received her first kiss, trembled at the first breath of love, had a presentiment of that sensual love of which she did not become aware until she was in the wild vale of Ota beside the spring where they mingled their kisses as they drank of its waters. The trees were now leafless, the climbing vines dead.
They entered the little village. The empty, silent streets smelled of the sea, of wrack, of fish. Huge brown nets were still hanging up to dry outside the houses, or stretched out on the shingle. The gray, cold sea, with its eternal roaring foam, was going out, uncovering the green rocks at the foot of the cliff toward Fécamp.
Jeanne and her father, motionless, watched the fishermen setting out in their boats in the dusk, as they did every night, risking their lives to keep from starving, and so poor, nevertheless, that they never tasted meat.
The baron, inspired at the sight of the ocean, murmured: “It is terrible, but it is beautiful. How magnificent this sea is on which the darkness is falling, and on which so many lives are in peril, is it not, Jeannette?”
She replied with a cold smile: “It is nothing to the Mediterranean.”
Her father, indignant, exclaimed: “The Mediterranean! It is oil, sugar water, bluing water in a washtub. Look at this sea, how terrible it is with its crests of foam! And think of all those men who have set out on it, and who are already out of sight.”
Jeanne assented with a sigh: “Yes, if you think so.” But this name, “Mediterranean,” had wrung her heart afresh, sending her thoughts back to those distant lands where her dreams lay buried.
Instead of returning home by the woods, they walked along the road, mounting the ascent slowly. They were silent, sad at the thought of the approaching separation. As they passed along beside the farmyards an odor of crushed apples, that smell of new cider which seems to pervade the atmosphere in this season all through Normandy, rose to their nostrils, or else a strong smell of the cow stables. A small lighted window at the end of the yard indicated the farmhouse.
It seemed to Jeanne that her mind was expanding, was beginning to understand the psychic meaning of things; and these little scattered gleams in the landscape gave her, all at once, a keen sense of the isolation of all human lives, a feeling that everything detaches, separates, draws one far away from the things they love.
She said, in a resigned tone: “Life is not always cheerful.”
The baron sighed: “How can it be helped, daughter? We can do nothing.”
The following day the baron and his wife went away, and Jeanne and Julien were left alone.
French
VII
Cards now became a distraction in the life of the young people. Every morning after breakfast, Julien would play several games of bezique with his wife, smoking and sipping brandy as he played. She would then go up to her room and sit down beside the window, and as the rain beat against the panes, or the wind shook the windows, she would embroider away steadily. Occasionally she would raise her eyes and look out at the gray sea which had white-caps on it. Then, after gazing listlessly for some time, she would resume her work.
She had nothing else to do, Julien having taken the entire management of the house, to satisfy his craving for authority and his craze for economy. He was parsimonious in the extreme, never gave any tips, cut down the food to the merest necessaries; and as Jeanne since her return had ordered the baker to make her a little Norman “galette” for breakfast, he had cut down this extra expense, and condemned her to eat toast.
She said nothing in order to avoid recriminations, arguments and quarrels; but she suffered keenly at each fresh manifestation of avarice on the part of her husband. It appeared to her low and odious, brought up as she had been in a family where money was never considered. How often had she not heard her mother say: “Why, money is made to be spent.” Julien would now say: “Will you never become accustomed to not throwing money away?” And each time he deducted a few sous from some one’s salary or on a note, he would say with a smile, as he slipped the change into his pocket: “Little streams make big rivers.”
On certain days Jeanne would sit and dream. She would gradually cease sewing and, with her hands idle, and forgetting her surroundings, she would weave one of those romances of her girlhood and be lost in some enchanting adventure. But suddenly Julien’s voice giving some orders to old Simon would snatch her abruptly from her dreams, and she would take up her work again, saying: “That is all over,” and a tear would fall on her hands as she plied the needle.
Rosalie, formerly so cheerful and always singing, had changed. Her rounded cheeks had lost their color, and were now almost hollow, and sometimes had an earthy hue. Jeanne would frequently ask her: “Are you ill, my girl?” The little maid would reply: “No, madame,” while her cheeks would redden slightly and she would retire hastily.
At the end of January the snow came. In one night the whole plain was covered and the trees next morning were white with icy foam.
On one of these mornings, Jeanne was sitting warming her feet before the fire in her room, while Rosalie, who had changed from day to day, was making the bed. Suddenly hearing behind her a kind of moan, Jeanne asked, without turning her head: “What is the matter?”
The maid replied as usual: “Nothing, madame”; but her voice was weak and trembling.
Jeanne’s thoughts were on something else, when she noticed that the girl was not moving about the room. She called: “Rosalie!” Still no sound. Then, thinking she might have left the room, she cried in a louder tone: “Rosalie!” and she was reaching out her arm to ring the bell, when a deep moan close beside her made her start up with a shudder.
The little servant, her face livid, her eyes haggard, was seated on the floor, her legs stretched out, and her back leaning against the bed. Jeanne sprang toward her. “What is the matter with you — what is the matter?” she asked.
The girl did not reply, did not move. She stared vacantly at her mistress and gasped as though she were in terrible pain. Then, suddenly, she slid down on her back at full length, clenching her teeth to smother a cry of anguish.
Jeanne suddenly understood, and almost distracted, she ran to the head of the stairs, crying: “Julien, Julien!”
“What do you want?” he replied from below.
She hardly knew how to tell him. “It is Rosalie, who — — “
Julien rushed upstairs two steps at a time, and going abruptly into the room, he found the poor girl had just been delivered of a child. He looked round with a wicked look on his face, and pushing his terrified wife out of the room, exclaimed: “This is none of your affair. Go away. Send me Ludivine and old Simon.”
Jeanne, trembling, descended to the kitchen, and then, not daring to go upstairs again, she went into the drawingroom, in which there had been no fire since her parents left, and anxiously awaited news.
She presently saw the manservant running out of the house. Five minutes later he returned with Widow Dentu, the nurse of the district.
Then there was a great commotion on the stairs as though they were carrying a wounded person,
