King of Camargue Part 34

"Go with me to the Icard farm, father, as you know the people there.

Let us go to the Icard farm at once; my happiness depends on it.

There is something there that I want to see to-morrow morning."

The poor man did not understand, but he always yielded to her caprice.

They set out at once for the Chateau d'Avignon.

They left the wagon at the chateau; they harnessed the best pair of horses to the cabriolet, and made seven or eight leagues without stopping.

"Thanks, father. I must be here to-morrow morning. I will tell you why----"

It was eleven o'clock at night.

When all were in bed, Livette, being familiar with "the place," which her father had pointed out to her anew at her request,--Livette furtively left the house to prowl about the spot where disaster awaited her, for love knows no obstacles, and we follow our destiny through everything, and rush on to death in pursuit of our last sorrow.

And then?--Ah! throughout the visions of her sick-bed Livette constantly lived over that terrible moment when she was prowling around the swamp. In truth, she was still there, in agony of mind.

About the swamp, in the darkness, Livette hovered like a sea-gull in distress. Like a lost soul from h.e.l.l she flitted about the edges of the bog, trying to pierce with her gaze the dark clumps of reeds and tamarisks.

From time to time, according to the spot from which she looked, she could see the gray roof of the cabin, silvered by the moonlight.

Was any one there? Had Rampal told her the truth? Ought she to lose this opportunity of convincing herself with her own eyes of Renaud's treachery?

Should she give her life to a traitor without endeavoring to unmask him, although warned? With her widely dilated eyes, she imagined that she saw lights that did not exist; or--if she did really see a feeble gleam through the c.h.i.n.ks in the door--she refused to believe her eyes.

The blood was tingling in her ears, and she thought she could hear voices. It seemed to her at times as if her head were bursting. She could see, inside her head, beneath her skull, a great white light, and in the centre of the light Renaud and the gipsy together. Oh! to think of not finding out!

And, if it should be so, what should she do?

The essential thing was to find out. Afterward, she would see. If she were strong enough, if she could do it--she would certainly kill the woman.--How? Livette did not know. Simply with a look, perhaps.--Madness rises from the swamps with the miasmatic exhalations at night. Livette felt that she was going mad.

"How do you get to the cabin?" she had asked her father.

Ah! yes, the path is marked by stakes, is it not? To the left of the stakes is the path. She cannot see the tops of the stakes in the dark water. Frogs were sitting on them, perhaps, to look at the moon; or turtles on those that were just level with the surface. But no, it was gra.s.s that covered them all. And Livette's eyes ached with her endeavors to open them wider in the darkness, and find some sign upon the indistinct objects about her.

But suppose Rampal had deceived her?

At one time, it seemed to her that she could hear something resembling the gipsy music that made the snakes dance--but so weak! Surely it was in her poor, tired head,--for if it had been the real music, all the reptiles in the swamp would have come out to dance, all at once, in the moonlight.

Bah! Why should she be afraid? As if there were so very many of the creatures in the country! They are not fond of the salt in the bogs, nor the high winds.

She hovered about the swamp like a sea-gull lost at sea!

"Yes, yes, this is the way, here is the path under the water and the stakes that mark it! I must keep the stakes at my right as I walk along."

She starts to take the first step, and dares not--but suddenly the sound of voices comes to her ears. She distinguishes two voices--two!--beyond any question. And now it is surely the metallic sound of the tambourine that floats through the reeds in the moonlight, bringing to her heart the frightful vision of the other's joy!

She will go. After all, since her unhappiness is certain, what matter if she die of it! Ah! how bitter would be his punishment if, on coming out, at daybreak, he should find her there, drowned!

She makes a step; she sinks! but she does not cry out. No, she will extricate herself unaided--she must. She clings to the long gra.s.s, to the reeds which break in her hands. She is sinking! Ah! G.o.d! is she to die there? They would be too well pleased, aye, both of them, to have caused her death! Therefore she must not die! She will not! She struggles, and sinks deeper. As she lifts one foot, she rests her weight on the other, which goes down, down, and the ooze gains upon her. It rises to her waist; and still she cannot refrain from raising her feet, one after the other, as if to climb an imaginary stairway, the solid ladder that she dreams of but cannot find!

With every upward effort she sinks lower; it is horrible. Her hands are so small that she does not grasp enough gra.s.s, enough reeds, at once! Everything about her yields, everything fails to give support.

How the reeds break between her fingers! like gra.s.s threads! It seems to her that clammy creatures are rubbing against her legs, her hands--ah! yes, the snakes--the bloodsuckers! She will be eaten alive by the bloodsuckers.--But where is the stake, near the edge of the swamp, that she thought she saw a moment ago? She lets go the gra.s.s to which she is clinging, with the result that she sinks deeper, still deeper. Now the cold water submerges her bosom, surrounds her neck, crawls up toward her mouth. Will she be compelled in a moment to drink that filthy water? At that thought, she makes one final effort. Her dishevelled locks cling about her neck, as if to strangle her, all drenched and cold and slimy, like veritable snakes!--She struggles, tosses her hands about this way and that--until one of them comes in contact with the wooden stake, firmly planted in the ground.--Saintes Maries!--She seizes it, twines her fingers about it, digs her nails into it, and does not relax her hold. Nor will she, even when she is dead! But her arm no longer has the strength to raise her, and her head falls heavily back--her eyes close. Is this death?--It was at that moment, just as she lost consciousness, that the brave-hearted maid cried out,--not until then. And her cry rang out over the swamps, like the call of the birds of pa.s.sage, which ceaselessly, over all the waters upon earth, seek the repose that can never be found.

That ghastly vision recurred again and again to Livette, while the women of the Icard farm were busying themselves, a little too noisily, around her bed. At last, there was silence in her room. She saw her father come in, but she did not choose to explain anything to him. She sent word to the grandmother not to be anxious, that she would return home in three days. Livette asked to see Renaud. Her father went to find him. She closed her eyes.

She fancied that she could remember, now, certain things that happened to her during her sleep of death in the _gargate_, but were not reproduced in her dream. She felt Renaud's arms lifting her out of the mire, and that, after all, is the one thing to be desired, more than life itself--the protection of the man she loved, her lover's mourning for her, thinking that she was dead.--But before that, a moment before, had she not felt the weight of a fixed gaze upon her?--She had looked dimly forth between her drooping eyelids, through her long lashes which seemed to her like a thick grating; and she fancied that she saw the gipsy, the ill-omened gitana, standing before her. "Yes, it is she, it is really she. She is standing here beside me. She looks very, very tall. Her head touches the sky. She is on the path leading to the cabin. She is just coming from the rendezvous. She has been kissing Renaud! When will he come? Will the witch's black shadow, standing so straight there, never go? What more do you want, witch? Don't you see that I am dead? I must make you think I am dead.

Then you will leave me, at last!--The wicked woman is always smiling.

Ah! there she goes.--How heavy her glance was! And how tall she was!

She kept all the light from me. Now I can see the sky again. Is it you, Renaud, is it you, Jacques, who take me in your arms as if I were dead?--It is you, at last!"

Thus cried poor Livette, delirious once more. But Renaud was sitting beside her bed with his face in his hands, listening to her.

"It is you," she went on; "you think me dead, and I can feel you take me in your arms and quickly carry me away. But why do you not weep, when you see me so? It is you, at last! I am dead, and still I feel you. You have me in your arms. Your heart beats fast. Mine has ceased to beat. Where were you, bad boy? What did you say to her? But that is past and gone!--Is that woman very dear to your heart?--Why do you come no more to my father's house in the evening? He is very fond of you. Grandma is a dear old soul. Do you see how faithful she is to her dead husband? People knew how to love one another better in her day, she says. Is it true? Do you believe it, Jacques? And if I die, won't you keep my memory sacred, as she keeps grandpa's?--Why do you make me suffer so?--Are we two never to walk under the great elm again? Our pretty stone bench under the rose-bushes is very sad now, and lonely like a tombstone. Ah! if you had chosen! I was pretty, yes, pretty, pretty! And now I shall be ugly. For I have done with life, even if I am not dead. My life is at an end, at an end!"

XXV

THE PHANTOM

Livette, who had been carried back to the Chateau d'Avignon many days before, had not left her bed. The fever clung to her obstinately.

Nothing could be done.

Was it really true, O G.o.d, that she was doomed to die, and he to see it? Was he to lose the future he had dreamed of, a future of unruffled happiness, of love and peace, as her husband; the joy he had known for such a brief s.p.a.ce, of having a woman, sweet and dear and helpless as a child, to cherish and protect?--Was he condemned never to know the pleasure of having a family--a pleasure that had been denied to him, an orphan, and of which he had often dreamed as of one of the joys of Paradise--was he condemned never to know it, because he had forgotten his longing for a single day? The picture, dear to country-folk, of the chimney with the smoke curling upward, that seems to say to them, as far as it can be seen: "The soup is hot, the wife is waiting, the children are calling," recurred sometimes to his mind, and he sighed profoundly.

The punishment that he saw coming upon him did not seem to him proportionate to the offence. There was no justice in it!

What is the meaning of that most terrible of all mysteries: that the love of the senses is more powerful than the love of the heart when separated from its object, even though the last be recognized as the more certain and the sweeter?

Between the lofty chapel and the subterranean crypt of the church of Saintes-Maries-de-la-Mer, on the level of human life, does the miracle come always from below? And if it be so, is it any less a miracle?

Which of you has fathomed the meaning of life? Who can say: "It is unjust," or: "It is useless," or: "What I do not see does not exist"?

Who can say if Livette's sufferings and Renaud's, their troubles and their heart-burnings, all the invisible and inexplicable movements within themselves,--of which they knew nothing,--were not preparing the way for realities inconceivable to our minds? The _ideal_, the dream of what is best, is the essential condition of the _material_ development of mankind. No force is wasted; everything is transformed.

"Everything is of some use," said the old shepherd Sigaud. "It takes all kinds to make a world."

Livette had forgiven Renaud, Renaud had not forgiven himself.

Sometimes he gazed at her, deeply moved, and he suffered with her for hours at a time. Sometimes he had sudden fits of rage against her--paroxysms of wickedness, as it were. Was she not an obstacle in his path? At such times, he believed that he was possessed by a devil, and he would kneel by Livette's bed and pray to the saints, the women of compa.s.sion.

Ah! how thin she was! Her eyes seemed to have grown larger, and to have changed from blue to black, because the pupils were still dilated. Her long, fair hair no longer shone. It seemed as if the muddy water of the swamp had taken away its gloss forever.

She often started at noises that she imagined she heard.

She, who in the old days used to talk but little, was constantly telling of the things she had dreamed, and she would be vexed if they were not remembered.

The doctors of Arles tried everything. Nothing was of any avail.