Kitobni o'qish: «Comedy of Marriage and Other Tales», sahifa 8
SCENE VI
(The same, and Jean Martinel standing at door R.)
GILBERTE [with a stifled cry]
It is he!
LÉON [goes up to Jean and taking him by the hand]
Welcome!
JEAN
I am like a prisoner awaiting the decision of his judges – whether it be acquittal or death. The moments through which I have just passed I shall never forget.
LÉON
Your uncle and I have said all that we had to say. Now speak for yourself.
JEAN
I do not know how. It must be to my wife alone. I dare not speak before you all. I ask but a moment. After that I go, and I shall leave the house if my wife’s attitude indicates that I ought. I shall do exactly what she would have me. I shall become that which she may order. But I must hear from her own lips her decision as to my life. [To Gilberte.] You cannot refuse me that, Madame. It is the only prayer that I shall ever make to you, I swear, if this request to you remains ungranted. [They stand face to face and look at each other.]
GILBERTE
No, I cannot refuse you. Father, Aunt, please leave me alone for a few minutes with Monsieur Martinel. You can see that I am perfectly calm.
PETITPRÉ
But – but —
JEAN [determinedly to M. Petitpré]
Monsieur, I shall not gainsay your will in anything. I shall do nothing without your approval. I have not returned here to contest your authority or to speak of rights; but I respectfully ask permission to remain alone a few minutes with – my wife! Consider that this is perhaps our last interview and that our future depends upon it.
MME. DE RONCHARD
It is solely the future of Gilberte which concerns me.
JEAN [to Mme. de Ronchard]
I appeal simply to your heart, Madame; your heart, which has suffered. Do not forget that your irritation and your bitterness against me come from the misfortune that another man has inflicted upon you. Your life has been broken by him. Do not wish the same for me. You have been unhappy; married scarcely a year. [Points to Gilberte.] Will you say that she shall be married scarcely a day, and that later she shall talk of her broken life – ceaselessly guarding in her mind the memory of this evening’s disaster? [At a movement of Mme. de Ronchard.] I know you to be kind, although you deny it, and I promise you, Madame, that if I remain Gilberte’s husband, I shall love you as a son, as a son worthy of you.
MME. DE RONCHARD [very much moved]
A son! He has stirred me deeply! [Whispers to Petitpré.] Come away, let us leave them alone. [Embraces Gilberte.]
PETITPRÉ [to Jean]
Well, so be it, Monsieur. [Rises and exit C., offering his arm to Mme. de Ronchard.]
MARTINEL [to Léon]
They are going to talk with that [touches his heart]; it is the only true eloquence.
[Exit with Léon C.]
SCENE VII
(Gilberte and Jean.)
JEAN
You know all, do you not?
GILBERTE
Yes. And I have been deeply wounded.
JEAN
I hope you do not accuse me of lying or of any other dissimulation.
GILBERTE
Oh, no!
JEAN
Do you blame me for having left you this evening?
GILBERTE
I blame no one who does his duty.
JEAN
You did not know this woman – and she is dead.
GILBERTE
It is just because she is dead that she troubles me thus.
JEAN
Impossible; you must have another reason. [With hesitation.] The child?
GILBERTE [quickly]
No, no! don’t deceive yourself. The poor little darling! it is not his fault. No, I suffer from something which is peculiar to myself, which can come only from me, and which I cannot confess to you. It is a sorrow deep in my heart, so keen, when I felt it spring to birth under the words of my brother and your uncle, that, should I ever experience it again when living with you as your wife, I should never be able to dispel it.
JEAN
What is it?
GILBERTE
I cannot tell it. [Sits L.]
JEAN [stands]
Listen to me. It is necessary that at this moment there should not be between us the shadow of a misunderstanding. All our life depends upon it. You are my wife, but I admit that you are absolutely free after what has happened. I will do as you wish. I am ready to agree to everything you desire, even to a divorce if you demand it. But what will happen to me after that I do not know, for I love you so that the thought of losing you after winning you will throw me mercilessly into some desperate resolve. [Sees Gilberte moved.] I do not seek to soften you, to move you – I simply tell you the naked truth. I feel, and I have felt during the whole night, through all the shocks and horrible emotions of the drama that has just been enacted, that you hold for me the keenest wound. If you banish me now, I am a lost man.
GILBERTE [much moved]
Do you really love me as much as that?
JEAN
With a love that I feel is ineffaceable.
GILBERTE
Did you love her?
JEAN
I did indeed love her. I experienced a tender attachment for a gentle and devoted girl. [In a low voice, with passion.] Listen: that which I am going to tell you is unworthy, perhaps infamous, but I am only a human being, feeble as anyone else. Well, just now, in the presence of this poor, dying girl, my eyes were filled with tears and my sobs choked me – all my being vibrated with sorrow; but at the bottom of my soul, in the depths of my being, I thought only of you.
GILBERTE [rises quickly]
Do you mean that?
JEAN [simply]
I cannot lie to you.
GILBERTE
Well, do you know what made me suffer just now when my brother told me of this intrigue and death? I can tell it to you now. I was jealous! It was unworthy of me, wasn’t it? Jealous of this poor, dead woman! But he spoke so well of her as to move me, and I felt that she loved you so much that you might find me perhaps indifferent and cold after her, and that hurt me so! I had so much fear of experiencing that that I thought of renouncing you.
JEAN
And now? – Gilberte! Gilberte!
GILBERTE [extends her hands]
I am here, Jean! take me!
JEAN
Ah, how grateful I am. [Kisses her hands; then immediately after, with emotion.] But here another anguish seizes me. I have promised this poor woman to take and cherish this child in my own home. [Gilberte makes a movement.] That is not all. Do you know what her last thought, her last prayer was? She entreated me to commend the child to you.
GILBERTE
To me!
JEAN
To you, Gilberte.
GILBERTE [profoundly moved]
She did this, the poor woman? Did she believe that I would take —
JEAN
She hoped it, and in that hope her death was made easier.
GILBERTE [in exalted mood, crosses R.]
Yes, I will take it! where is it?
JEAN
At my house.
GILBERTE
At your house? You must go to it immediately.
JEAN
What! leave you now, at this moment?
GILBERTE
We will go together, since I was to have accompanied you to your house this evening.
JEAN [joyously]
Oh, Gilberte! But your father will not let us go.
GILBERTE
Well, do you know what we must do, since my packing is finished, and my maid awaits me at your house? You must carry me off.
JEAN
Carry you off?
GILBERTE
Give me my cloak and let us go. All can be explained tomorrow. [Shows the cloak that she had left upon the chair in the first act.] My cloak, please.
JEAN [picks up the cloak quickly and throws it over her shoulders]
You are the most adorable creature! [Gilberte takes his arm and they go toward door R.]
SCENE VIII
(Enter Mme. de Ronchard, M. Petitpré, M. Martinel, and Léon C.)
MME. DE RONCHARD
Well, what are they doing? Are they going away now?
PETITPRÉ
Why, what does it mean?
GILBERTE
Yes; father, I am going away. I am going with my husband; but I shall be here to-morrow to ask pardon for this hurried flight, and to explain to you the reason for it.
PETITPRÉ
Were you going without saying good-bye to us – without embracing us?
GILBERTE
Yes, in order to avoid more discussions.
LÉON
She is right. Let them go.
GILBERTE [throws herself upon Petitpré’s neck]
Till to-morrow, father; till to-morrow, my dear Aunt. Good night, all; I have had enough of emotion and fatigue.
MME. DE RONCHARD [goes to Gilberte and embraces her]
Yes, run along, darling – there is a little one over there who waits for a mother!
Curtain
THE LANCER’S WIFE AND OTHER TALES
THE LANCER’S WIFE
I
It was after Bourbaki’s defeat in the east of France. The army, broken up, decimated and worn out, had been obliged to retreat into Switzerland, after that terrible campaign. It was only the short duration of the struggle that saved a hundred and fifty thousand men from certain death. Hunger, the terrible cold, and forced marches in the snow without boots, over bad mountainous roads, had caused the francs-tireurs especially the greatest suffering, for we were without tents and almost without food, always in front when we were marching toward Belfort, and in the rear when returning by the Jura. Of our brigade, that had numbered twelve hundred men on the first of January, there remained only twenty-two pale, thin, ragged wretches, when at length we succeeded in reaching Swiss territory.
There we were safe and could rest. Everybody knows what sympathy was shown to the unfortunate French army, and how well it was cared for. We all gained fresh life, and those who had been rich and happy before the war declared that they had never experienced a greater feeling of comfort than they did then. Just think. We actually had something to eat every day, and could sleep every night.
Meanwhile, the war continued in the east of France, which had been excluded from the armistice. Besançon still kept the enemy in check, and the latter had their revenge by ravaging the Comte Franché. Sometimes we heard that they had approached quite close to the frontier, and we saw Swiss troops, who were to form a line of observation between us and the Germans, set out on their march.
But this hurt our pride, and as we regained health and strength the longing for fighting laid hold of us. It was disgraceful and irritating to know that within two or three leagues of us the Germans were victorious and insolent, to feel that we were protected by our captivity, and to feel that on that account we were powerless against them.
One day, our captain took five or six of us aside, and spoke to us about it, long and earnestly. He was a fine fellow, that captain. He had been a sub-lieutenant in the Zouaves, was tall and thin and as hard as steel, and during the whole campaign had given a great deal of trouble to the Germans. He fretted in inactivity and could not accustom himself to the idea of being a prisoner and of doing nothing.
“Confound it!” he said to us, “does it not pain you to know that there are a lot of uhlans within two hours of us? Does it not almost drive you mad to know that those beggarly wretches are walking about as masters in our mountains, where six determined men might kill a whole troop any day? I cannot endure it any longer, and I must go there.”
“But how can you manage it, Captain?”
“How? It is not very difficult! Just as if we had not done a thing or two within the last six months, and got out of woods that were guarded by men very different from the Swiss. The day that you wish to cross over into France, I will undertake to get you there.”
“That may be; but what shall we do in France without any arms?”
“Without arms? We will get them over yonder, by Jove!”
“You are forgetting the treaty,” another soldier said; “we shall run the risk of doing the Swiss an injury, if Manteuffel learns that they have allowed prisoners to return to France.”
“Come,” said the captain, “those are all poor reasons. I mean to go and kill some Prussians; that is all I care about. If you do not wish to do as I do, well and good; only say so at once. I can quite well go by myself; I do not require anybody’s company.”
Naturally we all protested, and as it was quite impossible to make the captain alter his mind, we felt obliged to promise to go with him. We liked him too much to leave him in the lurch, since he had never failed us in any extremity; and so the expedition was decided on.
II
The captain had a plan of his own, a plan he had been cogitating over for some time. A man in that part of the country, whom he knew, was going to lend him a cart, and six suits of peasants’ clothes. We could hide under some straw at the bottom of the wagon, which would be loaded with Gruyère cheese. This cheese he was supposed to be going to sell in France. The captain told the sentinels that he was taking two friends with him to protect his goods, in case anyone should try to rob him, which did not seem an extraordinary precaution. A Swiss officer seemed to look at the wagon in a knowing manner, but that was in order to impress his soldiers. In a word, neither officers nor men made it out.
“Get on,” the captain said to the horses, as he cracked his whip, while our men quietly smoked their pipes. I was half suffocated in my box, which only admitted the air through some holes in front, while at the same time I was nearly frozen, for it was terribly cold.
“Get on,” the captain said again, and the wagon loaded with Gruyère cheese entered France.
The Prussian lines were very badly guarded, as the enemy trusted to the watchfulness of the Swiss. The sergeant spoke North German, while our captain spoke the bad German of the “Four Cantons”; so they could not understand each other. The sergeant, however, pretended to be very intelligent, and in order to make us believe that he understood us, they allowed us to continue our journey, and after traveling for seven hours, being continually stopped in the same manner, we arrived at a small village of the Jura, in ruins, at nightfall.
What were we going to do? Our only arms were the captain’s whip, our uniforms, the peasants’ blouses, and our food the Gruyère cheese. Our sole riches consisted in our ammunition, packets of cartridges which we had stowed away inside some of the huge cheeses. We had about a thousand of them, just two hundred each; but then we wanted rifles, and they must be chassepots; luckily, however, the captain was a bold man of an inventive mind, and this was the plan that he hit upon:
While three of us remained hidden in a cellar in the abandoned village, he continued his journey as far as Besançon with the empty wagon and one man. The town was invested, but one can always make one’s way into a town among the hills by crossing the table-land till within about ten miles of the walls, and then by following paths and ravines on foot. They left their wagon at Omans, among the Germans, and escaped out of it at night on foot, so as to gain the heights which border the river Doubs; the next day they entered Besançon, where there were plenty of chassepots. There were nearly forty thousand of them left in the arsenal, and General Roland, a brave marine, laughed at the captain’s daring project, but let him have six rifles and wished him “good luck.” There he also found his wife, who had been through all the war with us before the campaign in the east, and who had been only prevented by illness from continuing with Bourbaki’s army. She had recovered, however, in spite of the cold, which was growing more and more intense, and in spite of the numberless privations that awaited her, she insisted on accompanying her husband. He was obliged to give way to her, and all three, the captain, his wife, and our comrade, started on their expedition.
Going was nothing in comparison to returning. They were obliged to travel by night, so as to avoid meeting anybody, as the possession of six rifles would have made them liable to suspicion. But in spite of everything, a week after leaving us, the captain and his “two men” were back with us again. The campaign was about to begin.
III
The first night of his arrival, the captain began it himself. Under the pretext of examining the country round, he went along the highroad. I must tell you that the little village which served as our fortress was a small collection of poor, badly built houses, which had been deserted long before. It lay on a steep slope, which terminated in a wooded plain. The country people sold wood; they sent it down the ravines, which are called coulées locally, and which led down to the plain, and there they stacked it into piles, which were sold thrice a year to the wood merchants. The spot where this market was held was indicated by two small houses by the side of the highroad, which served for public-houses. The captain had gone down there by one of these coulées.
He had been gone about half an hour, and we were on the lookout at the top of the ravine, when we heard a shot. The captain had ordered us not to stir, and only to come to him when we heard him blow his trumpet. It was made of a goat’s horn, and could be heard a league off, but it gave no sound, and in spite of our cruel anxiety, we were obliged to wait in silence, with our rifles by our side.
To go down these coulées is easy, you need only let yourself glide down; but it is more difficult to get up again. You have to scramble up by catching hold of the hanging branches of the trees, and sometimes on all fours, by sheer strength. A whole mortal hour passed, and still the captain did not come, nothing moved in the brushwood. The captain’s wife began to grow impatient; what could he be doing? Why did he not call us? Did the shot that we had heard proceed from an enemy, and had he killed or wounded our leader, her husband? They did not know what to think, but I myself fancied that either he was dead or that his enterprise was successful. I was merely anxious and curious to know which.
Suddenly, we heard the sound of his trumpet, and were much surprised that instead of coming from below, as we had expected, it came from the village behind us. What did that mean? It was a mystery to us, but the same idea struck us all, that he had been killed, and that the Prussians were blowing the trumpet to draw us into an ambush. We therefore returned to the cottage, keeping a careful lookout, with our fingers on the trigger and hiding under the branches. But his wife, in spite of our entreaties, rushed on, leaping like a tigress. She thought that she had to avenge her husband, and had fixed the bayonet to her rifle. We lost sight of her at the moment that we heard the trumpet again, and a few moments later we heard her calling out to us:
“Come on! come on! he is alive! it is he!”
We hastened on, and saw the captain smoking his pipe at the entrance of the village, but strangely enough he was on horseback.
“Ah!” said he to us, “you see that there is something to be done here. Here I am on horseback already; I knocked over a uhlan yonder, and took his horse; I suppose they were guarding the wood, but it was by drinking and swilling in clover. One of them, the sentry at the door, had not time to see me before I gave him a sugarplum in his stomach, and then, before the others could come out, I jumped on to the horse and was off like a shot. Eight or ten of them followed me, I think, but I took the crossroads through the wood; I have got scratched and torn a bit, but here I am. And now, my good fellows, attention, and take care! Those brigands will not rest until they have caught us, and we must receive them with rifle bullets. Come along; let us take up our posts!”
We set out. One of us took up his position a good way from the village of the crossroads; I was posted at the entrance of the main street, where the road from the level country enters the village, while the two others, with the captain and his wife, took up positions in the middle of the village, near the church, whose tower served for an observatory and citadel.
We had not been in our places long before we heard a shot followed by another; then two, then three. The first was evidently a chassepot, – one recognized it by the sharp report, which sounds like the crack of a whip, – while the other three came from the lancers’ carbines.
The captain was furious. He had given orders to the outpost to let the enemy pass, and merely to follow them at a distance if they marched toward the village, and to join me when they had gone well between the houses. Then they were to appear suddenly, take the patrol between two fires, and not allow a single man to escape, for posted as we were, the six of us could have hemmed in ten Prussians, if needful.
“That confounded Piédelot has roused them,” the captain said, “and they will not venture to come on blindfold any longer. And then I am quite sure that he has managed to get wounded himself somehow or other, for we hear nothing of him. It serves him right; why did he not obey orders?” And then, after a moment, he grumbled in his beard: “After all, I am sorry for the poor fellow; he is so brave and shoots so well!”
The captain was right in his conjectures. We waited until evening, without seeing the uhlans; they had retreated after the first attack, but unfortunately we had not seen Piédelot either. Was he dead or a prisoner? When night came the captain proposed that we should go out and look for him, and so the three of us started. At the crossroads we found a broken rifle and some blood, while the ground was trampled down. But we did not find either a wounded man or a dead body, although we searched every thicket. At midnight we returned without having discovered anything of our unfortunate comrade.
“It is very strange,” the captain growled. “They must have killed him and thrown him into the bushes somewhere; they cannot possibly have taken him prisoner, as he would have called out for help. I cannot understand it all.” Just as he said that, bright, red flames shot up in the direction of the inn on the highroad, which illuminated the sky.
“Scoundrels! cowards!” shouted the captain. “I will bet that they have set fire to the two houses in the market-place, in order to have their revenge, and then they will scuttle off without saying a word. They will be satisfied with having killed a man and setting fire to two houses. All right. It shall not pass over like that. We must go for them; they will not like to leave their illuminations in order to fight.”
“It would be a great stroke of luck if we could set Piédelot free at the same time,” said some one.
The five of us set off, full of rage and hope. In twenty minutes we had got to the bottom of the couleé, and had not yet seen anyone when within a hundred yards of the inn. The fire was behind the house, and so all that we saw of it was the reflection above the roof. However, we were walking rather slowly, as we were afraid of a trap, when suddenly we heard Piédelot’s well-known voice. It had a strange sound, however, for it was at the same time dull and vibrant, stifled and clear, as if he was calling out as loud as he could with a gag in his mouth. He seemed to be hoarse and panting, and the unlucky fellow kept exclaiming: “Help! Help!”
We sent all thoughts of prudence to the devil and in two bounds were at the back of the inn, where a terrible sight met our eyes.
