And Mordiane was reminded of a little woman, fair-haired, slight, with a somewhat melancholy look, and a tender fashion of murmuring, "My darling," of which the mere remembrance made the blood stir in his veins.
She had loved him pa.s.sionately, madly, for three months; then, becoming pregnant in the absence of her husband, who was a governor of a colony, she had run away and concealed herself, distracted with despair and terror, till the birth of the child, which Mordiane carried off one summer"s evening, and which they had not laid eyes on afterwards.
She died of consumption three years later, over there, in the colony of which her husband was governor, and to which she had gone across to join him. And here, in front of him, was their son, who was saying, in the metallic tones with which he rang out his closing words:
"This piece of ground, monsieur, is a rare chance--"
And Mordiane recalled the other voice, light as the touch of a gentle breeze, as it used to murmur:
"My darling, we shall never part--"
And he remembered that soft, deep, devoted glance in those eyes of blue, as he watched the round eye, also blue, but vacant, of this ridiculous little man, who, for all that, bore a resemblance to his mother.
Yes, he looked more and more like her every moment--like her in accent, in movement, in his entire deportment--he was like her in the way an ape is like a man; but still he was hers; he displayed a thousand external characteristics peculiar to her, though in an unspeakably distorted, irritating, and revolting form.
The baron was galled, haunted as he was all of a sudden by this resemblance, horrible, each instant growing stronger, exasperating, maddening, torturing him like a nightmare, like a weight of remorse.
He stammered out:
"When can we look at this piece of ground together?"
"Why, to-morrow, if you like."
"Yes, to-morrow. At what hour?"
"One o"clock."
"All right."
The child he had met in the avenue appeared before the open door, exclaiming:
"Dada!"
There was no answer.
Mordiane had risen up with a longing to escape, to run off, which made his legs tremble. This "dada" had hit him like a bullet. It was to _him_ that it was addressed, it was intended for him, this "dada," smelling of garlic--this "dada" of the South.
Oh! how sweet had been the perfume exhaled by her, his sweetheart of bygone days!
Duchoux saw him to the door.
"This house is your own?" said the baron.
"Yes, monsieur; I bought it recently. And I am proud of it. I am a child of accident, monsieur, and I don"t want to hide it; I am proud of it. I owe nothing to anyone; I am the son of my own efforts; I owe everything to myself."
The little boy, who remained on the threshold, kept still exclaiming, though at some distance away from them:
"Dada!"
Mordiane, shaking with a shivering fit, seized with panic, fled as one flies away from a great danger.
"He is going to guess who I am, to recognize me," he thought. "He is going to take me in his arms, and to call out to me, "Dada," while giving me a kiss perfumed with garlic."
"To-morrow, monsieur."
"To-morrow, at one o"clock."
The landau rolled over the white road.
"Coachman! to the railway-station!"
And he heard two voices, one far away and sweet, the faint, sad voice of the dead, saying: "My darling," and the other sonorous, sing-song, frightful, bawling out, "Dada," just as people bawl out, "Stop him!"
when a thief is flying through the street.
Next evening, as he entered the club, the Count d"Etreillis said to him:
"We have not seen you for the last three days. Have you been ill?"
"Yes, a little unwell. I get headaches from time to time."
OLD AMABLE
PART I
The humid, gray sky seemed to weigh down on the vast brown plain. The odor of Autumn, the sad odor of bare, moist lands, of fallen leaves, of dead gra.s.s, made the stagnant evening air more thick and heavy. The peasants were still at work, scattered through the fields, waiting for the stroke of the Angelus to call them back to the farm-houses, whose thatched roofs were visible here and there through the branches of the leafless trees which protected the apple-gardens against the wind.
At the side of the road, on a heap of clothes, a very small male child seated with its legs apart, was playing with a potato, which he now and then let fall on his dress, while five women bent down with their rumps in the air, were picking sprigs of colza in the adjoining plain. With a slow continuous movement, all along the great cushions of earth which the plow had just turned up, they drove in sharp wooden stakes, and then cast at once into the hole so formed the plant, already a little withered, which sank on the side; then they covered over the root, and went on with their work.
A man who was pa.s.sing, with a whip in his hand, and wearing wooden shoes, stopped near the child, took it up, and kissed it. Then one of the women rose up, and came across to him. She was a big, red-haired girl, with large hips, waist, and shoulders, a tall Norman woman, with yellow hair in which there was a blood-red tint.
She said, in a resolute voice:
"Here you are, Cesaire--well?"
The man, a thin young fellow with a melancholy air, murmured:
"Well, nothing at all--always the same."
"He won"t have it?"
"He won"t have it."
"What are you going to do?"
"What do you say I ought to do?"