In the Wood
The Mayor was sitting down to breakfast when he was told that his village constable was waiting for him at the Town Hall with two prisoners. He went there immediately and found indeed old Hochedur, the village constable, standing guard with an air of great severity over a couple of stout villagers. The man, a fat paterfamilias, red-nosed and white-haired, seemed overwhelmed, while the woman, a nice little soul dressed in her Sunday clothes, very plump, her cheeks flushed, was looking defiantly at the instrument of authority who had captured them.
The Mayor asked: “What is all this, Hochedur?”
The constable made his statement.
He had set out that morning at his usual time to go on his beat from Champioux Woods to the boundaries of Argenteuil. He hadn’t found anything to remark on in the countryside except that it was beautiful weather and the corn was doing well, when young Bredel, who was pruning his vine, had called out:
“Hullo, Hochedur, go and look at the edge of the wood, in the first copse, and you’ll find there a couple of doves who have at least a hundred and thirty years between them.”
He set off in the direction indicated, had crept into the undergrowth and had heard words and sighs which had led him to suspect an outrage on public morals.
Then, crawling on hands and knees, as if he were trying to surprise a poacher, he had caught the couple here present at the moment when they were abandoning themselves to a natural instinct.
The Mayor stared at the prisoners in stupefaction. The man must have been at least sixty, and the woman not less than fifty-five.
He began to question them, first the man, who replied in so faint a voice that it was hardly audible.
“Your name?”
“Nicholas Beaurain.”
“What is your profession?”
“I am a draper in the Rue des Martyrs, Paris.”
“What were you doing in the wood?”
The draper made no answer, his glance fixed on his large stomach, his hands pressed against his thighs.
The Mayor asked again:
“Do you deny the accusation?”
“No, sir.”
“Then you admit it?”
“Yes, sir.”
“What have you to say in your defence?”
“Nothing, sir.”
“Where did you meet your accomplice?”
“She is my wife, sir.”
“Your wife?”
“Yes, sir.”
“Then—then, you don’t live together in Paris?”
“Pardon, sir, we do live together.”
“But—in that case, you must be mad, absolutely mad, my good man, to come and get yourself caught in the open country, at ten o’clock in the morning.”
The draper seemed ready to weep with shame. He muttered:
“It was she who wanted it. I told her it was a silly thing to do. But when a woman gets an idea into her head—you know, sir—she has no room for anything else.”
The Mayor, whose sense of humour was not puritanical, smiled and replied:
“In your case, then, the contrary ought to have happened. You wouldn’t be here if she hadn’t had room for something else!”
Then rage seized M. Beaurain, and turning towards his wife, he said: “Look what you’ve brought us to now, with your romantic notions! Think of it. We shall have to go into court at our age for immorality. We shall have to shut up shop and sell out and move into another district! Think of it!”
Mme. Beaurain got up, without looking at her husband, and explained the situation without any trace of embarrassment or self-consciousness, and almost without hesitation.
“My goodness, Mr. Mayor, I know quite well that we look foolish. Will you let me plead this cause like a lawyer—or, better still, like a poor woman?—and I hope you will be willing to send us home and spare us the shame of a summons.
“A long time ago, when I was young, I made the acquaintance of M. Beaurain in this district, on a Sunday. He was employed in a draper’s shop. I was a shop girl in a ready-made clothes shop. I remember all that as though it were yesterday. I used to spend my Sundays here, now and again, with a girl friend, Rose Levêque, with whom I lived in the Rue Pigalle. Rose had a sweetheart—I hadn’t. He it was who brought us out here. One Saturday he told me, laughing, that the next day he would bring out a friend. I understood what he meant, but I replied that it would be useless. I was a good girl, sir.
“The next day, however, we met Monsieur Beaurain in the train. He was very good-looking in those days. But I was determined not to give in, and I didn’t.
“There we were, then, at Bezons. The weather was glorious—the sort of weather that makes your heart beat for joy. For my part, even now, when the weather is fine, I am ready to cry like a fool, and when I am in the country I quite lose my head. The green of the trees, the birds singing, the corn waving in the wind, the swallows that swoop along so quickly, the scent of grass, of the wild poppies, the marguerites, all make me feel lightheaded. It is like drinking champagne when you aren’t used to it.
“On this day the weather was glorious, mild and clear. It seemed to pour into you through your eyes as you looked out on it, and through your mouth when you breathed! Rose and Simon kissed every other minute. It made me think a bit to watch them. M. Beaurain and I walked behind them, hardly uttering a word. When you don’t know each other you can’t find anything to say. He seemed very shy, this boy, and I was fluttered to see his embarrassment. At last we came to the little wood. It was as cool there as a bath and people were sitting on the grass. Rose and her friend teased me about looking so serious. You must see that I couldn’t look otherwise. After that they began to make love to each other without worrying if we were there or not. Next they talked to each other in whispers, and presently got up and went farther into the wood without saying anything. You can guess what a fool I looked left with this youth whom I had met for the first time.
“I felt so confused to see them go off in that way that my courage came back to me and I began to talk. I asked him what he was doing. He was a draper’s apprentice, as I have just told you. We talked for some little while. This emboldened him and he wanted to take liberties with me, but still I kept him in his place, and very firmly. Isn’t that true, M. Beaurain?”
M. Beaurain, who was looking at his boots in his embarrassment, made no reply.
She went on:
“At last the young man realised that I was a good girl and he began to pay court to me nicely, like a respectable man.
“After that day he came every Sunday. He was very much in love with me, monsieur. And I too, I loved him very much, oh, ever so much—he was a handsome fellow in those days.
“In short, we were married in September and we started our shop in the Rue des Martyrs.
“Those were hard years, sir. The business didn’t pay; and we could rarely afford holidays in the country. At last we lost the habit of going. There were other things in our minds.
“In business the cash box comes before flowers. Little by little we got older without noticing it, being quiet people who hardly think of love. What the heart doesn’t miss it doesn’t grieve over.
“At last, m’sieur, things went better and our future was safe. Then, really, I don’t know what happened to me, no, honestly I do not. I found myself dreaming again like a little schoolgirl. The sight of the barrows of flowers drawn along the street would bring the tears to my eyes. The scent of violets drifting in where I sat in my chair behind the cash box set my heart beating wildly.
“Then I would get up and go and stand on the doorstep to look at the blue sky between the roofs. When you see the sky from a street, it looks like a river, a long twisting river coming down to Paris; the swallows skimming over it are like fishes. It’s silly enough to feel like that, at my age! But what can you expect, sir? When you have worked all your life, there comes a time when you realise that you might have been doing something else, then you are filled with regret—oh, yes—you regret it. Just think, for twenty long years I could have been gathering kisses in the woods, like other people—like other women! I used to think how wonderful it would be to lie under the trees and love someone. I thought of this all day and all night. I dreamed of the moonlight on the water until I was nearly ready to drown myself!
“I dared not say all this to M. Beaurain right out. I knew too well that he would laugh at me and send me back to sell needles and thread. And truth to tell, M. Beaurain hadn’t much to say to me in those days. But when I looked in my mirror I understood too that I hadn’t much to say to anyone, either.
“Thereupon I made up my mind to suggest to him a holiday in the country, in that part where we first became acquainted. He agreed without any bother, and we arrived here this morning about nine.
“I felt quite young again as we came through the corn. The heart of a woman doesn’t really grow old! And indeed I saw my husband, not as he is now, but as he was in those days! That’s true, I swear it, sir. It’s as true as I stand here, I was drunk with it all! I began to embrace him. He could not have been more astonished if I’d tried to murder him. He kept saying to me: ‘You are mad. You are absolutely crazy this morning. What in the world has taken you?’
“I didn’t hear him: I could hear nothing but my own heart. And I made him go into the wood with me—then—I have told you the truth, m’sieu, the whole truth.”
The Mayor was a man of the world. He got up, smiling, and said:
“Go in peace, madame, and sin no more—under the trees!”