Pierre and Jean

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PIERRE & JEAN

By Guy De Maupassant


Translated By Clara Bell




CHAPTER I

"Tschah!" exclaimed old Roland suddenly, after he had remained
motionless for a quarter of an hour, his eyes fixed on the water, while
now and again he very slightly lifted his line sunk in the sea.

Mme. Roland, dozing in the stern by the side of Mme. Rosemilly, who had
been invited to join the fishing-party, woke up, and turning her head to
look at her husband, said:

"Well, well! Gerome."

And the old fellow replied in a fury:

"They do not bite at all. I have taken nothing since noon. Only men
should ever go fishing. Women always delay the start till it is too
late."

His two sons, Pierre and Jean, who each held a line twisted round his
forefinger, one to port and one to starboard, both began to laugh, and
Jean remarked:

"You are not very polite to our guest, father."

M. Roland was abashed, and apologized.

"I beg your pardon, Mme. Rosemilly, but that is just like me. I invite
ladies because I like to be with them, and then, as soon as I feel the
water beneath me, I think of nothing but the fish."

Mme. Roland was now quite awake, and gazing with a softened look at the
wide horizon of cliff and sea.

"You have had good sport, all the same," she murmured.

But her husband shook his head in denial, though at the same time he
glanced complacently at the basket where the fish caught by the three
men were still breathing spasmodically, with a low rustle of clammy
scales and struggling fins, and dull, ineffectual efforts, gasping in
the fatal air. Old Roland took the basket between his knees and tilted
it up, making the silver heap of creatures slide to the edge that he
might see those lying at the bottom, and their death-throes became more
convulsive, while the strong smell of their bodies, a wholesome reek
of brine, came up from the full depths of the creel. The old fisherman
sniffed it eagerly, as we smell at roses, and exclaimed:

"Cristi! But they are fresh enough!" and he went on: "How many did you
pull out, doctor?"

His eldest son, Pierre, a man of thirty, with black whiskers trimmed
square like a lawyer's, his mustache and beard shaved away, replied:

"Oh, not many; three or four."

The father turned to the younger. "And you, Jean?" said he.

Jean, a tall fellow, much younger than his brother, fair, with a full
beard, smiled and murmured:

"Much the same as Pierre--four or five."

Every time they told the same fib, which delighted father Roland. He had
hitched his line round a row-lock, and folding his arms he announced:

"I will never again try to fish after noon. After ten in the morning it
is all over. The lazy brutes will not bite; they are taking their siesta
in the sun." And he looked round at the sea on all sides, with the
satisfied air of a proprietor.

He was a retired jeweller who had been led by an inordinate love of
seafaring and fishing to fly from the shop as soon as he had made enough
money to live in modest comfort on the interest of his savings. He
retired to le Havre, bought a boat, and became an amateur skipper.
His two sons, Pierre and Jean, had remained at Paris to continue their
studies, and came for the holidays from time to time to share their
father's amusements.

On leaving school, Pierre, the elder, five years older than Jean, had
felt a vocation to various professions and had tried half a dozen in
succession, but, soon disgusted with each in turn, he started afresh
with new hopes. Medicine had been his last fancy, and he had set to work
with so much ardour that he had just qualified after an unusually short
course of study, by a special remission of time from the minister. He
was enthusiastic, intelligent, fickle, but obstinate, full of Utopias
and philosophical notions.

Jean, who was as fair as his brother was dark, as deliberate as his
brother was vehement, as gentle as his brother was unforgiving, had
quietly gone through his studies for the law and had just taken his
diploma as a licentiate, at the time when Pierre had taken his in
medicine. So they were now having a little rest at home, and both looked
forward to settling in Havre if they could find a satisfactory opening.

But a vague jealousy, one of those dormant jealousies which grow up
between brothers or sisters and slowly ripen till they burst, on the
occasion of a marriage perhaps, or of some good fortune happening to
one of them, kept them on the alert in a sort of brotherly and
non-aggressive animosity. They were fond of each other, it is true, but
they watched each other. Pierre, five years old when Jean was born,
had looked with the eyes of a little petted animal at that other little
animal which had suddenly come to lie in his father's and mother's arms
and to be loved and fondled by them. Jean, from his birth, had always
been a pattern of sweetness, gentleness, and good temper, and Pierre had
by degrees begun to chafe at ever-lastingly hearing the praises of this
great lad, whose sweetness in his eyes was indolence, whose gentleness
was stupidity, and whose kindliness was blindness. His parents, whose
dream for their sons was some respectable and undistinguished calling,
blamed him for so often changing his mind, for his fits of enthusiasm,
his abortive beginnings, and all his ineffectual impulses towards
generous ideas and the liberal professions.

Since he had grown to manhood they no longer said in so many words:
"Look at Jean and follow his example," but every time he heard them say
"Jean did this--Jean does that," he understood their meaning and the
hint the words conveyed.

Their mother, an orderly person, a thrifty and rather sentimental woman
of the middle class, with the soul of a soft-hearted book-keeper, was
constantly quenching the little rivalries between her two big sons
to which the petty events of their life constantly gave rise. Another
little circumstance, too, just now disturbed her peace of mind, and
she was in fear of some complications; for in the course of the winter,
while her boys were finishing their studies, each in his own line, she
had made the acquaintance of a neighbour, Mme. Rosemilly, the widow of a
captain of a merchantman who had died at sea two years before. The young
widow--quite young, only three-and-twenty--a woman of strong intellect
who knew life by instinct as the free animals do, as though she
had seen, gone through, understood, and weighted every conceivable
contingency, and judged them with a wholesome, strict, and benevolent
mind, had fallen into the habit of calling to work or chat for an hour
in the evening with these friendly neighbours, who would give her a cup
of tea.

Father Roland, always goaded on by his seafaring craze, would question
their new friend about the departed captain; and she would talk of him,
and his voyages, and his old-world tales, without hesitation, like a
resigned and reasonable woman who loves life and respects death.

The two sons on their return, finding the pretty widow quite at home in
the house, forthwith began to court her, less from any wish to charm her
than from the desire to cut each other out.

Their mother, being practical and prudent, sincerely hoped that one of
them might win the young widow, for she was rich; but then she would
have liked that the other should not be grieved.

Mme. Rosemilly was fair, with blue eyes, a mass of light waving hair,
fluttering at the least breath of wind, and an alert, daring, pugnacious
little way with her, which did not in the least answer to the sober
method of her mind.

She already seemed to like Jean best, attracted, no doubt, by an
affinity of nature. This preference, however, she betrayed only by
an almost imperceptible difference of voice and look and also by
occasionally asking his opinion. She seemed to guess that Jean's
views would support her own, while those of Pierre must inevitably
be different. When she spoke of the doctor's ideas on politics, art,
philosophy, or morals, she would sometimes say: "Your crotchets." Then
he would look at her with the cold gleam of an accuser drawing up an
indictment against women--all women, poor weak things.

Never till his sons came home had M. Roland invited her to join his
fishing expeditions, nor had he ever taken his wife; for he liked to put
off before daybreak, with his ally, Captain Beausire, a master mariner
retired, whom he had first met on the quay at high tides and with whom
he had struck up an intimacy, and the old sailor Papagris, known as Jean
Bart, in whose charge the boat was left.

But one evening of the week before, Mme. Rosemilly, who had been dining
with them, remarked, "It must be great fun to go out fishing." The
jeweller, flattered by her interest and suddenly fired with the wish
to share his favourite sport with her, and to make a convert after the
manner of priests, exclaimed: "Would you like to come?"

"To be sure I should."

"Next Tuesday?"

"Yes, next Tuesday."

"Are you the woman to be ready to start at five in the morning?"

She exclaimed in horror:

"No, indeed: that is too much."

He was disappointed and chilled, suddenly doubting her true vocation.
However, he said:

"At what hour can you be ready?"

"Well--at nine?"

"Not before?"

"No, not before. Even that is very early."

The old fellow hesitated; he certainly would catch nothing, for when the
sun has warmed the sea the fish bite no more; but the two brothers had
eagerly pressed the scheme, and organized and arranged everything there
and then.

So on the following Tuesday the Pearl had dropped anchor under the white
rocks of Cape la Heve; they had fished till midday, then they had slept
awhile, and then fished again without catching anything; and then it
was that father Roland, perceiving, rather late, that all that Mme.
Rosemilly really enjoyed and cared for was the sail on the sea, and
seeing that his lines hung motionless, had uttered in a spirit of
unreasonable annoyance, that vehement "Tschah!" which applied as much to
the pathetic widow as to the creatures he could not catch.

Now he contemplated the spoil--his fish--with the joyful thrill of a
miser; seeing as he looked up at the sky that the sun was getting low:
"Well, boys," said he, "suppose we turn homeward."

The young men hauled in their lines, coiled them up, cleaned the hooks
and stuck them into corks, and sat waiting.

Roland stood up to look out like a captain.

"No wind," said he. "You will have to pull, young 'uns."

And suddenly extending one arm to the northward, he exclaimed:

"Here comes the packet from Southampton."

Away over the level sea, spread out like a blue sheet, vast and sheeny
and shot with flame and gold, an inky cloud was visible against the rosy
sky in the quarter to which he pointed, and below it they could make out
the hull of the steamer, which looked tiny at such a distance. And to
southward other wreaths of smoke, numbers of them, could be seen, all
converging towards the Havre pier, now scarcely visible as a white
streak with the lighthouse, upright, like a horn, at the end of it.

Roland asked: "Is not the Normandie due to-day?" And Jean replied:

"Yes, to-day."

"Give me my glass. I fancy I see her out there."

The father pulled out the copper tube, adjusted it to his eye, sought
the speck, and then, delighted to have seen it, exclaimed:

"Yes, yes, there she is. I know her two funnels. Would you like to look,
Mme. Rosemilly?"

She took the telescope and directed it towards the Atlantic horizon,
without being able, however, to find the vessel, for she could
distinguish nothing--nothing but blue, with a coloured halo round it, a
circular rainbow--and then all manner of queer things, winking eclipses
which made her feel sick.

She said as she returned the glass:

"I never could see with that thing. It used to put my husband in quite a
rage; he would stand for hours at the windows watching the ships pass."

Old Roland, much put out, retorted:

"Then it must be some defect in your eye, for my glass is a very good
one."

Then he offered it to his wife.

"Would you like to look?"

"No, thank you. I know before hand that I could not see through it."

Mme. Roland, a woman of eight-and-forty but who did not look it, seemed
to be enjoying this excursion and this waning day more than any of the
party.

Her chestnut hair was only just beginning to show streaks of white. She
had a calm, reasonable face, a kind and happy way with her which it
was a pleasure to see. Her son Pierre was wont to say that she knew the
value of money, but this did not hinder her from enjoying the delights
of dreaming. She was fond of reading, of novels, and poetry, not for
their value as works of art, but for the sake of the tender melancholy
mood they would induce in her. A line of poetry, often but a poor one,
often a bad one, would touch the little chord, as she expressed it, and
give her the sense of some mysterious desire almost realized. And she
delighted in these faint emotions which brought a little flutter to her
soul, otherwise as strictly kept as a ledger.

Since settling at Havre she had become perceptibly stouter, and her
figure, which had been very supple and slight, had grown heavier.

This day on the sea had been delightful to her. Her husband, without
being brutal, was rough with her, as a man who is the despot of his
shop is apt to be rough, without anger or hatred; to such men to give an
order is to swear. He controlled himself in the presence of strangers,
but in private he let loose and gave himself terrible vent, though he
was himself afraid of every one. She, in sheer horror of the turmoil,
of scenes, of useless explanations, always gave way and never asked for
anything; for a very long time she had not ventured to ask Roland to
take her out in the boat. So she had joyfully hailed this opportunity,
and was keenly enjoying the rare and new pleasure.

From the moment when they started she surrendered herself completely,
body and soul, to the soft, gliding motion over the waves. She was not
thinking; her mind was not wandering through either memories or hopes;
it seemed to her as though her heart, like her body, was floating on
something soft and liquid and delicious which rocked and lulled it.

When their father gave the word to return, "Come, take your places at
the oars!" she smiled to see her sons, her two great boys, take off
their jackets and roll up their shirt-sleeves on their bare arms.

Pierre, who was nearest to the two women, took the stroke oar, Jean the
other, and they sat waiting till the skipper should say: "Give way!" For
he insisted on everything being done according to strict rule.

Simultaneously, as if by a single effort, they dipped the oars, and
lying back, pulling with all their might, began a struggle to display
their strength. They had come out easily, under sail, but the breeze
had died away, and the masculine pride of the two brothers was suddenly
aroused by the prospect of measuring their powers. When they went out
alone with their father they plied the oars without any steering, for
Roland would be busy getting the lines ready, while he kept a lookout in
the boat's course, guiding it by a sign or a word: "Easy, Jean, and you,
Pierre, put your back into it." Or he would say, "Now, then, number
one; come, number two--a little elbow grease." Then the one who had been
dreaming pulled harder, the one who had got excited eased down, and the
boat's head came round.

But to-day they meant to display their biceps. Pierre's arms were hairy,
somewhat lean but sinewy; Jean's were round and white and rosy, and the
knot of muscles moved under the skin.

At first Pierre had the advantage. With his teeth set, his brow knit,
his legs rigid, his hands clinched on the oar, he made it bend from
end to end at every stroke, and the Pearl was veering landward. Father
Roland, sitting in the bows, so as to leave the stern seat to the two
women, wasted his breath shouting, "Easy, number one; pull harder,
number two!" Pierre pulled harder in his frenzy, and "number two" could
not keep time with his wild stroke.

At last the skipper cried: "Stop her!" The two oars were lifted
simultaneously, and then by his father's orders Jean pulled alone for
a few minutes. But from that moment he had it all his own way; he grew
eager and warmed to his work, while Pierre, out of breath and exhausted
by his first vigorous spurt, was lax and panting. Four times running
father Roland made them stop while the elder took breath, so as to get
the boat into her right course again. Then the doctor, humiliated and
fuming, his forehead dropping with sweat, his cheeks white, stammered
out:

"I cannot think what has come over me; I have a stitch in my side. I
started very well, but it has pulled me up."

Jean asked: "Shall I pull alone with both oars for a time?"

"No, thanks, it will go off."

And their mother, somewhat vexed, said:

"Why, Pierre, what rhyme or reason is there in getting into such a
state. You are not a child."

And he shrugged his shoulders and set to once more.

Mme. Rosemilly pretended not to see, not to understand, not to hear.
Her fair head went back with an engaging little jerk every time the boat
moved forward, making the fine wayward hairs flutter about her temples.

But father Roland presently called out:

"Look, the Prince Albert is catching us up!"

They all looked round. Long and low in the water, with her two
raking funnels and two yellow paddle-boxes like two round cheeks,
the Southampton packet came ploughing on at full steam, crowded with
passengers under open parasols. Its hurrying, noisy paddle-wheels
beating up the water which fell again in foam, gave it an appearance of
haste as of a courier pressed for time, and the upright stem cut through
the water, throwing up two thin translucent waves which glided off along
the hull.

When it had come quite near the Pearl, father Roland lifted his hat,
the ladies shook their handkerchiefs, and half a dozen parasols eagerly
waved on board the steamboat responded to this salute as she went on her
way, leaving behind her a few broad undulations on the still and glassy
surface of the sea.

There were other vessels, each with its smoky cap, coming in from every
part of the horizon towards the short white jetty, which swallowed them
up, one after another, like a mouth. And the fishing barks and lighter
craft with broad sails and slender masts, stealing across the sky in tow
of inconspicuous tugs, were coming in, faster and slower, towards the
devouring ogre, who from time to time seemed to have had a surfeit, and
spewed out to the open sea another fleet of steamers, brigs, schooners,
and three-masted vessels with their tangled mass of rigging. The
hurrying steamships flew off to the right and left over the smooth bosom
of the ocean, while sailing vessels, cast off by the pilot-tugs which
had hauled them out, lay motionless, dressing themselves from the
main-mast to the fore-tops in canvas, white or brown, and ruddy in the
setting sun.

Mme. Roland, with her eyes half-shut, murmured: "Good heavens, how
beautiful the sea is!"

And Mme. Rosemilly replied with a long sigh, which, however, had no
sadness in it:

"Yes, but it is sometimes very cruel, all the same."

Roland exclaimed:

"Look, there is the Normandie just going in. A big ship, isn't she?"

Then he described the coast opposite, far, far away, on the other side
of the mouth of the Seine--that mouth extended over twenty kilometres,
said he. He pointed out Villerville, Trouville, Houlgate, Luc,
Arromanches, the little river of Caen, and the rocks of Calvados which
make the coast unsafe as far as Cherbourg. Then he enlarged on the
question of the sand-banks in the Seine, which shift at every tide so
that even the pilots of Quilleboeuf are at fault if they do not survey
the channel every day. He bid them notice how the town of Havre divided
Upper from Lower Normandy. In Lower Normandy the shore sloped down
to the sea in pasture-lands, fields, and meadows. The coast of Upper
Normandy, on the contrary, was steep, a high cliff, ravined, cleft and
towering, forming an immense white rampart all the way to Dunkirk,
while in each hollow a village or a port lay hidden: Etretat, Fecamp,
Saint-Valery, Treport, Dieppe, and the rest.

The two women did not listen. Torpid with comfort and impressed by the
sight of the ocean covered with vessels rushing to and fro like wild
beasts about their den, they sat speechless, somewhat awed by the
soothing and gorgeous sunset. Roland alone talked on without end; he
was one of those whom nothing can disturb. Women, whose nerves are
more sensitive, sometimes feel, without knowing why, that the sound of
useless speech is as irritating as an insult.

Pierre and Jean, who had calmed down, were rowing slowly, and the Pearl
was making for the harbour, a tiny thing among those huge vessels.

When they came alongside of the quay, Papagris, who was waiting there,
gave his hand to the ladies to help them out, and they took the way into
the town. A large crowd, the crowd which haunts the pier every day at
high tide--was also drifting homeward. Mme. Roland and Mme. Rosemilly
led the way, followed by the three men. As they went up the Rue de Paris
they stopped now and then in front of a milliner's or a jeweller's shop,
to look at a bonnet or an ornament; then after making their comments
they went on again. In front of the Place de la Bourse Roland paused, as
he did every day, to gaze at the docks full of vessels--the _Bassin du
Commerce_, with other docks beyond, where the huge hulls lay side by
side, closely packed in rows, four or five deep. And masts innumerable;
along several kilometres of quays the endless masts, with their yards,
poles, and rigging, gave this great gap in the heart of the town
the look of a dead forest. Above this leafless forest the gulls were
wheeling, and watching to pounce, like a falling stone, on any scraps
flung overboard; a sailor boy, fixing a pulley to a cross-beam, looked
as if he had gone up there bird's-nesting.

"Will you dine with us without any sort of ceremony, just that we may
end the day together?" said Mme. Roland to her friend.

"To be sure I will, with pleasure; I accept equally without ceremony. It
would be dismal to go home and be alone this evening."

Pierre, who had heard, and who was beginning to be restless under the
young woman's indifference, muttered to himself: "Well, the widow is
taking root now, it would seem." For some days past he had spoken of her
as "the widow." The word, harmless in itself, irritated Jean merely by
the tone given to it, which to him seemed spiteful and offensive.

The three men spoke not another word till they reached the threshold of
their own house. It was a narrow one, consisting of a ground-floor and
two floors above, in the Rue Belle-Normande. The maid, Josephine, a girl
of nineteen, a rustic servant-of-all-work at low wages, gifted to excess
with the startled animal expression of a peasant, opened the door, went
up stairs at her master's heels to the drawing-room, which was on the
first floor, and then said:

"A gentleman called--three times."

Old Roland, who never spoke to her without shouting and swearing, cried
out:

"Who do you say called, in the devil's name?"

She never winced at her master's roaring voice, and replied:

"A gentleman from the lawyer's."

"What lawyer?"

"Why, M'sieu 'Canu--who else?"

"And what did this gentleman say?"

"That M'sieu 'Canu will call in himself in the course of the evening."

Maitre Lecanu was M. Roland's lawyer, and in a way his friend, managing
his business for him. For him to send word that he would call in the
evening, something urgent and important must be in the wind; and the
four Rolands looked at each other, disturbed by the announcement as
folks of small fortune are wont to be at any intervention of a lawyer,
with its suggestions of contracts, inheritance, lawsuits--all sorts of
desirable or formidable contingencies. The father, after a few moments
of silence, muttered:

"What on earth can it mean?"

Mme. Rosemilly began to laugh.

"Why, a legacy, of course. I am sure of it. I bring good luck."

But they did not expect the death of any one who might leave them
anything.

Mme. Roland, who had a good memory for relationships, began to think
over all their connections on her husband's side and on her own, to
trace up pedigrees and the ramifications of cousin-ship.

Before even taking off her bonnet she said:

"I say, father" (she called her husband "father" at home, and sometimes
"Monsieur Roland" before strangers), "tell me, do you remember who it
was that Joseph Lebru married for the second time?"

"Yes--a little girl named Dumenil, a stationer's daughter."

"Had they any children?"

"I should think so! four or five at least."

"Not from that quarter, then."

She was quite eager already in her search; she caught at the hope of
some added ease dropping from the sky. But Pierre, who was very fond of
his mother, who knew her to be somewhat visionary and feared she might
be disappointed, a little grieved, a little saddened if the news were
bad instead of good, checked her: