King of Camargue Part 7

And so she had come forward, small but formidable--the queen! She knew also that in former times, in the days of pagan Europe, an immortal G.o.ddess had issued from the sea, had sprung forth, fair and naked, like a marvellous flower, and, standing on the blue waves, her feet resting in a sh.e.l.l of mother-of-pearl, had long held sway over men--before the reign of Jesus Christ.

Renaud, turning in his saddle, saw the gipsy standing there, still naked, waving her arms in the sunlight, as if she wished still, from afar, to hold Livette's betrothed spellbound and fascinated by her beauty.

The sun disappeared below the horizon, and the naked woman's figure, even more mysterious in the gathering twilight, was outlined in black against a coppery red sky.

VIII

ON THE BENCH

From Saintes-Maries, whither he went to ask how many bulls he was expected to bring on the day of the fete, Renaud rode away at once to the Chateau d'Avignon.

He was in haste to see Livette once more, and sitting by her side to forget the scene of the afternoon, to which, despite his efforts, his mind constantly reverted.

A ride of four or five leagues and he reached his destination.

Livette and her father and grandmother were sitting just outside the farm-house, enjoying the fresh air on the stone bench against the facade of the chateau, among the old climbing rose-bushes which frame the windows above with their bunches of green leaves interspersed with flowers.

This was also one of the favorite resorts of our lovers, who liked to have above their heads the perfumed foliage, to which one of the nightingales from the park often came to sing.

"Ah! good-evening, Jacques."

"Good-evening, all."

"What brings you so late? You have dined, of course?"

"I ate some anchovies at the Saintes----"

"They're good for nothing but to give you an appet.i.te. Would you like something else? you have only to speak."

"Thanks, Master Audiffret. I'll just go and look after Blanchet in the stable and then come back. I won't go to the _ja.s.s_ to-night. I'll sleep in the hay-loft with the horses."

Master Audiffret, with his pipe between his lips, rose and followed Renaud as far as the door of the stable, and from there watched him rub down his horse.

"Whenever you please, Master Audiffret, you can take him back for Livette. I don't find any faults in him; far from it. He is a good horse, and very gentle."

"He is quiet with you because you tire him out, you see; but she didn't use him every day, not by any means; I am always afraid for her. If she takes a fancy to ride him sometimes, you can lend him to her, and take the first horse that comes along for yourself. By the way, I hope you will soon have your Cabri again. Somebody saw Rampal yesterday in Crau. He was riding your horse, so he hasn't sold him, at all events. It's fair to suppose he means to bring him back to you."

"Oh! I will go to meet him," said Jacques, "for as to thinking he will bring him back to me--oh! no; he would have done that before now!--Can you tell me, Audiffret, where Rampal was seen yesterday?"

"Between Tibert's farm and Icard's in Crau. Right there, as you know, in the middle of a bog, is a hut you can only get to by a plank walk built on piles and covered by the water--you can only tell where it is, when you know the place, by stakes sticking up at intervals the whole length of the walk. I have an idea he means to go in hiding there, the beggar, like the deserter who went there to pa.s.s his time of service----"

"Aha! he has gone to the Conscript's Hut, has he? Very good; I will go to see him there, never fear!" said Renaud.

Blanchet, having been well rubbed down, was grinding the good lucern between his teeth. Renaud went out of the stable, and with Audiffret sat down beside Livette and the grandmother.

All four kept silence for a long moment. Nothing could be heard but the unceasing, melancholy croaking of the frogs, and beneath it, but indistinguishable, the dull murmuring of the two Rhones and the sea.

The sky was swarming with innumerable tiny stars, which seemed to answer the various noises of the palpitating moor; and, just as the waters of the Rhone, after it rushes into the blue ocean, pursue their own course for a long while therein, unmingled, without losing their earthy color; so the Milky-Way, made of a dust of stars, pursued its course, easily distinguishable, through the ocean of starry worlds.

Renaud had a feeling of constraint.

When he joined his fiancee, he did not feel all that he ordinarily felt--a joyful impulse to run to meet her, a sort of oppression at the pit of the stomach, a sudden delicious rush of the blood to the throbbing heart!--And Livette, too, so soon, was conscious of a vague inexplicable feeling at the bottom of her heart that something was wrong. There was something between them! Indeed, he had, for the first time, something to conceal from her; and, thinking that it might, that it must be apparent, he suddenly said:

"I am not well to-night."

"Look out for the fever!" said Audiffret. "I know it is not as frequent or as dangerous as it used to be, but you must be on your guard, all the same! Be on your guard, and take the remedy. Up in the pharmacy of the chateau are the registers of the time the land was first exploited--the time when the Chateau d'Avignon people were gaining a little arable land from the swamps every day. Why, men went to the hospital, fifteen, twenty a day. And such doses of quinine, my children! It is all written down in the _Livre de Raison_ up there. In those days, all the farms hereabout had the same kind of a book, called by the same name, just as sailors have a log-book. Those were the days of good order and gallantry. The peasant-women in those days didn't try to copy Parisian bourgeoises,--eh, grandmamma?--by wearing dresses that didn't suit them, instead of the old-fas.h.i.+oned gowns that made them attractive because they were so becoming."

"Yes," sighed the grandmother, "this is the age of pride, and my time has gone by."

That is the common remark of all our old peasants.

"People didn't read so many newspapers in those days," continued Audiffret, "they didn't worry so much about the affairs of the whole world, and every man paid much more attention to his own affairs.

Things went better for it. Landowners lived on their estates and raised families, instead of going to Paris and dying there, of pride or debt or something else. The _Livre de Raison_ up yonder describes our ancestors' battles with the swamps and the fever. The pharmacy is still in good order, with the scales and the jars in the pigeon-holes, under the dust. And the book tells everything, diseases and deaths.

To-day, hardly any one dies of the fever in our neighborhood. It is dying out. The dikes and ca.n.a.ls have done good service, and this Cochin China of France, as that sailor called it that I took to see the Giraud rice-fields, this Camargue of ours is as healthy to-day as Crau!--However, be on your guard, I tell you, and take the remedy!

don't wait till to-morrow; Livette will give you what you need. Now, I am going to bed. Stay up a little longer, young people, if you choose. Are you coming, grandma?"

"No, I'll stay out a moment longer with the young folks," said the old woman.

Audiffret knocked the ashes out of his pipe against the corner of the bench, and having put it in his pocket, went up to bed.

Silence reigned upon the bench.

The grandmother was tired and sleepy: every little while she would raise her head as if suddenly awakened,--then it would begin to fall forward again, slowly, slowly----

"A heavy dew is falling," observed Livette, suddenly.

"Yes, demoiselle."

"See!" said she ingenuously, holding out her arm so that he could feel the dampness on the sleeve of her dress. But he did not put out his hand. He was not all Livette's that evening, as usual. Strangely enough, she did not frighten him that evening. He was not, as usual, overcome with diffidence in her presence. She no longer dominated him.

And he was angry with himself. He suffered. He realized that his thoughts were more frequently busied with the memory of the day than with his sweetheart, who was sitting so near him.

"What are you thinking about?" said Livette, who had had her eyes upon him for a moment past, as if she could see his face distinctly, although they were sitting in the shadow. Beyond question, she felt that his thoughts were elsewhere. There is nothing more subtle than a lover's divination.

"I am thinking," said Renaud, a long minute after the question, "about my horse, which I propose to take back from Rampal to-morrow if he can be found in Camargue or Crau."

"And then?"

"And then?" he repeated--"I was thinking of the Conscript's Hut, where he is at this moment, perhaps,--in hiding."

"And of what else?" Livette insisted.

"Oh! how do I know! of the fever--of all we have just been saying----"

"Alas!" said the maiden, "and not at all of me, Renaud? do you not think of me any more?"