Fruitfulness Part 38

One morning Mathieu, wishing to ascertain if the young coveys of partridges were plentiful in the direction of Mareuil, took Gregoire with him; and when they found themselves alone among the plantations of the plateau, he began to talk to him seriously.

"You know I'm not pleased with you, my lad," said he. "I really cannot understand the idle life which you lead here, while all the rest of us are hard at work. I shall wait till October since you have positively promised me that you will then come to a decision and choose the calling which you most fancy. But what is all this t.i.ttle-tattle which I hear about appointments which you keep with the daughter of the Lepailleurs?

Do you wish to cause us serious worry?"

Gregoire quietly began to laugh.

"Oh, father! You are surely not going to scold a son of yours because he happens to be on friendly terms with a pretty girl! Why, as you may remember, it was I who gave her her first bicycle lesson nearly ten years ago. And you will recollect the fine white roses which she helped me to secure in the enclosure by the mill for Denis' wedding."

Gregoire still laughed at the memory of that incident, and lived afresh through all his old time sweethearting--the escapades with Therese along the river banks, and the banquets of blackberries in undiscoverable hiding-places, deep in the woods. And it seemed, too, that the love of childhood had revived, and was now bursting into consuming fire, so vividly did his cheeks glow, and so hotly did his eyes blaze as he thus recalled those distant times.

"Poor Therese! We had been at daggers drawn for years, and all because one evening, on coming back from the fair at Vieux-Bourg, I pushed her into a pool of water where she dirtied her frock. It's true that last spring we made it up again on finding ourselves face to face in the little wood at Monval over yonder. But come, father, do you mean to say that it's a crime if we take a little pleasure in speaking to one another when we meet?"

Rendered the more anxious by the fire with which Gregoire sought to defend the girl, Mathieu spoke out plainly.

"A crime? No, if you just wish one another good day and good evening.

Only folks relate that you are to be seen at dusk with your arms round each other's waist, and that you go stargazing through the gra.s.s alongside the Yeuse."

Then, as Gregoire this time without replying laughed yet more loudly, with the merry laugh of youth, his father gravely resumed:

"Listen, my lad, it is not at all to my taste to play the gendarme behind my sons. But I won't have you drawing some unpleasant business with the Lepailleurs on us all. You know the position, they would be delighted to give us trouble. So don't give them occasion for complaining, leave their daughter alone."

"Oh! I take plenty of care," cried the young man, thus suddenly confessing the truth. "Poor girl! She has already had her ears boxed because somebody told her father that I had been met with her. He answered that rather than give her to me he would throw her into the river."

"Ah! you see," concluded Mathieu. "It is understood, is it not? I shall rely on your good behavior."

Thereupon they went their way, scouring the fields as far as the road to Mareuil. Coveys of young partridges, still weak on the wing, started up both to the right and to the left. The shooting would be good. Then as the father and the son turned homeward, slackening their pace, a long spell of silence fell between them. They were both reflecting.

"I don't wish that there should be any misunderstanding between us,"

Mathieu suddenly resumed; "you must not imagine that I shall prevent you from marrying according to your tastes and that I shall require you to take an heiress. Our poor Blaise married a portionless girl. And it was the same with Denis; besides which I gave your sister, Claire, in marriage to Frederic, who was simply one of our farm hands. So I don't look down on Therese. On the contrary, I think her charming. She's one of the prettiest girls of the district--not tall, certainly, but so alert and determined, with her little pink face shining under such a wild crop of fair hair, that one might think her powdered with all the flour in the mill."

"Yes, isn't that so, father?" interrupted Gregoire enthusiastically.

"And if you only knew how affectionate and courageous she is! She's worth a man any day. It's wrong of them to smack her, for she will never put up with it. Whenever she sets her mind on anything she's bound to do it, and it isn't I who can prevent her."

Absorbed in some reflections of his own, Mathieu scarcely heard his son.

"No, no," he resumed; "I certainly don't look down on their mill. If it were not for Lepailleur's stupid obstinacy he would be drawing a fortune from that mill nowadays. Since corn-growing has again been taken up all over the district, thanks to our victory, he might have got a good pile of crowns together if he had simply changed the old mechanism of his wheel which he leaves rotting under the moss. And better still, I should like to see a good engine there, and a bit of a light railway line connecting the mill with Janville station."

In this fashion he continued explaining his ideas while Gregoire listened, again quite lively and taking things in a jesting way.

"Well, father," the young man ended by saying, "as you wish that I should have a calling, it's settled. If I marry Therese, I'll be a miller."

Mathieu protested in surprise: "No, no, I was merely talking. And besides, you have promised me, my lad, that you will be reasonable. So once again, for the sake of the peace and quietness of all of us, leave Therese alone, for we can only expect to reap worry with the Lepailleurs."

The conversation ceased and they returned to the farm. That evening, however, the father told the mother of the young man's confession, and she, who already entertained various misgivings, felt more anxious than ever. Still a month went by without anything serious happening.

Then, one morning Marianne was astounded at finding Gregoire's bedroom empty. As a rule he came to kiss her. Perhaps he had risen early, and had gone on some excursion in the environs. But she trembled slightly when she remembered how lovingly he had twice caught her in his arms on the previous night when they were all retiring to bed. And as she looked inquisitively round the room she noticed on the mantelshelf a letter addressed to her--a prettily worded letter in which the young fellow begged her to forgive him for causing her grief, and asked her to excuse him with his father, for it was necessary that he should leave them for a time. Of his reasons for doing so and his purpose, however, no particulars were given.

This family rending, this bad conduct on the part of the son who had been the most spoilt of all, and who, in a fit of sudden folly was the first to break the ties which united the household together, was a very painful blow for Marianne and Mathieu. They were the more terrified since they divined that Gregoire had not gone off alone. They pieced together the incidents of the deplorable affair. Charlotte remembered that she had heard Gregoire go downstairs again, almost immediately after entering his bedroom, and before the servants had even bolted the house-doors for the night. He had certainly rushed off to join Therese in some coppice, whence they must have hurried away to Vieux-Bourg station which the last train to Paris quitted at five-and-twenty minutes past midnight. And it was indeed this which had taken place. At noon the Froments already learnt that Lepailleur was creating a terrible scandal about the flight of Therese. He had immediately gone to the gendarmes to shout the story to them, and demand that they should bring the guilty hussy back, chained to her accomplice, and both of them with gyves about their wrists.

He on his side had found a letter in his daughter's bedroom, a plucky letter in which she plainly said that as she had been struck again the previous day, she had had enough of it, and was going off of her own free will. Indeed, she added that she was taking Gregoire with her, and was quite big and old enough, now that she was two-and-twenty, to know what she was about. Lepailleur's fury was largely due to this letter which he did not dare to show abroad; besides which, his wife, ever at war with him respecting their son Antonin, not only roundly abused Therese, but sneeringly declared that it might all have been expected, and that he, the father, was the cause of the gad-about's misconduct.

After that, they engaged in fisticuffs; and for a whole week the district did nothing but talk about the flight of one of the Chantebled lads with the girl of the mill, to the despair of Mathieu and Marianne, the latter of whom in particular grieved over the sorry business.

Five days later, a Sunday, matters became even worse. As the search for the runaways remained fruitless Lepailleur, boiling over with rancor, went up to the farm, and from the middle of the road--for he did not venture inside--poured forth a flood of ign.o.ble insults. It so happened that Mathieu was absent; and Marianne had great trouble to restrain Gervais as well as Frederic, both of whom wished to thrust the miller's scurrilous language back into his throat. When Mathieu came home in the evening he was extremely vexed to hear of what had happened.

"It is impossible for this state of things to continue," he said to his wife, as they were retiring to rest. "It looks as if we were hiding, as if we were guilty in the matter. I will go to see that man in the morning. There is only one thing, and a very simple one, to be done, those unhappy children must be married. For our part we consent, is it not so? And it is to that man's advantage to consent also. To-morrow the matter must be settled."

On the following day, Monday, at two o'clock in the afternoon, Mathieu set out for the mill. But certain complications, a tragic drama, which he could not possibly foresee, awaited him there. For years now a stubborn struggle had been going on between Lepailleur and his wife with respect to Antonin. While the farmer had grown more and more exasperated with his son's idleness and life of low debauchery in Paris, the latter had supported her boy with all the obstinacy of an illiterate woman, who was possessed of a blind faith in his fine handwriting, and felt convinced that if he did not succeed in life it was simply because he was refused the money necessary for that purpose. In spite of her sordid avarice in some matters, the old woman continued bleeding herself for her son, and even robbed the house, promptly thrusting out her claws and setting her teeth ready to bite whenever she was caught in the act, and had to defend some twenty-franc piece or other, which she had been on the point of sending away. And each time the battle began afresh, to such a point indeed that it seemed as if the shaky old mill would some day end by falling on their heads.

Then, all at once, Antonin, a perfect wreck at thirty-six years of age, fell seriously ill. Lepailleur forthwith declared that if the scamp had the audacity to come home he would pitch him over the wheel into the water. Antonin, however, had no desire to return home; he held the country in horror and feared, too, that his father might chain him up like a dog. So his mother placed him with some people of Batignolles, paying for his board and for the attendance of a doctor of the district.

This had been going on for three months or so, and every fortnight La Lepailleur went to see her son. She had done so the previous Thursday, and on the Sunday evening she received a telegram summoning her to Batignolles again. Thus, on the morning of the day when Mathieu repaired to the mill, she had once more gone to Paris after a frightful quarrel with her husband, who asked if their good-for-nothing son ever meant to cease fooling them and spending their money, when he had not the courage even to turn a spit of earth.

Alone in the mill that morning Lepailleur did not cease storming. At the slightest provocation he would have hammered his plough to pieces, or have rushed, axe in hand, and mad with hatred, on the old wheel by way of avenging his misfortunes. When he saw Mathieu come in he believed in some act of bravado, and almost choked.

"Come, neighbor," said the master of Chantebled cordially, "let us both try to be reasonable. I've come to return your visit, since you called upon me yesterday. Only, bad words never did good work, and the best course, since this misfortune has happened, is to repair it as speedily as possible. When would you have us marry off those bad children?"

Thunderstruck by the quiet good nature of this frontal attack, Lepailleur did not immediately reply. He had shouted over the house roofs that he would have no marriage at all, but rather a good lawsuit by way of sending all the Froments to prison. Nevertheless, when it came to reflection, a son of the big farmer of Chantebled was not to be disdained as a son-in-law.

"Marry them, marry them," he stammered at the first moment. "Yes, by fastening a big stone to both their necks and throwing them together into the river. Ah! the wretches! I'll skin them, I will, her as well as him."

At last, however, the miller grew calmer and was even showing a disposition to discuss matters, when all at once an urchin of Janville came running across the yard.

"What do you want, eh?" called the master of the premises.

"Please, Monsieur Lepailleur, it's a telegram."

"All right, give it here."

The lad, well pleased with the copper he received as a gratuity, had already gone off, and still the miller, instead of opening the telegram, stood examining the address on it with the distrustful air of a man who does not often receive such communications. However, he at last had to tear it open. It contained but three words: "Your son dead"; and in that brutal brevity, that prompt, hasty bludgeon-blow, one could detect the mother's cold rage and eager craving to crush without delay the man, the father yonder, whom she accused of having caused her son's death, even as she had accused him of being responsible for her daughter's flight.

He felt this full well, and staggered beneath the shock, stunned by the words that appeared on that strip of blue paper, reading them again and again till he ended by understanding them. Then his hands began to tremble and he burst into oaths.

"Thunder and blazes! What again is this? Here's the boy dying now!

Everything's going to the devil!"

But his heart dilated and tears appeared in his eyes. Unable to remain standing, he sank upon a chair and again obstinately read the telegram; "Your son dead--Your son dead," as if seeking something else, the particulars, indeed, which the message did not contain. Perhaps the boy had died before his mother's arrival. Or perhaps she had arrived just before he died. Such were his stammered comments. And he repeated a score of times that she had taken the train at ten minutes past eleven and must have reached Batignolles about half-past twelve. As she had handed in the telegram at twenty minutes past one it seemed more likely that she had found the lad already dead.

"Curse it! curse it!" he shouted; "a cursed telegram, it tells you nothing, and it murders you! She might, at all events, have sent somebody. I shall have to go there. Ah the whole thing's complete, it's more than a man can bear!"

Lepailleur shouted those words in such accents of rageful despair that Mathieu, full of compa.s.sion, made bold to intervene. The sudden shock of the tragedy had staggered him, and he had hitherto waited in silence.

But now he offered his services and spoke of accompanying the other to Paris. He had to retreat, however, for the miller rose to his feet, seized with wild exasperation at perceiving him still there in his house.

"Ah! yes, you came; and what was it you were saying to me? That we ought to marry off those wretched children? Well, you can see that I'm in proper trim for a wedding! My boy's dead! You've chosen your day well.

Be off with you, be off with you, I say, if you don't want me to do something dreadful!"

He raised his fists, quite maddened as he was by the presence of Mathieu at that moment when his whole life was wrecked. It was terrible indeed that this bourgeois who had made a fortune by turning himself into a peasant should be there at the moment when he so suddenly learnt the death of Antonin, that son whom he had dreamt of turning into a Monsieur by filling his mind with disgust of the soil and sending him to rot of idleness and vice in Paris! It enraged him to find that he had erred, that the earth whom he had slandered, whom he had taxed with decrepitude and barrenness was really a living, youthful, and fruitful spouse to the man who knew how to love her! And nought but ruin remained around him, thanks to his imbecile resolve to limit his family: a foul life had killed his only son, and his only daughter had gone off with a scion of the triumphant farm, while he was now utterly alone, weeping and howling in his deserted mill, that mill which he had likewise disdained and which was crumbling around him with old age.

"You hear me!" he shouted. "Therese may drag herself at my feet; but I will never, never give her to your thief of a son! You'd like it, wouldn't you? so that folks might mock me all over the district, and so that you might eat me up as you have eaten up all the others!"

This finish to it all had doubtless appeared to him, confusedly, in a sudden threatening vision: Antonin being dead, it was Gregoire who would possess the mill, if he should marry Therese. And he would possess the moorland also, that enclosure, hitherto left barren with such savage delight, and so pa.s.sionately coveted by the farm. And doubtless he would cede it to the farm as soon as he should be the master. The thought that Chantebled might yet be increased by the fields which he, Lepailleur, had withheld from it brought the miller's delirious rage to a climax.