been capable. He felt himself
being taken possession of in a way that tore all his scruples out of
his breast. Holding on to the trunk of the tree, he threw his other
arm round her waist, and when she confessed to him that she did not
know why she had run up there, but that if she had not found him she
would have thrown herself over the cliff, he tightened his clasp with
sudden exultation, as though she had been a gift prayed for instead
of a stumbling block for his pedantic conscience. Together they
walked back. In the failing light the buildings awaited them,
lifeless, the walls darkened by rain and the big slopes of the roofs
glistening and sinister under the flying desolation of the clouds. In
the kitchen Catherine heard their mingled footsteps, and rigid in the
tall armchair awaited their coming. Arlette threw her arms round the
old woman's neck while Réal stood on one side, looking on.
Thought after thought flew through his mind and vanished in the
strong feeling of the irrevocable nature of the event handing him to
the woman whom, in the revulsion of his feelings, he was inclined to
think more sane than himself Arlette, with one arm over the old
woman's shoulders, kissed the wrinkled forehead under the white band
of linen that, on the erect head, had the effect of a rustic diadem.
"To-morrow you and I will have to walk down to
the church."
The austere dignity of Catherine's pose seemed to be
shaken by this proposal to lead before the God, with whom she had
made her peace long ago, that unhappy girl chosen to share in the
guilt of impious and unspeakable horrors which had darkened her mind.
Arlette, still stooping over her aunt's face, extended
a hand towards Réal, who, making a step forward, took it
silently into his grasp.
"Oh, yes, you will, Aunt," insisted Arlette.
"You will have to come with me to pray for Peyrol, whom you and
I shall never see any more."
Catherine's head dropped, whether in assent or grief;
and Réal felt an unexpected and profound emotion, for he, too,
was convinced that none of the three persons in the farm would ever
see Peyrol again. It was as though the rover of the wide seas had
left them to themselves on a sudden impulse of scorn, of magnanimity,
of a passion weary of itself. However come by, Réal was ready
to clasp for ever to his breast that woman touched by the red hand of
the Revolution; for she, whose little feet had run ankle-deep through
the terrors of death, had brought to him the sense of triumphant
life.
(End of chapter XV.)
To the next chapter Originally prepared by Anders Thulin
"Quoique leurs chapeaux sont bien laids
God-dam! Moi, j'aime les Anglais
Ils ont un si bon caractère!"
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