Part 7

They were at the very mouth of the inlet. The white-capped surface of the lake swelled and tossed before them. The boat was wallowing heavily.

Maltham's paleness changed to a greenish-grey. He uttered a shrill scream--a cry of weakly helpless terror. "Put about! For God's sake put about!" he gasped. "We shall be drowned!"

For answer, she hauled the sheet a little and brought the boat still closer into the wind--heading straight out into the lake. "I told you once that the _Nixie_ could sail into the wind's eye," she said, coolly. "Now she is doing it. Does she not go well?"

At that, being desperate, he rallied a little. Springing to his feet, but standing unsteadily, he grasped the tiller and tried to shift the helm. Ulrica, standing firmly, laid her hand flat against his breast and thrust him away savagely--with such force that he reeled backward and fell, striking against the combing and barely missing going over the side.

"You fool!" she exclaimed. "Do you not see that it is too late?" She did not trouble herself to look at him. Her gaze was fixed in a keen ecstasy on the great oncoming waves.

What she said was true--it was too late. They were fairly out on the open lake, and all possibility of return was gone. To try to go about would be to throw the _Nixie_ into the trough of the sea--and so send her rolling over like a log. At the best, the little boat could live in that surge and welter for only a very few minutes more.

Maltham did not attempt to rise. His fall had hurt him, and what little was left of his spirit was cowed. He lay in a miserable heap, uttering little whimpering moans. The complaining noise that he made annoyed her. For the last time she looked at him, burning him for an instant with her glowing eyes. "Silence, you coward!" she cried, fiercely--and at her strong command he was still. Then her look was fixed on the great oncoming waves again, and she cast him out from her mind.

Even in her rage--partly because of it--Ulrica felt in every drop of her Norse blood the glow and the thrill of this glorious battle with great waters. The sheer delight of it was worth dying for--and so richly worth living through to the very last tingling instant that she steered with a strong and a steady hand. And again--as she stood firmly on the tossing boat, her draperies blown close about her, her loosened hair streaming out in golden splendour--she was Aslauga's very self. Sorrow and life together were ending well for her--in high emotion that filled and satisfied her soul. Magnificent, commanding, defiant, she sailed on in joyful triumph: glad and eager to give herself strongly to the strong death-clasp of the waves.

The Death-Fires of Les Martigues

I

"God keep you from the she-wolf, and from your heart's deep desire!"

That is one of our old sayings here in Provence. I used to laugh at it when I was young. I do not laugh at it now. When those words come into my heart, and they come often, I go by the rough hard way that leads upward to Notre Dame de la Garde until I come to the Crime Cross--it is a wearying toil for me to get up that steep hill-side, I am so stiff and old now--and there I cast fresh stones upon the heap at the foot of the cross. Each stone cast there, you know, is a prayer for forgiveness for some hidden crime: not a light fault, but a crime. The stones must be little stones, yet the heap is very wide and high--though every winter, when the great mistrals are blowing across the Étang de Berre, the little stones are whirled away down the hill-side. I do not know how this custom began, nor when; but it is a very old custom with us here in Les Martigues.

Once in every year I go up to the Crime Cross by night. This is on All Souls Eve. First I light the lamp over Magali's breast where she lies sleeping in the graveyard: going to the graveyard at dusk, as the others do, in the long procession that creeps up thither from the three parts of our town--from Jonquières, and the Isle, and Ferrières--to light the death-fires over the dear dead ones' graves. I go with the very first, as soon as the sun is down. I like to be alone with Magali while I light the little lamp that will be a guide for her soul through that night when souls are free; that will keep it safe from the devils who are free that night too. I do not like the low buzzing of voices which comes later, when the crowd is there, nor the broken cries and sobs. And when her lamp is lit, and I have lit my mother's lamp, I hurry away from the graveyard and the moaning people--threading my steps among the graves on which the lights are beginning to glimmer, and through the oncoming crowd, and then by the lonely path through the olive-orchards, and so up the stony height until I come at last to the Crime Cross--panting, aching--and my watch begins.

Up on that high hill-side, open to the west, a little of the dying daylight lingers. Eastward, like a big black mirror, lies the great étang; and far away across its still waters the mountain chain above Berre and Rognac rises purple-grey against the darker sky. In the west still are faint crimson blotches, or dashes of dull blood-red--reflected again, and made brighter, in the Étang de Caronte: that stretches away between the long downward slopes of the hills, on which stone-pines stand out in black patches, until its gleaming waters merge into the faint glow upon the waters of the Mediterranean. Above me is the sanctuary of Notre Dame de la Garde, a dark mass on the height above the olive-trees: of old a refuge for sinful bodies, and still a refuge where sinful souls may seek grace in prayer from their agony. And below me, on the slope far downward, is the graveyard: where the death-fires multiply each moment, as more and more lamps are lighted, until at last it is like a little fallen heaven of tiny stars. Only in its midst is an island of darkness where no lamps are. That is where the children lie together: the blessed innocents who have died sinless, and who wander not on All Souls Eve because when sweet death came to them their pure spirits went straight home to God. And beyond the graveyard, below it, is the black outspread of the town: its blackness deepened by a bright window here and there, and by the few street lamps, and by the bright reflections which shine up from the waters of its canals.

Seeing all this--yet only half seeing it, for my heart is full of other things--I sit there at the foot of the Crime Cross in the darkness, prayerful, sorrowful, while the night wears on. Sometimes I hear footsteps coming up the rocky path, and then the shadowy figure of a man or of a woman breaks out from the gloom and suddenly is close beside me--and I hear the rattle of little stones cast upon the heap behind me, on the other side of the cross. Presently, the rite ended, whoever it is fades back into the gloom again and passes away. And I know that another sinful soul has been close beside my sinful soul for a moment: seeking in penitent supplication, as I am seeking, rest in forgiveness for an undiscovered crime. But I am sure that none of them sees--as I see in the gloom there always--a man's white face on which the moonlight is shining, and beyond that white face the glint of moonlight on a raging sea; and I am sure that on none of their blackened souls rests a burden as heavy as that which rests on mine.

I am very weary of my burden, and old and broken too. It is my comfort to know that I shall die soon. But, also, the thought of that comfort troubles me. For I am a lone man, and childless. When I go, none of Magali's race, none of my race, will be left alive here in Les Martigues. Our death-fires will not be lighted. We shall wander in darkness on All Souls Eve.

II

"God keep you from the she-wolf, and from your heart's deep desire!"

My old mother, God rest her, said that to me when first she began to see that my love was set on Magali--and saw, too, that I was winning from Magali the love that belonged to Jan, who had her promise.

"It is an old man's lifetime, mother," I said, "since a wolf has been seen near Les Martigues." And I laughed and kissed her.

"Worse than a wolf is a heart that covets what it may not have, Marius," she answered. "Magali is as good as Jan's wife, and you know it. For a year she has been promised to him. She is my dead sister's child, and she is in my care--and in your care too, because you and she and I are all that is left of us, and you are the head of our house, the man. You are doing wickedness in trying to take her away from Jan--and Jan your own close friend, who saved your life out of the sea. The match is a good match for Magali, and she was contented with it until you--living here close beside her in your own house--began to steal away her heart from him. It is rascal work, Marius, that you are doing. You are playing false as a house-father and false as a friend--and God help me that I must speak such words to my own son! That is why I say, and I say it solemnly, 'God keep you from the she-wolf, and from your heart's deep desire!' That desire has no right to be in your heart, Marius. Drag it out of your heart and cast it away!"

But I only laughed and kissed her again, and told her that I would take good care of myself if a she-wolf tried to eat me--and so I went away, still laughing, to my fishing in the Gulf of Fos.

But I did not laugh when I was alone in my boat, slipping down the Étang de Caronte seaward. What she had said had made me see things clearly which until then had been half hid in a haze. We had slipped into our love for each other, Magali and I, softly and easily--just as my boat was slipping down the étang. Every day of our lives we were together, in the close way that housemates are together in a little house of four rooms. Before I got up in the morning I could hear her moving near me, only a thin wall between us; and her movements, again, were the last sounds that I heard at night. She waited on me at my meals. She helped my mother to mend my clothes--the very patches on my coat would bring to my mind the sight of her as she sat sewing at night beside the lamp. We were as close together as a brother and a sister could be; and in my dulness I had fancied for a long while that what I had felt for her was only what a brother would feel.

What first opened my eyes a little was the way that I felt about it when she gave her promise to Jan. For all our lives Jan and I had been close friends: and most close since that day when the squall struck our boats, as we lay near together, and I went overboard, and Jan--letting his own boat take its chances--came overboard after me because he knew that I could not swim. It was by a hair's-breadth only that we were not drowned together. After we were safe I told him that my life was his. And I meant it, then. Until Magali came between us I would have died for him with a right good will. After that I was ready enough that he should do the dying--and so be gone out of my way.

When he got Magali's promise, I say, my ugly feeling against him began. But it was not very strong at first, and I was not clear about it in my own mind. All that I felt was that, somehow, he had got between me and the sun. For one thing, I did not want to be clear about it. Down in the roots of me I knew that I had no right to that sunshine, and that Jan had--and I could not help thinking about how he had come overboard after me and had held me up there in the tumbling sea, and how I had told him that my life was his. But with this went a little thin thought, stirring now and then in the bottom of my mind though I would not own to it, that in giving him my life--which still was his if he wanted it--I had not given him the right to spoil my life for me while leaving me still alive. And I did my best not to think one way or the other, and was glad that it all was a blur and a haze.

And all the while I was living close beside Magali in that little house, with the sound of her steps always near me and the sound of her voice always in my ears. She had a very sweet voice, with a freshness and a brightness in it that seemed to me like the brightness of her eyes--and Magali's great black eyes were the brightest eyes that ever I saw. Even in Arles, where all the women are beautiful, there would be a buzz among the people lining Les Lices when Magali walked there of a feast-day, wearing the beautiful dress that our women wear here in Provence. To look at her made you think of an Easter morning sun.

III

"God keep you from the she-wolf, and from your heart's deep desire!"

My mother's words kept on ringing in my ears after I had left her. Suddenly the haze was gone and I saw clearly--and I knew that my heart's deep desire was to have Magali for my very own. And with that sudden coming of clear sight I knew, too, that I could have her. Out of the past came a crowd of memories which proved it to me. In my dull way, I say, I had fancied that I loved Magali as a sister, and I had tried to keep that fancy always by me in my haze. But with the haze gone--swept away by my mother's words as the mistral sweeps away our Mediterranean fogs--I knew that Magali never had been the fool that I had been.

I remembered her looks and her ways with me from the very day when she came to us, when she was just turned of sixteen: how she used sometimes to lay her hand lightly on my shoulder, how she would bend over to look at the net that I was mending until her hair brushed against my cheek or my forehead, how she always was bringing things to show me that I could not see rightly unless she stood very close at my side, and most of all how a dozen times a day she would be flashing at me her great black eyes. And I remembered how moody and how strange in her ways she was just before Jan got his promise from her; and how, when she told me that her promise was given, she gave me a look like none that ever I had from her, and said slowly: "The fisherman who will not catch any fish at all because he cannot catch the fish he wants most--is a fool, Marius!"

Yet even then I did not understand; though, as I say, my eyes were opened a little and I had the feeling that Jan had got between me and the sun. That feeling grew stronger because of the way that she treated him and treated me. Jan was for hurrying the marriage, but she kept him dangling and always was putting him off. As for me, I got all sides of her moods and tempers. Sometimes she scarcely would speak to me. Sometimes she would give me looks from those big black eyes of hers that thrilled me through! Sometimes she would hang about me in a patient sad way that made me think of a dog begging for food. And the colour so went out of her face that her big black eyes looked bigger and blacker still.

Then it was that I began to find in the haze that was about me a refuge--because I did not want to see clear. I let my thoughts go out to Magali, and stopped them before they got to Jan. It would be time enough, I reasoned--though I did not really reason it: I only felt it--to think about him when I had to. For the passing hours it was enough to have the sweetness of being near Magali--and that grew to be a greater sweetness with every fresh new day. Presently I noticed that her colour had come back again; and it seemed to me--though that may have been only because of my new love of her--that she had a new beauty, tender and strange. Certainly there was a new brightness, a curiously glowing brightness, in her eyes.

For Jan, things went hardly in those days. Having her promise, he had rights in her--as we say in Provence. But he did not get many of his rights. Half the time when he claimed her for walks on the hill-sides among the olive-orchards, she would not go with him--because she had her work to do at home, she said. And there was I, where her work was, at home! For a while Jan did not see beyond the end of his nose about it. I do not think that ever it crossed his mind to think of me in the matter--not, that is, until some one with better eyes than his eyes helped him to see. For he knew that I was his friend, and I suppose that he remembered what I had told him about my life being his. And even when his eyes were helped, he would not at first fully believe what he must plainly have seen. But he soon believed enough to make him change his manner toward me, and to make him watch sharp for something that would give him the right to speak words to me which would bring matters to a fair settlement by blows. And I was ready, as I have said--though I would not fairly own it to myself--to come to blows with him. For I wanted him dead, and out of my way.

And so my mother's words, which had made me at last see clearly, stayed by me as I went sailing in my boat softly seaward down the étang. And they struck deeper into me because Jan's boat was just ahead of mine; and the sight of him, and the thought of how he had saved my life only to cross it, made me long to run him down and drown him, and so be quit of him for good and all. I made up my mind then that, whether I killed him or left him living, it would be I who should have Magali and not he.

IV

"God keep you from the she-wolf, and from your heart's deep desire!"

My mother said that again to me when I came home that night from my fishing; and she said it to me often as the days went on. She saw the change that had come to me, and she knew what was in my soul. It is not wonderful, when you stop to think about it, that a man's mother should know what is in his soul: for the body in which that soul is, the living home of it, is a part of her own. And she grew sad and weary-looking when she found that her words had no hold on me, and there came into her eyes the sorrowful look that comes into the eyes of old people who are soon to die.

But Magali's eyes were the only eyes that I cared for then, and they seemed to me to grow brighter and brighter every day. When she and I walked in the olive-orchards together in the starlight the glow of them outshone the star-glow. It seemed to light up my heart.

I do not think that we talked much in those walks. I do not seem to remember our talking. But we understood each other, and we were agreed about what we were to do. I was old enough to marry as I pleased, but Magali was not--she could not marry without my mother's word. We meant to force that word. Some day we would go off in my boat together--over to Les Saintes Maries, perhaps; or perhaps to Marseille. It did not matter where we went. When we came back again, at the end of two or three days, my mother no longer could deny us--she would have to give in. And no one would think the worse of Magali: for that is our common way of settling a tangled love-matter here in Provence.

But I did not take account of Jan in my plans, and that was where I made a mistake. Jan had just as strong a will as I had, and every bit of his will was set upon keeping Magali for himself. I wanted her to break with him entirely, but that she would not do. She was a true Provençale--and I never yet knew one of our women who would rest satisfied with one lover when she could have two. If she can get more than two, that is better still. While I hung back from her, Magali was more than ready to come to me; but when she found me eager after her, and knew that she had a grip on me, she danced away.

And so, before long, Jan again had his walks with her in the olive-orchards by starlight just as I did, and likely enough her eyes glowed for him just as they did for me. When they were off that way together I would get into a wild-beast rage over it. Sometimes I would follow them, fingering my knife. I suppose that he felt like that when the turn was mine. Anyhow, the love-making chances which she gave him--even though in my heart I still was sure of her--kept me always watching him; and I could see that he always was watching me. Very likely he felt sure of her too, and that was his reason--just as it was my reason--for not bringing our matter to a fighting end. I was ready enough to kill him, God knows. Unless his eyes lied when he looked at me, he was ready to kill me.

And in that way the summer slipped past and the autumn came, and neither of us gained anything. I was getting into a black rage over it all. Down inside of me was a feeling like fire in my stomach that made me not want to eat, and that made what I did eat go wrong. My poor mother had given up trying to talk to me. She saw that she could not change my way--and, too, I suppose that she pretty well understood it all: for she had lived her life, and she knew the ways of our men and of our women when love stings them here in Provence. Only, her sadness grew upon her with her hopelessness. What I remember most clearly as I think of her in those last days is her pale old face and the dying look in her sorrowful eyes.

But seeing her in that way grief-struck only made my black rage blacker and the fire in my stomach burn hotter. I had the feeling that there was a devil down there who all the time was getting bigger and stronger: and that before long he and I would take matters in hand together and settle them for good and all. As for keeping on with things as they were, it was not to be thought of. Better than much more of such a hell-life would be ending everything by killing Jan.

What made me hang back from that was the certainty that if I did kill him--even in a fair fight, with his chance as good as mine--I would lose Magali beyond all hope: for the gendarmes would have me away in a whiff to jail--and then off would go my head, or, what would be just as bad, off I would go head and all to Cayenne. It was no comfort to me to know that Magali would almost cry her eyes out over losing me. Of course she would do that, being a Provençale. But before her eyes were quite out she would stop crying; and then in a moment she would be laughing again; and in another moment she would be freshly in love once more--with some man who was not murdered and who was not gone for his lifetime over seas. And all that, also, would be because she was a Provençale.

V

All the devils are let loose on earth on All Souls Eve--that is a fact known to everybody here in Provence. But whether it was one of those loosed devils, or the devil that had grown big in my own inside, that made me do what I did I do not know. What I do know, certainly, is that about dusk on All Saints Day the thought of how I could force things to be as I wanted them to be came into my heart.

My thought was not a new thought, exactly. It was only that I would do what we had planned to do to make my mother give in to us: get Magali into my boat and carry her off with me for a day or two to Les Saintes. But it came to me with the new meaning that in that way I could make Magali give in to me too. When we came back she would be ready enough to marry me, and my mother would be for hurrying our marrying along. It all was as plain and as sure as anything could be. And, as I have said, nobody would think the worse of Magali afterward; because that way of cutting through such difficulties is a common way with us in Provence.