of the room. Bertrande stood in the sunlight and met, as in a dream, the long-anticipated moment, her breath stilled and her heart beating wildly. The figure in leather and steel advanced with even tread, a stockier figure than that of the man who had gone away eight years before, broader in the shoulder, developed, mature. The beard was strange, being rough and thick, but above it the eyes were like those of Martin, the forehead, the whole cast of the countenance, like and unlike to Bertrande’s startled recognition, and as he advanced from the shadow he seemed to Bertrande a stranger, the stranger of the wooded pathway, then her loved husband, then a man who might have been Martin’s ancestor but not young Martin Guerre.
When he had advanced to within a few feet of her, he stopped, and she read in his eyes a surprise and an admiration so intense that her limbs seemed all at once bathed in a soft fire. She was frightened.
“Madame,” said the stranger who was her husband, “you are very beautiful.”
“Cap de Diou!” exclaimed the uncle. “Are you surprised that your wife is beautiful?”
“Beautiful, yes, I knew, but beauty such as this I did not remember.”
“Yes, Martin, yes,” cried the sisters. “She has changed, you are right. It is another beauty.”
“But why do you stand there? Embrace her, my nephew.”
And then Bertrande felt on her cheek the imprint of the bearded lips, and on her shoulders the weight of the strong hands, felt with a shock the actual masculinity of the embrace, so strange for one who had been long accustomed only to the light touch of Sanxi’s mouth. The embrace released her from her trance, reminding her of the last kiss which she had given Martin at the edge of the wheat field, and all the emotion tightly held in check for so many years was in her voice as she cried:
“Ah, why have you been away so long! Cruel! Cruel! I have almost forgotten your face! Even your voice, Martin, is strange in my ears.”
“Bertrande,” said Pierre Guerre with gravity, “this is no proper welcome for your husband, to overwhelm him with reproaches. You forget yourself, my child, indeed you do. My nephew, you must pardon her. It is the excess of emotion. We cannot tell you how we rejoice at your return. It was the greatest of sorrows to your father that you were gone so long. But that is over. I praise God that you are safely with us, no longer a boy, but a man grown. In times like these a house has need of a master and a child of a protector.”
“I praise God also,” said Bertrande softly, “and I ask your pardon, my husband.”
“No, Uncle,” came the reply. “She does well to reproach the man who left you all so long unprotected. It is I who should ask pardon of her. But you must believe me: until I passed through Rieux I did not know that my father was dead.” And, bending above her hand, he promised Bertrande that he would never again leave her and that he would do all in his power to atone for the neglect which he had shown her. Bertrande was deeply touched and not a little surprised. Uncle Pierre remarked:
“It is well done, my nephew. I can see that the wars have done more for you than strengthen bone and muscle. You have spoken like a true father and like the head of a house.”
Behind him the four sisters of Martin were agitated by murmurs of approval, and there were cries of approval and admiration from the servants, who, crowding forward, all wished to salute their long-absent master.
He greeted them all, inquiring for certain ones who had died during his absence, questioned them about their families and their health, praised them for their loyalty and good service, and appeared so genuinely pleased to see them all that their enthusiasm redoubled.
Bertrande, watching him, said to herself:
“He is noble, he is generous, he is like his father again, but become gracious.”
But suddenly the master, putting aside gently the servants who stood between him and Bertrande, cried:
“But where is Sanxi? Where is my son, that I may embrace him?”
At this Sanxi, who had been hiding behind his mother, burrowed his head into her skirts, drawing the ample folds about his shoulders.
“Come, Sanxi,” said his mother, taking him by the shoulders. “Here is your father, your good father of whom we have talked so many times. Salute him.”
“Ah, my little monsieur,” exclaimed a great voice, “it is good to see you,” and Sanxi, clinging like a kitten to his mother’s skirts, so that she had to disengage his fingers one by one, felt himself hoisted into the air and then folded close to a hard shoulder, smelt the reek of leather and horse-sweat, and then felt the wiry beard rubbed joyously against his face.
“Mama!” he cried. “Mama!”
“It is the strangeness,” he heard his mother’s voice saying apologetically. “Do not hold it against him. Consider, how sudden and how strange—for him, as for me.”
“Tonnèrre!” cried the great voice. “He is hard to hold. But never mind. We shall be friends, in time.”
The boy felt himself set on his feet firmly, and then his parents turned away from him. Some people pushed in between him and his mother, and as the crowd moved toward the door, everyone laughing and talking, it carried her along, clinging to the arm of the stranger. The swineherd and the boy who cared for the horses were the last to leave the room. They lagged behind, buffeting each other out of sheer good will, and the swineherd, turning, saw young Sanxi still standing in front of his mother’s chair.
“What a fine day for you,” he called. “It isn’t everyday that a boy gets a father.”
An hour later Sanxi had recovered himself sufficiently to dare sit beside his father on the long bench before the fireplace. On the other side of his father was the priest; in front of him, on a stool, was Uncle Pierre. His mother kept coming and going from the table to the fireplace, pausing sometimes with her hand on the shoulder of Uncle Pierre to gaze happily and incredulously at his father.
Uncle Pierre had to tell again how he had met Sanxi’s father, “away by the church, far from the road to the farm. I knew him at once, and that from the back of his head. I cried, ‘Hollah, Martin, my nephew, where are you going, away so far from your own house? You have returned,’ I said. ‘Pray do not leave us before you have seen your own roof.’ And what answer did he make, this excellent man? ‘I am going,’ said he, ‘to the church to give thanks to God for my safe return and to pray for the soul of my father of whose death I learned only yesterday.’”
The priest nodded with grave approval; the uncle wiped an actual tear from his eye.
“So then I cried, ‘Good boy, embrace me, Martin, embrace your old Uncle Pierre,’ and together we went and knelt in the church. I am glad that I have lived to see this day.”
Then Sanxi’s father had to hear from the priest and from Uncle Pierre all the story of how Sanxi’s grandfather had fallen from his horse and been killed instantly, and of how his grandmother had died very quietly in her bed with all her family and her servants round about, weeping, all save her son Martin, and through all these recitals Sanxi was puzzled to see how his mother alternately wept and smiled. His father did not cry. He was very serious, very serious and strong, and Sanxi, sitting beside him, observed minutely all the straps and buckles of his armor and how the metal of his gorget had chafed the leather of his jerkin, and began to admire him, silently.
For
