The Works of Guy de Maupassant Volume V Part 7

She felt a little rea.s.sured, and raised her head, which was covered with a cloud of lace.

"I love you already, dear," she said, with a smile.

He took his wife's little slender fingers in his mouth, and, his voice changed by this living gag, he asked:

"Will you give me a proof of your love?"

The question frightened her again, and, only remembering her father's words, and not quite understanding what she said:

"I am yours, dear," she answered.

He covered her hand with humid kisses, and, slowly rising, he bent towards her face, which she again began to hide. Suddenly he threw one arm across the bed, winding it around his wife over the clothes, and slipped his other arm under the bolster, which he raised with her head upon it; then he asked, in a low whisper:

"Then you will make room for me beside you?"

She had an instinctive fear, and stammered out: "Oh, not yet, I entreat you."

He seemed disappointed and a little hurt; then he went on in a voice that was still pleading, but a little more abrupt:

"Why not now, since we have got to come to it sooner or later?"

She did not like him for saying that, but, perfectly resigned and submissive, she said, for the second time:

"I am yours, dear."

Then he went quickly into his dressing-room, and she could distinctly hear the rustling of his clothes as he took them off, the jingling of the money in his pockets, the noise his boots made as he let them drop on the floor. All at once he ran across the room in his drawers and socks to put his watch on the mantelpiece; then he returned to the other room, where he moved about a little while longer. Jeanne turned quickly over to the other side and shut her eyes when she heard him coming. She nearly started out of bed when she felt a cold, hairy leg slide against hers, and, distractedly hiding her face in her hands, she moved right to the edge of the bed, almost crying with fear and horror. He took her in his arms, although her back was turned to him, and eagerly kissed her neck, the lace of her nightcap, and the embroidered collar of her night-dress. Filled with a horrible dread, she did not move, and then she felt his strong hands caressing her. She gasped for breath at this brutal touch, and felt an intense longing to escape and hide herself somewhere out of this man's reach. Soon he lay still, and she could feel the warmth of his body against her back. She did not feel so frightened then, and all at once the thought flashed across her mind that she had only to turn round and her lips would touch his.

At last he seemed to get impatient, and, in a sorrowful voice, he said:

"Then you will not be my little wife?"

"Am I not your wife already?" she said, through her hands.

"Come now, my dear, don't try to make a fool of me," he answered, with a touch of bad temper in his voice.

She felt very sorry when she heard him speak like that, and with a sudden movement she turned towards him to ask his pardon. He pa.s.sionately seized her in his arms and imprinted burning kisses all over her face and neck. She had taken her hands from her face and lay still, making no response to his efforts, her thoughts so confused that she could understand nothing, until suddenly she felt a sharp pain, and then she began to moan and writhe in his arms.

What happened next? She did not know, for her head was in a whirl. She was conscious of nothing more until she felt him raining grateful kisses on her lips. Then he spoke to her and she had to answer; then he made other attempts, which she repelled with horror, and as she struggled she felt against her chest the thick hair she had already felt against her leg, and she drew back in dismay. Tired at last of entreating her without effect, he lay still on his back; then she could think. She had expected something so different, and this destruction of her hopes, this shattering of her expectations of delight, filled her with despair, and she could only say to herself: "That, then, is what he calls being his wife; that is it, that is it."

For a long time she lay thus, feeling very miserable, her eyes wandering over the tapestry on the walls, with its tale of love. As Julien did not speak or move, she slowly turned her head towards him, and then she saw that he was asleep, with his mouth half opened and his face quite calm.

Asleep! she could hardly believe it, and it made her feel more indignant, more outraged than his brutal pa.s.sion had done. How could he sleep on such a night? There was no novelty for him, then, in what had pa.s.sed between them? She would rather he had struck her, or bruised her with his odious caresses till she had lost consciousness, than that he should have slept. She leant on her elbow, and bent towards him to listen to the breath which sometimes sounded like a snore as it pa.s.sed through his lips.

Daylight came, dim at first, then brighter, then pink, then radiant.

Julien opened his eyes, yawned, stretched his arms, looked at his wife, smiled, and asked:

"Have you slept well, dear?"

She noticed with great surprise that he said "thou" to her now, and she replied:

"Oh, yes; have you?"

"I? Oh, very well indeed," he answered, turning and kissing her. Then he began to talk, telling her his plans, and using the word "economy" so often that Jeanne wondered. She listened to him without very well understanding what he said, and, as she looked at him, a thousand thoughts pa.s.sed rapidly through her mind.

Eight o'clock struck.

"We must get up," he said; "we shall look stupid if we stay in bed late to-day;" and he got up first.

When he had finished dressing, he helped his wife in all the little details of her toilet, and would not hear of her calling Rosalie. As he was going out of the room, he stopped to say:

"You know, when we are by ourselves, we can call each other 'thee' and 'thou,' but we had better wait a little while before we talk like that before your parents. It will sound quite natural when we come back after our honeymoon." And then he went downstairs.

Jeanne did not go down till lunch-time; and the day pa.s.sed exactly the same as usual, without anything extraordinary happening. There was only an extra man in the house.

V

Four days after the wedding, the berlin in which they were to travel to Ma.r.s.eilles arrived. After the anguish of that first night, Jeanne soon became accustomed to Julien's kisses and affectionate caresses, though their more intimate relations still revolted her. When they went away she had quite regained her gayety of heart, and the baroness was the only one who showed any emotion at the parting. Just as the carriage was going off, she put a heavy purse in her daughter's hand.

"That is for any little thing you may want to buy," she said.

Jeanne dropped it into her pocket and the carriage started.

"How much did your mother give you in that purse?" asked Julien in the evening.

Jeanne had forgotten all about it, so she turned it out on her knees, and found there were two thousand francs in gold.

"What a lot of things I shall be able to buy!" she cried, clapping her hands.

At the end of a week they arrived at Ma.r.s.eilles, where the heat was terrible, and the next day they embarked on the _Roi Louis_, the little packet-boat which calls at Ajaccio on its way to Naples, and started for Corsica. It seemed to Jeanne as if she were in a trance which yet left her the full possession of all her senses, and she could hardly believe she was really going to Corsica, the birthplace of Napoleon, with its wild undergrowth, its bandits, and its mountains. She and her husband stood side by side on the deck of the boat watching the cliffs of Provence fly past. Overhead was a bright blue sky, and the waves seemed to be getting thicker and firmer under the burning heat of the sun.

"Do you remember when we went to Etretat in old Lastique's boat?" asked Jeanne; and, instead of answering her, Julien dropped a kiss right on her ear.

The steamer's paddles churned up the sea, and behind the boat, as far as the eye could reach, lay a long foaming track where the troubled waves frothed like champagne. All at once an immense dolphin leapt out of the water a few fathoms ahead, and then dived in again head foremost. It startled Jeanne, and she threw herself in Julien's arms with a little cry of fear; then she laughed at her terror, and watched for the reappearance of the enormous fish. In a few seconds up it came again, like a huge mechanical toy; then it dived again, and again disappeared; then came two more, then three, then six, which gamboled round the boat, and seemed to be escorting their large wooden brother with the iron fins. Sometimes they were on the left of the boat, sometimes on the right, and, one following the other in a kind of game, they would leap into the air, describe a curve, and replunge into the sea one after the other. Jeanne clapped her hands, delighted at each reappearance of the big, pliant fish, and felt a childish enjoyment in watching them.

Suddenly they disappeared, rose to the surface a long way out to sea, then disappeared for good, and Jeanne felt quite sorry when they went away.

The calm, mild, radiant evening drew on; there was not a breath of air to cause the smallest ripple on the sea; the sun was slowly sinking towards that part of the horizon beyond which lay the land of burning heat, Africa, whose glow could almost be felt across the ocean; then, when the sun had quite disappeared, a cool breath of wind, so faint that it could not be called a breeze, came over the sea. There were all the horrible smells of a packet-boat in their cabin, so Jeanne and Julien wrapped themselves in their cloaks and lay down side by side on deck.

Julien went to sleep directly, but Jeanne lay looking up at the host of stars which sparkled with so bright and clear a light in this soft Southern sky; then the monotonous noise of the engines made her drowsy, and at last she fell asleep. In the morning she was awakened by the voices of the sailors cleaning the boat, and she aroused her husband and got up. The sea was still all around them, but straight ahead something gray could be faintly seen in the dawn; it looked like a bank of strange-shaped clouds, pointed and jagged, lying on the waves. This vague outline gradually became more distinct, until, standing out against the brightening sky, a long line of mountain-peaks could be seen. It was Corsica, hidden behind a light veil of mist.

The sun rose, throwing black shadows around and below every prominence, and each peak had a crown of light, while all the rest of the island remained enveloped in mist.

The captain, a little elderly man, bronzed, withered, and toughened by the rough salt winds, came up on deck.

"Can you smell my lady over there?" he asked Jeanne, in a voice that thirty years of command, and shouting above the noise of the wind, had made hoa.r.s.e.

She had indeed noticed a strong, peculiar odor of herbs and aromatic plants.

"It's Corsica that smells like that, madame," went on the captain. "She has a perfumed breath, just like a pretty woman. I am a Corsican, and I should know that smell five miles off, if I'd been away twenty years.