She said as she returned the gla.s.s:
"I never could see with that thing. It used to put my husband in quite a rage; he would stand for hours at the window watching the ships pa.s.s."
Old Roland, much put out, retorted:
"Then it must be some defect in your eye, for my gla.s.s is a very good one."
Then he offered it to his wife.
"Would you like to look?"
"No, thank you. I know beforehand that I could not see through it."
Mme. Roland, a woman of eight-and-forty, but who did not look it, seemed to be enjoying this excursion and this waning day more than any of the party.
Her chestnut hair was only just beginning to show streaks of white.
She had a calm, reasonable face, a kind and happy way with her which it was a pleasure to see. Her son Pierre was wont to say that she knew the value of money, but this did not hinder her from enjoying the delights of dreaming. She was fond of reading, of novels and poetry, not for their value as works of art, but for the sake of the tender melancholy mood they would induce in her. A line of poetry, often but a poor one, often a bad one, would touch the little chord, as she expressed it, and give her the sense of some mysterious desire almost realized. And she delighted in these faint emotions which brought a little flutter to her soul, otherwise as strictly kept as a ledger.
Since settling at Havre she had become perceptibly stouter, and her figure, which had been very supple and slight, had grown heavier.
This day on the sea had been delightful to her. Her husband, without being brutal, was rough with her, as a man who is the despot of his shop is apt to be rough, without anger or hatred; to such men to give an order is to swear. He controlled himself in the presence of strangers, but in private he let loose and gave himself terrible vent, though he was himself afraid of every one. She, in sheer horror of the turmoil, of scenes, of useless explanations, always gave way and never asked for anything; for a very long time she had not ventured to ask Roland to take her out in the boat. So she had joyfully hailed this opportunity, and was keenly enjoying the rare and new pleasure.
From the moment when they started she surrendered herself completely body and soul, to the soft, gliding motion over the waves. She was not thinking; her mind was not wandering through either memories or hopes; it seemed to her as though her heart, like her body, was floating on something soft and liquid and delicious which rocked and lulled it.
When their father gave the word to return, "Come, take your places at the oars!" she smiled to see her sons, her two great boys, take off their jackets and roll up their shirt-sleeves on their bare arms.
Pierre, who was the nearest to the two women, took the stroke oar, Jean the other, and they sat waiting till the skipper should say: "Give way!" For he insisted on everything being done according to strict rule.
Both at once, as if by a single effort, they dipped the oars and lay back, pulling with all their might, and then a struggle began to display their strength. They had come out easily, under sail, but the breeze had died away, and the masculine pride of the two brothers was suddenly aroused by the prospect of measuring their powers. When they went out alone with their father they plied the oars without any steering, for Roland would be busy getting the lines ready, while he kept a lookout in the boat"s course, guiding it by a sign or a word: "Easy, Jean, and you, Pierre, put your back into it." Or he would say, "Now, then, number one; come, number two--a little elbow grease."
Then the one who had been dreaming pulled harder, the one who had got excited eased down, and the boat"s head came round.
But to-day they meant to display their biceps. Pierre"s arms were hairy, somewhat lean but sinewy; Jean"s were round and white and rosy, and the knot of muscles moved under the skin.
At first Pierre had the advantage. With his teeth set, his brow knit, his legs rigid, his hands clenched on the oar, he made it bend from end to end at every stroke, and the _Pearl_ was veering landward.
Father Roland, sitting in the bows, so as to leave the stern seat to the two women, wasted his breath shouting, "Easy, number one; pull harder, number two!" Pierre pulled harder in his frenzy, and "number two" could not keep time with his wild stroke.
At last the skipper cried: "Stop her!" The two oars were lifted simultaneously, and then by his father"s orders Jean pulled alone for a few minutes. But from that moment he had it all his own way; he grew eager and warmed to his work, while Pierre, out of breath and exhausted by his first vigorous spurt, was lax and panting. Four times running father Roland made them stop while the elder took breath, so as to get the boat into her right course again. Then the doctor humiliated and fuming, his forehead dropping with sweat, his cheeks white, stammered out:
"I cannot think what has come over me; I have a st.i.tch in my side. I started very well, but it has pulled me up."
Jean asked: "Shall I pull alone with both oars for a time?"
"No, thanks, it will go off."
And their mother, somewhat vexed, said:
"Why, Pierre, what rhyme or reason is there in getting in such a state. You are not a child."
And he shrugged his shoulders and set to once more.
Mme. Rosemilly pretended not to see, not to understand, not to hear.
Her fair head went back with an engaging little jerk every time the boat moved forward, making the fine wayward hairs flutter about her temples.
But father Roland presently called out:
"Look, the _Prince Albert_ is catching us up!"
They all looked round. Long and low in the water, with her two raking funnels and two yellow paddle-boxes like two round cheeks, the Southampton packet came plowing on at full steam, crowded with pa.s.sengers under open parasols. Its hurrying, noisy paddle-wheels beating up the water, which fell again in foam, gave it an appearance of haste as of a courier pressed for time, and the upright stem cut through the water, throwing up two thin translucent waves which glided off along the hull.
When it had come quite near the _Pearl_, father Roland lifted his hat, the ladies shook their handkerchiefs, and half a dozen parasols eagerly waved on board the steamboat responded to this salute as she went on her way, leaving behind her a few broad undulations on the still and gla.s.sy surface of the sea.
There were other vessels, each with its smoky cap, coming in from every part of the horizon toward the short white jetty, which swallowed them up, one after another, like a mouth. And the fishing barks and lighter craft with broad sails and slender masts, stealing across the sky in tow of inconspicuous tugs, were coming in, faster and slower, toward the devouring ogre, who from time to time seemed to have had a surfeit, and spewed out to the open sea another fleet of steamers, brigs, schooners, and three-masted vessels with their top-weight of tangled antlers. The hurrying steam-ships flew off to the right and left over the smooth bosom of the ocean, while sailing vessels, cast off by the pilot-tugs which had hauled them out, lay motionless, dressing themselves from the mainmast to the fore-top in canvas, white or brown, and ruddy in the setting sun.
Mme. Roland, with her eyes half-shut, murmured: "Good heavens, how beautiful the sea is!"
And Mme. Rosemilly replied with a long sigh, which, however, had no sadness in it:
"Yes, but it is sometimes very cruel, all the same."
Roland exclaimed:
"Look, there is the _Normandie_ just going in. A big ship, isn"t she?"
Then he described the coast opposite, far, far away, on the other side of the mouth of the Seine--that mouth extended over twenty kilometers, said he. He pointed out Villerville, Trouville, Houlgate, Luc, Arromanches, the little river of Caen, and the rocks of Calvados which make the coast unsafe as far as Cherbourg. Then he enlarged on the question of the sand banks in the Seine, which shift at every tide so that the pilots of Quilleboeuf are at fault if they do not survey the channel every day. He bid them notice how the town of Havre divided Upper from Lower Normandy. In Lower Normandy the sh.o.r.e sloped down to the sea in pasture-lands, fields, and meadows. The coast of Upper Normandy, on the contrary, was steep, a high cliff, ravined, cleft and towering, forming an immense white rampart all the way to Dunkirk, while in each hollow a village or a port lay hidden: Etretat, Fecamp, Saint-Valery, Treport, Dieppe, and the rest.
The two women did not listen. Torpid with comfort and impressed by the sight of the ocean covered with vessels rushing to and fro like wild beasts about their den, they sat speechless, somewhat awed by the soothing and gorgeous sunset. Roland alone talked on without end; he was one of those whom nothing can disturb. Women, whose nerves are more sensitive, sometimes feel, without knowing why, that the sound of useless speech is as irritating as an insult.
Pierre and Jean, who had calmed down, were rowing slowly, and the _Pearl_ was making for the harbor, a tiny thing among those huge vessels.
When they came alongside of the quay, Papagris, who was waiting there, gave his hand to the ladies to help them out, and they took the way into the town. A large crowd--the crowd which haunts the pier every day at high tide--was also drifting homeward. Mme. Roland and Mme.
Rosemilly led the way, followed by the three men. As they went up the rue de Paris they stopped now and then in front of a milliner"s or jeweler"s shop, to look at a bonnet or an ornament; then after making their comments they went on again. In front of the Place de la Bourse Roland paused, as he did every day, to gaze at the docks full of vessels--the _Ba.s.sin du Commerce_, with other docks beyond, where the huge hulls lay side by side, closely packed in rows, four or five deep. And masts innumerable; along several kilometers of quays the endless masts, with their yards, poles, and rigging, gave this great gap in the heart of the town the look of a dead forest. Above this leafless forest the gulls were wheeling, and watching to pounce, like a falling stone, on any sc.r.a.ps flung overboard; a sailor boy, fixing a pulley to a cross-beam, looked as if he had gone up there bird"s-nesting.
"Will you dine with us without any sort of ceremony, just that we may end the day together?" said Mme. Roland to her friend.
"To be sure I will, with pleasure; I accept equally without ceremony.
It would be dismal to go home and be alone this evening."
Pierre, who had heard, and who was beginning to be restless under the young woman"s indifference, muttered to himself: "Well, the widow is taking root now, it would seem." For some days past he had spoken of her as "the widow." The word, harmless in itself, irritated Jean merely by the tone given to it, which to him seemed spiteful and offensive.
The three men spoke not another word till they reached the threshold of their own house. It was a narrow one, consisting of a ground-floor and two floors above, in the rue Belle-Normande. The maid, Josephine, a girl of nineteen, a rustic servant-of-all-work at low wages, gifted to excess with the startled, animal expression of a peasant, opened the door, went upstairs at her master"s heels to the drawing-room, which was on the first floor, and then said:
"A gentleman called--three times."
Old Roland, who never spoke to her without shouting and swearing, cried out:
"Who do you say called, in the devil"s name?"
She never winced at her master"s roaring voice, and replied: