King of Camargue Part 28

Beware! The little one is brave. Some day there may be innocent blood on your hands, if you keep on in the road I forbid you to follow, for the devil is in the affair, I tell you, and all sorts of monsters are awaiting you at the turning in the evil road. A betrothed lover's infidelity, like a husband's, lays an egg filled with ghastly creatures, which sometimes hatches. If you have a heart, show it, Renaud, take my advice, and go back to your horses and cattle in the solitude of your plains, where the malignant fever is less to be feared than the disease you are taking here!"

Renaud, the tall, strong, dashing blade, listened to these wise words, hanging his head, poor fellow, like a child scolded for not knowing his catechism.

"If you are a man, make up your mind at once, and give me your word as a true-hearted drover."

"Take my hand, Monsieur le cure. I give you my word. I was in a fair way to go wrong. A spell was on me."

The two men exchanged a grasp of the hand.

The cure walked away with an anxious heart. He knew that Renaud was sincere, but he knew the strength of man's pa.s.sion and his ingenuity in lying.

So the cure had been asking questions?--In that case, to consort with the gipsy was to risk a rupture with Livette.

Renaud was about to leave the village,--or, if you please, the town,--with his mind firmly made up to renounce the gitana. Yes, he would sacrifice her to Livette, to his earnest desire to have a peaceful, happy home and a family, he, the wandering cowherd, the orphan, the foundling of the desert. That was happiness;--a roof to shelter one, a roof whose smoke one can see from afar on the horizon, thinking: the wife and little ones are there.

He would renounce the gitana; yes, but he proposed to make known his resolution to her himself. At the thought of leaving Saintes-Maries without _seeing her again_, for the purpose of telling her that he would not _see her again_, a weary feeling came over him; it seemed to him that he was suddenly shut up in a narrow s.p.a.ce, and left there without air, without horizon.--But he would see her again--he must. It would be better so. Must he not soothe her anger first of all? She would be angry enough in any event. Why exasperate her?--In very truth, if he did see her again, it was--he reached this conclusion after much thought--it was princ.i.p.ally in order to protect poor Livette against her! Yes, yes, it was for her sake that he would see her again. See her again! At those words, which he repeated softly to himself, a joy in living, in moving, in breathing, took possession of him.

Meanwhile, Zinzara, for her part, was vowing inwardly that she would enjoy a hearty laugh at the drover when he should presently seek her out!

Why, in that case, had she answered _yes_ to his amorous questions?

Oh! because at the moment when he whispered them in her ear, if she had been able, upon the spot, to give herself to this savage, all aglow from his conflict with bulls and heifers, doubtless she would have done it. He had awakened desire in her, as heat awakens thirst, as a summer evening awakens longing for a bath.--And then it had given her pleasure to say to herself that, over at the other end of the arena, the woman to whom he had paid queenly honor by giving her the smoking, red-hot iron, like the sceptre of a magician or a wicked zingaro king,--that that woman was suffering torments.

But he came too late. The desire had pa.s.sed away. And the acme of delight to her now lay in the thought of refusing the promised favor to the Christian she detested, while giving Livette to believe that he had been false to her.

Sitting upon a stone, alone, at some distance from her wagon, she awaited the drover. Her resolution to take vengeance by refusing was written upon her compressed lips, whose smile became more malicious than ever when she saw him riding toward her.

A few steps away he stopped. As he looked at her, he felt a sudden rushing of the blood in all his veins, a strange, delicious pressure at the pit of the stomach. He recognized the characteristic agitation of love; but he made an effort, and said, in a voice which he felt to be unsteady: "I expected to be free to-night, but I am not. The master has sent for me, and I must be far away from here by night-fall. So I must go at once. Adieu, gipsy!"

Zinzara understood instantly that he was running away from her, and why!---- She rose, like the serpent that rises on its tail and hisses with anger. All her harsh resolutions vanished in a twinkling; and, in a short, sharp, jerky voice, entirely different from her natural voice, she said: "I want you, do you hear? No one else shall give you orders when I have orders for you. What I want done is done. Are you going to act like a coward, pray--you, who have taken my fancy because, when you are on your horse, you resemble a zingaro who knows neither master nor G.o.d? Come, go on!"

Thus, the same motive of pa.s.sionate hatred,--as pleasant to her taste as love,--that a moment before induced her determination not to go with Renaud, now threw her into his arms. And to him the love or hatred of such a woman, at the moment when she gave herself to him, was one and the same thing; were there not still her pa.s.sion, her animated features, her gleaming eyes, her lips that, as they moved, disclosed two rows of pearly, sparkling teeth? Was there not her flexible, ballet-dancer's body, significantly held out toward him to whom she laid claim?

A thrill of savage joy shook Renaud from head to foot; and, as his rider shuddered, as if he had been touched by a cramp-fish, the horse seemed to experience a similar sensation, and pawed the ground an instant, between the knees that involuntarily pressed closer to his sides.

What was he to do? Ah! blessed saints! His betrothal had kept him virtuous for a long while, you know; had held him aloof from the frail damsels with whom he formerly consorted, and his youth was speaking now. The sea-bull must have the wild heifer. Lions that have loved gazelles, so says the Arabian legend, have died of it. Living creatures, by the law of nature, crave paroxysms of pa.s.sion; so long as they have them not, they seek them; and pay for them, if need be, with their own and others' blood. Who of us will blame them for becoming delirious sometimes, if we remember that life longs to live, and that that longing overshadows the fear of death?

"Come, go on!"

The queen uttered love's command. And with one bound she jumped to the saddle behind him. In a twinkling she had wound her right arm about the horseman's waist: "Go on!" she said again; and then, in an undertone, in a voice that was no more than a warm, speaking breath upon the man's neck, and made him shudder to the very roots of his hair, she added: "I want you, do you understand? I want you! So go on, go on! The man who goes on, arrives!"

He was caught, fast bound. The sorceress's arm was about his loins. He felt it against him, living, trembling, stronger than aught else.

The stupefied Renaud tried to regain his self-control,--to shake off the spell. He sat there, dazed, unable to disentangle his thoughts, to determine what he should do, trying to collect his ideas of a moment before, the good cure's advice, his word of honor, none of which could he remember or repeat to himself in his mind, intelligibly. It had all gone from him, out of reach of the effort of his memory. When an intense amorous pa.s.sion guides our movements, it is as legitimate as physical force,--honor is not betrayed: it has ceased to exist!

Those few seconds of hesitation afforded Zinzara perfect comprehension of what was taking place within him. His desire was no longer ardent enough to satisfy her pride, since it was possible for him to waver ever so little!

"Where are we going?" said she, resuming her sharp, jerky tone, in which there was a suspicion of a hiss. "Where are we going? You must know of a hiding-place somewhere, some deserted cabin in the midst of your swamps here,--a perfectly safe place, all your own, where you have taken other women--what do I care? _Pardi!_ I don't suppose that you waited for me, to _learn_! I will go wherever you take me.

Remember this--it must be somewhere where n.o.body can find me, for my race doesn't mix with yours: the zingara who gives herself to a Christian is the only despised one among us, and if one of our people should see me, there would be knives in the air, you may be sure, for you and for me!"

He still hesitated, remembering that he had reasons for hesitation, but unable to remember what they were. Mechanically he held back his horse (it was Blanchet!), who was acting badly.

At last, in the hurly-burly of his thoughts, he seized, at random, upon one thing he had entirely forgotten, the tapers promised by Livette to the Saintes Maries. He was to have lighted them devoutly in the church, during the night before or that morning. Yesterday his fiancee had reminded him again of the promise. Doubtless, Livette had lighted them for him, but that was not the same thing. And so the devil had him, do what he would. He lost his head. He felt that he was sliding down an inclined plane, and finding his struggles of no avail, he abandoned himself to his fate and hastened his fall.

"I know where we will go," he said; "to the Conscript's Hut, in the swamp."

It seemed to him that he was forced to reply, but he no longer felt any internal revolt against that obligation--far otherwise.

"Is it far?"

"Yes, in Crau, on the other side of the Rhone, near the Icard farm.

The devil couldn't find me there. Rampal might come there, no one else----"

"Wait," said she at that name, with a sudden gleam in her cat-like eyes.

She whistled.

He said to himself that some one from Saintes-Maries would certainly see them, and that Livette would learn the whole story--that it would be better now to start at once.--Or perhaps--who knows?--the delay was a good thing! Livette might pa.s.s, herself, and all would be changed.

He would hasten to her side. They would be saved. Who would be saved?

and from what? from a vague, terrible thing that was before him. He could not have told what it was; but it was simply the renunciation of his own will.

The gitana's clear, shrill whistle summoned a little zingaro of some ten years, a veritable wild cat, who came running to the horse's side.

From the saddle she said a few words in the gipsy language to him, in a short, imperative tone of command. The gipsy language is composed of German, Coptic, Egyptian, and Sanscrit. Renaud listened without the slightest suspicion of the meaning of the words.

In a fit of amorous hatred, the swarthy queen said to the little fellow:

"You know Rampal, the drover? go and find him. He is in the village; I saw him not long ago. Go at once and tell him this: he will find me to-night, with his enemy, whom you see here, in the Conscript's Hut, which he knows! And I will join you and the wagon to-morrow evening, in the town of Arles, by the old tombs."

She thought of everything. The wild cat disappeared.

"What did you say to him?" Renaud inquired.

She began to laugh, an insolent laugh.

He felt that he abhorred her, that he would delight to see her conquered, under his heel, absolutely in his power, gipsy queen and sorceress that she was, like an ordinary woman.

Each desired the other in hatred.

She laughed as she thought that the man about whom her arms were thrown like a lover she was luring to his destruction. That very night--before or after the joys of love; what cared she for that?--there would be between him and that other a struggle as of wild beasts, which she longed to see; a witches' carnival of love, to rejoice the souls of the dead; and she laughed.

"Queens," said she, "cannot leave their kingdoms without issuing secret orders. Come, my beast!"

Was she speaking to the man or the horse?--To the man, doubtless, in whom she had awakened an animal like herself.

She pressed him tighter, and again she whispered:

"Come, come!"

He felt the vampire's breath playing in the short hair on his neck and descending in hot flushes to his feet, which were nervously tapping his horse's flanks. Renaud trembled. His pa.s.sion had taken possession of him once more in all its intensity. It seemed as if a hurricane were raging in man and horse alike. They started off at full speed.