Nêne/Part 2/Chapter 8
CHAPTER VIII
NIGHT was falling, an October night as beautiful as a mid-summer evening, but of a more wistful, more intimate, more thrilling beauty. The wind that had been high all through the day, whisking the leaves off the trees, had gone to sleep. Only the tall tree-tops were still a-tremble, shining like copper in the golden haze of the setting sun.
Michael was guessing the hour of day by the length of the shadows. All day long he had worked in the meadow behind the house, pruning the bushy hedges, cutting the heads off the shrubs, hacking away the brambles and the intruding honey-suckle. Now he had come to the goat pasture and was cleaning up all the tough, hasty weed-growths of the summer. With wide strokes of his sickle he felled dry grasses, wall-flowers, the last of the thistles and the rusty stalks of dead ferns.
Every once in a while he straightened up to listen, and his eyes searched the road. Violette was to pass by the Moulinettes on her way back from Saint-Ambroise and he was waiting for her; it was almost time for her to come.
"Only a little while longer! When the mist rises round the pond, she'll be coming in sight."
All his youthful, ardent feelings carried him madly ahead toward her.
At the house, Madeleine's voice rang out. Michael heard it and all at once his temper was roused.
That girl! Why was she staying on at his place? Why couldn't he get rid of her even when her contract was run out? He'd made a new deal, and of course he couldn't think of going back on any deal once it was made.
Still … think of how she harmed him in Violette's esteem!
Well, after all, it was largely his own fault. He had been letting the woman take hold of his household too masterfully, right from the start. Now she had naturally enthroned herself and expected to rule the whole place. Well, she wouldn't—just watch and see!
"I'm the master and the only master.—They'll start laughing at me, next thing!—I'll get her to go.—She deserves it—it's plain justice."
He kept saying these things to himself to keep up his resolution. When he had Violette before his eyes, his rancour flamed high, but whenever he was alone he had to keep stirring the flames a little.
There were her three years of devoted service and good fellowship; there was the renewed prosperity of his farm, the happy comfort of his children. And then perhaps something else, too, that wasn't quite forgotten.
"It's plain justice, no more than plain justice"
Having finished his pruning, he threw down his sickle, picked up a fork and piled up the rubbish into a great heap; then, in order to destroy all these noxious weeds full of seed, Michael set the pile on fire. A bright flame roared up, biting into the dry fern and the small brush. Then the fire went down a little, and a thick, white smoke billowed from the burning greenery and rose up slowly.
Lalie, who was playing in the front yard, saw the beautiful, high smoke. She ran through the house to the back door.
"Nêne! Nêne! There's a big fire in the meadow; I am going to see it."
Madeleine called out:
"No, you stay here, you'll see it just as well; down there, you might get burned."
Michael heard her and approved of her prudence. But then, right away, he chided himself for his approval and, from a feeling of misconceived pride, he called:
"Lalie, come and see my bonfire!"
It was not a kindly invitation, but a crude defiance shouted very loud so as to carry far. The words passed over Lalie's head, on into the house, and crashed against Madeleine's heart. Lalie started off at once, calling back:
"Nêne, I'm going; papa said so."
Michael was now raking together the little heaps of dead leaves and dry twigs he had assembled all over the pasture. Every time he flung an armful of the fuel on the fire, it flamed up, crackled prettily and sent up innumerable sparks.
Lalie danced around the fire, clapping her hands. Michael had gathered some early chestnuts and put them for her on a bed of embers that he had raked together at one side of the bonfire. While they were roasting, the child started running back and forth through the smoke.
"Don't go too near," said Michael, "the flame might catch you."
The little girl stopped running and busied herself stirring her chestnuts with a twig.
At the lower end of the meadow there was still a big pile of brush left and Michael went to fetch it; but just as he was raising his pitchfork, he dropped it again and walked up to the road.
Violette was coming.
When she reached him she stopped and let her girl helpers go on ahead.
"Good evening," said she; "you heard me coming?"
"My mind is full of you all day long and when you rise to come toward me, wherever you are, I hear your step. My heart hears a hundred times farther than my ear."
She threw back her head, offering her swelling throat, and murmured languidly:
"When it comes to paying compliments, there's none can hold a candle to you."
"That's because none feels such tenderness as mine. If you knew how slowly the hours pass when I am far from you!"
She smiled and drew nearer until she touched him.
"I too," she said, "I think of you.—I'm glad I met you to-night; I wanted to tell you that I've found a new servant for you, an elderly woman who can come right away after All-Saints day."
Michael made an angry gesture.
"Oh, about that! I'm in a pretty fix, the way I was caught the other morning!"
"What do you mean? What happened?"
"I made a new agreement, for another year, with the one I've got now."
Violette gave a start as if she had stepped on a thorn and malice began to gleam in her eyes.
"You're joking," she said drily, "you're trying to make me laugh."
"Nothing of the kind, unfortunately!"
"Well, then?—Didn't you promise me?"
"Of course I did, and gladly, too! But there you are,—I never suspected—! I offered ridiculous wages and she took me up right off. I only did it so as not to hurt her feelings."
"Thank you! You'd sooner have her hurt mine, would you?"
She turned to go away and Michael pleaded:
"Violette!—Violette!—Please!—Don't hold it against me!"
And he added in a sad, cowardly tone: "I made you a promise—I'll try to keep it; I'll find a way."
"It's simple enough and you needn't bother your head: at All-Saints you just hire the servant I've found for you."
"I can't do it! We've made an agreement"
"Bah! Does that stop you?"
"Yes, it does.—In our family, we've always stuck to our bargains.—But perhaps she'll leave of her own accord: I'd rather have it that way."
"Not I!" declared Violette. "If you really mean to get rid of her, you can find plenty of reasons. In the first place, she's robbing you."
"That's not so!" said Michael.
"Isn't it, though!—Poor fellow!"
She gave him a sort of pitying look and began to relate Boiseriot's ugly tales. But as he shook his head and remained incredulous she grew impatient and declared flatly:
"Anyway, I've got enough of this! If you want me to listen to your compliments, you'll have to get rid of a servant as young as this one."
Michael had taken her hands and held them firmly in his.
"Violette! Viofette! All right—it'll be managed somehow. If you'd only say yes, it's you who'd be at the head of my household now; and if there was a servant, she'd be under your orders. Listen to me"
She tossed her head, but he went on, more pressingly:
"You know how much I love you! If you love me too, why won't you be my wife? Why wait and let our youth go to waste?"
She had no time to answer.
Through the evening quiet a cry rose: a sudden, terrible, agonised, long drawn-out cry of horrible fear and unspeakable pain. And then, almost at once, another, deeper, raucous cry: the cry of a cornered animal that makes ready for a spring.
Michael felt his legs give way under him; he raised a hand and cried in a quaking voice:
"God's curse! My child's on fire!"
He hurled himself forward, broke through the hedge, dashed across the meadow toward the cloud of smoke that eddied around a writhing, living torch.
Madeleine, too, came hurrying through the goat pasture. The child's cry had instantly brought her to her feet, had sped her out of the house and was pushing, carrying her forward with incredible swiftness. And from her throat rose that other cry in response, the hoarse cry of the she-wolf howling at death.
Apron in hand, she threw herself on the child, rolled with her on the grass, beat out the flames with wild gesturings, with her skirts, her hands, with all her big body.
And then, with one jerk, she was on her feet. The child writhed in her arms, uttering piercing, heart-rending shrieks.
Michael reached them all a-tremble, his clothes awry. She never even looked at him, but started off on the run.
With bare feet and her hair undone down her back she ran this way and that, aimlessly, bounding hither and thither in a mad zigzag.
As Michael ran after her, impatient to know the worst, she darted off to the pond with the child held high to let the wind cool the burns. A hedge cut her off for a minute; then she was seen darting back again.
Violette had also run into the meadow and was standing beside Michael on the pasture lane. With eyes aflame, Madeleine charged toward the two. They stepped out of her path, knowing that she was crazed and ready to scratch, to kick, to bite. She shot past them, wild-eyed, her hair streaming behind her in the wind, carrying her pitiful, screaming burden into the house.