The Fortune of the Rougons Part 18

There was no necessity for Silvere to question them further, for they told him the story of the poacher Chantegreil and his daughter Miette, with that unreasoning spite which is felt for social outcasts. The girl, in particular, they treated in a foul manner; and the insulting gibe of "daughter of a galley-slave" constantly rose to their lips like an incontestable reason for condemning the poor, dear innocent creature to eternal disgrace.

However, wheelwright Vian, an honest, worthy fellow, at last silenced his men.

"Hold your tongues, you foul mouths!" he said, as he let fall the shaft of a cart that he had been examining. "You ought to be ashamed of yourselves for being so hard upon the child. I've seen her, the little thing looks a very good girl. Besides, I'm told she doesn't mind work, and already does as much as any woman of thirty. There are some lazy fellows here who aren't a match for her. I hope, later on, that she'll get a good husband who'll stop this evil talk."

Silvere, who had been chilled by the workmen's gross jests and insults, felt tears rise to his eyes at the last words spoken by Vian. However, he did not open his lips. He took up his hammer, which he had laid down near him, and began with all his might to strike the nave of a wheel which he was binding with iron.

In the evening, as soon as he had returned home from the workshop, he ran to the wall and climbed upon it. He found Miette engaged upon the same labour as the day before. He called her. She came to him, with her smile of embarra.s.sment, and the charming shyness of a child who from infancy had grown up in tears.

"You're La Chantegreil, aren't you?" he asked her, abruptly.

She recoiled, she ceased smiling, and her eyes turned sternly black, gleaming with defiance. So this lad was going to insult her, like the others! She was turning her back upon him, without giving an answer, when Silvere, perplexed by her sudden change of countenance, hastened to add: "Stay, I beg you--I don't want to pain you--I've got so many things to tell you!"

She turned round, still distrustful. Silvere, whose heart was full, and who had resolved to relieve it, remained for a moment speechless, not knowing how to continue, for he feared lest he should commit a fresh blunder. At last he put his whole heart in one phrase: "Would you like me to be your friend?" he said, in a voice full of emotion. And as Miette, in surprise, raised her eyes, which were again moist and smiling, he continued with animation: "I know that people try to vex you. It's time to put a stop to it. I will be your protector now. Shall I?"

The child beamed with delight. This proffered friendship roused her from all her evil dreams of taciturn hatred. Still she shook her head and answered: "No, I don't want you to fight on my account. You'd have too much to do. Besides which, there are persons from whom you cannot protect me."

Silvere wished to declare that he would defend her against the whole world, but she closed his mouth with a coaxing gesture, as she added: "I am satisfied to have you as a friend."

They then conversed together for a few minutes, lowering their voices as much as possible. Miette spoke to Silvere of her uncle and her cousin.

For all the world she would not have liked them to catch him astride the coping of the wall. Justin would be implacable with such a weapon against her. She spoke of her misgivings with the fright of a schoolgirl on meeting a friend with whom her mother has forbidden her to a.s.sociate.

Silvere merely understood, however, that he would not be able to see Miette at his pleasure. This made him very sad. Still, he promised that he would not climb upon the wall any more. They were both endeavouring to find some expedient for seeing each other again, when Miette suddenly begged him to go away; she had just caught sight of Justin, who was crossing the grounds in the direction of the wall. Silvere quickly descended. When he was in the little yard again, he remained by the wall to listen, irritated by his flight. After a few minutes he ventured to climb again and cast a glance into the Jas-Meiffren, but he saw Justin speaking with Miette, and quickly withdrew his head. On the following day he could see nothing of his friend, not even in the distance; she must have finished her work in that part of the Jas. A week pa.s.sed in this fashion, and the young people had no opportunity of exchanging a single word. Silvere was in despair; he thought of boldly going to the Rebufats to ask for Miette.

The party-well was a large one, but not very deep. On either side of the wall the curb formed a large semicircle. The water was only ten or twelve feet down at the utmost. This slumbering water reflected the two apertures of the well, two half-moons between which the shadow of the wall cast a black streak. On leaning over, one might have fancied in the vague light that the half-moons were two mirrors of singular clearness and brilliance. Under the morning sunshine, when the dripping of the ropes did not disturb the surface of the water, these mirrors, these reflections of the heavens, showed like white patches on the green water, and in them the leaves of the ivy which had spread along the wall over the well were repeated with marvellous exactness.

One morning, at an early hour, Silvere, as he came to draw water for aunt Dide, bent over the well mechanically, just as he was taking hold of the rope. He started, and then stood motionless, still leaning over.

He had fancied that he could distinguish in the well the face of a young girl who was looking at him with a smile; however, he had shaken the rope, and the disturbed water was now but a dim mirror that no longer reflected anything clearly. Silvere, who did not venture to stir, and whose heart beat rapidly, then waited for the water to settle. As its ripples gradually widened and died away, he perceived the image reappearing. It oscillated for a long time, with a swing which lent a vague, phantom-like grace to its features, but at last it remained stationary. It was the smiling countenance of Miette, with her head and shoulders, her coloured neckerchief, her white bodice, and her blue braces. Silvere next perceived his own image in the other mirror. Then, knowing that they could see each other, they nodded their heads. For the first moment, they did not even think of speaking. At last they exchanged greetings.

"Good morning, Silvere."

"Good morning, Miette."

They were surprised by the strange sound of their voices, which became singularly soft and sweet in that damp hole. The sound seemed, indeed, to come from a distance, like the soft music of voices heard of an evening in the country. They understood that it would suffice to speak in a whisper in order to hear each other. The well echoed the faintest breath. Leaning over its brink, they conversed while gazing at one another's reflection. Miette related how sad she had been the last week.

She was now working at the other end of the Jas, and could only get out early in the morning. Then she made a pout of annoyance which Silvere distinguished perfectly, and to which he replied by nodding his head with an air of vexation. They were exchanging all those gestures and facial expressions that speech entails. They cared but little for the wall which separated them now that they could see each other in those hidden depths.

"I knew," continued Miette, with a knowing look, "that you came here to draw water every morning at the same hour. I can hear the grating of the pulley from the house. So I made an excuse, I pretended that the water in this well boiled the vegetables better. I thought that I might come here every morning to draw water at the same time as you, so as to say good morning to you without anyone suspecting it."

She smiled innocently, as though well pleased with her device, and ended by saying: "But I did not imagine we should see each other in the water."

It was, in fact, this unhoped-for pleasure which so delighted them. They only spoke to see their lips move, so greatly did this new frolic amuse their childish natures. And they resolved to use all means in their power to meet here every morning. When Miette had said that she must go away, she told Silvere that he could draw his pail of water. But he did not dare to shake the rope; Miette was still leaning over--he could see her smiling face, and it was too painful to him to dispel that smile. As he slightly stirred his pail, the water murmured, and the smile faded.

Then he stopped, seized with a strange fear; he fancied that he had vexed her and made her cry. But the child called to him, "Go on! go on!"

with a laugh which the echo prolonged and rendered more sonorous. She herself then nosily sent down a pail. There was a perfect tempest.

Everything disappeared under the black water. And Silvere made up his mind to fill two pitchers, while listening to the retreating steps of Miette on the other side of the wall.

From that day, the young people never missed their a.s.signations. The slumbering water, the white mirrors in which they gazed at one another, imparted to their interviews a charm which long sufficed their playful, childish imaginations. They had no desire to see each other face to face: it seemed much more amusing to them to use the well as a mirror, and confide their morning greetings to its echo. They soon came to look upon the well as an old friend. They loved to bend over the motionless water that resembled molten silver. A greenish glimmer hovered below, in a mysterious half light, and seemed to change the damp hole into some hiding-place in the depths of a wood. They saw each other in a sort of greenish nest bedecked with moss, in the midst of fresh water and foliage. And all the strangeness of the deep spring, the hollow tower over which they bent, trembling with fascination, added unconfessed and delightful fear to their merry laughter. The wild idea occurred to them of going down and seating themselves on a row of large stones which formed a kind of circular bench at a few inches above the water. They would dip their feet in the latter, converse there for hours, and no one would think of coming to look for them in such a spot. But when they asked each other what there might be down there, their vague fears returned; they thought it quite sufficient to let their reflected images descend into the depths amidst those green glimmers which tinged the stones with strange moire-like reflections, and amidst those mysterious noises which rose from the dark corners. Those sounds issuing from the invisible made them particularly uneasy; they often fancied that voices were replying to their own; and then they would remain silent, detecting a thousand faint plaints which they could not understand. These came from the secret travail of the moisture, the sighs of the atmosphere, the drops that glided over the stones, and fell below with the sonorousness of sobs. They would nod affectionately to each other in order to rea.s.sure themselves. Thus the attraction which kept them leaning over the brink had a tinge of secret terror, like all poignant charms. But the well still remained their old friend. It was such an excellent pretext for meeting! Justin, who watched Miette's every movement, never suspected the cause of her eagerness to go and draw some water every morning. At times, he saw her from the distance, leaning over and loitering. "Ah! the lazy thing!" he muttered; "how fond she is of dawdling about!" How could he suspect that, on the other side of the wall, there was a wooer contemplating the girl's smile in the water, and saying to her: "If that red-haired donkey Justin should illtreat you, just tell me of it, and he shall hear from me!"

This amus.e.m.e.nt lasted for more than a month. It was July then; the mornings were sultry; the sun shone brightly, and it was quite a pleasure to come to that damp spot. It was delightful to feel the cold breath of the well on one's face, and make love amidst this spring water while the skies were kindling their fires. Miette would arrive out of breath after crossing the stubble fields; as she ran along, her hair fell down over her forehead and temples; and it was with flushed face and dishevelled locks that she would lean over, shaking with laughter, almost before she had had time to set her pitcher down. Silvere, who was almost always the first at the well, felt, as he suddenly saw her smiling face in the water, as keen a joy as he would have experienced had she suddenly thrown herself into his arms at the bend of a pathway.

Around them the radiant morning hummed with mirth; a wave of warm light, sonorous with the buzzing of insects, beat against the old wall, the posts, and the curbstone. They, however, no longer saw the shower of morning sunshine, nor heard the thousand sounds rising from the ground; they were in the depths of their green hiding-place, under the earth, in that mysterious and awesome cavity, and quivered with pleasure as they lingered there enjoying its fresh coolness and dim light.

On some mornings, Miette, who by nature could not long maintain a contemplative att.i.tude, began to tease; she would shake the rope, and make drops of water fall in order to ripple the mirrors and deface the reflections. Silvere would then entreat her to remain still; he, whose fervour was deeper than hers, knew no keener pleasure than that of gazing at his love's image reflected so distinctly in every feature.

But she would not listen to him; she would joke and feign a rough old bogey's voice, to which the echo imparted a raucous melodiousness.

"No, no," she would say in chiding fashion; "I don't love you to-day!

I'm making faces at you; see how ugly I am."

And she laughed at seeing the fantastic forms which their spreading faces a.s.sumed as they danced upon the disturbed water.

One morning she got angry in real earnest. She did not find Silvere at the trysting-place, and waited for him for nearly a quarter of an hour, vainly making the pulley grate. She was just about to depart in a rage when he arrived. As soon as she perceived him she let a perfect tempest loose in the well, shook her pail in an irritated manner, and made the blackish water whirl and splash against the stones. In vain did Silvere try to explain that aunt Dide had detained him. To all his excuses she replied: "You've vexed me; I don't want to see you."

The poor lad, in despair, vainly questioned that sombre cavity, now so full of lamentable sounds, where, on other days, such a bright vision usually awaited him amid the silence of the stagnant water. He had to go away without seeing Miette. On the morrow, arriving before the time, he gazed sadly into the well, hearing nothing, and thinking that the obstinate girl would not come, when she, who was already on the other side slyly watching his arrival, bent over suddenly with a burst of laughter. All was at once forgotten.

In this wise the well was the scene of many a little drama and comedy.

That happy cavity, with its gleaming mirrors and musical echoes, quickly ripened their love. They endowed it with such strange life, so filled it with their youthful love, that, long after they had ceased to come and lean over the brink, Silvere, as he drew water every morning, would fancy he could see Miette's smiling face in the dim light that still quivered with the joy they had set there.

That month of playful love rescued Miette from her mute despair. She felt a revival of her affections, her happy childish carelessness, which had been held in check by the hateful loneliness in which she lived.

The certainty that she was loved by somebody, and that she was no longer alone in the world, enabled her to endure the persecutions of Justin and the Faubourg urchins. A song of joy, whose glad notes drowned their hootings, now sounded in her heart. She thought of her father with tender compa.s.sion, and did not now so frequently yield to dreams of bitter vengeance. Her dawning love cooled her feverish broodings like the fresh breezes of the dawn. At the same time she acquired the instinctive cunning of a young girl in love. She felt that she must maintain her usual silent and rebellious demeanour if she were to escape Justin's suspicions. But, in spite of her efforts, her eyes retained a sweet unruffled expression when the lad bullied her; she was no longer able to put on her old black look of indignant anger. One morning he heard her humming to herself at breakfast-time.

"You seem very gay, Chantegreil!" he said to her suspiciously, glancing keenly at her from his lowering eyes. "I bet you've been up to some of your tricks again!"

She shrugged her shoulders, but she trembled inwardly; and she did all she could to regain her old appearance of rebellious martyrdom. However, though Justin suspected some secret happiness, it was long before he was able to discover how his victim had escaped him.

Silvere, on his side, enjoyed profound happiness. His daily meetings with Miette made his idle hours pa.s.s pleasantly away. During his long silent companionship with aunt Dide, he recalled one by one his remembrances of the morning, revelling in their most trifling details.

From that time forward, the fulness of his heart cloistered him yet more in the lonely existence which he had adopted with his grandmother. He was naturally fond of hidden spots, of solitary retirement, where he could give himself up to his thoughts. At this period already he had eagerly begun to read all the old odd volumes which he could pick up at brokers' shops in the Faubourg, and which were destined to lead him to a strange and generous social religion and morality. His reading--ill-digested and lacking all solid foundation--gave him glimpses of the world's vanities and pleasures, especially with regard to women, which would have seriously troubled his mind if his heart had not been contented. When Miette came, he received her at first as a companion, then as the joy and ambition of his life. In the evening, when he had retired to the little nook where he slept, and hung his lamp at the head of his strap-bedstead, he would find Miette on every page of the dusty old volume which he had taken at random from a shelf above his head and was reading devoutly. He never came across a young girl, a good and beautiful creature, in his reading, without immediately identifying her with his sweetheart. And he would set himself in the narrative as well. If he were reading a love story, it was he who married Miette at the end, or died with her. If, on the contrary, he were perusing some political pamphlet, some grave dissertation on social economy, works which he preferred to romances, for he had that singular partiality for difficult subjects which characterises persons of imperfect scholarship, he still found some means of a.s.sociating her with the tedious themes which frequently he could not even understand. For instance, he tried to persuade himself that he was learning how to be good and kind to her when they were married. He thus a.s.sociated her with all his visionary dreamings. Protected by the purity of his affection against the obscenity of certain eighteenth-century tales which fell into his hands, he found particular pleasure in shutting himself up with her in those humanitarian Utopias which some great minds of our own time, infatuated by visions of universal happiness have imagined. Miette, in his mind, became quite essential to the abolition of pauperism and the definitive triumph of the principles of the Revolution. There were nights of feverish reading, when his mind could not tear itself from his book, which he would lay down and take up at least a score of times, nights of voluptuous weariness which he enjoyed till daybreak like some secret orgie, cramped up in that tiny room, his eyes troubled by the flickering yellow light, while he yielded to the fever of insomnia and schemed out new social schemes of the most absurdly ingenuous nature, in which woman, always personified by Miette, was worshipped by the nations on their knees.

He was predisposed to Utopian ideas by certain hereditary influences; his grandmother's nervous disorders became in him so much chronic enthusiasm, striving after everything that was grandiose and impossible.

His lonely childhood, his imperfect education, had developed his natural tendencies in a singular manner. However, he had not yet reached the age when the fixed idea plants itself in a man's mind. In the morning, after he had dipped his head in a bucket of water, he remembered his thoughts and visions of the night but vaguely; nothing remained of his dreams save a childlike innocence, full of trustful confidence and yearning tenderness. He felt like a child again. He ran to the well, solely desirous of meeting his sweetheart's smile, and tasting the delights of the radiant morning. And during the day, when thoughts of the future sometimes made him silent and dreamy, he would often, prompted by some sudden impulse, spring up and kiss aunt Dide on both cheeks, whereat the old woman would gaze at him anxiously, perturbed at seeing his eyes so bright, and gleaming with a joy which she thought she could divine.

At last, as time went on, Miette and Silvere began to tire of only seeing each other's reflection. The novelty of their play was gone, and now they began to dream of keener pleasures than the well could afford them. In this longing for reality which came upon them, there was the wish to see each other face to face, to run through the open fields, and return out of breath with their arms around each other's waist, clinging closely together in order that they might the better feel each other's love. One morning Silvere spoke of climbing over the wall, and walking in the Jas with Miette. But the child implored him not to perpetrate such folly, which would place her at Justin's mercy. He then promised to seek some other means.

The wall in which the well was set made a sudden bend a few paces further on, thereby forming a sort of recess, where the lovers would be free from observation, if they were to take shelter there. The question was how to reach this recess. Silvere could no longer entertain the idea of climbing over, as Miette had appeared so afraid. He secretly thought of another plan. The little door which Macquart and Adelaide had set up one night long years previously had remained forgotten in this remote corner. The owner of the Jas-Meiffren had not even thought of blocking it up. Blackened by damp and green with moss, its lock and hinges eaten away with rust, it looked like a part of the old wall. Doubtless the key was lost; the gra.s.s growing beside the lower boards, against which slight mounds had formed, amply proved that no one had pa.s.sed that way for many a long year. However, it was the lost key that Silvere hoped to find. He knew with what devotion his aunt Dide allowed the relics of the past to lie rotting wherever they might be. He searched the house for a week without any result, and went stealthily night by night to see if he had at last put his hand on the right key during the daytime. In this way he tried more than thirty keys which had doubtless come from the old property of the Fouques, and which he found all over the place, against the walls, on the floors, and at the bottom of drawers. He was becoming disheartened, when all at once he found the precious key. It was simply tied by a string to the street door latch-key, which always remained in the lock. It had hung there for nearly forty years. Aunt Dide must every day have touched it with her hand, without ever making up her mind to throw it away, although it could now only carry her back sorrowfully into the past. When Silvere had convinced himself that it really opened the little door, he awaited the ensuing day, dreaming of the joyful surprise which he was preparing for Miette. He had not told her for what he had been searching.

On the morrow, as soon as he heard the girl set her pitcher down, he gently opened the door, sweeping away with a push the tall weeds which covered the threshold. Stretching out his head, he saw Miette leaning over the brink of the well, looking into the water, absorbed in expectation. Thereupon, in a couple of strides, he reached the recess formed by the wall, and thence called, "Miette! Miette!" in a soft voice, which made her tremble. She raised her head, thinking he was on the coping of the wall. But when she saw him in the Jas, at a few steps from her, she gave a faint cry of surprise, and ran up to him. They took each other's hand, and looked at one another, delighted to be so near, thinking themselves far handsomer like this, in the warm sunshine. It was the middle of August, the Feast of the a.s.sumption. In the distance, the bells were pealing in the limpid atmosphere that so often accompanies great days of festival, an atmosphere full of bright gaiety.

"Good morning, Silvere!"

"Good morning, Miette!"

The voices in which they exchanged their morning greetings sounded strange to them. They knew only the m.u.f.fled accents transmitted by the echo of the well. And now their voices seemed to them as clear as the notes of a lark. And ah! how delightful it was in that warm corner, in that holiday atmosphere! They still held each other's hands. Silvere leaning against the wall, Miette with her figure slightly thrown backwards. They were about to tell each other all the soft things which they had not dared to confide to the reverberations of the well, when Silvere, hearing a slight noise, started, and, turning pale, dropped Miette's hands. He had just seen aunt Dide standing before him erect and motionless on the threshold of the doorway.

The grandmother had come to the well by chance. And on perceiving, in the old black wall, the white gap formed by the doorway which Silvere had left wide open, she had experienced a violent shock. That open gap seemed to her like a gulf of light violently illumining her past. She once more saw herself running to the door amidst the morning brightness, and crossing the threshold full of the transports of her nervous love.

And Macquart was there awaiting her. She hung upon his neck and pressed against his bosom, whilst the rising sun, following her through the doorway, which she had left open in her hurry, enveloped them with radiance. It was a sudden vision which roused her cruelly from the slumber of old age, like some supreme chastis.e.m.e.nt, and awakened a mult.i.tude of bitter memories within her. Had the well, had the entire wall, disappeared beneath the earth, she would not have been more stupefied. She had never thought that this door would open again. In her mind it had been walled up ever since the hour of Macquart's death. And amidst her amazement she felt angry, indignant with the sacrilegious hand that had penetrated this violation, and left that white open s.p.a.ce agape like a yawning tomb. She stepped forward, yielding to a kind of fascination, and halted erect within the framework of the door.

Then she gazed out before her, with a feeling of dolorous surprise. She had certainly been told that the old enclosure of the Fouques was now joined to the Jas-Meiffren; but she would never have thought the a.s.sociations of her youth could have vanished so completely. It seemed as though some tempest had carried off everything that her memory cherished. The old dwelling, the large kitchen-garden, the beds of green vegetables, all had disappeared. Not a stone, not a tree of former times remained. And instead of the scene amidst which she had grown up, and which in her mind's eye she had seen but yesterday, there lay a strip of barren soil, a broad patch of stubbles, bare like a desert.

Henceforward, when, on closing her eyes, she might try to recall the objects of the past, that stubble would always appear to her like a shroud of yellowish drugget spread over the soil, in which her youth lay buried. In the presence of that unfamiliar commonplace scene her heart died, as it were, a second time. Now all was completely, finally ended.

She was robbed even of her dreams of the past. Then she began to regret that she had yielded to the attraction of that white opening, of that doorway gaping upon the days which were now for ever lost.

She was about to retire and close the accursed door, without even seeking to discover who had opened it, when she suddenly perceived Miette and Silvere. And the sight of the two young lovers, who, with hanging heads, nervously awaited her glance, kept her on the threshold, quivering with yet keener pain. She now understood all. To the very end, she was destined to picture herself there, clasped in Macquart's arms in the bright sunshine. Yet a second time had the door served as an accomplice. Where love had once pa.s.sed, there was it pa.s.sing again.

'Twas the eternal and endless renewal, with present joys and future tears. Aunt Dide could only see the tears, and a sudden presentiment showed her the two children bleeding, with stricken hearts. Overwhelmed by the recollection of her life's sorrow, which this spot had just awakened within her, she grieved for her dear Silvere. She alone was guilty; if she had not formerly had that door made Silvere would not now be at a girl's feet in that lonely nook, intoxicating himself with a bliss which prompts and angers the jealousy of death.