Original Short Stories of Maupassant, Volume 8

G >> Guy de Maupassant >> Original Short Stories of Maupassant, Volume 8


Lormerin's heart began to throb. He remained sunk in his armchair with
the letter on his knees, staring straight before him, overcome by a
poignant emotion that made the tears mount up to his eyes!

If he had ever loved a woman in his life it was this one, little Lise,
Lise de Vance, whom he called "Ashflower," on account of the strange
color of her hair and the pale gray of her eyes. Oh! what a dainty,
pretty, charming creature she was, this frail baronne, the wife of that
gouty, pimply baron, who had abruptly carried her off to the provinces,
shut her up, kept her in seclusion through jealousy, jealousy of the
handsome Lormerin.

Yes, he had loved her, and he believed that he too, had been truly loved.
She familiarly gave him, the name of Jaquelet, and would pronounce that
word in a delicious fashion.

A thousand forgotten memories came back to him, far, off and sweet and
melancholy now. One evening she had called on him on her way home from a
ball, and they went for a stroll in the Bois de Boulogne, she in evening
dress, he in his dressing-jacket. It was springtime; the weather was
beautiful. The fragrance from her bodice embalmed the warm air-the odor
of her bodice, and perhaps, too, the fragrance of her skin. What a divine
night! When they reached the lake, as the moon's rays fell across the
branches into the water, she began to weep. A little surprised, he asked
her why.

"I don't know. The moon and the water have affected me. Every time I see
poetic things I have a tightening at the heart, and I have to cry."

He smiled, affected himself, considering her feminine emotion charming
--the unaffected emotion of a poor little woman, whom every
sensation overwhelms. And he embraced her passionately, stammering:

"My little Lise, you are exquisite."

What a charming love affair, short-lived and dainty, it had been and over
all too quickly, cut short in the midst of its ardor by this old brute of
a baron, who had carried off his wife, and never let any one see her
afterward.

Lormerin had forgotten, in fact, at the end of two or three months. One
woman drives out another so quickly in Paris, when one is a bachelor! No
matter; he had kept a little altar for her in his heart, for he had loved
her alone! He assured himself now that this was so.

He rose, and said aloud: "Certainly, I will go and dine with her this
evening!"

And instinctively he turned toward the mirror to inspect himself from
head to foot. He reflected: "She must look very old, older than I look."
And he felt gratified at the thought of showing himself to her still
handsome, still fresh, of astonishing her, perhaps of filling her with
emotion, and making her regret those bygone days so far, far distant!

He turned his attention to the other letters. They were of no importance.

The whole day he kept thinking of this ghost of other days. What was she
like now? How strange it was to meet in this way after twenty-five years!
But would he recognize her?

He made his toilet with feminine coquetry, put on a white waistcoat,
which suited him better with the coat than a black one, sent for the
hairdresser to give him a finishing touch With the curling iron, for he
had preserved his hair, and started very early in order to show his
eagerness to see her.

The first thing he saw on entering a pretty drawing-room newly furnished
was his own portrait, an old faded photograph, dating from the days when
he was a beau, hanging on the wall in an antique silk frame.

He sat down and waited. A door opened behind him. He rose up abruptly,
and, turning round, beheld an old woman with white hair who extended both
hands toward him.

He seized them, kissed them one after the other several times; then,
lifting up his head, he gazed at the woman he had loved.

Yes, it was an old lady, an old lady whom he did not recognize, and who,
while she smiled, seemed ready to weep.

He could not abstain from murmuring:

"Is it you, Lise?"

She replied:

"Yes, it is I; it is I, indeed. You would not have known me, would you? I
have had so much sorrow--so much sorrow. Sorrow has consumed my
life. Look at me now--or, rather, don't look at me! But how handsome
you have kept--and young! If I had by chance met you in the street I
would have exclaimed: 'Jaquelet!'. Now, sit down and let us, first of
all, have a chat. And then I will call my daughter, my grown-up daughter.
You'll see how she resembles me--or, rather, how I resembled
her--no, it is not quite that; she is just like the 'me' of former
days--you shall see! But I wanted to be alone with you first. I
feared that there would be some emotion on my side, at the first moment.
Now it is all over; it is past. Pray be seated, my friend."

He sat down beside her, holding her hand; but he did not know what to
say; he did not know this woman--it seemed to him that he had never
seen her before. Why had he come to this house? What could he talk about?
Of the long ago? What was there in common between him and her? He could
no longer recall anything in presence of this grandmotherly face. He
could no longer recall all the nice, tender things, so sweet, so bitter,
that had come to his mind that morning when he thought of the other, of
little Lise, of the dainty Ashflower. What, then, had become of her, the
former one, the one he had loved? That woman of far-off dreams, the
blonde with gray eyes, the young girl who used to call him "Jaquelet" so
prettily?

They remained side by side, motionless, both constrained, troubled,
profoundly ill at ease.

As they talked only commonplaces, awkwardly and spasmodically and slowly,
she rose and pressed the button of the bell.

"I am going to call Renee," she said.

There was a tap at the door, then the rustle of a dress; then a young
voice exclaimed:

"Here I am, mamma!"

Lormerin remained bewildered as at the sight of an apparition.

He stammered:

"Good-day, mademoiselle"

Then, turning toward the mother:

"Oh! it is you!"

In fact, it was she, she whom he had known in bygone days, the Lise who
had vanished and come back! In her he found the woman he had won
twenty-five years before. This one was even younger, fresher, more
childlike.

He felt a wild desire to open his arms, to clasp her to his heart again,
murmuring in her ear:

"Good-morning, Lison!"

A man-servant announced:

"Dinner is ready, madame."

And they proceeded toward the dining-room.

What passed at this dinner? What did they say to him, and what could he
say in reply? He found himself plunged in one of those strange dreams
which border on insanity. He gazed at the two women with a fixed idea in
his mind, a morbid, self-contradictory idea:

"Which is the real one?"

The mother smiled again repeating over and over:

"Do you remember?" And it was in the bright eyes of the young girl that
he found again his memories of the past. Twenty times he opened his mouth
to say to her: "Do you remember, Lison?" forgetting this white-haired
lady who was looking at him tenderly.

And yet, there were moments when, he no longer felt sure, when he lost
his head. He could see that the woman of to-day was not exactly the woman
of long ago. The other one, the former one, had in her voice, in her
glances, in her entire being, something which he did not find again. And
he made prodigious efforts of mind to recall his lady love, to seize
again what had escaped from her, what this resuscitated one did not
possess.

The baronne said:

"You have lost your old vivacity, my poor friend."

He murmured:

"There are many other things that I have lost!"

But in his heart, touched with emotion, he felt his old love springing to
life once more, like an awakened wild beast ready to bite him.

The young girl went on chattering, and every now and then some familiar
intonation, some expression of her mother's, a certain style of speaking
and thinking, that resemblance of mind and manner which people acquire by
living together, shook Lormerin from head to foot. All these things
penetrated him, making the reopened wound of his passion bleed anew.

He got away early, and took a turn along the boulevard. But the image of
this young girl pursued him, haunted him, quickened his heart, inflamed
his blood. Apart from the two women, he now saw only one, a young one,
the old one come back out of the past, and he loved her as he had loved
her in bygone years. He loved her with greater ardor, after an interval
of twenty-five years.

He went home to reflect on this strange and terrible thing, and to think
what he should do.

But, as he was passing, with a wax candle in his hand, before the glass,
the large glass in which he had contemplated himself and admired himself
before he started, he saw reflected there an elderly, gray-haired man;
and suddenly he recollected what he had been in olden days, in the days
of little Lise. He saw himself charming and handsome, as he had been when
he was loved! Then, drawing the light nearer, he looked at himself more
closely, as one inspects a strange thing with a magnifying glass, tracing
the wrinkles, discovering those frightful ravages, which he had not
perceived till now.

And he sat down, crushed at the sight of himself, at the sight of his
lamentable image, murmuring:

"All over, Lormerin!"




THE PARROT

I

Everybody in Fecamp knew Mother Patin's story. She had certainly been
unfortunate with her husband, for in his lifetime he used to beat her,
just as wheat is threshed in the barn.

He was master of a fishing bark and had married her, formerly, because
she was pretty, although poor.

Patin was a good sailor, but brutal. He used to frequent Father Auban's
inn, where he would usually drink four or five glasses of brandy, on
lucky days eight or ten glasses and even more, according to his mood. The
brandy was served to the customers by Father Auban's daughter, a pleasing
brunette, who attracted people to the house only by her pretty face, for
nothing had ever been gossiped about her.

Patin, when he entered the inn, would be satisfied to look at her and to
compliment her politely and respectfully. After he had had his first
glass of brandy he would already find her much nicer; at the second he
would wink; at the third he would say. "If you were only willing,
Mam'zelle Desiree----" without ever finishing his sentence; at
the fourth he would try to hold her back by her skirt in order to kiss
her; and when he went as high as ten it was Father Auban who brought him
the remaining drinks.

The old innkeeper, who knew all the tricks of the trade, made Desiree
walk about between the tables in order to increase the consumption of
drinks; and Desiree, who was a worthy daughter of Father Auban, flitted
around among the benches and joked with them, her lips smiling and her
eyes sparkling.

Patin got so well accustomed to Desiree's face that he thought of it even
while at sea, when throwing out his nets, in storms or in calms, on
moonlit or dark evenings. He thought of her while holding the tiller in
the stern of his boat, while his four companions were slumbering with
their heads on their arms. He always saw her, smiling, pouring out the
yellow brandy with a peculiar shoulder movement and then exclaiming as
she turned away: "There, now; are you satisfied?"

He saw her so much in his mind's eye that he was overcome by an
irresistible desire to marry her, and, not being able to hold out any
longer, he asked for her hand.

He was rich, owned his own vessel, his nets and a little house at the
foot of the hill on the Retenue, whereas Father Auban had nothing. The
marriage was therefore eagerly agreed upon and the wedding took place as
soon as possible, as both parties were desirous for the affair to be
concluded as early as convenient.

Three days after the wedding Patin could no longer understand how he had
ever imagined Desiree to be different from other women. What a fool he
had been to encumber himself with a penniless creature, who had
undoubtedly inveigled him with some drug which she had put in his brandy!

He would curse all day lung, break his pipe with his teeth and maul his
crew. After he had sworn by every known term at everything that came his
way he would rid himself of his remaining anger on the fish and lobsters,
which he pulled from the nets and threw into the baskets amid oaths and
foul language. When he returned home he would find his wife, Father
Auban's daughter, within reach of his mouth and hand, and it was not long
before he treated her like the lowest creature in the world. As she
listened calmly, accustomed to paternal violence, he grew exasperated at
her quiet, and one evening he beat her. Then life at his home became
unbearable.

For ten years the principal topic of conversation on the Retenue was
about the beatings that Patin gave his wife and his manner of cursing at
her for the least thing. He could, indeed, curse with a richness of
vocabulary in a roundness of tone unequalled by any other man in Fecamp.
As soon as his ship was sighted at the entrance of the harbor, returning
from the fishing expedition, every one awaited the first volley he would
hurl from the bridge as soon as he perceived his wife's white cap.

Standing at the stern he would steer, his eye fixed on the bows and on
the sail, and, notwithstanding the difficulty of the narrow passage and
the height of the turbulent waves, he would search among the watching
women and try to recognize his wife, Father Auban's daughter, the wretch!

Then, as soon as he saw her, notwithstanding the noise of the wind and
waves, he would let loose upon her with such power and volubility that
every one would laugh, although they pitied her greatly. When he arrived
at the dock he would relieve his mind, while unloading the fish, in such
an expressive manner that he attracted around him all the loafers of the
neighborhood. The words left his mouth sometimes like shots from a
cannon, short and terrible, sometimes like peals of thunder, which roll
and rumble for five minutes, such a hurricane of oaths that he seemed to
have in his lungs one of the storms of the Eternal Father.

When he left his ship and found himself face to face with her, surrounded
by all the gossips of the neighborhood, he would bring up a new cargo of
insults and bring her back to their dwelling, she in front, he behind,
she weeping, he yelling at her.

At last, when alone with her behind closed doors, he would thrash her on
the slightest pretext. The least thing was sufficient to make him raise
his hand, and when he had once begun he did not stop, but he would throw
into her face the true motive for his anger. At each blow he would roar:
"There, you beggar! There, you wretch! There, you pauper! What a bright
thing I did when I rinsed my mouth with your rascal of a father's apology
for brandy."

The poor woman lived in continual fear, in a ceaseless trembling of body
and soul, in everlasting expectation of outrageous thrashings.

This lasted ten years. She was so timorous that she would grow pale
whenever she spoke to any one, and she thought of nothing but the blows
with which she was threatened; and she became thinner, more yellow and
drier than a smoked fish.



II

One night, when her husband was at sea, she was suddenly awakened by the
wild roaring of the wind!

She sat up in her bed, trembling, but, as she hear nothing more, she lay
down again; almost immediately there was a roar in the chimney which
shook the entire house; it seemed to cross the heavens like a pack of
furious animals snorting and roaring.

Then she arose and rushed to the harbor. Other women were arriving from
all sides, carrying lanterns. The men also were gathering, and all were
watching the foaming crests of the breaking wave.

The storm lasted fifteen hours. Eleven sailors never returned; Patin was
among them.

In the neighborhood of Dieppe the wreck of his bark, the Jeune-Amelie,
was found. The bodies of his sailors were found near Saint-Valery, but
his body was never recovered. As his vessel seemed to have been cut in
two, his wife expected and feared his return for a long time, for if
there had been a collision he alone might have been picked up and carried
afar off.

Little by little she grew accustomed to the thought that she was rid of
him, although she would start every time that a neighbor, a beggar or a
peddler would enter suddenly.

One afternoon, about four years after the disappearance of her husband,
while she was walking along the Rue aux Juifs, she stopped before the
house of an old sea captain who had recently died and whose furniture was
for sale. Just at that moment a parrot was at auction. He had green
feathers and a blue head and was watching everybody with a displeased
look. "Three francs!" cried the auctioneer. "A bird that can talk like a
lawyer, three francs!"

A friend of the Patin woman nudged her and said:

"You ought to buy that, you who are rich. It would be good company for
you. That bird is worth more than thirty francs. Anyhow, you can always
sell it for twenty or twenty-five!"

Patin's widow added fifty centimes, and the bird was given her in a
little cage, which she carried away. She took it home, and, as she was
opening the wire door in order to give it something to drink, he bit her
finger and drew blood.

"Oh, how naughty he is!" she said.

Nevertheless she gave it some hemp-seed and corn and watched it pruning
its feathers as it glanced warily at its new home and its new mistress.
On the following morning, just as day was breaking, the Patin woman
distinctly heard a loud, deep, roaring voice calling: "Are you going to
get up, carrion?"

Her fear was so great that she hid her head under the sheets, for when
Patin was with her as soon as he would open his eyes he would shout those
well-known words into her ears.

Trembling, rolled into a ball, her back prepared for the thrashing which
she already expected, her face buried in the pillows, she murmured: "Good
Lord! he is here! Good Lord! he is here! Good Lord! he has come back!"

Minutes passed; no noise disturbed the quiet room. Then, trembling, she
stuck her head out of the bed, sure that he was there, watching, ready to
beat her. Except for a ray of sun shining through the window, she saw
nothing, and she said to her self: "He must be hidden."

She waited a long time and then, gaining courage, she said to herself: "I
must have dreamed it, seeing there is nobody here."

A little reassured, she closed her eyes, when from quite near a furious
voice, the thunderous voice of the drowned man, could be heard crying:
"Say! when in the name of all that's holy are you going to get up, you
b----?"

She jumped out of bed, moved by obedience, by the passive obedience of a
woman accustomed to blows and who still remembers and always will
remember that voice! She said: "Here I am, Patin; what do you want?"

Put Patin did not answer. Then, at a complete loss, she looked around
her, then in the chimney and under the bed and finally sank into a chair,
wild with anxiety, convinced that Patin's soul alone was there, near her,
and that he had returned in order to torture her.

Suddenly she remembered the loft, in order to reach which one had to take
a ladder. Surely he must have hidden there in order to surprise her. He
must have been held by savages on some distant shore, unable to escape
until now, and he had returned, worse that ever. There was no doubting
the quality of that voice. She raised her head and asked: "Are you up
there, Patin?"

Patin did not answer. Then, with a terrible fear which made her heart
tremble, she climbed the ladder, opened the skylight, looked, saw
nothing, entered, looked about and found nothing. Sitting on some straw,
she began to cry, but while she was weeping, overcome by a poignant and
supernatural terror, she heard Patin talking in the room below.

He seemed less angry and he was saying: "Nasty weather! Fierce wind!
Nasty weather! I haven't eaten, damn it!"

She cried through the ceiling: "Here I am, Patin; I am getting your meal
ready. Don't get angry."

She ran down again. There was no one in the room. She felt herself
growing weak, as if death were touching her, and she tried to run and get
help from the neighbors, when a voice near her cried out: "I haven't had
my breakfast, by G--!"

And the parrot in his cage watched her with his round, knowing, wicked
eye. She, too, looked at him wildly, murmuring: "Ah! so it's you!"

He shook his head and continued: "Just you wait! I'll teach you how to
loaf."

What happened within her? She felt, she understood that it was he, the
dead man, who had come back, who had disguised himself in the feathers of
this bird in order to continue to torment her; that he would curse, as
formerly, all day long, and bite her, and swear at her, in order to
attract the neighbors and make them laugh. Then she rushed for the cage
and seized the bird, which scratched and tore her flesh with its claws
and beak. But she held it with all her strength between her hands. She
threw it on the ground and rolled over it with the frenzy of one
possessed. She crushed it and finally made of it nothing but a little
green, flabby lump which no longer moved or spoke. Then she wrapped it in
a cloth, as in a shroud, and she went out in her nightgown, barefoot; she
crossed the dock, against which the choppy waves of the sea were beating,
and she shook the cloth and let drop this little, dead thing, which
looked like so much grass. Then she returned, threw herself on her knees
before the empty cage, and, overcome by what she had done, kneeled and
prayed for forgiveness, as if she had committed some heinous crime.




THE PIECE OF STRING

It was market-day, and from all the country round Goderville the peasants
and their wives were coming toward the town. The men walked slowly,
throwing the whole body forward at every step of their long, crooked
legs. They were deformed from pushing the plough which makes the
left-shoulder higher, and bends their figures side-ways; from reaping the
grain, when they have to spread their legs so as to keep on their feet.
Their starched blue blouses, glossy as though varnished, ornamented at
collar and cuffs with a little embroidered design and blown out around
their bony bodies, looked very much like balloons about to soar, whence
issued two arms and two feet.

Some of these fellows dragged a cow or a calf at the end of a rope. And
just behind the animal followed their wives beating it over the back with
a leaf-covered branch to hasten its pace, and carrying large baskets out
of which protruded the heads of chickens or ducks. These women walked
more quickly and energetically than the men, with their erect, dried-up
figures, adorned with scanty little shawls pinned over their flat bosoms,
and their heads wrapped round with a white cloth, enclosing the hair and
surmounted by a cap.

Now a char-a-banc passed by, jogging along behind a nag and shaking up
strangely the two men on the seat, and the woman at the bottom of the
cart who held fast to its sides to lessen the hard jolting.

In the market-place at Goderville was a great crowd, a mingled multitude
of men and beasts. The horns of cattle, the high, long-napped hats of
wealthy peasants, the head-dresses of the women came to the surface of
that sea. And the sharp, shrill, barking voices made a continuous, wild
din, while above it occasionally rose a huge burst of laughter from the
sturdy lungs of a merry peasant or a prolonged bellow from a cow tied
fast to the wall of a house.

It all smelled of the stable, of milk, of hay and of perspiration, giving
off that half-human, half-animal odor which is peculiar to country folks.

Maitre Hauchecorne, of Breaute, had just arrived at Goderville and was
making his way toward the square when he perceived on the ground a little
piece of string. Maitre Hauchecorne, economical as are all true Normans,
reflected that everything was worth picking up which could be of any use,
and he stooped down, but painfully, because he suffered from rheumatism.
He took the bit of thin string from the ground and was carefully
preparing to roll it up when he saw Maitre Malandain, the harness maker,
on his doorstep staring at him. They had once had a quarrel about a
halter, and they had borne each other malice ever since. Maitre
Hauchecorne was overcome with a sort of shame at being seen by his enemy
picking up a bit of string in the road. He quickly hid it beneath his
blouse and then slipped it into his breeches, pocket, then pretended to
be still looking for something on the ground which he did not discover
and finally went off toward the market-place, his head bent forward and
his body almost doubled in two by rheumatic pains.

He was at once lost in the crowd, which kept moving about slowly and
noisily as it chaffered and bargained. The peasants examined the cows,
went off, came back, always in doubt for fear of being cheated, never
quite daring to decide, looking the seller square in the eye in the
effort to discover the tricks of the man and the defect in the beast.