A Humble Drama
Meetings constitute the charm of travelling. Who does not know the joy of coming, five hundred leagues from one’s native land, upon a man from Paris, a college friend, or a neighbour in the country? Who has not spent a night, unable to sleep, in the little jingling stagecoach of countries where steam is still unknown, beside a strange young woman, half seen by the gleam of the lantern when she clambered into the carriage at the door of a white house in a little town?
And, when morning comes, and brain and ears are still numbed by the perpetual ringing of the bells and the noisy clatter of the windows, how charming to see your pretty tousled neighbour open her eyes, look about her, arrange her rebellious tresses with the tips of her slim fingers, adjust her hat, feel with her skilful hand whether her corsets have not slipped, whether her person is as it should be, and her skirt not too crushed!
She gives you, too, a single cold, inquisitive glance. Then she settles herself into her corner and seems to have no eyes for anything but the landscape.
In spite of yourself, you stare at her all the time: you think of her the whole time in spite of yourself. What is she? Where has she come from? Where is she going to? In spite of yourself, you sketch a little romance in your mind. She is pretty; she seems charming! Happy man! … Life might be exquisite by her side. Who knows? Perhaps she is the woman necessary to our emotions, our dreams, our desires.
And how delicious, too, is the regret with which you see her get off at the gate of a country-house. A man is waiting there with two children and two servants. He takes her in his arms and kisses her as he helps her down. She stoops and takes up the little ones who are stretching out their hands, and caresses them lovingly; they go off down a path while the maids take the boxes which the conductor is handing down from the roof.
Goodbye! It is finished. You will never see her again. Goodbye to the woman who has spent the night at your side. You never knew her, never spoke to her; still you are a little sad when she goes. Goodbye!
I have many of these memories of travel, grave and gay.
I was in Auvergne, wandering on foot among those delightful French mountains, not too high, not too wild, but friendly and homely. I had climbed the Sancy, and was just going into a little inn, near a pilgrims’ chapel named Notre Dame de Vassivière, when I noticed an old woman, a strange, absurd figure, lunching by herself at the table inside.
She was at least seventy, tall, withered, and angular, with white hair arranged in old-fashioned sausage curls on her temples. She was dressed in the quaint and clumsy style of the wandering Englishwoman, like a person to whom clothes were a matter of complete indifference; she was eating an omelette and drinking water.
She had an odd expression, with restless eyes, the face of one whom life has treated harshly. I stared at her in spite of myself, wondering: “Who is she? What sort of thing is this woman’s life? Why is she wandering all alone in these mountains?”
She paid, then rose to go, readjusting upon her shoulders an extraordinary little shawl, whose two ends hung down over her arms. She took from a corner a long alpenstock covered with names engraved in the rusty iron, then walked out, straight and stiff, with the long strides of a postman setting off on his round.
A guide was waiting for her at the door. They moved off. I watched them descend the valley, along the road indicated by a line of high wooden crosses. She was taller than her companion, and seemed to walk faster than he.
Two hours later I was climbing up the brim of that deep funnel in the heart of which, in a vast and wonderful green cavity filled with trees, bushes, rocks, and flowers, lies Lake Pavin, so round that it looks as though it had been made with a compass, so clear and blue that one might suppose it a flood of azure poured down from the sky, so charming that one would like to live in a hut on the slope of the wood overlooking this crater where, quiet and cool, the water sleeps.
She was standing there motionless, gazing at the transparent water lying at the bottom of the dead volcano. She was standing as though she would peer beneath it, into its unknown depths, peopled, it is said, by trout of monstrous size who have devoured all the other fish. As I passed close to her, I fancied that two tears welled in her eyes. But she walked away with long strides to rejoin her guide, who had stopped in a tavern at the foot of the rise leading to the lake.
I did not see her again that day.
Next day, as night was falling, I arrived at the castle of Murol. The old fortress, a giant tower standing upon a peak in the centre of a large valley, at the crossing of three dales, rises towards the sky, brown, crannied, and battered, but round from its broad circular base to the crumbling turrets of its summit.
It is more impressive than any other ruin in its simple bulk, its majesty, its ancient air of power and austerity. It stands there solitary, high as a mountain, a dead queen, but still a queen of the valleys crouching under it. The visitor approaches by a pine-clad slope, enters by a narrow door, and stops at the foot of the walls, in the first enclosure, high above the whole countryside.
Within are fallen rooms, skeleton staircases, unknown pits, subterranean chambers, oubliettes, walls cleft through the middle, vaults still standing, none knows how, a maze of stones and crannies where grass grows and animals creep.
I was alone, roaming about this ruin.
Suddenly, behind a piece of wall, I caught sight of a human being, almost a phantom, as if it were the spirit of the ancient ruined building.
I started in amazement, almost in terror. Then I recognised the old woman I had already met twice.
She was weeping. She was weeping big tears, and held her handkerchief in her hand.
I turned to go. She spoke to me, ashamed at having been discovered unawares.
“Yes, monsieur, I am crying. … It does not happen often.”
“Excuse me, madame, for having disturbed you,” I stammered in confusion, not knowing what to answer. “Doubtless you are the victim of some misfortune.”
“Yes—no,” she murmured, “I am like a lost dog.”
And putting her handkerchief over her eyes, she burst into sobs.
I took her hands and tried to console her, touched by her very moving grief. And abruptly she began to tell me her history, as if she did not want to be left alone any longer to bear her grief.
“Oh! … Oh! … Monsieur. … If you knew … in what distress I live … in what distress. …
“I was happy. … I have a home … away in my own country. I cannot go back again, I shall never go back again, it is too cruel.
“I have a son. … It is he! It is he! Children do not know. … One has so short a time to live! If I saw him now, I might not know him! How I loved him! How I loved him! Even before he was born, when I felt him stir in my body. And then afterwards. How I embraced him, caressed him, cherished him. If you only knew how many nights I have spent watching him sleep, thinking of him. I was mad about him. He was eight years old when his father sent him away to boarding-school. It was all over. He was no longer mine. Oh! My God! He used to come every Sunday, that was all.
“Then he went to college, in Paris. He only came four times a year; and each time I marvelled at the changes in him, at finding him grown bigger without having seen him grow. I was robbed of his childhood, his trust, the love he would never have withdrawn from me, all my joy in feeling him grow and become a little man.
“I saw him four times a year! Think of it! At each of his visits his body, his eyes, his movements, his voice, his laugh, were no longer the same, were no longer mine. A child alters so swiftly, and, when you are not there to watch him alter, it is so sad; you will never find him again!
“One year he arrived with down upon his cheeks! He! My son! I was amazed … and—would you believe it?—sad. I scarcely dared to kiss him. Was this my baby, my small wee thing with fair curls, my baby of long ago, the darling child I had laid in long clothes upon my knee, who had drunk my milk with his little greedy lips, this tall brown boy who no longer knew how to caress me, who seemed to love me chiefly as a duty, who called me ‘mother’ for convention’s sake, and who kissed me on the forehead when I longed to crush him in my arms?
“My husband died. Then it was the turn of my parents. Then I lost my two sisters. When Death enters a house, it is as though he hastened to finish as much work as possible so that he need not return for a long time. He leaves but one or two alive to mourn the rest.
“I lived alone. In those days my big son was dutiful enough. I hoped to live and die near him.
“I went to join him, so that we might live together. He had acquired a young man’s ways; he made me realise that I worried him. I went away; I was wrong; but I suffered so to feel that I, his mother, was intruding. I went back home.
“I hardly saw him again.
“He married. What joy! At last we were to be united again forever. I should have grandchildren! He had married an English girl who took a dislike to me. Why? Perhaps she felt that I loved him too much?
“I was again forced to go away. I found myself alone. Yes, monsieur.
“Then he went to England. He was going to live with them, his wife’s parents. Do you understand? They have him, they have my son for their own! They have stolen him from me! He writes to me every month. At first he used to come and see me. Now he comes no more.
“It is four years since I have seen him. His face was wrinkled and his hair was turning white. Was it possible? This man, this almost old man, my son? My little pink baby of long ago? Doubtless I shall not see him again.
“And I travel all the year. I go to the right and to the left, as you see, all by myself.
“I am like a lost dog. Goodbye, monsieur. Do not stay near me, it hurts me to have told you all this.”
And, as I walked down the hill again, I turned round, and saw the old woman standing on a cracked wall, gazing at the mountains, the long valley, and Lake Chambon in the distance.
The skirts of her dress and the queer little shawl on her thin shoulders fluttered in the wind like a flag.