King of Camargue Part 33

[Ill.u.s.tration: Chapter XXIII

_She went to the farther end of the Allee des Alyscamps, between the rows of tall poplars, amid the stone monuments, and lighted a fire of twigs, to give her light enough to look about and select a spot where she could sleep comfortably._]

What he was seeking was her real face, WHICH DID NOT EXIST, for a face is the expression of a soul, and she had no soul. Had she ever loved him? that is what he would have liked to ascertain, if nothing more. Had she smiled on Rampal? Perhaps--G.o.d! could it be possible? Who knows? Of what was she not capable to consummate her crime?--And yet he secretly admired her for the extraordinary perfidy he attributed to her. The Saracen blood, the blood of heathen pirates, did not flow in his veins for nothing.

Yes, indeed, if, in her hate-inspired work, she had had need of Rampal, with whom he had several times seen her talking, was it not possible that she had given herself to him in order to make him absolutely submissive to her will? What was he thinking of? Given herself to him? No, not that!--Not in its fullest meaning, at all events--but she might have let him steal a kiss--a long kiss, perhaps--from her lips. And the herdsman felt the keen point of the spear of jealousy pierce his heart.

He thought and thought, feverish with pa.s.sion, excited by his excessive exertions for several days past, and he rode through the fields and swamps, amid the gra.s.s and stones of Crau, surrounded by buzzing insects maddened by the heat, which was terrible.

Great G.o.d! only the night before, he had believed that she had a veritable woman's pa.s.sion for him, a pa.s.sion like those he had often aroused in women, with his strength, his courage, and his prowess as horse-breaker and cavalier. And as she was the daughter of a free race, and queen of her tribe, he had been proud of his conquest. He had straightened himself up in his saddle, like a crowned king, conqueror in many battles. He had handled his spear with a firmer hand. He had glanced proudly at the other drovers, his comrades, with a distinct feeling that he was "better than they," since this savage queen, who, in her travels, had doubtless seen so many brave and comely men, had chosen him--even though he were not the first!--that she, whom the laws of her people forbade to love a European dog, the slave of cities, had chosen him, the drover of Camargue!

Now that that happiness was gone from him, he suddenly realized its value. An immense void lay before him. For the first time, the desert seemed a melancholy place to him, too vast, too bare. He realized that henceforth his whole life would lie in the past. He was no longer the king! He would never be the king again! She had never loved him! And she had pretended that she did!

But when she had cried out and turned pale in his arms, had she not forgotten that she was acting a lie? If that were so, she must be very sure of finding elsewhere such ardent caresses as his, from another.

Otherwise she would not have fled, for he scouted the idea that she was afraid. Such a one as she could have no fear! And if, as he thought the night before, he had really taken her fancy, would she not have remained, guilty or not, to enjoy his caresses anew, even though she were to die of them?

But she would not have died of them! She, sorceress as she was, must have known that he would have forgiven everything. Therefore she had _wanted_ to go. She cared nothing for him. If, on the other hand, it had pleased her to keep him with her, to continue their liaison, she would have found a way to do it, in spite of everything. She had only to desire to do it. She did not _desire_!--Even so, he desired her!

He rode away at headlong speed. He must find her again. Then they would see! And he circled round the cabin in the swamp like a hawk, examining all the clumps of thorn-broom, all the tamarisks and reeds.

Oh! he would find her!

He had been riding for several hours, and he began to feel that his quest was useless. If she were outside the limits of the last greater circle that he had described in his search for her, it was all over!

he was too late.

At last, convinced of his discomfiture, he leaped from his horse and seated himself on the sloping bank of a ditch. It was near midday. He was neither hungry nor thirsty, but the sun told him that it was midday.

The gnats were humming about his ears, devouring him, riddling the hide of his horse, who hung his head and sniffed at a tuft of salt gra.s.s without eating it, pulling a little upon the rein which Renaud, still seated, held loosely in his hand.

Renaud was looking straight before him, and now that he was a.s.sured of his misfortune, now that he had neither betrothed nor mistress, neither present nor future, he felt that he was becoming cold and hard, and was astonished to find it so. It seemed to him as if his misfortune had happened to a piece of wood or stone. The wood and the stone were himself. How could he have had such dread of the certainty that had come to him at last? While he had that dread, he still hoped and suffered. Now that all was said, he found that he was insensible to it all--dead, in a measure. And that gratified him.

He who had wept so bitterly the night that he tried to put aside his nascent pa.s.sion, now, in this final catastrophe, which should have called forth all the tears in his body, felt as if the springs had run dry. Instead of being more deeply moved than ever, he found that he was strangely composed, as if armed against fate.--He received the blow like a soldier, like a drover. His tranquillity became more p.r.o.nounced and more extraordinary as the excessive severity of the disaster became more certain.

Tranquillity for an hour, perhaps! But what did that matter? He had no suspicion of it. He found that he was strong in the face of disaster.

Ah! she could make up her mind to go? She was laughing at me? Very good! I have no need of her, the vagabond! I have seen through the sorceress! I know her, I know her! Good-evening!

He rose, to return home. As he raised his head, he saw the gitana--five hundred yards ahead of him.--Her back was turned to him, and she was walking tranquilly along.

In a twinkling, he was in the saddle. "Stop!" Blanchet, smarting under a blow from the stirrup-leather, flew over the ground, making the sand and stones fly, snorting with wrath as the spur tore his flank. In four minutes they made half a league. The gipsy, still in front, with her back turned to them, walked quietly along. It was her orange handkerchief, her copper crown, her undulating gait. It was certainly she!

Suddenly, when she reached the sh.o.r.e of a pond, she walked out, with the same tranquil step, upon the surface of the water, which bore her weight as if it were covered with ice; while, not far away, a large brig, decked out with flags, was bearing down upon him, with all sail set, through the furze-bushes and p.r.i.c.kly oaks of Crau, across the arid fields.

Renaud sadly hung his head. The brig explained it all. It was all a spectre due to the mirage! Discouragement came upon the man and crushed him.

Thus, all the strength he had expended, his shameful acceptance of such a love, his toilsome day of fruitless search, after the mad ride of the preceding night, the exhaustion of horse and rider, all came to an end in the endless trickery of the mirage!

The sorceress must be far away! And in what direction? There was nothing for him to do but abandon the pursuit. He retraced his steps to the Icard farm. The fruitlessness of the effort affected him more keenly than the effort itself.

He no longer looked about, he no longer thought, he no longer loved or hated. Weariness had suddenly fallen upon his shoulders and his loins like a weight too heavy to be borne. He rode on, bent almost double, swaying like an inert thing, with the motion of his horse. He felt as if he were falling from a great height in a sort of sick man's dream.

His eyes, worn out with gazing over the fields and scrutinizing every bush, closed in spite of him. His nerveless hand knew not where the reins were; nor did his brain know what had become of his ideas.

Blanchet went forward mechanically, with his head almost touching the ground. He, too, was without will-power, overdone, exhausted, his eyes injected with blood; his breath was short and quick, and his flanks beat the charge.

At another time, the careful horseman, who loved his beasts, would very quickly have noticed that his horse's wind was broken, when he felt his sides rise and fall with that short, hard, jerky breath; but Renaud was conscious of nothing. There was nothing in his head but a burning void. He did not even long for shade or rest. He was suffering from the utter dejection that follows terrible crises, from the great sorrow caused by death, from hopeless despair. Overwhelmed as he was by his selfish weariness, if he had been capable of recognizing any sentiment in his mind, he would have found there a vague, cowardly feeling of annoyance at having to enter a sick-chamber, at having to witness the spectacle of Livette's suffering. He would have liked--but he had not the strength to do it--to dismount from his horse, to lie down in the fresh air, under a tamarisk, and sleep there a long, long time; to forget himself, to cease to see or speak or hear or listen or exist!--He was like one walking in his sleep.

Suddenly Blanchet stopped, and began to tremble in every limb, and, before his rider had come to his senses, his four legs, planted stiffly like stakes, seemed to be broken by a single blow, and he fell in a heap.

Renaud awoke, standing on his feet beside his fallen horse. Blanchet was dying. It was soon over. The honest creature opened, to an unnatural width, his great glazed eyes, green as the stagnant water in the swamps, and filled with that wondering expression which the infinite mystery of living or of having lived imparts to the gaze of little children, animals, and dying men; he straightened out his four legs, trembling like the reeds in the marshes. A shiver ran over his whole body, riddled with the stings of a myriad of gnats and great flies, some of which flew up into the air and settled down again in the corners of the dim, wide-open eyes. Then the poor creature became motionless, with an indefinable something that was alarming and terrible in his immobility, something that put joy to flight, that seemed to imply finality. It was death. Blanchet had ended his humble Camarguese life in the open desert, in the bright sunlight. Livette's horse was dead in the service of Renaud's pa.s.sion for Zinzara!

The faithful beast did not know what had happened; he did not know the reason of the forced journeys, the multiplied wounds inflicted by Renaud's spurs, by the stings of the gadflies, and by Zinzara's pin, buried in his flesh; he had submitted, without a murmur, to the destiny that bade him suffer at the hands of those who might have made life pleasanter for him, and, as he lay dead, his eyes still expressed his endless amazement at his failure to understand what was expected of him.

It was all over. He was dead. The affectionate creature had fallen a victim to the violence and malignity of human pa.s.sions. Man had betrayed him for a woman's sake. And now his graceful form, made for swift movement, was infinitely sad to see, because the eye could see clearly all that there was in its immobility contrary to the purpose for which it was designed--and irreparable.

Renaud gazed stupidly at him.--He saw again, like so many reproachful words, Blanchet's last look, his short, rapid breath, the shudder that ran over his bleeding skin. And, restored to his senses by this unforeseen catastrophe which awoke a thousand salutary thoughts in his mind, he felt his heart grow soft. He burst into tears.

Thus Blanchet served his mistress still by his death. "Everything is of some use," said Sigaud.

Renaud stooped and returned, upon his still warm nostrils, the kiss he had received from him on the day of his first despair; then, having removed the saddle and bridle and concealed them in a safe place, he returned on foot to the Icard farm, with an intense, affectionate desire to do his utmost to care for and comfort poor Livette, for the death of her horse brought him back to her more quickly than anything else could have done.

He promised himself that he would return and bury Blanchet, but he did not have time. The good horse belonged to the vulture and the eagle.

In the evening of that same day, while Livette, sleeping soundly, seemed to everybody to be out of danger,--while Renaud lay, like a dog, in front of her door, determined to defend and save her,--Zinzara arrived at the Alyscamps at Arles.

There, thinking that Renaud might, with the devil's a.s.sistance, succeed in overtaking her,--although she may have had her reasons for thinking that his horse was not in condition for service at that time,--she left her house on wheels, in order that she might not be taken by surprise therein like a wild beast in its lair,--not from fear, but because she was desirous, before all else, not to see him again. She went to the farther end of the Allee des Alyscamps, between the rows of tall poplars, amid the stone monuments, and lighted a fire of twigs, to give her light enough to look about and select a spot where she could sleep comfortably.

She went there late, when the lovers who congregate there on May evenings, to make love upon the tombs, had returned to the sleeping city.

Along the whole length of the avenue, between the tall, straight poplars, run two rows of sarcophagi, some very high, with ma.s.sive lids, others low and without lids, with a few scattered blossoms, sown by the wind, at the bottom. The dead who once slept there were sent down to Arles in sealed urns, abandoned to the current of the Rhone by the cities farther up the river. Now flowers are springing from their dust; and their open tombs are nothing more than beds for vagabonds and lovers.

By the bright light of her fire, which cast her shadow, enormously exaggerated, upon the wall of the ruined chapel, Zinzara selected her couch. She tossed an armful of gra.s.s and leaves upon the bottom of a sarcophagus; and, while the nightingale, who builds his nest there every year, was singing for dear life, the strange creature slept peacefully, with her face to the sky, trusting in her destiny; and, as a ray of moonlight fell upon her calm face with its closed eyelids, the sorceress resembled her black mummy, which concealed and idealized corruption--embalmed beneath a golden mask.

XXIV

IN THE GARGATE

When he received Zinzara's message from the gipsy child, Rampal, who was still suffering from his fall of a few days before, did not think of going in person to surprise Renaud. He did better than that. He went at once to Livette, and told her of the rendezvous at the cabin.

"Your lover, Livette, who defends you so fiercely against a harmless kiss, is with a woman to-night--you ought to be able to guess who she is--in the Conscript's Hut, near the Icard farm."

As Livette stood aghast, with pale cheeks, he continued:

"Your father has good horses; if you want to see for yourself, you can. It will be worth your while."

"Thanks, Rampal," said Livette.

Not for an instant did she doubt the truth of what he told her, and she said to her father: