Part 3

Mademoiselle would not return till evening. Alone with a servant, the boy soon began to take liberties. Then, tired, he became serious and spoke of his studies, of his plans for the future. When Mademoiselle arrived unexpectedly, she found a young man who was saying, solemnly:

“As soon as I shall have become a sub-lieutenant, I will marry; I already am considering it.”

“And perhaps you know whom?”

“I know very well.”

The servant laughed. She, too, knew whom he would marry as soon as it would be possible.

“Why, he’s charming--this little fellow!” exclaimed the old maid.

After this first day, she never failed to be at home during the school holidays. They would chat, take strolls, or play by the fire. She used the familiar form of address when speaking to him, she would kiss him, touch his clothes, mother him; she loved him.

In the meantime the youngster became thirteen, then came vacation days; she let them pass, and herself went on a trip. But the end of September was like an anniversary; she wished herself to go and fetch him whom she called her protégé. While waiting for school to reopen, he spent three days in her home. She was so attentive, so tender, almost, that Rosalie felt pangs of jealousy.

The holidays came around again, all alike, all happy. There were hours of intimacy, family hours, but mingled with a certain indescribable uneasiness, ever so sweet, of an acute, enervating sweetness. The days went by and the boy grew to fourteen.

The absence of Rosalie on one afternoon that she went to the farm troubled them as an animal is troubled by the sudden opening of his cage. By a common impulse they went into the house. It was stormy and very warm.

“Come,” she said, “to my room. It’s the only cool place in the house.”

And all this was innocent and inevitable.

In her room they drew near to a table where there were albums; they looked them over together, but without seeing anything. Their voices, when they spoke, seemed to them different. Their knees touched, then their hands, then their lips, and the rest came, too, though with difficulty.

The thrill of the chaste old maid was moving. She wept. Then she sank to her knees and worshipped, as a sacred symbol, the adorable body of her little friend. The god that she had sought distractedly on her pious journeys had at last appeared, and the happiness that the priests had prophesied for her she had at last felt swelling her heart.

The young boy was far less perturbed, for at that age pleasure does not radiate. He was absorbed by anatomical curiosity. He made a tour of the woman he had conquered, like the adolescent who feels his first partridge all about and who brushes back all its feathers.

“My little Jesus,” said the old maid, “Rosalie will soon be here.”

The hours that intervened before dinner were like acts of grace. She dined as one listening to mass.

And this continued for four years, from Thursday to Thursday, from vacation to vacation. The young boy, at times, felt a desire for other loves, but tiny hamlets are not very fertile in adventures and, then again, such powerful arms enfolded him, such generous hands!

Rosalie, who detected the secret of her mistress, took advantage of it to procure herself a dowry in view of the uncertainty of the future, and the adopted son of the “old maid” became a young man who enjoyed high esteem.

And now the old maid discovered that, among her friend’s children there were two other little boys, one of twelve and one of eight.

“I’ll see them through their school career,” she said. “But I want only one at a time.”

And thus it was arranged. These three little friends took care of her to her sixtieth year. Rich in the years of youth that she had economised, and unceasingly refreshed by youthful flesh, this innocent Ninon continued, up to an advanced age, to be the benefactress of the honorable poor families who had sons to send to school. Her piety, now become uncertain, gave concern to the clergy, but since one of her pupils, disgusted with his love tasks, entered the ecclesiastical seminary, where the old maid paid his expenses generously, the church was reassured. There are crises of indifference even in the souls of the most religious.

Only the confessor of the old maid, for she confessed regularly and voluptuously--only this honest old canon knew the whole truth. He would lower his eyes as they met those of his penitent and would flee at her approach. The odor of the secret that sealed his lips poisoned his heart. He died of grief at the sight of his tender lioness devouring her seventh lamb.

Violets continued ever to adorn and to perfume the corsage and the hat, the garden and the heart of the old maid with the violet eyes.

RED

_Cum vere rubenti Candida venit avis._

Virgil.

She was already returning, her arms rigid with the weight of the milk pails; her sabots were wet with the dew, and the hem of her skirt felt cold. When the sun became visible, red through the morning mist, she said to herself:

“It’s going to be a beautiful day.”

She mused upon this for a long while, avoiding the pebbles of the path so as not to spill her milk, and the tall bending, weeping grass because her bare legs were really cold.

“It’s going to be a beautiful day.”

She walked on, now crossing a field of gorse where the path, much wider, made expressly for the farmhands, stretched straight ahead of her. The mist had disappeared, enchanted by the sun--had risen yonder above, doubtless, whence it would descend again gently, as serene dew, a mantle of coolness which the stars spread fraternally over the shoulders of the parched earth.

She mused again:

“It’s going to be very warm.”

Then a stem of buckwheat, lost there by a bird, suggested to her:

“The buckwheat will be ripe for threshing.”

This idea gave her pleasure, then became a source of worriment, for the season had been a wet one, and if the buckwheat were ripe for threshing, surely it would be threshed. This meant that she must quickly get in, quickly strain the milk, feed the fowl and many things, so many that she felt a tug at her heart.

As she was striding along too quickly, a drop of milk splashed from the pail and fell upon her sabot. She stopped, put down the pails, happy for a chance to rest, although she was somewhat remorseful, too; in order to limber them she raised her beautiful pink arms very high, thus gilding them with the fire of the sun.

Suddenly she started, becoming almost pale, and bringing her hand to her bosom. She had not been frightened. She had simply been surprised by the first gun shot of the year.

At the same moment she saw a cloudlet of smoke; a feather flew by her; a wounded partridge fell amidst the gorse.

“Here, Tom!” cried a voice. “Go look. Fetch it.”

The dog bounded along the path, pressed forward, returned, intent and troubled, but definitely resolved not to plunge into the dangerous forest. As the voice, now more imperious, more angry and nearer as well, repeated the commandment, Tom, his tail between his legs, took refuge in the skirts of the young girl, who bent over to caress him and encourage him.

“Don’t fondle him, beat him!” cried the voice.

It was that of a young man who now appeared, standing in the hedge amidst the branches.

The milk maid straightened up, looked and turned red. From the voice she had not been able to tell whether it was the father or the son. She thought that it was the father; she wished it were, for the scorn of the haughty young man, who had never spoken a word to her, pained her deeply.

She went red and felt uneasy, but could not lower her glance. She was lost in admiration, she was ready to fall to her knees.

The command was repeated, the dog pretended death.

Then, with legs and arm bare, she plunged into the gorse and was badly scratched. She walked along almost blindly, as fast as she could, holding back her tears.

Having fetched the partridge she threw it into Tom’s mouth.

The young man, still standing amidst the trees, above the sea of cruel gorse, made her a friendly sign then jumped forward, proceeding in front of his hound.

She, without replying, perhaps without having seen the friendly gesture that thanked the poor servant, once more bent her shoulders beneath the neck yoke, and the milk pails, well balanced, hung from her red hands.

She walked on, thinking no longer of anything but matters so vague and so deep that her mind could not grasp them.

Her legs were bleeding, her hand was bleeding, and around her right arm was a scratch that encircled it like a bracelet.

“That’s a briar.”

The gorse pricks but does not tear.

The milk pails, in the meantime, seemed to grow lighter. She walked on, quickly, as quickly as her unstable burden would permit.

A man whom she passed near the farmhouse looked at her bleeding arm. Then she turned red. Later, as she strained the milk, she thought that she felt ill.

The purple bracelet gripped her arm, but it was in her heart that she felt the clutch.

Tom was running up to her. She was afraid.

“Is it going to begin all over again?” she asked herself, upset by emotion.

Panting but happy, the dog lay at her feet. Then, espying a bowl, she poured out a little milk for him.

“You spoil him,” said the young man, approaching. “I told you, he rather deserved a beating.”

She found some words to say:

“Beat your dog?”

“Upon my word, if I had been alone, the partridge should have remained in the gorse. Did you hurt yourself? Oh! You’re bleeding?”

She was so happy that she no longer felt her joy. She was in another world. She was a woman face to face with a man.

“Let me see!”

She held out her pink, golden arm and at once drew it back, thus causing her breasts to shake under the coarse plaited linen. The young man was tempted, but controlled himself:

“Don’t say anything. But I don’t want anybody to know that I met you near the gorse.”

He went off, knowing full well what he was to do.

The next morning as the dew was disappearing and Tom was off in search of yesterday’s partridges, a sudden cry, a sweet and dolorous cry, rose from amidst the tall dry grass, near the gorse field, yonder where the heather begins.

The servant returned as on the previous day, her shoulders beneath the yoke, her hands hanging, holding the milk pails. She did not stop on the way, although she was very weary and deeply moved. She strained her milk, as on every other day, sunk in vague thought. But, her task finished, she sat down upon a stool and gazed at her arm.

A mad bite had placed upon the bracelet of blood a red clasp.

TRANSCRIBER’S NOTES

Typos in punctuation corrected, and author’s spelling of “Angéle” retained.

Unexpected change in character name from “Elizabeth” (page 37) to “Ariane” (page 40) retained.