Читать книгу King of Camargue - Jean Aicard - Страница 9

Table of Contents

Livette was so fresh and sweet that people often repeated, in speaking of her, the Provençal expression: “You could drink her in a glass of water!”

In loving Livette, Renaud experienced the pleasant feeling, so dear to the heart of strong men, of having some one to protect, a little wife, who was no more than a child. Because of Livette’s fragility and slender stature, the rough drover, made for violent passions, the horseman of the Camargue desert, the hard-fisted herdsman, the subduer of mares and bulls, felt the love that is based upon sweet compassion, upon respect for charming weakness; in a word, he learned the secret of true tenderness which he could not have felt, perhaps, for one of his own class.

It would never have occurred to him to tell her any of the vulgar jests with a double meaning, with which he regaled the more robust fair ones of his acquaintance on branding-days or on race-days. To do that would have seemed to him to be a villainous misuse of his power and his experience as a man. Still less did Livette cause him to feel the fierce desire, well known to him, which sometimes, with other girls, went to his brain like a rush of blood,—the desire to touch with his hands, to take in his arms, to throw down into the ditch, laughing at the gentle resistance, at the consent which repels a little, at the equal struggle between the youth and the maiden, who have, in reality, a tacit understanding to be robber and robbed. No: in Livette’s presence, Renaud felt that he was a new man. There came to him, in regard to the little damsel with the golden hair, a tranquillity of heart that surprised him greatly. Love has a thousand forms. That which Renaud felt for Livette was a soothing emotion. He “wished her well.” That was what he kept repeating to himself as he thought of her. And, as he desired all the others something after the fashion of the bulls of his manade, in the season when the germs are at work, it so happened that he seemed not to desire the only woman he really loved.

There was a sweet fascination in the thought, which he relished like a draught of pure water after a long day’s walk through the dust in the hot sun. He rejoiced inwardly in his love as in a halt for rest in the shade of a great tree, beside a clear, cool spring, while the birds sang their greeting to the morning. Sometimes, in the blazing heat of midday, when he was riding across the mirror-like waste of sand and salt and water, his horse plodding wearily along with hanging head, the thought of Livette would steal softly into his mind, and it would seem as if a cool breeze were blowing on his forehead, washing away, in a sense, the dust and fatigue, like a bath. He would feel refreshed, and a smile would come unbidden to his lips. His whole being would thrill with pleasure, and, with renewed life, he would imperceptibly, with hand and knee alike, order his horse to raise his head. And the lover’s steed would raise his head without further bidding, and snort and toss his mane, scatter, with a sudden lash of his tail, the gadflies that were streaking his sides with blood, and, with quickened step, reach the shelter of the hawthorns and the poplars on the Rhône bank—whose leaves forever quiver and rustle like the water, like the heart of man, like everything that lives and hopes and suffers and then dies!

Not only by her grace and weakness did she win his heart, strong and rough as he was; but also by the care expended on her dress, by the splendor of her surroundings, she, the wealthy farmer’s daughter, enchanted him, the poor drover; and she seemed to him a strange, unfamiliar creature from another world. And so she was in fact. Of a different quality, he said to himself: a being outside his sphere, far, far above it.

That he might one day unloose the latchets of her little shoes had not occurred to him, and, lo! she was his! Livette, the daughter of the intendant of the Château d’Avignon! she was his fiancée, his betrothed, his future wife!

He seemed to himself the heir to a throne. In face of the mere thought of his future, he felt something like the embarrassment a beggar feels on the threshold of a palace, before the carpets over which he must pass to enter, with shoes heavy with mud.

She had in his eyes something of the sanctity of the blessed Madonna, carved from wood, painted blue and gold, and overladen with pearls and flowers, that he used to see when a child in the church of Saint-Trophime at Arles.

So it was that he felt a secret amazement at finding himself beloved.

It did not seem to him that it could really be true; and as he must needs be convinced of the fact every time he spoke to her, his love constantly appealed to him with all the force of novelty.

He was a little embarrassed, too, in her presence, could not find his words, contented himself with smiling at her, with yielding submission to her like a child, with running to fetch this or that for her, divining her desires from her glance; mistaking now and then, but rarely; feeling the same pleasure in being the maiden’s footman that is felt by the misshapen court dwarf in love with the king’s fair daughter.

His sobriquet of The King seemed to him a mockery beside her. She embarrassed him; in her presence he was meek and lowly.

He was surprised, indignant even, in his heart, at the familiar tone assumed by others with Livette. It seemed strange to him that her companions should treat her as an equal; that her father and her grandmother should not have the same respect and consideration for his fiancée that he himself had.

Frequently, when the grandmother cried to Livette: “Do this or that; run! be quick!” he would be angry, and would long to say to her: “Why do you order her about? She was not made to obey! You’re a bad grandmother! Don’t you see that she is too delicate and pretty for such tasks?”

But this was a feeling kept hidden in his heart; he would not have dared to avow it, for women are made, according to our ancestors, to be the slaves of man. So he said no word of what he felt. He even deemed himself a little ridiculous to feel it. He contented himself by doing in a twinkling, in Livette’s stead, the thing she was bidden to do, if it was something within his power.

Ah! but if any man had ventured to indulge in any ill-sounding pleasantry with Livette, to take any liberty with her—oh! then, be sure that he would without reflection have felled him on the spot with his stout fist!

Why, if any one, man or woman, in the crowd on a fête-day, happened to make a coarse remark in her hearing,—one of the sort that he himself knew how to make with great effect upon occasion,—he would be overcome with rage against that person; it seemed to him that every one should take notice of Livette’s presence, should feel that she was near, and understand that, before her, they should show some self-respect.

All this he would have been incapable of explaining, but he felt it all, confusedly and vaguely, in his heart.

Livette, for her part, was keenly conscious of the drover’s adoration. She revelled in it, without unduly seeming to do so. She saw very plainly that she had, without effort, tamed a wild beast. She laughed sometimes, as she looked at him—a frank, ringing laugh, in which there was, however, a touch of the triumph of the mysterious feminine witchery, the marvellous invention of nature, which decrees that the strong man shall be vanquished, rolled in the dust, at the pleasure of fascinating weakness. This miracle, performed by life, by nature, by love, she believed to be her own work,—hers, Livette’s,—and the little woman was a bit swollen with pride! More than frequently she would say to herself: “What have I done? I don’t deserve this good fortune; no, indeed, I don’t deserve it!” She saw very clearly that, in his eyes, she was a being apart: that he did not treat her by any means as everybody else did: and, greatly astonished as she was, she was proud of it.

Thereupon, wondering in her sincere heart what she had “more” or better than another, and finding no answer to the question, it came about that she deemed her lover a little, just a very little, stupid to be so dominated by her, and he so strong! And then she would prettily make fun of him and laugh aloud at him, saying:

“Ah! great booby!”

So it was that the whole essence of Woman, profound, seductive, existed in this simple, obscure peasant-girl, who could have told nothing as to her own character.

In time, too, she came to look upon herself as pretty, beautiful, the prettiest, the loveliest of all, and to admire her own charms. When such thoughts came to her, and if the truth must be known, none were more frequent,—ah! then she felt her pride! And she no longer deemed her lover stupid in the least degree; on the contrary, he seemed to her very fortunate, too fortunate! and then it was he who hardly deserved her! At such times, she received his attentions, his humility, with the air of a princess accustomed to homage.

Then, too, she would wonder why all the others did not do for her what he did? And, thereupon, she would conceive a sort of gratitude for him. Such a constant revolution in our hearts of impressions, often irreconcilable and ever changing, around a fixed idea, is love.—Yes, in very truth he deserved to be loved simply because he had known enough to appreciate her! to choose her! The other young men were the fools, one and all!

Warm was his welcome if he arrived at the farm when that thought was in her mind. She would give the little cry of a happy bird, and run to meet her lover.

“Good-morning, Monsieur Jacques!”

“Good-morning, Demoiselle Livette!”

They would shake hands.

“Will you come to the Rhône?”

“With all my heart!”

And often they would go and sit together beside the Rhône, beneath the great hawthorn—a tree more than a hundred years old and known to everybody. The hawthorn, like the aspen and the birch, is a familiar Camarguese tree.

Sometimes, on the way, she would hold out to him a flexible green twig, broken from a poplar by the roadside, and they would walk along, united and kept apart at the same time by the short branch, followed by a swarm of gnats with their tiny iris-hued wings.

She was very fond of this sport of making him walk thus, not too near, not too far away, holding him without touching him, drawing him nearer or keeping him at a distance, as her fancy dictated, making of the leafy wand a whip if he showed signs of rebellion.

She had the feeling that thus she was indeed his mistress, remembering how she used sometimes to make her horse Blanchet follow her docilely in the same way by holding out to him a small wisp of flowering oats;—how she had sometimes, by the same means, led back behind her, quiet as an ox, a vicious bull that had escaped, wounded, from the arena, and that she had encountered by the roadside, in a thicket of thorn-broom, bathing his foaming tongue in the streams of blood that were flowing from his nostrils.

Arrived at the bank of the Rhône, beneath the great hawthorn with the gnarled black trunk and smooth white branches, that stretches its abundant rustling foliage well out over the stream, the lovers would sit down, side by side, upon the roots protruding from the ground or upon a bundle of cut reeds.

And they would watch the water flow. The earthy, yellowish water, with its whirling masses of foam, rushing toward the sea.

They would sit and gaze.

They would not speak. They would live on in silence, listening to the plashing of the Rhône, the tiny wavelets that came rippling in obliquely to the bank, to loiter there among the feet of countless reeds and poplars, while the main current in the centre of the stream flowed swiftly, hurriedly along, as if in haste to reach the sea, and there be swallowed up.—There they would sit and dream, not speaking.

They felt that they were living the same life as everything about them. From time to time, a kingfisher, sky-blue and reddish-brown, would pass before them, light on a low branch, gazing sidewise at the water with his beak ready to strike, then, suddenly, fly off across the Rhône. And, with the sky-blue bird, their thoughts would cross the river, there to light again upon a branch, bent like a bow, whose slender point trailed in the water, vibrating in the current, and surrounded with a mass of foam, dead leaves, and twigs. And suddenly the bird, like a sorcerer, had disappeared.

“How pretty!” Livette would sometimes say.

And that was all.

He would make no reply. He knew not what to say to her. He was too happy. He would not call the king his cousin!

In the evening twilight, many little rabbits, young in that month of May, would run out from the park, through the wild hedges, almost invisible in their gray coats, and play in the shadow at the foot of the bushes, their presence betrayed by the rustling of a tuft of grass or a low-hanging, horizontal branch that barred their path.

To heighten the enjoyment of the lovers, there was the nightingale’s song, at the rising of the moon. Listen to it: ’tis always lovely in the darkness, is the nightingale’s song. It begins with three distinct, long-drawn-out cries; you would say it was a signal, a preconcerted call; it enjoins attention. Then the modulations hesitatingly arise. You would say that it is timid, that it fears its prayer will not be granted. But soon it takes courage, self-assurance comes, and the song bursts forth and soars and fills the air with its melodious uproar. ’Tis love, ’tis youth and love that can no longer be restrained, that nothing stays, that claim their rights in life.—His song is done.

His song is done, but still the lovers listen on and on to the bird’s song, echoed in the dark recesses of their own hearts.

At last, it would be time to return. They would rise and walk back toward the farm, not far away.

The grandmother would be calling from the doorway:

“Livette! Livette!”

Her voice would reach their ears, with a plaintive, caressing accent, tinged with sadness, from the edge of the vast expanse that rose in the darkness toward the stars, toward life and love,—a long, melancholy call. The voice at night upon the moor fills the air and rises tranquilly, disturbed by no echo, sad to be alone in a too great solitude.

Around the lovers as they returned to the farm, in the orchards, in the park, as the darkness increased, the deafening clamor of the frogs would soon be heard, a mighty noise, the sum total of a multitude of feeble sounds, a frightful din, composed of many minor croakings of unequal strength, which, massed together, drowning one another, mount at last into a rhythmic tumult like the ceaseless roaring of a cataract.

And amid this formidable everlasting clamor, made by the voices of myriads of amorous little frogs, accentuated by the cry of a curlew, or a heron on the watch, and accompanied by the humming of the two Rhônes and the plashing of the sea—the lovers, both deeply moved, heard nothing save the calm beating of their hearts.

As time went on, their love waxed greater, increased by the memory of all these hours lived together.

Renaud was no longer simple Renaud in Livette’s eyes, but the being by whom she knew what life was, through whom came to her that overwhelming consciousness of everything, of the horizons of land and sea, that sentiment of being, that longing for the future, for growth, that inflow of vague hopes that comes of love and gives a zest to life.

And now, if any one had sought to wrest Jacques from Livette, she would have died of it, and he who should try to wrest Livette from Jacques would have died of it—he would, my friends, even more certainly.

It is a good and excellent thing that love should be always busied in making the world younger—and the nightingale, like the frogs, is never weary of repeating it.