The Wife of Martin Guerre

by Janet Lewis

  The judges then asked him a great number of questions regarding the history of his family, the date of his own wedding, the date of birth of Sanxi, to all of which he answered without hesitation.

  “Madame,” said the judges to Bertrande, “you have heard these answers. Are they correct?”

  “They are all correct, my lords,” said Bertrande, “but still the man is not my husband.”

  The judges conferred together and presently announced that the case would be dismissed for a short time while an examination should be made into the characters of the accusers. Bertrande, her face burning with shame at this implication, turned to Martin’s uncle.

  “This is because we have asked for money,” she said bitterly. “All that I ask, all that I hope is to be rid of his presence.”

  Uncle Pierre shrugged his shoulders.

  “You must not be unreasonable,” he told her. “After all, there will be the expense of the trial.”

  However, the investigation determined that the characters of Bertrande and Pierre were above reproach, and the case was ordered to proceed. In the interval, word of the dispute had gone round the countryside, and a great number of persons had either presented themselves voluntarily or had been called by the court as witnesses. On the morning when the case reopened, the chambers of the judges were crowded with interested persons, of whom no fewer than one hundred and fifty were present in the quality of witnesses.

  The examination of relatives began, followed by that of the farm servants, then of neighbors from Artigues. Without a dissenting voice they all declared that the man in fetters was no other than Martin Guerre himself. The priest, being called, declared that the man was Martin and gave an eloquent account of Bertrande’s illness and her madness, as he had discussed it with her husband and herself.

  The day was wearing to a close, and Bertrande, sadly, said to Pierre Guerre:

  “Do not all these people begin to convince you that you may be mistaken?”

  “I am not one to change my mind every five minutes,” said honest Pierre. “I have thought him a rogue, and a rogue he remains.”

  The priest departed and a new witness was called.

  “Your name?” said the judge.

  “Jean Espagnol.”

  “And whence do you come?”

  “From Tonges, my lord.”

  “Your occupation?”

  “Soldier of fortune.”

  “Do you know the prisoner?”

  “That I do, my lord.”

  “And by what name do you know him?”

  “Arnaud du Tilh, my lord. Sometimes we call him Pansette.”

  A murmur ran over the room. People stretched themselves, and Bertrande shot a glance at the accused man, whose face, however, showed no guilt, no surprise and only a very natural interest in the proceeding.

  “And how long have you known the prisoner?”

  “Oh, from the cradle, my lord.”

  “Have you had any conversation with him of late?”

  “My lord, he told me less than half a year ago that he was playing the part of one Martin Guerre, that he had met this said Guerre in the wars, and that this Guerre made over to him, for certain considerations, the whole of his estate and the permission to impersonate himself.”

  “Ah, it is a lie,” cried the voice of Bertrande, passionately.

  “Well said, Madame,” added the prisoner.

  “Silence,” demanded the judge.

  The witness spread his hands palm outwards with the expression of a man who has done his best for the cause of truth and justice, and, being dismissed, took his place again in the crowd.

  From then on the case began to appear most dubious for the prisoner, for although it was rather a tall story that Martin Guerre would have made over all his possessions to a wandering rogue for whatever considerations, there were many witnesses examined who declared that the prisoner was in fact a Gascon by the name of Arnaud du Tilh. There were also among the witnesses called, some who were acquainted with both Martin Guerre and the rogue du Tilh. Of these, some said that the prisoner was Martin, some that he was Arnaud, and some declared themselves unable to decide between the two. The examination of witnesses ran on at such length that it was necessary to reconvene the court on the following day. Finally, when the last witness had given his testimony, the judges sent for Sanxi, and tried to find in his face some resemblance to the man who claimed to be his father. But since the boy so obviously resembled his father’s sisters, who were said to resemble their mother, rather than their father, the countenance of Sanxi was of little aid to the judges.

  The judges withdrew and debated the case at length. Bertrande, sitting clasping and unclasping her hands, overheard two of the spectators who were commenting freely on the case. Said one:

  “They have proved nothing against the man, and the woman demands a great sum of money.”

  “If she denies him to be her husband,” said the other, “why did she not deny it immediately? She lived with him for three years without complaining. Why does she quarrel with him now?”

  “She has lost her pains, without a doubt,” said the first.

  “My God, my God,” said Bertrande, bowing her head and clasping and unclasping her long hands in a passion of despair, “deliver me from sin.”

  The judges returned and prepared to speak:

  “Whereas, out of one hundred and fifty witnesses called by this court of Rieux, forty have testified that the prisoner is Martin Guerre, sixty have refused to testify to his identity, and fifty have testified that he is none other than Arnaud du Tilh, and whereas the wife of Martin Guerre, whose opinion should bear more weight with us than that of any other living person, has testified that the prisoner is not her husband, we do affirm that the prisoner is in fact Arnaud du Tilh, commonly known as Pansette. And we do condemn the said Arnaud du Tilh to do public penance before the church of Artigues, and before the house of Martin Guerre, and to suffer death by decapitation before the house of Martin Guerre.”

  A gasp as of astonishment and pity swept the room, and Bertrande de Rols, rising from her seat, cried out in a clear, terrified voice:

  “Not death! Not death! No, no, I have not demanded his death!”

  She stood, grown very pale, confronting the judges with surprise and horror in her features; and then, putting out her hand gropingly, she half-turned toward Pierre Guerre, and fell unconscious into his arms.

  The prisoner had started also at Bertrande’s cry. In spite of the sentence just passed upon him, his eyes were clear, and his face bright, one would have said, with joy.

  III. Toulouse

  It is difficult to relate all that Bertrande de Rols suffered in the days which followed directly upon this decision. She returned to Artigues, to a house in which all peace and contentment had been destroyed. Nor was there anyone in Artigues, except Martin’s uncle, who did not by word or gesture blame her for this destruction. Sanxi regarded her with frightened, incredulous eyes, or slipped from a room as she entered, like a small animal who has been beaten continuously and without having offended. Nor was the matter ended. If the sentence had been carried through without delay, Bertrande felt, she might have borne the horror with some courage and reached, afterwards, a certain peace of finality, and time might have justified her action; but the case had been appealed at once by Martin’s sisters to the parliament of Toulouse, and the summer dragged forward through a long, heartbreaking uncertainty.

  The wheat was harvested, but without exultation, and threshed, but without merriment. As in other years the water of the mountain stream was turned upon the stubble fields and ran in shining cascades across the parched and broken earth, but Bertrande de Rols did not walk out to see it, nor did it matter to her that the flowers sprang up after the passage of the water as if a carpet had suddenly been spread, a carpet of a thousand flowers and a thousand pleasant odors. During the last days of August word was brought to Artigues that the parliament of Toulouse had found the evidence inconclu
sive and had called the witnesses for a second trial.

  The curé visited Bertrande.

  “My daughter,” he said, as persuasive and kindly as if she had not now for almost a year steadily refused his advice, “it is no more than my duty to entreat you to consider once more that which you have undertaken.”

  “Reverend Father,” said Bertrande abruptly, “have you never once thought but that I might be right? Consider the soldier from Rochefort. Is it not possible that this man may indeed be Arnaud du Tilh? Is it not more than likely?”

  “All things are possible with God,” said the priest, “but I cannot think it likely that the man of whom we speak should be one and the same with a most notorious rogue.” His voice softened and his eyes became very sad. “The man of whom we speak was one whom I had grown to value greatly. His ways, his thoughts, were kindly. There was no soul in my parish of Artigues who did not benefit in some way from his presence here.”

  “You valued him,” said Bertrande quietly, “more than you valued Martin Guerre who ran away?”

  “Indeed, more,” said the priest. “What was that boy? A raw, impatient youth, a thoughtless boy, selfish in the extreme. He had in him, it is true, the qualities of a great man. I like to think that he has grown into that man. His selfishness has become generosity, his impatience has become energy well-directed. It did not happen suddenly. He was eight years in a hard school.” He paused, and in a curious voice asked her, “It does not pain you to hear me praise him?”

  “No,” she answered slowly, as if she questioned herself. “It is no more than just to remember that he has been kind to us—kind to all, save me, and kind even to me after a strange fashion.”

  “Then if it does not pain you to hear him praised,” said the priest, pursuing his slight advantage, “if it pleases you a little to hear good of him, then you cannot have ceased entirely to love him, and does not this love convince you that he is truly Martin Guerre?”

  “No,” said Bertrande fiercely and quickly. “No, Father. Can you not see, it is in this love that he has wronged me most, that he has damned my soul? I have sinned, through him, and you will not understand it even long enough to give me absolution! No, Father, I cannot believe him to be other than the rogue, Arnaud du Tilh.”

  Her cheeks had flushed, as if with a fever, and to the priest her eyes held a strange luminosity. He lifted his hand and then, helplessly, dropped it upon his knee. He said:

  “There is a doubt, nevertheless. While there remains a doubt you run the risk of unwillingly, unwittingly, assisting at the destruction of your own husband. I counsel you to withdraw the charges before it is too late. Those who love you, and him, have given you an opportunity of retreating from this whole affair.

  “Is it for you to assume vengeance? You believe that you have sinned. You are in danger of sinning far more greatly. If there is evil in the matter, God will unravel it in His own good time. No, do not answer now. I advise you to withdraw the accusation. If you cannot do this, if your heart will not permit you to do this, then I shall pray for you that you may be prevented against your will from so harming, not only yourself, but all who love you.”

  He left her sorely shaken, as he had meant to do, not in her opinion of the man’s guilt, but in her belief in the wisdom of her action. The event had gone beyond her plan. “I did not demand his death,” she reminded herself; “but now I must demand it.”

  After the priest came Martin’s youngest sister. She knelt in front of Bertrande and, covering Bertrande’s two hands with her own, looked up into the face of her sister-in-law, and said most pleadingly:

  “Bertrande, my dearest sister, we were always good friends. Do not be angry with me now. When you come before the judges of Toulouse, say to them, ‘I withdraw the charges made against my husband. I do not know how it happened—I think that I was mad.’ Our uncle will not press the charges, if you do not. Martin will forgive you. We shall all be happy again. Dear God,” and she suddenly began to weep, “we cannot have him killed before his own house.”

  She bowed her head on her hands, and Bertrande felt upon her own cold fingers the warm tears.

  “Little sister,” she answered in despair, “how can I deny the truth?”

  “It is only the truth for you, not for us,” returned the weeping girl. “For the truth, that none of us believe, you would destroy us all. We shall never be happy again. The farm will never prosper again.”

  “Your uncle believes as I do,” said Bertrande.

  “Ah, but he is old. He wants nothing to be changed that was not just as it was when our father died. He would not change a cobble stone. And Martin changes everything, and is changed himself, so that we all love him more.”

  “Well, then,” said Bertrande, “if the man be Martin, as you would have me say, why does not Arnaud du Tilh come forward and declare himself? Why should he let an innocent man suffer in his name?”

  “He has enough to answer for with the law,” replied the girl with some impatience. “It is to his advantage to be considered dead. The law will cease to seek for him. And why should a rogue put his neck into a halter for the sake of another?”

  Bertrande sighed and laid her hand gently on the girl’s shoulder.

  “I am so sorry,” she said, “so sorry.” But she promised nothing.

  September came, reddening the vines, making the mornings and evenings cool. Bertrande, returning from church the evening before her departure, whither she had gone in preparation for the journey to Toulouse, crossed the courtyard toward her house, wearily. She saw the housekeeper sitting near the doorway killing doves, and sat down beside the old woman.

  “You have made your prayers, Madame,” said the old woman.

  “Yes.”

  “I wish that you had made them for a better cause.”

  “How can you know what prayers I made?”

  “I cannot know, Madame. I only know that since you have had this strange idea of yours, nothing goes well for us. And all was well before. So well.”

  She sighed, leaning forward, holding the dove head down between her hands, the smooth wings folded close to the smooth soft body, while the dark blood dripped slowly from a cut in the throat into an earthen dish. The dish, already filled with blood, darker than that which was falling into it, spilled over slightly, and a barred gray cat, creeping cautiously near, elongated, its belly close to the ground, put out a rasping pale tongue and licked the blood. The housekeeper, after a little, pushed it away with the side of her foot. A pile of soft gray-feathered bodies already lay beside her on the bench. The living dove turned its head this way and that, struggled a little, clasping a pale cold claw over the hand that held it, and relaxed, although still turning its head. The blood seemed to be clotting too soon, the wound was shrunken, and the old woman enlarged it with the point of the knife which she had in her lap. The dove made no cry. Bertrande watched with pity and comprehension the dying bird, feeling the blood drop by drop leave the weakening body, feeling her own strength drop slowly away like the blood of the dove.

  “What would you have me do?” she asked at length. “The truth is only the truth. I cannot change it, if I would.”

  The old woman turned her head without lifting her shoulders, still leaning forward heavily above her square, heavy lap. Her face was much more lined than in the days when Bertrande had first known her. There were creases above and below her lips, parallel with the line of the lips, as well as creases at the corners of the mouth. Her forehead was scored with lines that arched one above the other regularly, following the arches of the eyebrows. There were fine radiating lines about her eyes. The skin was brown and healthy, with ruddy patches on the cheek bones, but nevertheless the face was worn.

  “I, Madame?” she said.

  Bertrande looked into the tired affectionate brown eyes and nodded.

  “Ah,” said the housekeeper, turning once more to the dove which now lay still in her hands, “Madame, I would have you still be deceived. We were all happy t
hen.” She laid the dead dove with the others, and stooped to pick up the dish of blood.

  All the way to Toulouse the echoes of these three conversations rang through the mind of Bertrande de Rols, making a slow, confused accompaniment to the clop-clop of the horses’ hooves. The housekeeper rode behind her, Uncle Pierre before. They descended the valley of the Neste, the road running close to the stream, until the valley closed about them narrowly, leaving barely room for the passage of the torrent and the path above it. The woods were yellowing, but were still rich in leafy shadow. They came from the deep gorge to the wider valley of the Garonne, the stream coming in swiftly from the right, from the valley of Aran, saw St. Bertrand de Comminges with its narrow buttresses rising from its stony pedestal far below them in the green cup of the hills, crossed the Garonne and came into the more spacious country where the heavy-laden vines were trained from maple tree to maple tree in natural festoons. They passed St. Gaudens and St. Martory; they approached Muret. It was the journey which Bertrande had taken in imagination with Martin that autumn when he had first left her, and it was all rich and lovely, the wild mountain scenery giving way gradually to more thickly clustered farms, thorn hedges around the autumn gardens, and fruit trees set about the houses, medlars, plums and cherries, and always the fresh running of the water beyond the road; but now she traveled in great bitterness of heart, hearing through the noise of the hooves and the splashing of the Garonne, only the reproaches and prayers of those dependent upon her.