The Farmer
The Baron René de Treilles said: “Won’t you come to my farm at Marinville for the first of the shooting? It would be a real pleasure. Besides, I shall be alone. The shooting is so difficult of access and the house so primitive that I can only invite intimate friends.”
I accepted the invitation.
We left on a Saturday by the line for Normandy and got out at Alvimare, where Baron René, pointing out a country conveyance drawn by a restive horse that a tall white-haired peasant was holding, said:
“That is our carriage, old chap.”
The peasant held his hand out to the Baron, who, shaking it heartily, asked:
“Well, Master Lebrument, how goes it?”
“Always the same, sir.”
We got into the hen-coop that hung and swung between two enormous wheels, and the young horse, after a violent swerve, started off at a gallop, throwing us up in the air like balls; each bump back on to the wooden bench hurt me terribly.
The peasant kept on repeating in his calm, monotonous voice:
“There, there, gently, gently, Mustard, gently.”
But Mustard paid no attention and gambolled along like a young goat.
Behind us, in the empty part of the coop, our two dogs were sitting up and sniffing the air that smelt of game.
The Baron, with sad eyes, looked out at the spacious, undulating, melancholy Norman country landscape, so like an English park—one of those extensive parks with farmyards, surrounded by two or four rows of trees and full of squat apple trees that hide the house, with an endless vista of hedges, groups and clusters of trees, which artistic gardeners engaged on developing large estates appreciate. René de Treilles said suddenly: “I love this place; it is the home of my fathers.” He was a pure Norman, tall and broad, rather stout, of the old stock of adventurers who set off to found new kingdoms on the shores of every ocean. He was about fifty, maybe ten years younger than the farmer who was driving and who was nothing but skin and bone—one of those men who live for a century.
After two hours’ travelling over stony roads, through the green monotonous plain, the conveyance turned into a yard full of apple trees and stopped in front of an old, dilapidated building, where an antiquated servant waited beside a boy who seized hold of the horse.
We went into the farmhouse. The well-smoked kitchen was high and roomy. The brasses and china shone in the reflection thrown by the fire. A cat was asleep on a chair and a dog asleep under the table. You could smell a mixture of milk, apple and smoke, and that indefinable odour of old peasant houses: the odour of earth, walls, furniture, of spilt soup, washing-days, and former inhabitants, the mingled smell of beasts and human beings, of things and of people, the smell of time in its flight.
I went out again to look at the farmyard, which was very large, full of old, gnarled, squat apple trees, covered with fruit that fell on to the grass round the roots. The Norman perfume of apples in the yard was as strong as that of the blossoming orange-trees in the South.
The enclosure was surrounded by four rows of beeches so tall that at nightfall they seemed to reach the clouds; the evening breeze stirred in the treetops, which tossed about restlessly, droning over a never-ending, sad lament.
When I went back, the Baron was warming his feet and listening to the farmer’s account of the countryside. He told of marriages, births and deaths, of the drop in the price of grain, and then he talked about the cattle: La Veularde (a cow bought at Veules) had had a calf in mid-June. Last year the cider was not good and apricots were dying out in the country.
After this we had a good, leisurely, quiet dinner, simple but abundant, throughout which I kept noticing the very special friendly relations between the Baron and the peasant, which had struck me from the very first.
Out of doors the beeches continued their lament under the lash of the night wind, and our two dogs, shut up in a stable, whined and howled in a foreboding manner. The fire on the open hearth got lower and lower and the servant had gone to bed, and Master Lebrument said:
“I will go to bed, if I may, sir. I am not accustomed to sit up late, that I am not.”
The Baron held out his hand and said: “Certainly, old fellow,” in such a friendly tone that when the man had gone, I said:
“This farmer is very devoted to you?”
“Better than that, old chap; I am deeply attached to him because of the tragedy of his life, quite a simple and a very sad affair. But I will tell you the story. …
“You know that my father was a colonel in a cavalry regiment. This boy—a farmer’s son and now an old man—was his orderly. When my father retired he took the soldier, then about forty years old, with him as valet. I was thirty at the time, and we lived in our castle de Varenne, near Caudebec-en-Cour.
“My mother’s chambermaid was one of the prettiest girls imaginable, alert, gay, fair and slight: a real soubrette, of the kind no longer with us. Now they are all no better than they should be. There is a railway to Paris, the city beckons to them. As soon as they grow up, Paris takes all these sluts who in the old days were simple serving-maids. Every man passing by—like the recruiting-sergeant looking for conscripts—entices them away and then seduces them, so that now we have only the fag-end of the female race left as servants: thickset, hideous, common, deformed, too ugly for love.
“As I was saying, this young girl was charming, and I occasionally kissed her in the dark passages. No more than that; oh! nothing more, I swear. She was a good girl, and I respected my mother’s house, which is more than can be said for the scamp of today.
“My father’s valet—the former soldier, the old farmer you have just seen—fell madly in love with the girl, impossibly in love. At first we noticed that he forgot everything, that he did not seem to be able to think about anything, and my father was always saying: ‘Come, come, John, what is the matter? Are you ill?’ To which he replied: ‘No, no, sir. I am all right.’
“He got thinner and thinner, then he began to break the glasses and drop the plates when he was waiting at table. We thought he had some nervous complaint, and sent for the doctor, who thought the spinal cord was affected, so my father, anxious for the welfare of his servant, decided to send him to a hospital, but when told about the plan, he confessed.
“He chose a morning when his master was shaving, to make his confession. He began timidly:
“ ‘Sir.’
“ ‘Well, my boy?’
“ ‘You see, it is not medicine I want.’
“ ‘Well, what is it then?’
“ ‘To be married.’
“My father turned, very surprised, and said:
“ ‘What’s that? What’s that? … eh?’
“ ‘To be married.’
“ ‘To be married? Well, then, you must be … in love … you?’
“ ‘That’s what’s the matter, sir.’
“My father burst into such a fit of uncontrollable laughter that my mother called out:
“ ‘What is the matter with you, Gontran?’
“He replied: ‘Come here, Catherine.’
“When she came he told her with tears in his eyes that his idiot of a valet was simply ill with love.
“My mother’s feelings were roused at once; instead of laughing she asked: ‘Who is it you love so madly, my boy?’
“Without hesitating he replied: ‘Louise, my lady,’ and my mother said very seriously: ‘We must try and arrange things for the best.’
“So Louise was called and when questioned by my mother said that she knew of John’s love, that he had proposed several times, but that she did not want him, and refused to say why.
“Two months passed by, during which Father and Mother were always urging the girl to marry John. As she swore she loved no one else, she could give no good reason for her refusal. At last her resistance was overcome by a substantial gift of money and they settled down here as farmers. They left the castle and I saw nothing of them for three years. After three years I learnt that Louise had died of consumption, but, my father and mother dying soon after, another two years had gone by before I saw John again.
“At last one autumn towards the end of October, I thought I would come down for the shooting season, for the estate had been very carefully looked after and my farmer declared there was plenty of game about.
“I arrived one wet evening and was amazed to find that my father’s former orderly was quite white although he could not be more than forty-five or six.
“I made him join me at dinner, at this very table. It was raining in torrents and the rain could be heard beating on the roof, the walls, the windows, and flooding the courtyard; my dog was howling in the stable just as our dogs are howling this evening.
“Suddenly, after the servant-maid had gone to bed, the peasant murmured:
“ ‘Sir …’
“ ‘What is it, Master John?’
“ ‘I have something to tell you.’
“ ‘Tell away, John.’
“ ‘Well, but it worries me.’
“ ‘Go ahead all the same.’
“ ‘You remember Louise, my wife?’
“ ‘Of course I remember her.’
“ ‘Well, she begged me to deliver something to you.’
“ ‘What sort of thing?’
“ ‘A … a … you might call it a confession. …’
“ ‘Ah! … what is it?’
“ ‘It is … it is … I would be very glad not to tell you … but I must, I must. … Well, then, she did not die of consumption … it was … it was … grief. … I will just tell you all about it.
“ ‘As soon as she came here she got thinner and thinner and changed so much that you would not have known her after six months; not have known her, sir. Just like me before I was married to her, only the other way about, just the other way about.
“ ‘I sent for the doctor, who said her liver was affected, that she had a—a torpid liver, so I bought all kinds of drugs, which cost over three hundred francs. But she would not take them, she would not; she said:
“ ‘ “Not worth while, my poor John, it will be all right.”
“ ‘But I knew there was something wrong. Then once I found her crying; I didn’t know what to do, no, I didn’t. I bought her caps, dresses, pomade for the hair, earrings, but it was no use, and I saw that she would not live long.
“ ‘One snowy evening at the end of November—she had been in bed the whole day—she told me to go and fetch the priest, and I went.
“ ‘As soon as he came she said: “John, I am going to confess to you. I owe you that. Listen, John. I have never deceived you, never, neither before nor after our marriage, never. The priest will tell you so, he knows everything. Listen, John, it is because I cannot get over leaving the castle that I am dying, because … my feeling for our young master, Baron René, was so great … only a too great friendship, you hear, nothing but friendship. It is killing me. When I could not see him I felt that I was dying. If I could have seen him I would have gone on living; only seen him, nothing else. I want you to tell him some day, later on, when I am gone. You will tell him. Swear you will … swear … John, before the priest. It will be a consolation to feel that some day he will know what I died of. … That’s all … now swear. …”
“ ‘Well, I, I promised, sir. And I have kept my word, the word of an honest man.’
“Then he was silent and sat gazing into my eyes.
“My God! You can have no idea what I felt on hearing this from the poor devil, whose wife’s death I had unknowingly caused, told me so simply in this kitchen on a night of driving rain.
“I stammered: ‘Poor John! Poor John!’
“He muttered: ‘That’s how it is, sir. I couldn’t do anything, nothing at all. … It’s all over now. …’
“I caught hold of his hands across the table, and wept.
“He asked: ‘Will you come and see her grave?’
“I nodded my head, for I could not speak.
“He got up, lit the lantern, and off we went through the wet; the slanting raindrops that fell as quickly as arrows in their flight were abruptly illuminated by the light of the lantern. He opened a gate and I caught sight of crosses, all in black wood. Then he said: ‘Here it is,’ in front of a marble slab on which he placed the lantern so that I might read the inscription:
To Louise-Hortense Marinet
Wife of Jean-François Lebrument
Agriculturer
She Was a Faithful Wife
May Her Soul Be with God.
“We were both of us on our knees in the mud, with the lantern between us, and as I watched the rain beat on the marble, spring up again in a fine feathery shower, and then escape over the edges of the cold impenetrable cold stone, I thought of the dead woman’s love. That poor broken heart! … her broken heart! …
“I have come here every year since. And I don’t know why, but I feel as uncomfortable as a culprit when I am with this man, who always seems to be forgiving me for what has happened.”