For Sale
To set out on foot, when the sun is just rising, and walk through the dew, by the side of the fields, at the verge of the quiet sea, what ecstasy!
What ecstasy! It enters in through the eyes with the radiant light, through the nostrils with the sharp air, through the skin with the caressing wind.
Why do we retain, so clear, so precious, so sharp a memory of a few moments of passionate union with the Earth, the memory of a swift divine emotion, of the almost caressing greeting of a countryside revealed by a twist of the road, at the mouth of a valley, at the edge of a river, just as if we had come upon a charming and complaisant young girl?
I remember one day, among many. I was walking along the coast of Brittany towards the outthrust headland of Finistère. I walked quickly, thinking of nothing at all, along the edge of the water. This was in the neighbourhood of Quimperlé, in the loveliest and most adorable part of Brittany.
It was a morning in spring, one of those mornings in which one is again just twenty, a morning to revive dead hopes and give back the dreams of first youth.
I walked between the cornfields and the sea, along a road no better than a path. The corn was quite motionless, and the waves lifted very gently. The air was filled with the fragrance of ripening fields and the salt scent of the seaweed. I walked without a thought in my head, straight forward, continuing a journey begun fifteen days before, a tramp round the coast of Brittany. I felt gloriously fit, content, light of feet and light of heart. I just walked.
I thought of nothing. Why think of anything in hours filled by an instinctive happiness, a profound physical happiness, the happiness of the beasts of the fields and the birds soaring in the blue spaces beneath the sun? I heard the far-off sound of hymn-singing. A procession perhaps, since this was Sunday. Then I rounded a little headland, stood still, amazed with delight. Five large fishing-boats came into sight, filled with people, men, women, and children, on their way to the Indulgence at Plouneven.
They hugged the coast, moving slowly, helped scarcely at all by the soft, hardly breathing wind which swelled the brown sails faintly and then, as if wearied out, let them fall, all slack, round the masts.
The clumsy boats moved slowly, filled with such a crowd of folk. And the whole crowd was singing. The men standing against the sides of the boats, their heads covered with wide hats, sang their deep notes lustily, the women shrilled the treble air, and the thin voices of the children pierced that devout and monstrous uproar like the tuneless squeak of fifes.
The voyagers in all five boats shouted the same hymn, whose monotonous rhythm rose to the quiet sky, and the five boats sailed one behind the other, close together.
They passed close by in front of me, and I saw them draw away, I heard their song sink and die upon the air.
And I fell dreaming delightful dreams, as youth will dream, absurd divine dreams.
How swiftly it is gone, the age of dreams, the only happy age in a whole lifetime. No one is ever lonely, ever sad, ever gloomy or cast down, who bears within himself that most wonderful power of wandering, as soon as he is left to himself, into a world of happy dreams. What a faery world, where anything may happen in the audacious imagination of the dreamer who roams therein! How adorable life appears covered in the gold dust of dreams.
Alas, those days are done!
I fell dreaming. Of what? Of all that a man never ceases to hope for, all that he desires, riches, honour, women.
And I walked on, taking great strides, my hand caressing the yellow locks of the corn which bowed itself under my fingers and thrilled my skin as if I had touched living hair.
I made my way round a little promontory and saw, at the end of a narrow open beach, a whitewalled house built above three terraces that came down to the shore.
Why does this house send through me a shiver of delight? Do I know it? Sometimes, in such wanderings, we come upon corners of the country that we seem to have known for a very long time, so familiar are they to us, so do they wake a response in our hearts. Is it possible that we have never seen them before, that we have not lived in them in some former life? Everything about them stirs us, fills us with the most profound delight, the gentle swell of the horizon, the ordered trees, the colour of the soil.
A charming house, rising from its high steps. Large fruit-trees had established themselves along the terraces which came down to the water, like giant stairs. And on the rim of each terrace, like a crown of gold, ran a border of Spanish broom in full flower.
I halted in my tracks, possessed with a sudden love for this dwelling-place. How I would have liked to own it, to live there, forever!
I drew near the door, my heart beating quickly with envious desire, and saw, on one of the pillars of the gate, a big placard: “For Sale.”
I felt a sharp thrill of delight, as if this dwelling had been offered to me, as if I had been given it. Why, yes, why? I do not know.
“For Sale.” Then it no longer belonged to any special person, could belong to anyone on earth, to me, to me! Why this joy, this sense of utter delight, deep incomprehensible delight? I knew well enough, however, that I could not buy it. How could I pay for it? No matter, it was for sale. The caged bird belongs to its owner, the bird in the air is mine, not being man’s.
I went into the garden. Oh, what a delightful garden, with its terraces lifted one above the other, its espaliers with arms stretched out like crucified martyrs, its clumps of golden broom, and two old fig-trees at the end of each terrace!
When I stood on the last, I looked all round me. The shore of the little bay stretched at my feet, curved and sandy, separated from the open sea by three massive brown rocks, which closed the entry to the bay and must have acted as a breakwater on rough days.
On the headland, right opposite, two great stones, one upright, the other lying in the grass, a Menhir and a Dolmen, like two strange beings, husband and wife, turned to stone by an evil spell, seemed to watch unwinkingly the small house that they had seen built—they who for centuries had known this onetime solitary cove—the small house that they would see fall, crumple, vanish little by little and altogether disappear, the little house that was for sale.
Oh, old Dolmen and old Menhir, how I love you!
I knocked at the door as if I had been knocking at my own door. A woman came to open it, a servant, a little old servant, black-gowned, white-bonneted, looking like a working nun. It seemed to me as if I knew her too, this woman.
I said to her:
“You are not a Breton woman, are you?”
She answered:
“No, sir, I come from Lorraine.”
She added:
“You have come to look over the house?”
“Oh, yes, certainly.”
And I went in.
It seemed to me that I knew it all, the walls, the furniture. I was almost surprised not to find my own walking-sticks in the hall.
I made my way into the drawing room, a charming drawing room carpeted with rush mats, which looked out over the sea through its three large windows. On the mantel shelf, Chinese vases and a large photograph of a woman. I went to it at once, convinced that I recognised her too. And I did recognise her, although I was certain that I had never met her. It was she, the inexpressible she, she for whom I was waiting, whom I desired, she whom I summoned, whose face haunted my dreams. She, she whom one seeks always, in every place, she whom one is every moment just going to see in the street, just going to discover on a country road the instant one’s glance falls on a red sunshade over the cornfield, she who must surely already be in the hotel when I enter it on my travels, in the railway carriage I am just getting into, in the drawing room whose door is just opening to me.
It was she, assuredly, past all manner of doubt, it was she. I recognised her by her eyes which were looking at me, by her hair arranged English fashion, but above all by her mouth, by that smile which long ago I had surmised.
I asked at once:
“Who is this lady?”
The nun-like servant answered dryly:
“That is Madame.”
I continued:
“She is your mistress?”
In her austere conventional fashion, she replied:
“Oh, no, sir.”
I sat down and said firmly:
“Tell me about her.”
She stood amazed, motionless, obstinately silent.
I persisted:
“She is the owner of the house, then?”
“Oh, no, sir.”
“Then whose is this house?”
“It belongs to my master, Monsieur Tournelle.”
I pointed a finger towards the photograph.
“And this lady, who is she?”
“That is Madame.”
“Your master’s wife?”
“Oh, no, sir.”
“His mistress, then?”
The nun had nothing to say. I went on, pricked by a vague jealousy, by a confused anger against this man who found this woman first.
“Where are they now?”
The servant murmured:
“Monsieur the gentleman is in Paris, but about Madame I know nothing.”
I shivered.
“Ah. They are no longer together?”
“No, sir.”
I became wily, and said solemnly:
“Tell me what happened, probably I could be of service to your master. I know this woman, she’s a bad lot.”
The old servant looked at me, and seeing my honest expression, she trusted me.
“Oh, sir, she did my master a bad turn. He made her acquaintance in Italy and he brought her away with him as if he had married her. She sang beautifully. He loved her so much, sir, that it was pitiful to see him. They were travelling in this district last year. And they discovered this house which had been built by a fool, an old fool who wanted to settle five miles from the village. Madame wanted to buy it outright, so that she could stay here with my master. And he bought the house to please her.
“They lived here all last summer, sir, and almost all the winter.
“And then, one morning at breakfast-time, Monsieur called me.
“ ‘Césaire, has Madame come in?’
“ ‘No, sir.’
“We waited for her the whole day. My master was like a madman. We sought everywhere; we did not find her. She had gone, sir, we never knew where or how.”
Oh, what a tide of joy surged in me! I would have liked to embrace the nun, to seize her round the waist and make her dance in the drawing room.
Oh, she had gone, she had escaped, she had left him, utterly wearied, disgusted with him! How happy I was!
The old woman went on:
“Monsieur almost died of grief, and he has gone back to Paris, leaving me here with my husband to sell the house. He is asking twenty thousand francs for it.”
But I was no longer listening. I was thinking of her. And all at once it struck me that I had only to set out again to come upon her, that this very springtime she would have been driven to come back to the place, to see the house, this charming house that she must have loved so dearly, to see it emptied of him.
I flung ten francs into the old woman’s hand. I snatched the photograph and rushed off at a run, pressing desperate kisses on the adorable face that looked up from the cardboard.
I regained the road and began to walk on, looking at her, her very self. How glorious that she was free, that she had got away! Without doubt I should meet her today or tomorrow, this week or next, now that she had left him. She had left him because my hour had come.
She was free, somewhere, in the world. I had only to find her now that I knew her.
And all the while I touched caressingly the bowed locks of ripe corn, I drank in the sea air that filled out my lungs, I felt the sun kissing my face. I had walked on, I walked on wild with joy, drunk with hope. I walked on, certain that I was going to meet her soon and lead her back to enjoy our turn in that charming home “For Sale.” How she would revel in it, this time!