King of Camargue Part 3

Then, for the first time, Renaud thought of the girl. Hitherto he had seen in Livette only the "young lady." They remained bending forward, she over the rope which she seemed to be examining attentively, he over Livette's hair. Livette wore her "morning head-dress," consisting of a little white handkerchief which covered the _chignon_, and was tied in such fashion that the two ends stood up like little hollow, pointed ears on top of her head. When they are in full-dress, the women of Camargue surround the high _chignon_, covered by a fine white linen cap, with a broad velvet ribbon, almost always black, whose long, unequal ends fall behind the head, a little at one side.

Renaud, then, was looking at Livette's clear flaxen hair,--in which there was, here and there, a lock of a darker golden hue,--symmetrically ma.s.sed on top of her head, advancing in little waves toward her temples, coquettishly arranged, but so short and fluffy that some few locks escaped, here, there, and everywhere, enough to form the faint golden mist above her head.

He looked at the pretty, round neck, whence the fair hair seemed to spring, like a vigorous plant, so slender and so fine! so long, and full of life! And the temptation to press his lips upon it drew him on, as, after a long day's journey among dry, stony hills, the sight of the water draws on the horses of Camargue, accustomed to moist pasturage.

She felt that she was being stared at too long.

"Let us go!" she said, suddenly. "My father's orders were that you should come as soon as possible."

Renaud felt as if he were waking from a long sleep and from a dream.

He jumped to his feet. Without a word, he went to Blanchet, took off the woman's saddle and carried it into the house, placed his own upon the beast, which the mosquitoes had at last made restive, and leaped upon his back.

Livette, a.s.sisted by the drover's strong hand, leaped to the croup behind him with one spring; highly amused she was as she threw one arm around Renaud's waist. It is the fashion among the Camarguese young women, all of whom, on fete-days, ride to the plains of Meyran, or to Saintes-Maries, "fitted" to the horses of their promised husbands.

The drover started Blanchet off at a gallop, gave him his head, and let him take his own course. Blanchet left the travelled road, headed straight for the chateau across the moor, through the sand thickly sown with stiff, rounded clumps of saltwort at irregular intervals.

The good horse flew over these clumps, scarcely touching the tops, landing always between them in the damp sand, from which, however, by force of long habit, he withdrew his feet without effort, calculating in advance the distance between the obstacles, galloping freely and evenly, changing feet as he chose, making sport of his heavy burden, happy at being left to himself.

And Livette must needs hold tight to the drover's waist; he was a lithe, supple fellow, and swayed with the horse. And the swift motion, the free air, youth and love, all combined to intoxicate the two young people; and without meaning it, without thinking of it, the horseman repeated his song of a few moments before, between his teeth, but loud enough to be overheard by the girl:

"Prends tes amours en croupe!

En avant!"

And it seemed to them as if the whole horizon were theirs.

When they dismounted, in front of the farm-house of the chateau, they had not spoken a word, but they had exchanged in silence the subtlest and strongest part of themselves.

From that day, Renaud, being sincerely in love, exerted himself to please. He was careful about his dress, paid more attention to the adjustment of his neckerchief, shaved more closely, and had not a single glance to spare for the other girls, even the prettiest of them.

At last, he said to Livette one day:

"Your father will never be willing!"

Those were his first words of love.

"If I am willing, my father will be. And when my father is willing, grandmother always is!"

"The good G.o.d grant it!" replied Jacques.

And it had happened as she said. For almost five months now they had been betrothed.

The fascinating thing about Livette was that she was just the opposite of Renaud, so slender and delicate, so fair and such a child,--and, furthermore, that she loved him with all her might, the sweetheart,--there was no mistake about that.

V

THE LOVERS

Livette was so fresh and sweet that people often repeated, in speaking of her, the Provencal expression: "You could drink her in a gla.s.s of water!"

In loving Livette, Renaud experienced the pleasant feeling, so dear to the heart of strong men, of having some one to protect, a little wife, who was no more than a child. Because of Livette's fragility and slender stature, the rough drover, made for violent pa.s.sions, the horseman of the Camargue desert, the hard-fisted herdsman, the subduer of mares and bulls, felt the love that is based upon sweet compa.s.sion, upon respect for charming weakness; in a word, he learned the secret of true tenderness which he could not have felt, perhaps, for one of his own cla.s.s.

It would never have occurred to him to tell her any of the vulgar jests with a double meaning, with which he regaled the more robust fair ones of his acquaintance on branding-days or on race-days. To do that would have seemed to him to be a villainous misuse of his power and his experience as a man. Still less did Livette cause him to feel the fierce desire, well known to him, which sometimes, with other girls, went to his brain like a rush of blood,--the desire to touch with his hands, to take in his arms, to throw down into the ditch, laughing at the gentle resistance, at the consent which repels a little, at the equal struggle between the youth and the maiden, who have, in reality, a tacit understanding to be robber and robbed. No: in Livette's presence, Renaud felt that he was a new man. There came to him, in regard to the little damsel with the golden hair, a tranquillity of heart that surprised him greatly. Love has a thousand forms. That which Renaud felt for Livette was a soothing emotion. He "wished her well." That was what he kept repeating to himself as he thought of her. And, as he desired all the others something after the fashion of the bulls of his _manade_, in the season when the germs are at work, it so happened that he seemed not to desire the only woman he really loved.

There was a sweet fascination in the thought, which he relished like a draught of pure water after a long day's walk through the dust in the hot sun. He rejoiced inwardly in his love as in a halt for rest in the shade of a great tree, beside a clear, cool spring, while the birds sang their greeting to the morning. Sometimes, in the blazing heat of midday, when he was riding across the mirror-like waste of sand and salt and water, his horse plodding wearily along with hanging head, the thought of Livette would steal softly into his mind, and it would seem as if a cool breeze were blowing on his forehead, washing away, in a sense, the dust and fatigue, like a bath. He would feel refreshed, and a smile would come unbidden to his lips. His whole being would thrill with pleasure, and, with renewed life, he would imperceptibly, with hand and knee alike, order his horse to raise his head. And the lover's steed would raise his head without further bidding, and snort and toss his mane, scatter, with a sudden lash of his tail, the gadflies that were streaking his sides with blood, and, with quickened step, reach the shelter of the hawthorns and the poplars on the Rhone bank--whose leaves forever quiver and rustle like the water, like the heart of man, like everything that lives and hopes and suffers and then dies!

Not only by her grace and weakness did she win his heart, strong and rough as he was; but also by the care expended on her dress, by the splendor of her surroundings, she, the wealthy farmer's daughter, enchanted him, the poor drover; and she seemed to him a strange, unfamiliar creature from another world. And so she was in fact. Of a different quality, he said to himself: a being outside his sphere, far, far above it.

That he might one day unloose the latchets of her little shoes had not occurred to him, and, lo! she was his! Livette, the daughter of the intendant of the Chateau d'Avignon! she was his fiancee, his betrothed, his future wife!

He seemed to himself the heir to a throne. In face of the mere thought of his future, he felt something like the embarra.s.sment a beggar feels on the threshold of a palace, before the carpets over which he must pa.s.s to enter, with shoes heavy with mud.

She had in his eyes something of the sanct.i.ty of the blessed Madonna, carved from wood, painted blue and gold, and overladen with pearls and flowers, that he used to see when a child in the church of Saint-Trophime at Arles.

So it was that he felt a secret amazement at finding himself beloved.

It did not seem to him that it could really be true; and as he must needs be convinced of the fact every time he spoke to her, his love constantly appealed to him with all the force of novelty.

He was a little embarra.s.sed, too, in her presence, could not find his words, contented himself with smiling at her, with yielding submission to her like a child, with running to fetch this or that for her, divining her desires from her glance; mistaking now and then, but rarely; feeling the same pleasure in being the maiden's footman that is felt by the misshapen court dwarf in love with the king's fair daughter.

His sobriquet of _The King_ seemed to him a mockery beside her. She embarra.s.sed him; in her presence he was meek and lowly.

He was surprised, indignant even, in his heart, at the familiar tone a.s.sumed by others with Livette. It seemed strange to him that her companions should treat her as an equal; that her father and her grandmother should not have the same respect and consideration for his fiancee that he himself had.

Frequently, when the grandmother cried to Livette: "Do this or that; run! be quick!" he would be angry, and would long to say to her: "Why do you order her about? She was not made to obey! You're a bad grandmother! Don't you see that she is too delicate and pretty for such tasks?"

But this was a feeling kept hidden in his heart; he would not have dared to avow it, for women are made, according to our ancestors, to be the slaves of man. So he said no word of what he felt. He even deemed himself a little ridiculous to feel it. He contented himself by doing in a twinkling, in Livette's stead, the thing she was bidden to do, if it was something within his power.

Ah! but if any man had ventured to indulge in any ill-sounding pleasantry with Livette, to take any liberty with her--oh! then, be sure that he would without reflection have felled him on the spot with his stout fist!

Why, if any one, man or woman, in the crowd on a fete-day, happened to make a coa.r.s.e remark in her hearing,--one of the sort that he himself knew how to make with great effect upon occasion,--he would be overcome with rage against that person; it seemed to him that every one should take notice of Livette's presence, should feel that she was near, and understand that, before her, they should show some self-respect.

All this he would have been incapable of explaining, but he felt it all, confusedly and vaguely, in his heart.

Livette, for her part, was keenly conscious of the drover's adoration.

She revelled in it, without unduly seeming to do so. She saw very plainly that she had, without effort, tamed a wild beast. She laughed sometimes, as she looked at him--a frank, ringing laugh, in which there was, however, a touch of the triumph of the mysterious feminine witchery, the marvellous invention of nature, which decrees that the strong man shall be vanquished, rolled in the dust, at the pleasure of fascinating weakness. This miracle, performed by life, by nature, by love, she believed to be her own work,--hers, Livette's,--and the little woman was a bit swollen with pride! More than frequently she would say to herself: "What have I done? I don't deserve this good fortune; no, indeed, I don't deserve it!" She saw very clearly that, in his eyes, she was a being apart: that he did not treat her by any means as everybody else did: and, greatly astonished as she was, she was proud of it.

Thereupon, wondering in her sincere heart what she had "more" or better than another, and finding no answer to the question, it came about that she deemed her lover a little, just a very little, stupid to be so dominated by her, and he so strong! And then she would prettily make fun of him and laugh aloud at him, saying:

"Ah! great b.o.o.by!"

So it was that the whole essence of Woman, profound, seductive, existed in this simple, obscure peasant-girl, who could have told nothing as to her own character.

In time, too, she came to look upon herself as pretty, beautiful, the prettiest, the loveliest of all, and to admire her own charms. When such thoughts came to her, and if the truth must be known, none were more frequent,--ah! then she felt her pride! And she no longer deemed her lover stupid in the least degree; on the contrary, he seemed to her very fortunate, too fortunate! and then it was he who hardly deserved her! At such times, she received his attentions, his humility, with the air of a princess accustomed to homage.

Then, too, she would wonder why all the others did not do for her what he did? And, thereupon, she would conceive a sort of grat.i.tude for him. Such a constant revolution in our hearts of impressions, often irreconcilable and ever changing, around a fixed idea, is love.--Yes, in very truth he deserved to be loved simply because he had known enough to appreciate her! to choose her! The other young men were the fools, one and all!