King of Camargue Part 4

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 Rhone?"

"With all my heart!"

And often they would go and sit together beside the Rhone, 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 Rhone, 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 ma.s.ses of foam, rus.h.i.+ng toward the sea.

They would sit and gaze.

They would not speak. They would live on in silence, listening to the plas.h.i.+ng of the Rhone, 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 pa.s.s before them, light on a low branch, gazing sidewise at the water with his beak ready to strike, then, suddenly, fly off across the Rhone. 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 ma.s.s 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 gra.s.s 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-a.s.surance 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 mult.i.tude of feeble sounds, a frightful din, composed of many minor croakings of unequal strength, which, ma.s.sed 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 Rhones and the plas.h.i.+ng 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.

VI

RAMPAL

Rampal, who had borrowed Jacques Renaud's horse, had not returned.

Renaud now rode no other horse than Blanchet.

Rampal was a low rascal, gambler, hanger-on of wine-shops, well-known at Arles in all the vile haunts scattered along the Rhone.

Dismissed by several masters, a drover without a drove, he pa.s.sed his life in these days, riding from town to town, from Aigues-Mortes to Nimes, from Nimes to Arles, from Arles to Martigues, and in each of these towns plied some doubtful trade, cheated a little at cards, winning the means of living a week without doing anything, and returning, for that week, to the Camargue he loved, where there were, in two or three farm-houses, women who smiled upon his mysterious, piratical existence.

For that existence, a horse was essential. Rampal, serving as a drover on foot, had, in the first place, stolen a horse from a _manade_, but he broke his tether the second night, left his master, swam the Rhone, and rejoined his fellows. Then it was that the rascal, having, in truth, important business on hand, had said to Renaud:

"I have to go to Saintes, I'll take your horse, Cabri."

"Take my horse," Renaud replied.

It did not occur to him that Rampal would not return. Jacques relied so surely upon his own reputation for strength and courage that he did not think that any one would venture to arouse his wrath.

And then he had a sort of pity for Rampal, mingled with a little admiration. He was a bold horseman, was Rampal, and, except for women and cards, he would have been, with Renaud, or just after him, a king of the drovers! So that, if Rampal aroused Renaud's compa.s.sion, Renaud aroused Rampal's envy.

However, the vagaries of this _marrias_, this good-for-nothing knave, were the pranks of a free man. Neither married nor betrothed, fatherless and motherless, with no one to support or a.s.sist, no one whom he must please, he had a perfect right to live as he pleased! At least, that is what most people thought.

Moreover, Renaud, although an honest man, had the tastes of a vagabond. Before his heart was filled with his strange affection for Livette, by which he felt as if he were bound hand and foot, he had, in truth, borne a part with Rampal in many curious adventures.

More than once they had galloped along side by side toward the open moor, each having _en croupe_ a laughing damsel, who, after the close of a bull-fight at Aigues-Mortes or Arles, had consented to accompany them for a night.

But on such occasions Renaud had always dealt frankly, never promising marriage nor any other thing, but simply giving the fair one a present, a souvenir, a bra.s.s ring, or a silk handkerchief--a _fichu_ to pleat after the Arlesian fas.h.i.+on, or a broad velvet ribbon for a head-dress; while Rampal was treacherous, promised much and did nothing,--in short, was nothing but _fena_, a good-for-nothing.

So Rampal had borrowed Renaud's horse with the intention of bringing him back the same evening; but that evening he had heard of a fete at Martigues and had ridden away thither without worrying about Renaud.

"He'll take a horse out of his _manade_," he said to himself.