CHAPTER II

.*

With a few intervals of drowsy indolence, she felt a mad desire to wander off, to venture out in the heat of the sun, to scour the beach and surrounding country, to explore unfamiliar paths. She stimulated her companion; at times she carried him off almost by force; at times, too, she started off alone, and he joined her unexpectedly.

In order to climb a hill, they followed a small pathway bordered by thick hedges of violet flowers, among which blossomed the large and delicate calices of other snowy fragrant flowers with fine petals. On the other side of the hedges, ears of corn waved to and fro on their stems, yellowish-green in color, more or less ready to change into gold; and in other places the corn was so thick and high that it towered over the tops of the hedges, suggesting a beautiful, overflowing cup.

Nothing escaped Hippolyte's vigilant eye. Every minute she stooped to blow away certain spheres of down, very fragile, at the tips of their long, slender peduncles. Every minute she stopped to observe the small spiders climbing by an invisible thread from a flower situated low down to a branch above.

On the hill, in a narrow, sunny circle, there was a small field of flax already dry. The yellowish stems bore at their summits a ball of gold, and here and there the gold seemed tarnished by an ironlike rust. The highest stems were waving almost imperceptibly. And, because of this extreme lightness, the whole gave the idea of some delicate piece of gold-work.

"Look, it is just like filigree!" said Hippolyte.

The furze was commencing to shed its flowers. A few feet away hung a sort of white foam in flakes; on others crawled large black and brown caterpillars, soft to the touch as velvet. Hippolyte took up one whose delicate down was streaked with vermilion, and she kept it calmly on the palm of her hand.

"It is more beautiful than a flower," she said.

George remarked, and it was not the first time, that she was almost totally devoid of instinctive repugnance towards insects, and that, in general, she did not feel that keen and invincible repulsion which he himself felt for a host of things considered unclean.

"Throw it away, I beg of you!"

She began to laugh, and stretched out her hand as if to put the caterpillar on his neck. He gave a cry and sprang back, which made her laugh all the more.

"Oh, what a brave man!"

In a spirit of mischief, she started to pursue him between the trunks of the young oaks, through the narrow paths that formed a sort of mountainous labyrinth. Her peals of laughter started from between the gray stones flocks of wild sparrows.

"Stop! Stop! You frighten the sheep."

A small flock of frightened sheep dispersed, dragging behind them up the rocky incline a bundle of bluish rags.

"Stop. I have it no longer. See."

And she showed the runaway her empty hands.

"Let us help the Mute."

And she ran towards the woman in rags, who was making ineffectual efforts to hold back the sheep attached to the long cords of twisted osier. Hippolyte seized the bunch of cords, and braced her feet against a stone in order to have more resisting power. She panted, her face purple; and in this violent attitude she was very beautiful. Her beauty lighted up, unexpectedly, like a torch.

"Come, George, come you too!" she cried to George, communicating to him her frank and childish joy.

The sheep stopped in a clump of furze. There were six of them, three black and three white, and bore the osier cords around their woolly necks. The woman who looked after them, emaciated, poorly covered by her bluish rags, gesticulated while giving vent, from her toothless mouth, to an incomprehensible grumbling. Her little greenish eyes, without eyelashes, bleary, tearful and congested, had a malignant look.

When Hippolyte gave her alms, she kissed the pieces of money. Then, letting go the cords, she removed from her head a rag which no longer had either form or color, stooped to the ground, and slowly, with greatest care, tied up the pieces of money in a multiplicity of knots.

"I am tired," said Hippolyte. "Let us sit down here for a moment."

They sat down. George then perceived that the spot was near the great furze field where, on that May morning, the five virgins had plucked the flowers to strew the path of the beautiful Roman. That morning already seemed very far off, lost in dreamy haze. He said:

"Do you see, over yonder, those bushes which are now almost flowerless? Well, it was there that we filled the baskets to strew flowers on your path when you arrived. Oh, what a day! Do you remember?"

She smiled, and in a transport of sudden tenderness took one of his hands, which she kept pressed in her own; and she leaned her cheek on the shoulder of the loved one, burying herself in the sweetness of that memory, of that solitude, of that peace, of that poesy.

From time to time a breath of wind passed through the tops of the oaks; and below, farther on, in the gray of the olive-trees, passed, from time to time, a clear wave of silver. The Mute moved away slowly behind the feeding sheep; and she seemed to leave something fantastic in her traces, as if a reflect of the legends in which malignant fairies transform themselves into toads at every turn of the path.

"Aren't you happy now?" murmured Hippolyte.

George thought: "It is already two weeks, and there has been no change in me. Still the same anxiety, the same inquietude, the same discontent! We are hardly at the beginning, and I already foresee the end. What shall we do to enjoy the passing hour?" Certain phrases of a letter from Hippolyte recurred to him: "Oh! when will it be given me to be near you during entire days, to live your life? You will see, I shall no longer be the same woman. I will be your mistress, your friend, your sister; and if you think me worthy, I will be also your adviser.... In me you should find nothing but sweetness and repose.... It will be a life of love such as has never before been seen." ...

He thought: "For the past two weeks our whole existence has been composed of petty, material incidents, like those of to-day. It is true; I have already seen in her _another woman_! She is commencing to change, even in appearance. It is unbelievable how rapidly she is gaining in health. One would say that every breath is a gain; that, for her, every fruit turns into blood; that the healthfulness of the air penetrates her every pore. She was made for this life of idleness, of liberty, of physical enjoyment, of carelessness. Up to now, she has not uttered a single thoughtful word which revealed preoccupation of the soul. Her intervals of silence and immobility are caused only by muscular fatigue, just as at the present moment."

"Of what are you thinking?" she demanded.

"Of nothing. I am happy."

After a pause, she added:

"We'll go on now, shall we?"

They rose. She bestowed upon his mouth a sonorous kiss. She was gay and restless. Every few minutes she darted away from him to run down an incline free from rocks; and when she wished to check her speed, she grasped the trunk of a young oak, which groaned and bent beneath the shock.

She gathered a violet flower and sucked it.

"It's honey."

She gathered another, and placed it on her lover's lips.

"Taste it!"

And it seemed as if she enjoyed the savor for the second time, at seeing the motions of his mouth.

"With all these flowers, and all these bees, there must certainly be a hive near by," she went on. "One of these mornings, while you are asleep, I must come here and search for it.... I'll bring you a honeycomb."

She prattled at a great rate about this adventure, which tickled her fancy; and in her words appeared, with the vivacity of an actual sensation, the freshness of the morning, the mystery of the woods, the impatience of the search, the joy of the discovery, the pale color and wild fragrance of honey.

They halted half-way up the hill, at the border of the woody region, charmed by the melancholy which ascended from the sea.

The sea was delicately colored, between a blue and a green, in which the green had a progressive tendency to dominate; but the sky, of a leaden azure at the zenith, and streaked here and there by clouds, was rose-colored in the curve toward Ortono. This light was reflected in pale tints on the surface of the water, and recalled deflowered roses floating. Against the maritime background were arranged in steps, in harmonious degrees, first the two large oaks with their dark foliage, then the silvery olive-trees, then the fig-trees with their bright foliage and violet branches. The moon, orange-colored, enormous, almost at its full, rose up above the ring of the horizon, like a globe of crystal through whose transparency could be seen a chimerical country figured in bas-relief on a massive disk of gold.

One heard the warbling of birds, near and far. One heard the lowing of an ox; then a bleating; then the wailing of a child. There was a pause during which all these voices were silent, and only this single wail was heard.

It was a wail, not violent or interrupted, but shrill, continuous, almost feeble. And it attracted the soul, detached it from all the rest, snatched it from the seduction of the twilight, to oppress it with a veritable anguish which responded to the suffering of the unknown creature, of the little, invisible being.

"Do you hear?" said Hippolyte, whose voice, already changed by compassion, became involuntarily lower. "I know who the child is that's crying."

"You know?" asked George, to whom his mistress's voice and appearance had given a strange shock.

"Yes."

She was again listening intently to the lamentable moaning, which now seemed to fill the whole place. She added: "It's the infant that the Ghouls are sucking."

She had pronounced these words without the shadow of a smile, as if she herself were beneath the empire of the superstition.

"It lives over there, in that tumble-down cottage. Candia told me."

After a slight hesitation, during which they listened to the wails and had a fantastic vision of the dying child, Hippolyte suggested:

"Shall we go and see it? It's not far."

George was perplexed, dreading the sadness of the spectacle, and the contact of the distressed and coarse people.

"Shall we?" repeated Hippolyte, whose curiosity became irresistible. "It is over there, in that old cottage, beneath the pine. I know the way."

"Let's go!"

She went straight ahead, hastening her steps, across a sloping field. Both were silent; both heard only the infantile wail which served them as a guide. And, step by step, their anguish became more poignant and in proportion as the wailing became more distinct and indicated better the poor, bloodless body from which pain forced it.

They traversed a copse of odorous orange-trees, treading on the flowers scattered on the ground. On the threshold of a cottage close to the one they sought an enormously stout woman was seated; and on her monstrous body was a small round head, with soft eyes, white teeth, a placid smile.

"Where are you going, signora?" asked the woman, without rising.

"We are going to see the child whom the Ghouls are sucking."

"What's the use? You'd better stay here, and take a rest. I do not lack children, either. Look!"

Three or four naked children, who had also such large stomachs that one would have believed them to be dropsical, dragged themselves along on the ground, grunting and tumbling over, putting in their mouths everything that fell into their hands. And the woman held in her arms a fifth child, all covered with brownish scabs, from the midst of which shone out a pair of large clear blue eyes, like miraculous flowers.

"You see that I have plenty of them too, and that this one, here, is sick. Stay here a bit."

She smiled, soliciting with her eyes the strangers' generosity. And, with an expression in which one guessed the desire to dissuade the curiosity of the woman by the vague presentiment of a peril:

"What's the good of going there?" she repeated. "See how ill this one is."

And again she showed the afflicted child, but without simulating any sorrow, as if she simply offered to the passer-by a nearer object of compassion in exchange for a more distant one--as if she wished to say: "Since you desire to be compassionate, have compassion for the one before you." George examined, with deep pain, the poor, spotted face, whose large, bright, and clear eyes seemed to drink in all the light shed on this June evening.

"What is he suffering from?" he asked.

"Ah! signor, who ever knows?" answered the fat woman, always with the same placidity. "He has what God wishes."

Hippolyte gave her some money; and they resumed their way towards the other cottage, bearing with them the nauseous odor emanating from that door full of shadow.

They did not speak. They felt a contraction of their hearts, a disgust in their mouths, a weakness in their limbs. They heard the shrill wailing, mingled with other voices, other sounds; and they were stupefied at having been able to hear this single sound so far away, and so distinctly. But what attracted their eyes was the tall and straight pine whose robust trunk stood out black against the diffused light of the twilight, sustaining a melodious summit filled with sparrows.

At their approach, a whisper passed among the women gathered around the victim.

"Here are the gentlefolk--Candia's strangers."

"Come, come!"

And the women opened their circle to permit the arrivals to draw nearer. One of them, an old woman, with wrinkled skin, of the color of parched earth, expressionless eyes, whitish and as if vitrified in the depths of their hollow orbits, said, addressing Hippolyte, and touching her arm:

"Look, signora! Look! The Ghouls are sucking it, poor creature! Look at the state they've reduced it to! May God protect your children!"

Her voice was so dry that it appeared artificial, and resembled the sounds articulated by an automaton.

"Cross yourself, signora!" she added again.

The advice seemed lugubrious in that lifeless mouth, in which the voice lost its human character and became a dead thing. Hippolyte made the sign of the cross, and looked at her companion.

In the space before the door of the hut the women ere in a circle as around a spectacle, making; from time to time some mechanical sign of condolence. And the circle was unceasingly renewed; some, already tired of looking, went away; others arrived from neighboring houses. And almost all, at the sight of this slow death, repeated the same gesture, repeated the same words.

The child reposed in a little cradle, of rough pine boards, like a small, lidless coffin. The poor creature, naked, sickly, emaciated, greenish, was wailing continuously and waving its debilitated arms and legs, which had nothing more than skin and bone, as if asking for help. And the mother, seated at the foot of the cradle, bent in two, her head so low that it almost touched her knees, seemed to hear nothing. It seemed as if some terrible weight rested on her neck and prevented her from rising. At times, mechanically, she placed on the edge of the cradle a coarse, callous hand, burnt by the sun; and she made the gesture of rocking without altering her attitude or breaking the silence. Then the holy images, the talismans, and the relics, with which the pine cradle was almost entirely covered, undulated and tinkled, during a momentary pause in the wail.

"Liberata! Liberata!" cried one of the women, shaking her. "Look, Liberata! The lady has come--the lady is in your house! Look!"

The mother slowly raised her head and looked around her, with a bewildered air; then she fixed on her visitor her dry and mournful eyes, in whose depths there was less of fatigued sorrow than inert and shadowy terror--the terror of nocturnal witchcraft against which no exorcism prevailed, the terror of those insatiable beings who now had the house in their power, and who would not abandon it perhaps but with the last corpse.

"Speak! Speak!" insisted one of the women, shaking her again by the arm. "Speak! Ask the lady to send you to the Madonna of the Miracles."

The others surrounded Hippolyte with supplications.

"Yes, signora. Be charitable to her! Send her to the Madonna. Send her to the Madonna!"

The child cried louder. In the tops of the pine-tree the sparrows were emitting heart-rending cries. In the neighborhood, between the deformed trunks of the olive-trees, a dog barked. The moon was beginning to cast its shadows. "Yes," stammered Hippolyte, incapable of sustaining longer the fixed gaze of the silent mother. "Yes, yes, we will send her--to-morrow."

"No, not to-morrow; Saturday, signora."

"Saturday is the Vigil."

"Let her buy him a candle."

"A fine candle."

"A ten-pound candle."

"Do you hear, Liberata? Do you hear?"

"The lady will send you to the Madonna!"

"The Madonna will pity you."

"Speak! Speak!"

"She's become dumb, signora."

"She hasn't spoken for three days."

In the midst of the confused cries of the women, the child cried still louder.

"Do you hear how he cries?"

"He always cries loudest, signora, at nightfall."

"Perhaps it's coming soon."

"Perhaps the child has seen----"

"Make the sign of the cross, signora."

"It's getting dark."

"Do you hear how he cries?"

"Isn't that the bell tolling?"

"No; one can't hear it here."

"Silence!"

"One can't hear it here."

"But I hear it."

"I hear it, too."

"_Ave Maria!_"

All were silent, made the sign of the cross, and bowed. It seemed as if several sonorous waves, scarcely perceptible, arrived from the distant market-town; but the child's wail filled every listener's ear. Once more, only this single wail could be heard. The mother had fallen on her knees at the foot of the cradle, prostrated to the earth. Hippolyte, her head bowed, was praying with fervor.

"Look, there, in the doorway!" whispered one of the women to her neighbor.

George, watchful and uneasy, turned his head. The doorway was full of shadow.

"Look, there, in the doorway! Don't you see something?"

"Yes, I see," replied the other, uncertain, a little frightened.

"What is it? What do you see?" asked a third.

"What is it?" demanded a fourth.

"What is it?"

Suddenly curiosity and fright seized them all. They looked toward the door. The child cried. The mother rose, and she, too, began to fix her dilated eyes on the door which the shadows rendered mysterious. The dog barked among the olive-trees.

"What is it?" said George, in a low voice, but not without requiring some effort to shake off the increasing uneasiness of his imagination. "What do you see?"

None of the women dared to answer. All, in the shadow, saw the outlines of a vague form.

Then he advanced toward the door. When he crossed the threshold, a furnace-like heat and a repugnant stench cut short his breath. He turned round, went out.

"It's a scythe," he said.

In fact, it was a scythe hanging on the wall.

"Ah! a scythe."

And the voices recommenced.

"Liberata! Liberata!"

"Are you mad?"

"She is mad."

"It's getting dark. Let us go."

"He's not crying any more."

"Poor creature! Is he asleep?"

"He has stopped crying."

"Take in the cradle; the evening is damp. We will help you, Liberata."

"Poor creature! Is he asleep?"

"One would think he were dead. He no longer moves."

"Take in the cradle, won't you? Don't you hear us, Liberata?"

"She is mad."

"Where is the lamp? Joseph will soon return. Have you no lamp? Joseph will soon return from the lime-kiln."

"She is mad. She doesn't speak any more."

"We are going. God be with you!"

"Poor tormented flesh! Is he sleeping?"

"He's sleeping, he's sleeping.... He's not in pain now."

"Oh, Lord Jesus, save him!"

"Protect us, O Lord!"

"Farewell, farewell! Good night!"

"Good night!"

"Good night!"

*