In and out of Three Normandy Inns Part 3

OUT ON A MUSSEL-BED.

That same afternoon we were out on the mussel bed.

The tide was at its lowest. Before us, for an acre or more, there lay a wide, wet, stretch of brown mud. Near the beach was a strip of yellow sand; here and there it had contracted into narrow ridges, elsewhere it had expanded into scroll-like patterns. The bed of mud and slime ran out from this yellow sand strip--a surface diversified by puddles of muddy water, by pools, clear, ribbed with wavelets, and by little heaps of stones covered with lichens. The surface of the bed, whether pools or puddles, or rock-heaps, or sea-weeds ma.s.sed, was covered by thousands and thousands of black, lozenge-shaped bivalves. These bivalves were the mussels. Over this bed of sh.e.l.ls and slime there moved and toiled a whole villageful of old women. Where the sea met the edges of the mud-flat the throng of women was thickest. The line of the ever-receding sh.o.r.e was marked by the shapes of countless bent figures.

The heads of these stooping women were on a level with their feet, not one stood upright. All that the eye could seize for outline was the dome made by the bent hips, and the backs that closed against the knees as a blade is clasped into a knife handle. The oblong ma.s.ses that were lifted now and then, from the level of the sabots, resolved themselves into the outlines of women's heads and women's faces. These heads were tied up in cotton kerchiefs or in cotton nightcaps; these being white, together with the long, thick, ap.r.o.ns also white, were in startling contrast to the blue of the sky and to the changing sea-tones.

Between these women and the incoming tide, twice daily, was fought a persistent, unrelenting duel. It was a duel, on the part of the fish-wives, against time, against the fate of the tides, against the blind forces of nature. For this combat the women were armed to the teeth, clad as they were in their skeleton muscular leanness; helmeted with their heads of iron; visored in the bronze of their skin and in wrinkles that laughed at the wind. In these sinewy, toughened bodies there was a grim strength that appeared to know neither ache nor fatigue nor satiety.

High, clear, strong, came their voices. The tones were the tones that come from deep chests, and with a prolonged, sustained capacity for enduring the toil of men. But the high-pitched laughter proved them women, as did their loud and unceasing gossip. The battle of the voices rose above the swash of the waves, above, also, another sound, as incessant as the women's chatter and the swish of the water as it hissed along the mud-flat's edges.

[Ill.u.s.tration: A SALE OF MUSSELS--VILLERVILLE]

This was the swift, sharp, saw-like cutting among the stones and the slime, the sc.r.a.pe, sc.r.a.pe of the hundred of knives into the moist earth. This ceaseless sc.r.a.ping, lunging, digging, made a new world of sound--strange, sinister, uncanny. It was neither of the sea nor yet of the land--it was a noise that seemed inseparable from this tongue of mud, that also appeared to be neither of the heavens above nor of the earth, from the bowels out of which it had sprung.

The mussels cling to their slime with extraordinary tenacity; only an expert, who knows the exact point of attachment between the hard sh.e.l.l and its soil, can remove a mussel with dexterity. These women, as they dipped their knives into the thick mud, swept the diminutive black bivalve with a trenchant movement, as a Moor might cleave a human head with one turn of his moon-shaped sword. Into the bronzed, wrinkled old hands the mussels then were slipped as if they had been so many dainty sweets.

New and pungent smells were abroad on this strip of slime. Sea smells, strong and salty; smells of the moist and damp soil, the bitter-sweet of wetted weeds, the aromatic flavor that sh.e.l.l-life yields, and the smells also of rotten and decaying fish--all these were inextricably blended in the air, that was of the keenness of a frost-blight for freshness, and yet was warm with the softness of a June sun.

Meanwhile the voices of the women were nearing. Some of the bent heads were lifted as we approached. Here and there a coif, or cotton cap, nodded, and the slit of a smile would gape between the nose and the meeting chin. A high good humor appeared to reign among the groups; a carnival of merriment laughed itself out in coa.r.s.e, cracked laughter; loud was the play of the jests, hoa.r.s.e and guttural the gibes that were abroad on the still air, from old mouths that uttered strong, deep notes.

"Why should they all be old?" we queried. We were near enough to see the women face to face now, since we were far out along the outer edges of the bed; we were so near the sea that the tide was beginning to wash us back, along with the fringe of the diggers.

"They're not--they only look old," replied Renard, stopping a moment to sketch in a group directly in front. "This life makes old women of them in no time. How old, for instance, should you think that girl was, over there?"

The girl whom he designated was the only figure of youth we had seen on the bed. She was working alone and remote from the others. She wore no coif. Her ma.s.ses of red, wavy hair shaded a face already deeply seamed with lines of premature age. A moment later she pa.s.sed close to us. She was bent almost double beneath a huge, reeking basket, heaped with its pile of wet mussels. She was carrying it to a distant pool. Once beside the pool, with swift, dexterous movement the heavy basket was slipped from the bent back, the load of mussels falling in a shower into the miniature lake. The next instant she was stamping on the heap, to plunge them with her sabot still further into the pool. She was was.h.i.+ng her load. Soon she shouldered the basket again, filling it with the cleansed mussels. A moment later she joined the long, toiling line of women that were perpetually forming and reforming on their way to the carts. These latter were drawn up near the beach, their contents guarded by boys and old men, who received the loads the women had dug, dragging the whole, later, up the hill.

"She has the Venus de Milo lines, that girl," Renard continued, critically, with his eyes on her, as she now repa.s.sed us. The figure was drawn up at its full height. It had in truth a n.o.ble dignity of outline. There was a Spartan vigor and severity in the lean, uncorseted shape, with the bust thrown out against the sky--the bust of a young warrior rather than a woman. There was a hardy, masculine freedom in the pliable motion of her straight back, a ripple with muscles that played easily beneath the close bodice, in her arms, and her finely turned ankles and legs, that were bared below the knee. The very simplicity of her costume helped to mark the Greek severity of her figure. She wore a short skirt of some coa.r.s.e hempen stuff, covered with a thick ap.r.o.n made of sail-cloth, her feet thrust into black sabots, while the upper part of her body was covered with an unbleached chemise, widely open at the throat.

She had the Phidian breadth and the modern charm--that charm which troubles and disturbs, haunting the mind with vague, unsatisfied suggestions of something finer than is seen, something n.o.bler than the gross physical envelope reveals.

"I must have her--for my Salon picture," calmly remarked Renard, after a long moment of scrutiny, his eyes following the lean, stately figure in its grave walk across the weeds and slime. "Yes, I must have her."

"Won't she be hard to get? How can she be made to sit, a stiffened image of clay, after this life of freedom, this athletic struggle out here--with these winds and tides?"

One of us, at least, was stirred at Renard's calm a.s.sumption--the a.s.sumption so common to artists, who, when they see a good thing at once count on its possessors.h.i.+p, as if the whole world, indeed, were eternally sitting, agape with impatience, awaiting the advent of some painter to sketch in its portrait.

"Oh, it'll be easy enough. She makes two francs a day with her six basketfuls. I'll offer her three, and she'll drop like a shot."

"I'll make it a red picture," he continued, dipping his brushes into a little case of paints he held on his thumb; "the mussel-bed a reddish violet, the sky red in the horizon, and the girl in the foreground, with that torrent of hair as the high light. I've been hunting for that hair all over Europe." And he began sketching her in at once.

"_Bonjour, mere_, how goes it?" He nodded as he sketched at a wrinkled, bent figure, who was smiling out at him from beneath her load of mussels.

"_Pas mal--e' vous, M'sieur Renard?_"

"All right--and the mortgage, how goes that?"

"Pas si mal--it'll be paid off next year."

"Who is she? One of your models?"

"Yes, last year's: she was my belle--the belle of the mussel-bed for me, a year ago. Now there's a lesson in patience for you. She's sixty-five, if she's a minute; she's been working here, on this mussel-bed, for five years, to pay the mortgage off her farm; when that is done, her daughter Augustine can marry; Augustine's _dot_ is the farm."

"Augustine--at our inn?"

"The very same."

"And the blonde--the handsome man at the creamery, he is the future--?"

"I'm sorry to hear such things of Augustine," smiled Renard, as he worked; "she must be indulging in an entr'acte. No, the gentleman of Augustine's--well, perhaps not of her affections, but of her mother's choice, is a peasant who works the farm; the creamery is only an incidental diversion. Again, I'm sorry to hear such sad things of Augustine--"

"Horrors!"

"Exactly. That's the way it's done--over here. Will you join me--over there?" Renard blushed a little. "I mean I wish to follow that girl--she's going to dig out yonder. Will you come?"

Meanwhile the light was changing, and so was the tide. The women were coming inward, washed up to the sh.o.r.e along with the gra.s.ses and seaweeds. A band of diggers suddenly started, with full basket loads, toward a fis.h.i.+ng boat that had dropped anchor close in to the sh.o.r.e; it was a Honfleur craft, come to buy mussels for the Paris market. The women trudged through the water, up to their waists; they cl.u.s.tered about the boats like so many laden beasts. But their shrill bargaining proved them women.

Meanwhile that gentle hissing along the level stretch of brown mud was the tide. It was pus.h.i.+ng the women upward, as if it had been a hand--the hand of a relentless fate--instead of a little, liquid kiss.

The sun, as it dipped, made a glory of splendor out of this commonplace bank. It soaked the mud in gold; it was in a royal mood, throwing its largess with reckless abundance to this poor of earth--to the slime and the mud. The long, yellow, lichen leaves ma.s.sed on the rocks were dyed as if lying in a yellow bath. The sands were richly colored; the ridges were brown in the shadows and burnished at the tops. In the distance the sea weeds were black, sable furs, covering the velvet robes of earth. The sea out beyond was as rosy as a babe, and the sails were dazzlingly white as they floated past, between the sky and the distant purple line of the horizon.

Meanwhile the tide is coming in.

The procession of the women toward the carts grows in numbers. The thick sabots plunge into the mud, the water squirts out of the wooden shoes as the strong heels press into them. The straw, the universal stocking of these women-diggers, is reeking with dirt. Volumes of slush are splashed on the bared skinny ankles, on the wet skirts, wet to the waists, and on the coa.r.s.e sail-cloth ap.r.o.ns tied beneath the hanging bosoms. The women are all drenched now in a bath of filth. The baskets are reeking with filth also, they rain showers of dirt along the bent backs. A long line of the bent figures has formed on their way to the carts. There is, however, a thick fringe of diggers left who still dispute their rights with the sea.

But the tide is pus.h.i.+ng them inward, upward. And all the while the light is getting more and more golden, s.h.i.+mmery, radiant. Under this light, beneath this golden mantel of color, these creatures appear still more terrible. As they bend over, their faces tirelessly held downward on a level with their hands, they seem but gnomes; surely they are huge, undeveloped embryos of women, with neither head nor trunk.

For this light is pitiless. It makes them even more a part of this earth, out of which they seem to have sprung, a strange amorphous growth. The bronzed skins are dyed in the gold as if to match with the hue of the mud; the wet skirts are shreds, gray and brown tatters, not so good in texture as the lichens, and the ragged jerseys seem only bits of the more distant weeds woven into tissues to hide mercifully the lean, sinewy backs.

The tide is almost in.

In the shallows the sunset is fading. Here and there are brilliant little pools, each pool a mirror, and each mirror reflects a different picture. Here is a second sky--faintly blue, with a trailing saffron scarf of cloud; there, the inverted silhouettes of two fish-wives are conical shapes, their coifs and wet skirts startlingly distinct in tones; beyond, sails a fantastic fleet, with polychrome sails, each spar, masthead, and wrinkled sail as sharply outlined as if chiselled in relief. Presently these miniature pictures fade as the light fades.

Blacker grows the mud, and there is less and less of it; the silhouetted shapes of the diggers are seen no more; they are following the carts up the steep cliffs; even the sky loses its color and fades also. And the little pools that have been a burning orange, then a darkening violet, gay with pictured worlds, in turn pale to gray, and die into the universal blackness.

The tide is in.

It is flowing, rich and full, crested with foam beneath the osier hedges. We hear it break with a sudden dash and splutter against the cliff parapets. And the mud-bank is no more.

Half an hour later, from our chamber windows we looked forth through the dusk across at the mussel bed. The great mud-bank, all that black acreage of slime and sea-weed, the eager, struggling band of toiling fish wives, all was gone; it was all as if it had not been--would never be again. The water hissed along the beach; it broke in rhythmic, sonorous measure against the parapet. Surely there had never been any beds, or any mussels, or any toiling fish-wives; or if there had, it was all a world that the sea had washed up, and then as quietly, as heedlessly, as pitilessly had obliterated.

It was the very epitome of life itself.

CHAPTER V.

THE VILLAGE.