The Idiots
by Joseph Conrad
We were driving along the road
from Treguier to Kervanda. We passed at a smart trot between the hedges topping
an earth wall on each side of the road; then at the foot of the steep ascent
before Ploumar the horse dropped into a walk, and the driver jumped down
heavily from the box. He flicked his whip and climbed the incline, stepping
clumsily uphill by the side of the carriage, one hand on the footboard, his eyes
on the ground. After a while he lifted his head, pointed up the road with the
end of the whip, and said--
"The idiot!"
The sun was shining violently upon
the undulating surface of the land. The rises were topped by clumps of meagre
trees, with their branches showing high on the sky as if they had been perched
upon stilts. The small fields, cut up by hedges and stone walls that zig-zagged
over the slopes, lay in rectangular patches of vivid greens and yellows,
resembling the unskilful daubs of a naive picture. And the landscape was
divided in two by the white streak of a road stretching in long loops far away,
like a river of dust crawling out of the hills on its way to the sea.
"Here he is," said the driver,
again.
In the long grass bordering the
road a face glided past the carriage at the level of the wheels as we drove
slowly by. The imbecile face was red, and the bullet head with close-cropped
hair seemed to lie alone, its chin in the dust. The body was lost in the bushes
growing thick along the bottom of the deep ditch.
It was a boy's face. He might have
been sixteen, judging from the size--perhaps less, perhaps more. Such creatures
are forgotten by time, and live untouched by years till death gathers them up
into its compassionate bosom; the faithful death that never forgets in the
press of work the most insignificant of its children.
"Ah! there's another," said the
man, with a certain satisfaction in his tone, as if he had caught sight of
something expected.
There was another. That one stood
nearly in the middle of the road in the blaze of sunshine at the end of his own
short shadow. And he stood with hands pushed into the opposite sleeves of his
long coat, his head sunk between the shoulders, all hunched up in the flood of
heat. From a distance he had the aspect of one suffering from intense cold.
"Those are twins," explained the
driver.
The idiot shuffled two paces out of
the way and looked at us over his shoulder when we brushed past him. The glance
was unseeing and staring, a fascinated glance; but he did not turn to look
after us. Probably the image passed before the eyes without leaving any trace
on the misshapen brain of the creature. When we had topped the ascent I looked
over the hood. He stood in the road just where we had left him.
The driver clambered into his seat,
clicked his tongue, and we went downhill. The brake squeaked horribly from time
to time. At the foot he eased off the noisy mechanism and said, turning half
round on his box--
"We shall see some more of them
by-and-by."
"More idiots? How many of them are
there, then?" I asked.
"There's four of them--children of
a farmer near Ploumar here. . . . The parents are dead now," he added,
after a while. "The grandmother lives on the farm. In the daytime they
knock about on this road, and they come home at dusk along with the cattle. . .
. It's a good farm."
We saw the other two: a boy and a
girl, as the driver said. They were dressed exactly alike, in shapeless
garments with petticoat-like skirts. The imperfect thing that lived within them
moved those beings to howl at us from the top of the bank, where they sprawled
amongst the tough stalks of furze. Their cropped black heads stuck out from the
bright yellow wall of countless small blossoms. The faces were purple with the
strain of yelling; the voices sounded blank and cracked like a mechanical
imitation of old people's voices; and suddenly ceased when we turned into a
lane.
I saw them many times in my
wandering about the country. They lived on that road, drifting along its length
here and there, according to the inexplicable impulses of their monstrous
darkness. They were an offence to the sunshine, a reproach to empty heaven, a
blight on the concentrated and purposeful vigour of the wild landscape. In time
the story of their parents shaped itself before me out of the listless answers
to my questions, out of the indifferent words heard in wayside inns or on the
very road those idiots haunted. Some of it was told by an emaciated and
sceptical old fellow with a tremendous whip, while we trudged together over the
sands by the side of a two-wheeled cart loaded with dripping seaweed. Then at
other times other people confirmed and completed the story: till it stood at
last before me, a tale formidable and simple, as they always are, those
disclosures of obscure trials endured by ignorant hearts.
When he returned from his military
service Jean-Pierre Bacadou found the old people very much aged. He remarked
with pain that the work of the farm was not satisfactorily done. The father had
not the energy of old days. The hands did not feel over them the eye of the
master. Jean-Pierre noted with sorrow that the heap of manure in the courtyard
before the only entrance to the house was not so large as it should have been.
The fences were out of repair, and the cattle suffered from neglect. At home
the mother was practically bedridden, and the girls chattered loudly in the big
kitchen, unrebuked, from morning to night. He said to himself: "We must
change all this." He talked the matter over with his father one evening
when the rays of the setting sun entering the yard between the outhouses ruled
the heavy shadows with luminous streaks. Over the manure heap floated a mist,
opal-tinted and odorous, and the marauding hens would stop in their scratching
to examine with a sudden glance of their round eye the two men, both lean and
tall, talking in hoarse tones. The old man, all twisted with rheumatism and
bowed with years of work, the younger bony and straight, spoke without gestures
in the indifferent manner of peasants, grave and slow. But before the sun had
set the father had submitted to the sensible arguments of the son. "It is
not for me that I am speaking," insisted Jean-Pierre. "It is for the
land. It's a pity to see it badly used. I am not impatient for myself." The
old fellow nodded over his stick. "I dare say; I dare say," he
muttered. "You may be right. Do what you like. It's the mother that will
be pleased."
The mother was pleased with her
daughter-in-law. Jean-Pierre brought the two-wheeled spring-cart with a rush
into the yard. The gray horse galloped clumsily, and the bride and bridegroom,
sitting side by side, were jerked backwards and forwards by the up and down
motion of the shafts, in a manner regular and brusque. On the road the
distanced wedding guests straggled in pairs and groups. The men advanced with
heavy steps, swinging their idle arms. They were clad in town clothes; jackets
cut with clumsy smartness, hard black hats, immense boots, polished highly.
Their women all in simple black, with white caps and shawls of faded tints
folded triangularly on the back, strolled lightly by their side. In front the
violin sang a strident tune, and the biniou snored and hummed, while the player
capered solemnly, lifting high his heavy clogs. The sombre procession drifted
in and out of the narrow lanes, through sunshine and through shade, between
fields and hedgerows, scaring the little birds that darted away in troops right
and left. In the yard of Bacadou's farm the dark ribbon wound itself up into a
mass of men and women pushing at the door with cries and greetings. The wedding
dinner was remembered for months. It was a splendid feast in the orchard.
Farmers of considerable means and excellent repute were to be found sleeping in
ditches, all along the road to Treguier, even as late as the afternoon of the
next day. All the countryside participated in the happiness of Jean-Pierre. He
remained sober, and, together with his quiet wife, kept out of the way, letting
father and mother reap their due of honour and thanks. But the next day he took
hold strongly, and the old folks felt a shadow--precursor of the grave--fall
upon them finally. The world is to the young.
When the twins were born there was
plenty of room in the house, for the mother of Jean-Pierre had gone away to
dwell under a heavy stone in the cemetery
of Ploumar
He was happy, and so was Susan,
his wife. It was not an ethereal joy welcoming new souls to struggle, perchance
to victory. In fourteen years both boys would be a help; and, later on,
Jean-Pierre pictured two big sons striding over the land from patch to patch,
wringing tribute from the earth beloved and fruitful. Susan was happy too, for
she did not want to be spoken of as the unfortunate woman, and now she had
children no one could call her that. Both herself and her husband had seen
something of the larger world--he during the time of his service; while she had
spent a year or so in Paris with a Breton family; but had been too home-sick to
remain longer away from the hilly and green country, set in a barren circle of
rocks and sands, where she had been born. She thought that one of the boys
ought perhaps to be a priest, but said nothing to her husband, who was a
republican, and hated the "crows," as he called the ministers of
religion. The christening was a splendid affair. All the commune came to it,
for the Bacadous were rich and influential, and, now and then, did not mind the
expense. The grandfather had a new coat.
Some months afterwards, one evening
when the kitchen had been swept, and the door locked, Jean-Pierre, looking at
the cot, asked his wife: "What's the matter with those children?"
And, as if these words, spoken calmly, had been the portent of misfortune, she
answered with a loud wail that must have been heard across the yard in the
pig-sty; for the pigs (the Bacadous had the finest pigs in the country) stirred
and grunted complainingly in the night. The husband went on grinding his bread
and butter slowly, gazing at the wall, the soup-plate smoking under his chin.
He had returned late from the market, where he had overheard (not for the first
time) whispers behind his back. He revolved the words in his mind as he drove
back. "Simple! Both of them. . . . Never any use! . . . Well! May be, may
be. One must see. Would ask his wife." This was her answer. He felt like a
blow on his chest, but said only: "Go, draw me some cider. I am
thirsty!"
She went out moaning, an empty jug
in her hand. Then he arose, took up the light, and moved slowly towards the
cradle. They slept. He looked at them sideways, finished his mouthful there,
went back heavily, and sat down before his plate. When his wife returned he
never looked up, but swallowed a couple of spoonfuls noisily, and remarked, in
a dull manner--
"When they sleep they are like other
people's children."
She sat down suddenly on a stool
near by, and shook with a silent tempest of sobs, unable to speak. He finished
his meal, and remained idly thrown back in his chair, his eyes lost amongst the
black rafters of the ceiling. Before him the tallow candle flared red and
straight, sending up a slender thread of smoke. The light lay on the rough,
sunburnt skin of his throat; the sunk cheeks were like patches of darkness, and
his aspect was mournfully stolid, as if he had ruminated with difficulty
endless ideas. Then he said, deliberately--
"We must see . . . consult people.
Don't cry. . . . They won't all be like that . . . surely! We must sleep
now."
After the third child, also a boy,
was born, Jean-Pierre went about his work with tense hopefulness. His lips
seemed more narrow, more tightly compressed than before; as if for fear of
letting the earth he tilled hear the voice of hope that murmured within his
breast. He watched the child, stepping up to the cot with a heavy clang of
sabots on the stone floor, and glanced in, along his shoulder, with that
indifference which is like a deformity of peasant humanity. Like the earth they
master and serve, those men, slow of eye and speech, do not show the inner
fire; so that, at last, it becomes a question with them as with the earth, what
there is in the core: heat, violence, a force mysterious and terrible--or
nothing but a clod, a mass fertile and inert, cold and unfeeling, ready to bear
a crop of plants that sustain life or give death.
The mother watched with other eyes;
listened with otherwise expectant ears. Under the high hanging shelves
supporting great sides of bacon overhead, her body was busy by the great
fireplace, attentive to the pot swinging on iron gallows, scrubbing the long
table where the field hands would sit down directly to their evening meal. Her
mind remained by the cradle, night and day on the watch, to hope and suffer.
That child, like the other two, never smiled, never stretched its hands to her,
never spoke; never had a glance of recognition for her in its big black eyes,
which could only stare fixedly at any glitter, but failed hopelessly to follow
the brilliance of a sun-ray slipping slowly along the floor. When the men were at
work she spent long days between her three idiot children and the childish
grandfather, who sat grim, angular, and immovable, with his feet near the warm
ashes of the fire. The feeble old fellow seemed to suspect that there was
something wrong with his grandsons. Only once, moved either by affection or by
the sense of proprieties, he attempted to nurse the youngest. He took the boy
up from the floor, clicked his tongue at him, and essayed a shaky gallop of his
bony knees. Then he looked closely with his misty eyes at the child's face and
deposited him down gently on the floor again. And he sat, his lean shanks
crossed, nodding at the steam escaping from the cooking-pot with a gaze senile
and worried.
Then mute affliction dwelt in
Bacadou's farmhouse, sharing the breath and the bread of its inhabitants; and
the priest of the Ploumar parish had great cause for congratulation. He called
upon the rich landowner, the Marquis de Chavanes, on purpose to deliver himself
with joyful unction of solemn platitudes about the inscrutable ways of Providence
The Chavanes returning that
evening, after seeing their guest to the main gate of the park, discussed the
matter while they strolled in the moonlight, trailing their long shadows up the
straight avenue of chestnuts. The marquise, a royalist of course, had been
mayor of the commune which includes Ploumar, the scattered hamlets of the
coast, and the stony islands that fringe the yellow flatness of the sands. He
had felt his position insecure, for there was a strong republican element in
that part of the country; but now the conversion of Jean-Pierre made him safe.
He was very pleased. "You have no idea how influential those people
are," he explained to his wife. "Now, I am sure, the next communal
election will go all right. I shall be re- elected." "Your ambition
is perfectly insatiable, Charles," exclaimed the marquise, gaily.
"But, ma chere amie," argued the husband, seriously, "it's most
important that the right man should be mayor this year, because of the
elections to the Chamber. If you think it amuses me . . ."
Jean-Pierre had surrendered to his wife's
mother. Madame Levaille was a woman of business, known and respected within a
radius of at least fifteen miles. Thick-set and stout, she was seen about the
country, on foot or in an acquaintance's cart, perpetually moving, in spite of
her fifty-eight years, in steady pursuit of business. She had houses in all the
hamlets, she worked quarries of granite, she freighted coasters with
stone--even traded with the Channel Islands .
She was broad-cheeked, wide-eyed, persuasive in speech: carrying her point with
the placid and invincible obstinacy of an old woman who knows her own mind. She
very seldom slept for two nights together in the same house; and the wayside
inns were the best places to inquire in as to her whereabouts. She had either
passed, or was expected to pass there at six; or somebody, coming in, had seen
her in the morning, or expected to meet her that evening. After the inns that
command the roads, the churches were the buildings she frequented most. Men of
liberal opinions would induce small children to run into sacred edifices to see
whether Madame Levaille was there, and to tell her that so-and-so was in the
road waiting to speak to her about potatoes, or flour, or stones, or houses;
and she would curtail her devotions, come out blinking and crossing herself
into the sunshine; ready to discuss business matters in a calm, sensible way
across a table in the kitchen of the inn opposite. Latterly she had stayed for
a few days several times with her son-in-law, arguing against sorrow and
misfortune with composed face and gentle tones. Jean-Pierre felt the
convictions imbibed in the regiment torn out of his breast--not by arguments
but by facts. Striding over his fields he thought it over. There were three of
them. Three! All alike! Why? Such things did not happen to everybody--to nobody
he ever heard of. One--might pass. But three! All three. Forever useless, to be
fed while he lived and . . . What would become of the land when he died? This
must be seen to. He would sacrifice his convictions. One day he told his wife--
"See what your God will do for us.
Pay for some masses."
Susan embraced her man. He stood
unbending, then turned on his heels and went out. But afterwards, when a black
soutane darkened his doorway, he did not object; even offered some cider
himself to the priest. He listened to the talk meekly; went to mass between the
two women; accomplished what the priest called "his religious duties"
at Easter. That morning he felt like a man who had sold his soul. In the
afternoon he fought ferociously with an old friend and neighbour who had
remarked that the priests had the best of it and were now going to eat the
priest-eater. He came home dishevelled and bleeding, and happening to catch
sight of his children (they were kept generally out of the way), cursed and
swore incoherently, banging the table. Susan wept. Madame Levaille sat serenely
unmoved. She assured her daughter that "It will pass;" and taking up
her thick umbrella, departed in haste to see after a schooner she was going to
load with granite from her quarry.
A year or so afterwards the girl
was born. A girl. Jean-Pierre heard of it in the fields, and was so upset by
the news that he sat down on the boundary wall and remained there till the
evening, instead of going home as he was urged to do. A girl! He felt half
cheated. However, when he got home he was partly reconciled to his fate. One
could marry her to a good fellow--not to a good for nothing, but to a fellow
with some understanding and a good pair of arms. Besides, the next may be a
boy, he thought. Of course they would be all right. His new credulity knew of
no doubt. The ill luck was broken. He spoke cheerily to his wife. She was also
hopeful. Three priests came to that christening, and Madame Levaille was
godmother. The child turned out an idiot too.
Then on market days Jean-Pierre was
seen bargaining bitterly, quarrelsome and greedy; then getting drunk with
taciturn earnestness; then driving home in the dusk at a rate fit for a
wedding, but with a face gloomy enough for a funeral. Sometimes he would insist
on his wife coming with him; and they would drive in the early morning, shaking
side by side on the narrow seat above the helpless pig, that, with tied legs,
grunted a melancholy sigh at every rut. The morning drives were silent; but in
the evening, coming home, Jean-Pierre, tipsy, was viciously muttering, and
growled at the confounded woman who could not rear children that were like
anybody else's. Susan, holding on against the erratic swayings of the cart,
pretended not to hear. Once, as they were driving through Ploumar, some obscure
and drunken impulse caused him to pull up sharply opposite the church. The moon
swam amongst light white clouds. The tombstones gleamed pale under the fretted
shadows of the trees in the churchyard. Even the village dogs slept. Only the
nightingales, awake, spun out the thrill of their song above the silence of
graves. Jean-Pierre said thickly to his wife--
"What do you think is there?"
He pointed his whip at the
tower--in which the big dial of the clock appeared high in the moonlight like a
pallid face without eyes--and getting out carefully, fell down at once by the
wheel. He picked himself up and climbed one by one the few steps to the iron
gate of the churchyard. He put his face to the bars and called out
indistinctly--
"Hey there! Come out!"
"Jean! Return! Return!" entreated
his wife in low tones.
He took no notice, and seemed to
wait there. The song of nightingales beat on all sides against the high walls
of the church, and flowed back between stone crosses and flat gray slabs,
engraved with words of hope and sorrow.
"Hey! Come out!" shouted
Jean-Pierre, loudly.
The nightingales ceased to sing.
"Nobody?" went on
Jean-Pierre. "Nobody there. A swindle of the crows. That's what this is.
Nobody anywhere. I despise it. Allez! Houp!"
He shook the gate with all his
strength, and the iron bars rattled with a frightful clanging, like a chain
dragged over stone steps. A dog near by barked hurriedly. Jean-Pierre staggered
back, and after three successive dashes got into his cart. Susan sat very quiet
and still. He said to her with drunken severity--
"See? Nobody. I've been made a fool! Malheur!
Somebody will pay for it. The next one I see near the house I will lay my whip
on . . . on the black spine . . . I will. I don't want him in there . . . he
only helps the carrion crows to rob poor folk. I am a man. . . . We will see if
I can't have children like anybody else . . . now you mind. . . . They won't be
all . . . all . . . we see. . . ."
She burst out through the fingers
that hid her face--
"Don't say that, Jean; don't say that,
my man!"
He struck her a swinging blow on
the head with the back of his hand and knocked her into the bottom of the cart,
where she crouched, thrown about lamentably by every jolt. He drove furiously,
standing up, brandishing his whip, shaking the reins over the gray horse that
galloped ponderously, making the heavy harness leap upon his broad quarters.
The country rang clamorous in the night with the irritated barking of farm
dogs, that followed the rattle of wheels all along the road. A couple of
belated wayfarers had only just time to step into the ditch. At his own gate he
caught the post and was shot out of the cart head first. The horse went on
slowly to the door. At Susan's piercing cries the farm hands rushed out. She
thought him dead, but he was only sleeping where he fell, and cursed his men,
who hastened to him, for disturbing his slumbers.
Autumn came. The clouded sky descended
low upon the black contours of the hills; and the dead leaves danced in spiral
whirls under naked trees, till the wind, sighing profoundly, laid them to rest
in the hollows of bare valleys. And from morning till night one could see all
over the land black denuded boughs, the boughs gnarled and twisted, as if
contorted with pain, swaying sadly between the wet clouds and the soaked earth.
The clear and gentle streams of summer days rushed discoloured and raging at
the stones that barred the way to the sea, with the fury of madness bent upon
suicide. From horizon to horizon the great road to the sands lay between the
hills in a dull glitter of empty curves, resembling an unnavigable river of
mud.
Jean-Pierre went from field to field,
moving blurred and tall in the drizzle, or striding on the crests of rises,
lonely and high upon the gray curtain of drifting clouds, as if he had been
pacing along the very edge of the universe. He looked at the black earth, at
the earth mute and promising, at the mysterious earth doing its work of life in
death-like stillness under the veiled sorrow of the sky. And it seemed to him
that to a man worse than childless there was no promise in the fertility of fields,
that from him the earth escaped, defied him, frowned at him like the clouds,
sombre and hurried above his head. Having to face alone his own fields, he felt
the inferiority of man who passes away before the clod that remains. Must he
give up the hope of having by his side a son who would look at the turned-up
sods with a master's eye? A man that would think as he thought, that would feel
as he felt; a man who would be part of himself, and yet remain to trample
masterfully on that earth when he was gone? He thought of some distant
relations, and felt savage enough to curse them aloud. They! Never! He turned
homewards, going straight at the roof of his dwelling, visible between the
enlaced skeletons of trees. As he swung his legs over the stile a cawing flock
of birds settled slowly on the field; dropped down behind his back, noiseless
and fluttering, like flakes of soot.
That day Madame Levaille had gone
early in the afternoon to the house she had near Kervanion. She had to pay some
of the men who worked in her granite quarry there, and she went in good time
because her little house contained a shop where the workmen could spend their
wages without the trouble of going to town. The house stood alone amongst
rocks. A lane of mud and stones ended at the door. The sea-winds coming ashore
on Stonecutter's point, fresh from the fierce turmoil of the waves, howled
violently at the unmoved heaps of black boulders holding up steadily
short-armed, high crosses against the tremendous rush of the invisible. In the sweep
of gales the sheltered dwelling stood in a calm resonant and disquieting, like
the calm in the centre of a hurricane. On stormy nights, when the tide was out,
the bay of Fougere
The darkness came from the hills,
flowed over the coast, put out the red fires of sunset, and went on to seaward
pursuing the retiring tide. The wind dropped with the sun, leaving a maddened
sea and a devastated sky. The heavens above the house seemed to be draped in
black rags, held up here and there by pins of fire. Madame Levaille, for this
evening the servant of her own workmen, tried to induce them to depart.
"An old woman like me ought to be in bed at this late hour," she good-humouredly
repeated. The quarrymen drank, asked for more. They shouted over the table as
if they had been talking across a field. At one end four of them played cards,
banging the wood with their hard knuckles, and swearing at every lead. One sat
with a lost gaze, humming a bar of some song, which he repeated endlessly. Two
others, in a corner, were quarrelling confidentially and fiercely over some
woman, looking close into one another's eyes as if they had wanted to tear them
out, but speaking in whispers that promised violence and murder discreetly, in
a venomous sibillation of subdued words. The atmosphere in there was thick
enough to slice with a knife. Three candles burning about the long room glowed
red and dull like sparks expiring in ashes.
The slight click of the iron latch
was at that late hour as unexpected and startling as a thunder-clap. Madame
Levaille put down a bottle she held above a liqueur glass; the players turned
their heads; the whispered quarrel ceased; only the singer, after darting a
glance at the door, went on humming with a stolid face. Susan appeared in the
doorway, stepped in, flung the door to, and put her back against it, saying,
half aloud--
"Mother!"
Madame Levaille, taking up the bottle
again, said calmly: "Here you are, my girl. What a state you are in!"
The neck of the bottle rang on the rim of the glass, for the old woman was
startled, and the idea that the farm had caught fire had entered her head. She
could think of no other cause for her daughter's appearance.
Susan, soaked and muddy, stared the
whole length of the room towards the men at the far end. Her mother asked--
"What has happened? God guard us from
misfortune!"
Susan moved her lips. No sound came.
Madame Levaille stepped up to her daughter, took her by the arm, looked into
her face.
"In God's name," she said,
shakily, "what's the matter? You have been rolling in mud. . . . Why did
you come? . . . Where's Jean?"
The men had all got up and
approached slowly, staring with dull surprise. Madame Levaille jerked her daughter
away from the door, swung her round upon a seat close to the wall. Then she
turned fiercely to the men--
"Enough of this! Out you go--you
others! I close."
One of them observed, looking down
at Susan collapsed on the seat: "She is--one may say--half dead."
Madame Levaille flung the door open.
"Get out! March!" she cried,
shaking nervously.
They dropped out into the night,
laughing stupidly. Outside, the two Lotharios broke out into loud shouts. The
others tried to soothe them, all talking at once. The noise went away up the
lane with the men, who staggered together in a tight knot, remonstrating with
one another foolishly.
"Speak, Susan. What is it?
Speak!" entreated Madame Levaille, as soon as the door was shut.
Susan pronounced some
incomprehensible words, glaring at the table. The old woman clapped her hands
above her head, let them drop, and stood looking at her daughter with
disconsolate eyes. Her husband had been "deranged in his head" for a
few years before he died, and now she began to suspect her daughter was going
mad. She asked, pressingly--
"Does Jean know where you are? Where
is Jean?"
"He knows . . . he is dead."
"What!" cried
the old woman. She came up near, and peering at her daughter, repeated three
times: "What do you say? What do you say? What do you say?"
Susan sat dry-eyed and stony before
Madame Levaille, who contemplated her, feeling a strange sense of inexplicable
horror creep into the silence of the house. She had hardly realised the news,
further than to understand that she had been brought in one short moment face
to face with something unexpected and final. It did not even occur to her to
ask for any explanation. She thought: accident--terrible accident--blood to the
head--fell down a trap door in the loft. . . . She remained there, distracted
and mute, blinking her old eyes.
Suddenly, Susan said--
"I have killed him."
For a moment the mother stood
still, almost unbreathing, but with composed face. The next second she burst
out into a shout--
"You miserable madwoman . . . they
will cut your neck. . . ."
She fancied the gendarmes entering
the house, saying to her: "We want your daughter; give her up:" the
gendarmes with the severe, hard faces of men on duty. She knew the brigadier
well--an old friend, familiar and respectful, saying heartily, "To your
good health, Madame!" before lifting to his lips the small glass of
cognac--out of the special bottle she kept for friends. And now! . . . She was
losing her head. She rushed here and there, as if looking for something urgently
needed--gave that up, stood stock still in the middle of the room, and screamed
at her daughter--
"Why? Say! Say! Why?"
The other seemed to leap out of her
strange apathy.
"Do you think I am made of
stone?" she shouted back, striding towards her mother.
"No! It's impossible. . . ."
said Madame Levaille, in a convinced tone.
"You go and see, mother,"
retorted Susan, looking at her with blazing eyes. "There's no money in
heaven--no justice. No! . . . I did not know. . . . Do you think I have no
heart? Do you think I have never heard people jeering at me, pitying me,
wondering at me? Do you know how some of them were calling me? The mother of
idiots--that was my nickname! And my children never would know me, never speak
to me. They would know nothing; neither men--nor God. Haven't I prayed! But the
Mother of God herself would not hear me. A mother! . . . Who is accursed--I, or
the man who is dead? Eh? Tell me. I took care of myself. Do you think I would
defy the anger of God and have my house full of those things--that are worse
than animals who know the hand that feeds them? Who blasphemed in the night at
the very church door? Was it I? . . . I only wept and prayed for mercy . . .
and I feel the curse at every moment of the day--I see it round me from morning
to night . . . I've got to keep them alive--to take care of my misfortune and
shame. And he would come. I begged him and Heaven for mercy. . . . No! . . .
Then we shall see. . . . He came this evening. I thought to myself: 'Ah!
again!' . . . I had my long scissors. I heard him shouting . . . I saw him
near. . . . I must--must I? . . . Then take! . . . And I struck him in the
throat above the breastbone. . . . I never heard him even sigh. . . . I left
him standing. . . . It was a minute ago. How did I come here?"
Madame Levaille shivered. A wave of
cold ran down her back, down her fat arms under her tight sleeves, made her
stamp gently where she stood. Quivers ran over the broad cheeks, across the
thin lips, ran amongst the wrinkles at the corners of her steady old eyes. She
stammered--
"You wicked woman--you disgrace me.
But there! You always resembled your father. What do you think will become of
you . . . in the other world? In this . . . Oh misery!"
She was very hot now. She felt
burning inside. She wrung her perspiring hands--and suddenly, starting in great
haste, began to look for her big shawl and umbrella, feverishly, never once
glancing at her daughter, who stood in the middle of the room following her
with a gaze distracted and cold.
"Nothing worse than in this,"
said Susan.
Her mother, umbrella in hand and
trailing the shawl over the floor, groaned profoundly.
"I must go to the priest,"
she burst out passionately. "I do not know whether you even speak the
truth! You are a horrible woman. They will find you anywhere. You may stay
here--or go. There is no room for you in this world."
Ready now to depart, she yet wandered
aimlessly about the room, putting the bottles on the shelf, trying to fit with
trembling hands the covers on cardboard boxes. Whenever the real sense of what
she had heard emerged for a second from the haze of her thoughts she would
fancy that something had exploded in her brain without, unfortunately, bursting
her head to pieces--which would have been a relief. She blew the candles out
one by one without knowing it, and was horribly startled by the darkness. She
fell on a bench and began to whimper. After a while she ceased, and sat
listening to the breathing of her daughter, whom she could hardly see, still
and upright, giving no other sign of life. She was becoming old rapidly at
last, during those minutes. She spoke in tones unsteady, cut about by the
rattle of teeth, like one shaken by a deadly cold fit of ague.
"I wish you had died little. I
will never dare to show my old head in the sunshine again. There are worse
misfortunes than idiot children. I wish you had been born to me simple--like
your own. . . ."
She saw the figure of her daughter
pass before the faint and livid clearness of a window. Then it appeared in the
doorway for a second, and the door swung to with a clang. Madame Levaille, as
if awakened by the noise from a long nightmare, rushed out.
"Susan!" she
shouted from the doorstep.
She heard a stone roll a long time
down the declivity of the rocky beach above the sands. She stepped forward
cautiously, one hand on the wall of the house, and peered down into the smooth
darkness of the empty bay. Once again she cried--
"Susan! You will kill yourself
there."
The stone had taken its last leap
in the dark, and she heard nothing now. A sudden thought seemed to strangle
her, and she called no more. She turned her back upon the black silence of the
pit and went up the lane towards Ploumar, stumbling along with sombre
determination, as if she had started on a desperate journey that would last, perhaps,
to the end of her life. A sullen and periodic clamour of waves rolling over
reefs followed her far inland between the high hedges sheltering the gloomy
solitude of the fields.
Susan had run out, swerving sharp to
the left at the door, and on the edge of the slope crouched down behind a
boulder. A dislodged stone went on downwards, rattling as it leaped. When
Madame Levaille called out, Susan could have, by stretching her hand, touched
her mother's skirt, had she had the courage to move a limb. She saw the old
woman go away, and she remained still, closing her eyes and pressing her side
to the hard and rugged surface of the rock. After a while a familiar face with
fixed eyes and an open mouth became visible in the intense obscurity amongst
the boulders. She uttered a low cry and stood up. The face vanished, leaving
her to gasp and shiver alone in the wilderness of stone heaps. But as soon as
she had crouched down again to rest, with her head against the rock, the face
returned, came very near, appeared eager to finish the speech that had been cut
short by death, only a moment ago. She scrambled quickly to her feet and said:
"Go away, or I will do it again." The thing wavered, swung to the
right, to the left. She moved this way and that, stepped back, fancied herself
screaming at it, and was appalled by the unbroken stillness of the night. She
tottered on the brink, felt the steep declivity under her feet, and rushed down
blindly to save herself from a headlong fall. The shingle seemed to wake up;
the pebbles began to roll before her, pursued her from above, raced down with
her on both sides, rolling past with an increasing clatter. In the peace of the
night the noise grew, deepening to a rumour, continuous and violent, as if the
whole semicircle of the stony beach had started to tumble down into the bay.
Susan's feet hardly touched the slope that seemed to run down with her. At the
bottom she stumbled, shot forward, throwing her arms out, and fell heavily. She
jumped up at once and turned swiftly to look back, her clenched hands full of
sand she had clutched in her fall. The face was there, keeping its distance,
visible in its own sheen that made a pale stain in the night. She shouted,
"Go away!"--she shouted at it with pain, with fear, with all the rage
of that useless stab that could not keep him quiet, keep him out of her sight.
What did he want now? He was dead. Dead men have no children. Would he never
leave her alone? She shrieked at it--waved her outstretched hands. She seemed
to feel the breath of parted lips, and, with a long cry of discouragement, fled
across the level bottom of the bay.
She ran lightly, unaware of any
effort of her body. High sharp rocks that, when the bay is full, show above the
glittering plain of blue water like pointed towers of submerged churches,
glided past her, rushing to the land at a tremendous pace. To the left, in the
distance, she could see something shining: a broad disc of light in which
narrow shadows pivoted round the centre like the spokes of a wheel. She heard a
voice calling, "Hey! There!" and answered with a wild scream. So, he
could call yet! He was calling after her to stop. Never! . . . She tore through
the night, past the startled group of seaweed-gatherers who stood round their
lantern paralysed with fear at the unearthly screech coming from that fleeing
shadow. The men leaned on their pitchforks staring fearfully. A woman fell on
her knees, and, crossing herself, began to pray aloud. A little girl with her
ragged skirt full of slimy seaweed began to sob despairingly, lugging her
soaked burden close to the man who carried the light. Somebody said: "The
thing ran out towards the sea." Another voice exclaimed: "And the sea
is coming back! Look at the spreading puddles. Do you hear--you woman--there!
Get up!" Several voices cried together. "Yes, let us be off! Let the
accursed thing go to the sea!" They moved on, keeping close round the
light. Suddenly a man swore loudly. He would go and see what was the matter. It
had been a woman's voice. He would go. There were shrill protests from
women--but his high form detached itself from the group and went off running.
They sent an unanimous call of scared voices after him. A word, insulting and
mocking, came back, thrown at them through the darkness. A woman moaned. An old
man said gravely: "Such things ought to be left alone." They went on
slower, shuffling in the yielding sand and whispering to one another that
Millot feared nothing, having no religion, but that it would end badly some
day.
Susan met the incoming tide by the
Raven islet and stopped, panting, with her feet in the water. She heard the
murmur and felt the cold caress of the sea, and, calmer now, could see the
sombre and confused mass of the Raven on one side and on the other the long
white streak of Molene sands that are left high above the dry bottom of Fougere
Bay at every ebb. She turned round and saw far away, along the starred
background of the sky, the ragged outline of the coast. Above it, nearly facing
her, appeared the tower of Ploumar Church; a slender and tall pyramid shooting
up dark and pointed into the clustered glitter of the stars. She felt strangely
calm. She knew where she was, and began to remember how she came there--and
why. She peered into the smooth obscurity near her. She was alone. There was
nothing there; nothing near her, either living or dead.
The tide was creeping in quietly,
putting out long impatient arms of strange rivulets that ran towards the land
between ridges of sand. Under the night the pools grew bigger with mysterious
rapidity, while the great sea, yet far off, thundered in a regular rhythm along
the indistinct line of the horizon. Susan splashed her way back for a few yards
without being able to get clear of the water that murmured tenderly all around
and, suddenly, with a spiteful gurgle, nearly took her off her feet. Her heart
thumped with fear. This place was too big and too empty to die in. To-morrow
they would do with her what they liked. But before she died she must tell
them--tell the gentlemen in black clothes that there are things no woman can
bear. She must explain how it happened. . . . She splashed through a pool,
getting wet to the waist, too preoccupied to care. . . . She must explain.
"He came in the same way as ever and said, just so: 'Do you think I am
going to leave the land to those people from Morbihan that I do not know? Do
you? We shall see! Come along, you creature of mischance!' And he put his arms
out. Then, Messieurs, I said: 'Before God--never!' And he said, striding at me
with open palms: 'There is no God to hold me! Do you understand, you useless
carcase. I will do what I like.' And he took me by the shoulders. Then I,
Messieurs, called to God for help, and next minute, while he was shaking me, I
felt my long scissors in my hand. His shirt was unbuttoned, and, by the candle-
light, I saw the hollow of his throat. I cried: 'Let go!' He was crushing my
shoulders. He was strong, my man was! Then I thought: No! . . . Must I? . . .
Then take!--and I struck in the hollow place. I never saw him fall. . . . The
old father never turned his head. He is deaf and childish, gentlemen. . . .
Nobody saw him fall. I ran out . . . Nobody saw. . . ."
She had been scrambling amongst the
boulders of the Raven and now found herself, all out of breath, standing
amongst the heavy shadows of the rocky islet. The Raven is connected with the
main land by a natural pier of immense and slippery stones. She intended to
return home that way. Was he still standing there? At home. Home! Four idiots
and a corpse. She must go back and explain. Anybody would understand. . . .
Below her the night or the sea seemed
to pronounce distinctly--
"Aha! I see you at last!"
She started, slipped, fell; and
without attempting to rise, listened, terrified. She heard heavy breathing, a
clatter of wooden clogs. It stopped.
"Where the devil did you pass?"
said an invisible man, hoarsely.
She held her breath. She recognized
the voice. She had not seen him fall. Was he pursuing her there dead, or
perhaps . . . alive?
She lost her head. She cried from
the crevice where she lay huddled, "Never, never!"
"Ah! You are still there. You led me
a fine dance. Wait, my beauty, I must see how you look after all this. You
wait. . . ."
Millot was stumbling, laughing,
swearing meaninglessly out of pure satisfaction, pleased with himself for
having run down that fly-by-night. "As if there were such things as
ghosts! Bah! It took an old African soldier to show those clodhoppers. . . .
But it was curious. Who the devil was she?"
Susan listened, crouching. He was
coming for her, this dead man. There was no escape. What a noise he made
amongst the stones. . . . She saw his head rise up, then the shoulders. He was
tall--her own man! His long arms waved about, and it was his own voice sounding
a little strange . . . because of the scissors. She scrambled out quickly,
rushed to the edge of the causeway, and turned round. The man stood still on a
high stone, detaching himself in dead black on the glitter of the sky.
"Where are you going to?" he
called, roughly.
She answered, "Home!" and
watched him intensely. He made a striding, clumsy leap on to another boulder,
and stopped again, balancing himself, then said--
"Ha! ha! Well, I am going with you.
It's the least I can do. Ha! ha!
ha!"
She stared at him till her eyes
seemed to become glowing coals that burned deep into her brain, and yet she was
in mortal fear of making out the well-known features. Below her the sea lapped
softly against the rock with a splash continuous and gentle.
The man said, advancing another
step--
"I am coming for you. What do you
think?"
She trembled. Coming for her! There
was no escape, no peace, no hope. She looked round despairingly. Suddenly the
whole shadowy coast, the blurred islets, the heaven itself, swayed about twice,
then came to a rest. She closed her eyes and shouted--
"Can't you wait till I am dead!"
She was shaken by a furious hate
for that shade that pursued her in this world, unappeased even by death in its
longing for an heir that would be like other people's children.
"Hey! What?" said Millot,
keeping his distance prudently. He was saying to himself: "Look out! Some
lunatic. An accident happens soon."
She went on, wildly--
"I want to live. To live
alone--for a week--for a day. I must explain to them. . . . I would tear you to
pieces, I would kill you twenty times over rather than let you touch me while I
live. How many times must I kill you--you blasphemer! Satan sends you here. I
am damned too!"
"Come," said
Millot, alarmed and conciliating. "I am perfectly alive! . . . Oh, my
God!"
She had screamed,
"Alive!" and at once vanished before his eyes, as if the islet itself
had swerved aside from under her feet. Millot rushed forward, and fell flat
with his chin over the edge. Far below he saw the water whitened by her
struggles, and heard one shrill cry for help that seemed to dart upwards along
the perpendicular face of the rock, and soar past, straight into the high and
impassive heaven.
Madame Levaille sat, dry-eyed, on the
short grass of the hill side, with her thick legs stretched out, and her old
feet turned up in their black cloth shoes. Her clogs stood near by, and further
off the umbrella lay on the withered sward like a weapon dropped from the grasp
of a vanquished warrior. The Marquis of Chavanes, on horseback, one gloved hand
on thigh, looked down at her as she got up laboriously, with groans. On the
narrow track of the seaweed-carts four men were carrying inland Susan's body on
a hand-barrow, while several others straggled listlessly behind. Madame
Levaille looked after the procession. "Yes, Monsieur le Marquis," she
said dispassionately, in her usual calm tone of a reasonable old woman.
"There are unfortunate people on this earth. I had only one child. Only
one! And they won't bury her in consecrated ground!"
Her eyes filled suddenly, and a
short shower of tears rolled down the broad cheeks. She pulled the shawl close
about her. The Marquis leaned slightly over in his saddle, and said--
"It is very sad. You have all my
sympathy. I shall speak to the Cure. She was unquestionably insane, and the
fall was accidental. Millot says so distinctly. Good-day, Madame."
And he trotted off, thinking to
himself: "I must get this old woman appointed guardian of those idiots,
and administrator of the farm. It would be much better than having here one of
those other Bacadous, probably a red republican, corrupting my commune."
