Part 3

But there! see the devilish thing,--I couldn't get out the crowning word of it. I managed the second and the third, but the first wouldn't come. My forehead was sweating. The girl could have helped me out, if she only would, for she knew the tune of my song well enough; others had sung it to her already. But with Brulette, one had to have patience and discretion; and though I was not altogether new at gallant speeches, those I had exchanged with others who were less difficult than Brulette (just by way of getting my hand in) had taught me nothing that was proper to say to a high-priced young girl like my cousin.

All that I could manage was to hark back to the subject of her favorite, Joseph. At first she laughed; then, little by little, seeing that I was seriously finding fault with him, she became herself serious. "Let the poor lad alone," she said; "he is much to be pitied."

"But why and wherefore? Is he consumptive, or crazy, that you are so afraid of his being meddled with?"

"He is worse than that," answered Brulette; "he is an egotist."

"Egotist" was one of the curate's words which Brulette had picked up, though it was not used among us in my day. Brulette had a wonderful memory; and that was how she sometimes came out with words which I might have recollected too, only I did not, and consequently I could not understand them.

I was too shy to ask her for an explanation and admit my ignorance. Besides, I imagined it was a mortal illness; and I felt that such a great affliction convicted me of injustice. I begged Brulette's pardon for having annoyed her, adding,--

"If I had known what you tell me sooner, I shouldn't have felt any bitterness or rancor for the poor fellow."

"How came you never to notice it?" she said. "Don't you see how he makes every one give way to him and oblige him, without ever dreaming of thanking them; how the least neglect affronts him, and the slightest joke angers him; how he sulks and suffers about things nobody else would ever notice; and how one must put one's best self into a friendship with him without his ever comprehending that it is not his due, but an offering made to God of love to our neighbor?"

"Is that the effect of illness?" I asked, a little puzzled by Brulette's explanation.

"Isn't it the very worst thing he can have in his heart?" she replied.

"Does his mother know he has something the matter with his heart?"

"She guesses at it; but, you see, I can't talk to her about it for fear of grieving her."

"Has no one tried to cure him?"

"I have done, and I mean to do, my best," she answered, continuing a topic on which we didn't understand each other; "but I think my way of managing him only makes him worse."

"It is true," I said, after reflecting awhile, "that the fellow always did have something queer about him. My grandmother, who is dead,--and you know how she piqued herself on foretelling the future,--said he had misfortune written on his face; that he was doomed to live in misery or to die in the flower of his age, because of a line he has on his forehead. Ever since then, I declare to you that when Joseph is gloomy I see that line of ill-luck, though I never knew where my grandmother saw it. At such times I'm afraid of him, or rather of his fate, and I feel led to spare him blame and annoyance as if he was not long for this world."

"Bah!" said Brulette, laughing, "nothing but my great-aunt's fancies! I remember them very well. Didn't she also tell you that light eyes, like Joseph's, can see spirits and hidden things? As for me, I don't believe a word of it, neither do I think he is in danger of dying. People live a long time with a mind like his; they take their comfort in worrying others, though perhaps, while threatening to die, they will live to bury all about them."

I could not understand what she said, and I was going to question her further, when she asked for her sabots and slipped her feet easily into them, though they were so small I couldn't get my hand in. Then, calling to her dog and shortening her petticoat, she left me, quite anxious and puzzled by all she said, and as little advanced as ever in my courtship.

The following Sunday, as she was starting for mass at Saint-Chartier, where she liked better to go than to our own parish church, because there was dancing in the market-place between mass and vespers, I asked if I could go with her.

"No," she said. "I am going with my grandfather; and he does not like a crowd of sweethearts after me along the roads."

"I am not a crowd of sweethearts," I said. "I am your cousin, and my uncle never wanted me out of his way."

"Well, keep out of mine now," she said,--"only for to-day. My father and I want to talk with José, who is in the house and is going to mass with us."

"Then he has come to propose marriage; and you are glad enough to listen to him."

"Are you crazy, Tiennet? After all I told you about José!"

"You told me he had an illness that would make him live longer than other people; and I don't see what there is in that to quiet me."

"Quiet you for what?" exclaimed Brulette, astonished. "What illness? Where are your wits? Upon my word, I think all the men are crazy!"

Then, taking her grandfather's arm, who just then came out of the house with José, she started, as light as a feather and gay as a fawn, while my good uncle, who thought there was nothing like her, smiled at the passers-by as much as to say, "You have no such girl as that to show!"

I followed them at a distance, to see if Joseph drew any closer to her on the way, and whether she took his arm, and whether the old man left them together. Nothing of the kind. Joseph walked all the time at my uncle's left, and Brulette on his right, and they seemed to be talking gravely.

After the service I asked Brulette to dance with me.

"Oh, you are too late!" she said; "I have promised at least fifteen dances. You must come back about vesper time."

This annoyance did not include Joseph, for he never danced; and to avoid seeing Brulette surrounded by her other swains, I followed him into the inn of the "Bœuf Couronné," where he went to see his mother, and I to kill time with a few friends.

I was rather a frequenter of wine-shops, as I have already told you,--not because of the bottle, which never got the better of my senses, but from a liking for company and talk and songs. I found several lads and lasses whom I knew and with whom I sat down to table, while Joseph sat in a corner, not drinking a drop or saying a word,--sitting there to please his mother, who liked to look at him and throw him a word now and then as she passed and repassed. I don't know if it ever occurred to Joseph to help her in the hard work of serving so many people, but Benoit wouldn't have allowed such an absent-minded fellow to stumble about among his dishes and bottles.

You have heard tell of the late Benoit? He was a fat man with a topping air, rather rough in speech, but a good liver and a fine talker when occasion served. He was upright enough to treat Mariton with the respect she deserved; for she was, to tell the truth, the queen of servants, and Benoit's house had never had so much custom as while she reigned over it.

The thing Père Brulet warned her of never happened. The danger of the business cured her of coquetry, and she kept her own person as safe as she did the property of her master. The truth is, it was chiefly for her son's sake that she had brought herself down to harder work and greater discretion than was natural to her. In that she was seen to be so good a mother that instead of losing the respect of others, she had gained more since she served at the inn; and that's a thing which seldom happens in our country villages,--nor elsewhere, as I've heard tell.

Seeing that Joseph was paler and gloomier than usual, the thought of what my grandmother had said of him, together with the illness (very queer, it seemed to me) which Brulette imputed to him, somehow struck my mind and touched my heart. No doubt he was still angry with me for the harsh words I had used to him. I wanted to make him forget them, and to force him to sit at our table, thinking I could unawares make him a trifle drunk; for, like others of my age, I thought the fumes of a little good white wine a sovereign cure for low spirits.

Joseph, who paid little attention to what was going on around him, let us fill his glass and nudge his elbow so often that any one but he would soon have felt the effects. Those who were inciting him to drink, and thoughtlessly setting him the example, soon had too much; but I, who wanted my legs for the dance, stopped short as soon as I felt that I had had enough. Joseph fell into a deep cogitation, leaned his two elbows on the table, and seemed to me neither brighter nor duller than he was before.

No one paid any attention to him; everybody laughed and chattered on their own account. Some began to sing, just as folks sing when they have been drinking, each in his own key and his own time, one fellow trolling his chorus beside another who trolls his, the whole together making a racket fit to split your head, while the whole company laughed and shouted so that nobody could hear anything at all.

Joseph sat still without flinching, and looked at us in his staring way for quite a time. Then he got up and went away, without saying anything.

I thought he might be ill, and I followed him. But he walked straight and fast, like a man who was none the worse for wine; and he went so far up the slope of the hill above the town of Saint-Chartier that I lost sight of time, and came back again, for fear I should miss my dance with Brulette.

She danced so prettily, my dear Brulette, that every eye was upon her. She adored dancing and dress and compliments, but she never encouraged any one to make serious love to her; and when the bell rang for vespers, she would walk away, dignified and serious, into church, where she certainly prayed a little, though she never forgot that all eyes were on her.

As for me, I remembered that I had not paid my score at the Bœuf Couronné, and I went back to settle with Mariton, who took occasion to ask me where her son had gone.

"You made him drink," she said; "and that's not his habit. You might at least not have let him wander off alone; accidents happen so easily."

THIRD EVENING.

I went back to the slope and followed the road Joseph had taken, inquiring for him as I went along, but could hear nothing except that he had been seen to pass, and had not returned. The road led me to the right of the forest, and I went in to question the forester, whose house, a very ancient building, stands at the top of a large tract of heathland lying on the hillside. It is a melancholy place, though you can see from there to a great distance; and nothing grows there at the edge of the oak-copses but brake and furze.

The forester of those days was Jarvois, a relation of mine, born in Verneuil. As soon as he saw me, and because I did not often walk that way, he was so friendly and hospitable that I could not get away.

"Your comrade, Joseph, was here about an hour ago," he said, "and asked if the charcoal-burners were in the woods; his master probably told him to inquire. He spoke clear enough and was steady on his legs, and he went on up to the big oak; you need not be uneasy. And now you are here, you must drink a bottle with me, and wait till my wife comes back with the cows, for she will be hurt if you go away without seeing her."

Thinking there was no reason to worry, I stayed with my relations till sunset. It was about the middle of February; and when it got to be nearly dark I said good-night, and took the upper road, intending to cross to Verneuil and go home by the straight road, without returning to Saint-Chartier, where I had nothing further to do.

My relative explained the road, as I had never been in the forest more than once or twice in my life. You know that in these parts we seldom go far from home, especially those of us who till the ground, and keep near our dwellings like chicks round a coop.

So, in spite of a warning, I kept too far to the left; and instead of striking a great avenue of oaks, I got among the birches, at least a mile and a half from where I ought to have been.

The night was dark, and I could not see a thing; for in those days the forest of Saint-Chartier was still a fine one,--not as to size, for it was never very large, but from the age of the trees, which allowed no light from the sky to get through them. What it thus gained in grandeur and greenery it made you pay for in other ways. Below it was all roots and brambles, sunken paths and gullies full of spongy black mud, out of which you could hardly draw your feet, and where you sank knee-deep if you got even a little way off the track. Presently, getting lost in the forest and scratched and muddied in the opens, I began to curse the luckless time and the luckless place.

After struggling and wading till I was overheated, though the night was chilly, I got among some dry brake which were up to my chin; and looking straight before me, I saw in the gray of the night something like a huge black mass in the middle of an open tract. I felt sure it was the big oak, and that I had reached the end of the forest. I had never seen the tree, but I had heard tell of it, for it was famous as one of the oldest in the country; and from the talk of others I knew pretty well how it was shaped. You must surely have seen it. It is a gnarled tree, topped in its youth by some accident so that it grew in breadth and thickness; its foliage, shrivelled by the winter, still clung to it, and it stood up there like a rock looking to heaven.

I was about to go towards it, thinking I should find the path, which made a straight line through the woods, when I heard a sound of music that was something like bagpipes, but so loud you might think it thunder.

Don't ask me why a thing which ought to have comforted me, by showing the presence of a human being, did actually frighten me like a child. I must honestly tell you that in spite of my nineteen years and a good pair of fists, I had not felt easy after I found I had lost my way. It was not because wolves do come down sometimes into that forest from the great woods of Saint-Aoust that I lost heart, nor yet that I feared any evil-intentioned Christian; but I was chilled through with the kind of fear that you can't explain to your own self, because you don't really know the cause of it. The dark night; the wintry fog; a jumble of noises heard in the woods, with others coming from the plain; a crowd of foolish stories which you have heard, and which now start up in your head; and finally the idea of being all alone far from your own belongings,--there's enough in all that to upset your mind when you are young, and, indeed, when you are old.

You can laugh at me if you like; but that music, in that lonely place, seemed to me devilish. It was too loud and strong to be natural, and the tune was so sad and strange that it was not like any other known music on this Christian earth. I quickened my steps; then I stopped, amazed at another sound. While the music clashed on one side, a bell chimed on the other; and the two sounds came at me, as if to prevent me from going forward or back.

I jumped to one side and hid in the brake; and as I did so, there was a flash of light about four feet from me, and I saw a large black animal, that I couldn't make out distinctly, spring up and disappear at a run.

Instantly from all parts of the undergrowth a crowd of the same animals sprang out, stamping, and running towards the bell and towards the music, which now seemed to be getting nearer to each other. There might have been two hundred of these animals, but I saw at least thirty thousand; for terror got hold of me, and I began to see sparks and white specks in my eyes, such as fear produces in those who can't defend themselves.

I don't know whose legs carried me to the oak; I seemed to have none of my own. But I got there, quite astonished to have crossed that bit of ground like a whirlwind; and when I recovered breath I heard nothing, neither far nor near, and could see nothing under the tree nor yet in the brake, and was not quite sure that I hadn't dreamed a pandemonium of crazy music and evil beasts.

I began to look about me and find out where I was. The oak-branches overhung a large piece of grassy ground; it was so dark under them that I could not see my feet, and I stumbled over a big root and fell, hands forward, upon the body of a man who was lying there as if asleep or dead. I don't know what fear made me say or shout, but at any rate my voice was recognized, and that of Joseph replied, saying,--

"Is that you, Tiennet? What are you doing here at this time of night?"

"And you yourself, what are you doing, old fellow?" I replied, much pleased and comforted to have found him. "I have looked everywhere for you. Your mother was worrying, and I hoped you had got back to her long ago."

"I had business over here," he replied, "and before starting back I wanted to rest, that's all."

"Were not you afraid of being here alone at night in this hideous, gloomy place?"

"Afraid of what? Why should I be afraid, Tiennet? I don't understand you."

I was ashamed to confess what a fool I had been. Still, I did venture to ask if he hadn't seen people and animals in the open.

"Yes, yes," he said, "I have seen plenty of animals, and people too; but they are not mischievous, and we can go away together without their harming us."

I fancied from his voice that he was sneering at my fears. I left the oak as he did; but when we got out of its shadow, I fancied that José's face and figure were not the same as usual. He seemed to me taller, and carried his head higher, walking quickly, and speaking with more energy than naturally belonged to him. This did not ease my mind, for all sorts of queer recollections crossed it. It was not from my grandmother only that I had heard tell that folks with white faces and green eyes, gloomy tempers and speech that you couldn't understand, were apt to consort with evil spirits; and in all countries, as you know, old trees are said to be haunted by sorcerers and _other such_.

I hardly dared to breathe as long as we were in the undergrowth. I kept expecting to see the same things I had either dreamed in my brain or seen with my senses. But all was still; there was no sound except the breaking of the dried branches as we went along, or the crunching of the remains of ice under our feet.

Joseph, who walked in front, did not follow the main path, but cut across the covert. You would have thought he was a hare, well acquainted with the ins and outs, and he led me so quickly to the ford of the Igneraie, without crossing the potter's village, that it seemed as if I got there by magic. Then he left me, without having opened his lips, except to say that he wished to show himself to his mother, as she was worried about him; and he followed the road to Saint-Chartier, while I took a short cut through the two parishes to my own house.

I no sooner found myself in the places I was familiar with than my terror left me, and I was very much ashamed not to have conquered it. Joseph would no doubt have told me the things I wanted to know if I had only asked him; for, for once in his life, he had lost his sleepy air, and I had even detected for an instant a sort of laugh in his voice, and something in his behavior like a wish to give assistance.

However, when I had slept upon the adventure, and my senses were calmer, I was convinced that I had not dreamed what I had seen in the undergrowth, and I began to think there was something queer about Joseph's tranquillity under the oak. The animals that I had seen in such number were certainly not an ordinary sight. In our part of the country we have no flocks, except sheep, and those I had seen were animals of another color and another shape. They were neither horses nor cattle nor sheep nor goats; besides, no animals were allowed to pasture in the forest.

Now, as I tell you all this, I think I was a great fool. And yet there's a deal that's unknown in the affairs of this world into which a man sticks his nose, and more still in God's affairs, which He chooses to keep secret. Anyhow, I did not venture to question Joseph; for though you may be inquisitive about good things, you ought not to be so about evil ones; and, indeed, a wise man feels reluctant to poke into matters where he may find a good deal more than he looks for.

FOURTH EVENING.

One thing gave me still more to think about in the following days. It was discovered in Aulnières that Joseph every now and then stayed out at night.

People joked about it, thinking he had a love-affair; but it was no use following and watching him, no one ever saw him turn to inhabited parts, or speak to a living person. He went away across the fields into the open country so quickly and slyly that it was impossible to find out his secret. He returned about dawn, and went to work like the rest; but instead of being weary, he seemed livelier and more contented than usual.

This was noticed three times in the course of the winter, which was very long and very severe that year. But neither the snow nor the north wind was able to keep Joseph from going off at night when the fancy took him. People imagined he was one of those who walk or work in their sleep; but it was nothing of the kind, as you will see.

On Christmas Eve, as Véret, the sabot-maker, was on his way to keep the midnight feast with his parents at Ourouer, he saw under the big elm Râteau, not the giant who is said to walk under it with a rake on his shoulder, but a tall dark man who did not have a good face, and who was whispering quite low to another man not so tall, and who had a more Christian kind of look. Véret was not actually afraid, and he passed near enough to listen to what they were saying. But as soon as the other two saw him, they separated. The dark man made off, nobody knows where, and his comrade, coming up to Véret, said to him in a strangled sort of voice,--

"Where are you going, Denis Véret?"

The shoemaker began to be uneasy; and knowing that you must not speak to the things of darkness, especially near an evil tree, he continued his way without looking round; but he was followed by the being he took to be a spirit, who walked behind, keeping step with him.

When they reached the end of the open ground the pursuer turned to the left, saying, "Good-night, Denis Véret!"

And then for the first time Véret recognized Joseph, and laughed at his own fears; but still without being able to imagine for what purpose and in whose company Joseph had come to the big elm between one and two o'clock in the morning.

When this last affair came to my knowledge I felt very sorry, and reproached myself for not trying to turn Joseph from the evil ways he seemed to be taking. But I had let so much time elapse I did not like to take the matter up then. I spoke to Brulette, who only made fun of it; from which I began to believe they had a secret love for each other of which I had been the dupe, like other folks who tried to see magic in it and only saw fire.

I was more grieved than angry. Joseph, so slack at his work and so cranky, seemed to me a weak stay and a poor companion for Brulette. I could have told her that (putting myself entirely out of the question) she could have played a better game with her cards; but I was afraid to say it, thinking I might make her angry, and so lose her friendship, which seemed to me very sweet, even without her other favors.