Part 10
The ones whose story it is my sad duty to record were two big blue "Romans," united by the most demonstrative tenderness. They had no other occupation than to bill and coo all day long. After their eggs had been laid, they took turns at sitting on them, each for half a day at a time--and as soon as the little ones had their first feathers, returned to their ardent lovemaking.
One day I perceived on a chestnut tree belonging to me a big white pigeon who seemed to find the neighbourhood to its liking. After a few short turns about the place, the newcomer, in the course of its search for food, settled upon the home of the two Romans, and deliberately entered it, attracted by the buckwheat and corn. Mr. Pigeon drove the intruder out. He returned, and the performance of expulsion began over again. This game lasted all day.
The obstinacy of the newcomer seemed to me to indicate the weaker sex--which diagnosis was confirmed by my recognition that the Roman pigeon, while upholding his rights as first occupant, merely went through the motions of battle, and never effectively attacked his opponent. For eight days this proceeding continued. Several hundred times a day the white pigeon flew from the tree to the dovecote, only to turn back at the first threat of the tenant's beak, and then return at once from her branch to the blue pigeon's door, where, owing to his prompt hostility, she would barely alight.
Wearying of the performance, I, finally, with a desire to protect my friends, the Romans, caught the white bird, and presented it to a friend who was improving some property in the wilds of Sannois. My chestnut tree relapsed into peace, and the feathered pair continued to taste the joys of love.
Two months later, to my surprise, I perceived my white visitor on the chestnut tree. She had already recommenced her visits to the Roman family, and seemed very little affected by the hostile reception given to her persistent offers of friendship. At the same time a letter from Sannois informed me that the prisoner, taking advantage of a hole in the netting, had escaped. Touched by the sentiment that had brought a wandering soul back from such a distance to the home of her choice, I resolved worthily to exercise the hospitality so perseveringly demanded of me. I had a new house built, and I gave a beautiful husband to the lady whose heart was so obviously oppressed by the weight of solitude. Peace settled upon the amorous pigeon world. Each bent his energies, in accordance with established order, to the occupation of reproducing himself, and seemed to find happiness therein.
Who does not know that the joys of this world are brief?
One day the white lady's husband was found dead, without having given any sign of illness. His funeral was scarcely over, I blush to say, before the light creature began visiting the Roman pair again. I soon noticed that the male pigeon had reached a sort of reconcilement to those obstinate visits. He continued, to be sure, to drive the intruder away, but so nervelessly that she returned after a few flaps of her wings, without even bothering to go back as far as the chestnut tree.
Soon, I realized that the fascinating person with the white plumage had free access to the home of her neighbours. When I inquired into the reason for the Roman not barring his entrance to the stranger, I found that his mate, hunched in a ball, was seriously ill, and that the perturbed husband would not leave her. I greatly admired this exemplary conduct. The trouble was that the stranger, taking advantage of the open door, formed the annoying habit of perching there inside, day and night. The pigeon stayed close by his mate, and hunched himself also in a ball to express his sympathy, while the stranger looked, dry-eyed, on the ruin of the home, and waited for her day.
As this day was long in coming, the hussy ventured to intrude upon the sorrow of the suffering couple. Thereupon, the sick nurse, listening only to the voice of duty, hurled himself upon the wicked beast, and with beak and claw drove her across the threshold--even a little way beyond. Alas! this was precisely the object of her detestable machinations. The widow wished to be pursued. She succeeded, returning incessantly to the charge--which obliged the pigeon to escort her out of the house--and defending herself only enough to lend vivacity to the encounter. Then, when the moment seemed opportune, she abruptly ceased to resist, and crouching down, half spread her wings, asking that the battle of conjugal duty be transformed into a lovers' contest. Rarely has human creature given such an exhibition of immoral conduct.
I must say that the virtuous pigeon at first expressed his indignation by coos expressive of fury. But what can you expect? The flesh is weak. When temptation is offered every minute of the day there is some excuse for stumbling. I was a witness of my Roman pigeon's weakening. I saw him finally succumb to the suggestions of the wanton, and fall into sin! It is true that, ashamed of his weakness, he immediately chastised vice by pecking the one who had just given him delight, and quickly flew back to the bed of straw where the invalid lay wondering at his prolonged absence.
Every creature has its destiny. The betrayed wife refused to die. She remained motionless all day long, ate copiously, in spite of her illness, and did not waste away. Little by little the gallant husband formed the habit of infidelity, and even ended by showing a grievous alacrity in evil doing. I must, however, say to his credit, that if he found the attraction of sin stronger now than the call of duty, he never ceased to observe the strictest decorum under the conjugal roof. He always treated the one responsible for his fall as a courtesan whose acquaintance was not to be acknowledged. As soon as they were inside the dovecote, the two accomplices were not acquainted. The Roman pigeon lived faithfully at the side of his Roman wife. The white pigeon would go to roost, with an assumption of indifference, on the highest perch. Bourgeois decency was preserved. As we see it daily among human beings, respectability among animals may be coupled with scandalous debauchery. The sad, confiding little invalid seemed to express gratitude to her spouse, by tender, cuddling motions, to which, I prefer to believe, he did not submit without some feeling of shame. I should think that the victim would have suspected something, if only because the two culprits looked so remarkably above suspicion. But there are especial immunities.
This state of things might have endured indefinitely if the ill-starred idea of an experiment had not come into my mind. I took away the sick bird and isolated her for two days in a cage. I planned to observe the psychology of her return home, fancying that a crisis would be precipitated, from which virtue might issue triumphant.
At first the widower wished to make sure of his "misfortune." He searched the garden, then the neighbouring roofs where he had formerly spent long periods in the company of his better half. When he finally believed that his legitimate mate had vanished into nothingness, he plunged into bottomless deeps of bliss with the illegitimate one. What an example to the inhabitants of Passy!
For two days a joy so scandalous reigned in the guilty establishment that I could not resist the desire to break up the indecent festival. I therefore took the unfortunate prisoner and exposed her well in view on the lawn. As soon as the adulterous couple beheld her, the courtesan hastened to the dovecote, doubtless to establish her rights of proprietorship, and the faithless spouse fell furiously upon the wife restored to his bosom. He beat her with wing and beak, uttering angry coos. I supposed that he was calling her to account for her disappearance, and reproaching her with what he might have considered a prank, he whose heart should have been racked with remorse. It seemed to me that he was driving her toward the dovecote, and thinking that it might be well to sustain him in his demand that she resume her position in the home, whence it was high time that the adventuress be expelled, I myself put back the ailing pigeon in the spot from which I had taken her three days before.
I had scarcely left her when a terrible flutter of wings warned me that something was happening. I hastened back. The irreproachable wife was dead, killed by the lovers, whom two days had sufficed to unite in indissoluble bonds of infamy. The unlucky creature lay with her skull broken open by their beaks, and the murderers sated their ferocity upon the dead body, which I had difficulty in wresting from them.
There are no courts of law in the animal world, wherefore Providence had no option but to crown the triumph of crime with happy peace. This it did with its customary generosity. The two villains live happy in their love. They have had, and will yet have, many children.
XVII
SIX CENTS
Here is the history of a man without a history. As far back as I can remember, I can see in the great court of honour of the Manor, devoted to plebeian uses since the Revolution, Six Cents, the sawyer, silently occupied with making boards out of the trunks of poplars, elms, and oaks, which at the end of my last vacation I had left green and living, filled with the song of birds, and whose corpses I found on my return tragically piled up for the posthumous torture by which man pursues his work of death-dealing civilization.
Jacques Barbot, commonly called Six Cents, was in those days the representative of industry in the rural world; he typified man in the first stage above the purely agricultural labourer of olden times. To prepare the raw material for the next man to use was his social function. He had certainly never given thought to this, any more than to the cruel fate which makes of man the first victim of his inventions, pregnant though they be of future benefit. For how many centuries the grinding of wheat chained the slave to the millstone, until the day dawned when the beast of burden, the wind, water and steam, came to take his place. Even to-day, how much serf's labour still awaits the ingenuity of future liberators!
It is certain that Six Cents, although he expressed his views to nobody, for discretion of thought was chief among his characteristics, did not feel himself a slave, in his quiet patience under the common subjugation of labour. As it happened, the machine which set him free promptly dealt him his death blow.
Employee and employer as well, he hired a comrade, whose pay was nearly equal to his own, and all the year round, in the cold and the rain, the sun or the wind, he matched himself with untiring energy against the wide-branched giants, and defeated those adversaries. The ever-renewed struggle against the eternal resistance of the woody monsters made up his entire life. Beyond that, no horizon, no thought; his was the unconsciousness of the soul in the making. Gladstone, stupidly and without the excuse of necessity, used to hack down the noble leafy creations that form so great a part of the earth's beauty. Six Cents, as insensible as he to the esthetic aspect of tree life, engaged in a mortal combat to wrest his living from the obstinate fibres clinging to life with obscure yet tenacious vitality.
On winter days, favourable for felling trees, the executioners would arrive on the spot, axe in hand, to carry out the death sentence pronounced by interest against life and beauty. In the desolate country, overflown by bands of crows with their ill-omened croaking, the strokes of the sinister axe would echo far around, as they accomplished their work of death. The tall trunk rocks at each deeper entering of the iron, while the plumy branches beat the air in shudders of agony. The rope fastened to the top of the tree grows taut--a sharp blow, followed by a long wail, and the groaning colossus falls heavily to earth. Like a hero on the fields of Ilion hurling himself upon the spoils of the vanquished foe, Six Cents on the instant is chopping, cutting, trimming, drawing lines where the saw is to divide the tree into logs. Soon the stripped shaft, chained to the sawing trestle, will show on its length as well as its girth black lines, drawn straight by aid of a string for the sawyer's reliance in guiding the steel teeth.
One man stands above and one below the trestle. The thin notched blade, working its way forward with a soft swish muffled by the sawdust, rises and falls with the rhythmic motion of the bodies alternately bending down and straightening up. From a distance you see two men in front of each other, one facing earthward, the other skyward, and perpetually bowing as if in mutual greeting. When the entire existence of a human being has for its sole activity an incessant bowing, not even to the tree about to die, but to its corpse, into which he is driving the iron a little further with each courteous gesture, there results a monotony of sensation, of thought (if the two words may be used in this connection,) progressively benumbing the spirit, or reducing it to the minimum of cogitation compatible with a continuance of life. The inert intelligence becomes atrophied. What is the mentality of the slave harnessed to the millstone? Not greatly superior to that of the beast of burden substituted for him. Six Cents, slaughtering his trees, took from them only vegetative life. His victims unconsciously revenged themselves by bringing him down through the continuity of enforced labour to the lowest rank of conscious life.
One must not suppose that Six Cents was stupid. His countenance, with its regular features, was frank and open. His eyes, which though lacking in fire were gentle and appeared to dwell on something far away, reminded one of those of certain dogs, "very intelligent," but incapable of any effort beyond primitive comprehension. He was not a mere animal, but simply an undeveloped man. He did not know how to read, nor had he ever stopped to wonder what might be contained in a book. To saw to-day, to saw to-morrow: a narrow cycle of dull thoughts brought him continually back to his starting point. The wide gray velvet trousers from the pocket of which protruded the points of a pair of compasses distinguished him from tillers of the soil. The stamp of science and art was upon him, but so rudimentary, that the appropriate mechanical gesture was the Ultima Thule of his attainment. The smooth-shaven face, framed in long gray locks, under a cloth cap in the fashion of Louis XI, inspired respect by its placid gravity. His slow, heavy step could be heard on the road as he went silently to his work, whereas the plowmen, exchanging greetings as they passed one another, urged on their beasts with shouts, held them back with oaths, or brightened the day with love songs. Presently, they would be turning over their furrows, still shouting, still swearing, and still singing, followed by the feathered host, to whom the plowshare furnishes inexhaustible feasts. During this, Six Cents, at the foot of the trestle, gazing upward open mouthed, without sound, his attention centred upon not departing from the straight line, would stretch to full height with arms extended, then stoop to the ground as if to touch it, bend over only to lift himself, and lift himself only to bend again.
And what of the interludes between work hours? There is the cheer of the coarse but comforting repast, with the zest of its thin, sourish white wine "warming to the heart"--the walk from work to food and from food to work; sleep, when strength is spent, and rising when it would be pleasant to go on sleeping. On Sundays, there is first and foremost the joy of doing nothing, then there are the heavy conversations during which no one has anything to say, each having no interest in any but his own case, "feeling only his own ills," as the popular saying has it; there is the talk about the weather, the tedium of an idle day, occasionally the diversion of rural debate on the church square after mass; there is communion with the blessed bottle, substituting a paradise of dreams for the irksome reality of things. What further?
Married in a purely animal sense, as is the case with the majority of the human race, Six Cents lived in the relation of male to female with his "good wife," finding in marriage the advantage of partnership in labour. Were they faithful to each other? In a village these matters, which create so much commotion in the city, have small importance. People are too close to nature to resist the attraction of the moment. And I cannot see that the dwellers in cities set them such a shining example. The distraction of fairs is unknown to the sawyer who has nothing to sell. Thefts are too common, crimes too rare, they are not common subjects of conversation. Finally, to satisfy the rudimentary urge of idealism, there are politics and religion, represented by the mayor and the priest. From the pulpit fall incomprehensible words to which no one pays attention, since no one can see that they have any real effect upon anything whatsoever. Religion consists principally in believing that we must by means of certain ceremonies get on the right side of a God who will otherwise burn us up. At the approach of death one tries to get the balance in his favour at all costs. But this changes nothing in the conduct of life. Local politics are in general, as they are everywhere, a matter of business. The calculation can quickly be made as to the value of a vote on one side or the other. There is no other problem. This is how a great many Frenchmen still express the "national will" concerning the most important matters of politics and sociology. The point ever present to the mind is the question of remuneration. But the conditions determining the wages of labour escape the power of analysis of such fellows as Six Cents. What can they do but say "I work too much and earn too little," and stop, amazed before the insoluble puzzle.
One day, however, Six Cents heard news, when he happened to complain that "Boards did not find as good market as they used to." He was told about pines, and water power, and sawmills in Norway, and cheap transportation, a tale which he did not entirely understand, but from which he gathered that the evil was irremediable. He therefore resigned himself as he had always done, bowing under the inevitable. He earned less and still less, while working harder and harder because of arms grown weaker, and back grown stiff with the years. In spite of the kindly advice of philanthropical political economists, Six Cents, wearing out his body by continual labour, had no savings. He had no old sock filled with gold pieces against a rainy day, such as the simple like to believe in. Why economize, when one knows that a lifetime of pinching would lead to a ludicrously inadequate result?
Old age is upon him. Pitiless progress has done its work. Humble village craftsmen like Six Cents are out of date. The concentration of capital demands the mustering of labourers in the all-devouring factory. Six Cents looks on without understanding, without complaining. He has come to poverty, want. Utter destitution as he nears the grave seems to him but one fate-ordained calamity more to throw on the heap with the others. Is any one surprised at heat in summer and cold in winter? We must accept things as they come, and if nothing comes, still be content, since we cannot change the actual course of things. It is the same resignation as that of beasts under the whip. Six Cents' wife with a sack on her back goes from door to door begging for a crust or a few potatoes, grudgingly given to her. The sawyer does such small odd jobs as he finds to do. They keep alive, and at times appear contented. Seated on a stone at the threshold of his hut, Six Cents watches the world go by. The young come, merry, wilful, noisy. The aged pass, dejected, resigned, silent.
"With all the boards I have sawed," said he, the other day, "it will certainly be strange if four cannot be found to make my last home."
The history of a man without a history I have called this. But even without events, without passions, without desires, without revolts, without search for better things, and with the apathy of lifelong labour directed to no end, is it not still a history? The evolution of human society cannot be denied. But the time seems distant when men shall keep abreast in their progression. Up to the present time, what a lot of laggards! Consider the mental development of the cave man, chipping his flint, polishing his stone axe, sharpening his arrows, dividing his time between hunting and fighting, defending his hearth with vigilant effort, and trying to destroy the hearth of his neighbour, and then tell me whether the wretched man who spends all the days of his life sawing the same board, hammering the same iron-bar, turning the same crank of the same machine all day long--whether this man is intellectually superior to the cave man? All this, of course, must change. Let us, in order to help on the good work, take account as we go of the temporary conditions of human kind.
XVIII
FLOWER O' THE WHEAT
Flower o' the Wheat was the prettiest girl in my village. Tall, well set up, stepping along with a fine self-confidence, she brightened by her clear laughter the fields, the woods, the deep road cuts of the Vendée. With the first warm days of spring the milky whiteness of her skin would be dotted over with a constellation of freckles.
The peasants used to say: "The good Lord threw a handful of bran in her face."
Bran and flour, it would seem, for her face under the sun's rays remained as white as if dusted over with the powder of bolted wheat. Hence, perhaps, her surname, or possibly she owed it to her red hair, matched rather unusually by tawny eyes. She gave one the impression of being all of the beautiful gold-brown tone of ripe wheat. Flower o' the Wheat was beautiful, and knew it because she was told so all day long.
The man of the fields is not by a long way insensible to beauty. His esthetic sense is not the same as ours. He is not moved by a line, a contour, the grace of a moving form, but he is powerfully affected by colour, as are all whom civilization has not overrefined. Flower o' the Wheat being a creature of living colour, had, therefore, the pleasure of hearing herself proclaimed fair, and of having to fend off the playfulness, and occasionally the somewhat robust caresses, of manly youth all the way from Sainte Hermine to Chantonnay. Plant a flower wherever you will, there the bees will congregate. Wherever you meet beauty, you will see men coming to forage, with eyes and hands and lips. Between city and country there is only a difference of setting.
As her fame spread beyond the borders of the canton, Flower o' the Wheat had a throng of admirers such as had not been seen for many a day in our neighbourhood. The pride of it shone in her eyes, dazzled by their own attractiveness, and if she had been told of Cleopatra on whom was centred the gaze of the world, it is not certain that she would have thought the Egyptian queen had an advantage over the country maid. For which I praise her, for enumerating a multitude of adorers is a foolish pastime. Moreover, the queen was dead and the peasant girl alive: the best argument of all.