A Little, Aloud

by Angela Macmillan

  The night of the ball arrived. Madame Loisel was a great success. She was prettier than any other woman present, elegant, graceful, smiling and wild with joy. All the men looked at her, asked her name, sought to be introduced. All the attachés of the Cabinet wished to waltz with her. She was remarked by the minister himself.

  She danced with rapture, with passion, intoxicated by pleasure, forgetting all in the triumph of her beauty, in the glory of her success, in a sort of cloud of happiness comprised of all this homage, admiration, these awakened desires and of that sense of triumph which is so sweet to woman’s heart.

  She left the ball about four o’clock in the morning. Her husband had been sleeping since midnight in a little deserted anteroom with three other gentlemen whose wives were enjoying the ball.

  He threw over her shoulders the wraps he had brought, the modest wraps of common life, the poverty of which contrasted with the elegance of the ball dress. She felt this and wished to escape so as not to be remarked by the other women, who were enveloping themselves in costly furs.

  Loisel held her back, saying: ‘Wait a bit. You will catch cold outside. I will call a cab.’

  But she did not listen to him and rapidly descended the stairs. When they reached the street they could not find a carriage and began to look for one, shouting after the cabmen passing at a distance.

  They went toward the Seine in despair, shivering with cold. At last they found on the quay one of those ancient night cabs which, as though they were ashamed to show their shabbiness during the day, are never seen round Paris until after dark.

  It took them to their dwelling in the Rue des Martyrs, and sadly they mounted the stairs to their flat. All was ended for her. As to him, he reflected that he must be at the ministry at ten o’clock that morning.

  She removed her wraps before the glass so as to see herself once more in all her glory. But suddenly she uttered a cry. She no longer had the necklace around her neck!

  ‘What is the matter with you?’ demanded her husband, already half-undressed.

  She turned distractedly toward him.

  ‘I have – I have – I’ve lost Madame Forestier’s necklace,’ she cried.

  He stood up, bewildered.

  ‘What! – how? Impossible!’

  They looked among the folds of her skirt, of her cloak, in her pockets, everywhere, but did not find it.

  ‘You’re sure you had it on when you left the ball?’ he asked.

  ‘Yes, I felt it in the vestibule of the minister’s house.’

  ‘But if you had lost it in the street we should have heard it fall. It must be in the cab.’

  ‘Yes, probably. Did you take his number?’

  ‘No. And you – didn’t you notice it?’

  ‘No.’

  They looked, thunderstruck, at each other. At last Loisel put on his clothes.

  ‘I shall go back on foot,’ said he, ‘over the whole route, to see whether I can find it.’

  He went out. She sat waiting on a chair in her ball dress, without strength to go to bed, overwhelmed, without any fire, without a thought.

  Her husband returned about seven o’clock. He had found nothing.

  He went to the police headquarters, to the newspaper offices to offer a reward; he went to the cab companies – everywhere, in fact, whither he was urged by the least spark of hope.

  She waited all day, in the same condition of mad fear before this terrible calamity.

  Loisel returned at night with a hollow, pale face. He had discovered nothing.

  ‘You must write to your friend,’ said he, ‘that you have broken the clasp of her necklace and that you are having it mended. That will give us time to turn round.’

  She wrote at his dictation.

  At the end of a week they had lost all hope. Loisel, who had aged five years, declared:

  ‘We must consider how to replace that ornament.’

  The next day they took the box that had contained it and went to the jeweller whose name was found within. He consulted his books.

  ‘It was not I, madame, who sold that necklace; I must simply have furnished the case.’

  Then they went from jeweller to jeweller, searching for a necklace like the other, trying to recall it, both sick with chagrin and grief.

  They found, in a shop at the Palais Royal, a string of diamonds that seemed to them exactly like the one they had lost. It was worth forty thousand francs. They could have it for thirty-six.

  So they begged the jeweller not to sell it for three days yet. And they made a bargain that he should buy it back for thirty-four thousand francs, in case they should find the lost necklace before the end of February.

  Loisel possessed eighteen thousand francs which his father had left him. He would borrow the rest.

  He did borrow, asking a thousand francs of one, five hundred of another, five louis here, three louis there. He gave notes, took up ruinous obligations, dealt with usurers and all the race of lenders. He compromised all the rest of his life, risked signing a note without even knowing whether he could meet it; and, frightened by the trouble yet to come, by the black misery that was about to fall upon him, by the prospect of all the physical privations and moral tortures that he was to suffer, he went to get the new necklace, laying upon the jeweller’s counter thirty-six thousand francs.

  When Madame Loisel took back the necklace Madame Forestier said to her with a chilly manner:

  ‘You should have returned it sooner; I might have needed it.’

  She did not open the case, as her friend had so much feared. If she had detected the substitution, what would she have thought, what would she have said? Would she not have taken Madame Loisel for a thief?

  Thereafter Madame Loisel knew the horrible existence of the needy. She bore her part, however, with sudden heroism. That dreadful debt must be paid. She would pay it. They dismissed their servant; they changed their lodgings; they rented a garret under the roof.

  She came to know what heavy housework meant and the odious cares of the kitchen. She washed the dishes, using her dainty fingers and rosy nails on greasy pots and pans. She washed the soiled linen, the shirts and the dishcloths, which she dried upon a line; she carried the slops down to the street every morning and carried up the water, stopping for breath at every landing. And dressed like a woman of the people, she went to the fruiterer, the grocer, the butcher, a basket on her arm, bargaining, meeting with impertinence, defending her miserable money, sou by sou.

  Every month they had to meet some notes, renew others, obtain more time.

  Her husband worked evenings, making up a tradesman’s accounts, and late at night he often copied manuscript for five sous a page.

  This life lasted ten years.

  At the end of ten years they had paid everything, everything, with the rates of usury and the accumulations of the compound interest.

  Madame Loisel looked old now. She had become the woman of impoverished households – strong and hard and rough. With frowsy hair, skirts askew and red hands, she talked loud while washing the floor with great swishes of water. But sometimes, when her husband was at the office, she sat down near the window and she thought of that gay evening of long ago, of that ball where she had been so beautiful and so admired.

  What would have happened if she had not lost that necklace? Who knows? Who knows? How strange and changeful is life! How small a thing is needed to make or ruin us!

  But one Sunday, having gone to take a walk in the Champs Elysées to refresh herself after the labours of the week, she suddenly perceived a woman who was leading a child. It was Madame Forestier, still young, still beautiful, still charming.

  Madame Loisel felt moved. Should she speak to her? Yes, certainly. And now that she had paid, she would tell her all about it. Why not?

  She went up.

  ‘Good-day, Jeanne.’

  The other, astonished to be familiarly addressed by this plain good-wife, did not recognise her at all and stammered:

 
; ‘But – madame! – I do not know—You must have mistaken.’

  ‘No. I am Mathilde Loisel.’

  Her friend uttered a cry.

  ‘Oh, my poor Mathilde! How you are changed!’

  ‘Yes, I have had a pretty hard life, since I last saw you, and great poverty – and that because of you!’

  ‘Of me! How so?’

  ‘Do you remember that diamond necklace you lent me to wear at the ministerial ball?’

  ‘Yes. Well?’

  ‘Well, I lost it.’

  ‘What do you mean? You brought it back.’

  ‘I brought you back another exactly like it. And it has taken us ten years to pay for it. You can understand that it was not easy for us, for us who had nothing. At last it is ended, and I am very glad.’

  Madame Forestier had stopped.

  ‘You say that you bought a necklace of diamonds to replace mine?’

  ‘Yes. You never noticed it, then! They were very similar.’

  And she smiled with a joy that was at once proud and ingenuous.

  Madame Forestier, deeply moved, took her hands.

  ‘Oh, my poor Mathilde! Why, my necklace was paste! It was worth at most only five hundred francs!’

  OVERHEARD ON A SALTMARSH

  Harold Monro

  Nymph, nymph, what are your beads?

  Green glass, goblin. Why do you stare at them?

  Give them me.

  No.

  Give them me. Give them me.

  No.

  Then I will howl all night in the reeds,

  Lie in the mud and howl for them.

  Goblin, why do you love them so?

  They are better than stars or water,

  Better than voices of winds that sing,

  Better than any man’s fair daughter,

  Your green glass beads on a silver ring.

  Hush, I stole them out of the moon.

  Give me your beads, I want them.

  No.

  I will howl in the deep lagoon

  For your green glass beads, I love them so.

  Give them me. Give them.

  No.

  READING NOTES

  At the end of the story, do you feel sorry for Mathilde or did she get her just reward? Members of a drop-in reading group thought she paid a high price because her life was ruined. ‘On the other hand,’ said one reader, ‘what sort of selfish existence might she have lived if she had not lost the necklace?’ Most people felt for the husband as the victim of her envious discontent both before and after the ball. There was much talk about what else they could have done about the missing necklace and why Mathilde ‘bore her part with sudden heroism’. Someone else wondered how far the observation, ‘with women there is neither caste nor rank, for beauty, grace and charm take the place of family and birth’ could still be said to be true today.

  The poem takes up the themes of envy and greed. This group enjoyed taking parts and reading it aloud and, while comparing the goblin to Gollum, noticed that it is the nymph who has stolen the beads while the goblin merely desires them. The atmosphere of the poem, the voices, the passionate desire were all investigated.

  Trouble

  FAR FROM THE MADDING CROWD

  (ON CASTERBRIDGE HIGHWAY, CHAPTER 40)

  Thomas Hardy

  (approximate reading time 16 minutes)

  Bathsheba Everdene is married to the dashing Sergeant Troy. What she does not know is that Troy’s heart secretly belongs to Fanny Robin, Bathsheba’s former servant, who is pregnant with Troy’s child.

  One evening Bathsheba and Troy, out riding in their carriage, come across Fanny, now destitute and making her way on foot to the workhouse at Casterbridge. Bathsheba does not recognise her and Troy makes an excuse so that he can return hurriedly to Fanny and give her some money, promising to come to her later . . .

  For a considerable time the woman walked on. Her steps became feebler, and she strained her eyes to look afar upon the naked road, now indistinct amid the penumbrae of night. At length her onward walk dwindled to the merest totter, and she opened a gate within which was a haystack. Underneath this she sat down and presently slept.

  When the woman awoke it was to find herself in the depths of a moonless and starless night. A heavy unbroken crust of cloud stretched across the sky, shutting out every speck of heaven; and a distant halo which hung over the town of Casterbridge was visible against the black concave, the luminosity appearing the brighter by its great contrast with the circumscribing darkness. Towards this weak, soft glow the woman turned her eyes.

  ‘If I could only get there!’ she said. ‘Meet him the day after tomorrow: God help me! Perhaps I shall be in my grave before then.’

  A manor-house clock from the far depths of shadow struck the hour, one, in a small, attenuated tone. After midnight the voice of a clock seems to lose in breadth as much as in length, and to diminish its sonorousness to a thin falsetto.

  Afterwards a light – two lights – arose from the remote shade, and grew larger. A carriage rolled along the road, and passed the gate. It probably contained some late diners-out. The beams from one lamp shone for a moment upon the crouching woman, and threw her face into vivid relief. The face was young in the groundwork, old in the finish; the general contours were flexuous and childlike, but the finer lineaments had begun to be sharp and thin.

  The pedestrian stood up, apparently with revived determination, and looked around. The road appeared to be familiar to her, and she carefully scanned the fence as she slowly walked along. Presently there became visible a dim white shape; it was another milestone. She drew her fingers across its face to feel the marks.

  ‘Two more!’ she said.

  She leant against the stone as a means of rest for a short interval, then bestirred herself, and again pursued her way. For a slight distance she bore up bravely, afterwards flagging as before. This was beside a lone copsewood, wherein heaps of white chips strewn upon the leafy ground showed that woodmen had been faggoting and making hurdles during the day. Now there was not a rustle, not a breeze, not the faintest clash of twigs to keep her company. The woman looked over the gate, opened it, and went in. Close to the entrance stood a row of faggots, bound and unbound, together with stakes of all sizes.

  By the aid of the Casterbridge aurora, and by feeling with her hands, the woman selected two sticks from the heaps. These sticks were nearly straight to the height of three or four feet, where each branched into a fork like the letter Y. She sat down, snapped off the small upper twigs, and carried the remainder with her into the road. She placed one of these forks under each arm as a crutch, tested them, timidly threw her whole weight upon them – so little that it was – and swung herself forward. The girl had made for herself a material aid.

  The crutches answered well. The pat of her feet, and the tap of her sticks upon the highway, were all the sounds that came from the traveller now. She had passed the last milestone by a good long distance, and began to look wistfully towards the bank as if calculating upon another milestone soon. The crutches, though so very useful, had their limits of power. Mechanism only transfers labour, being powerless to supersede it, and the original amount of exertion was not cleared away; it was thrown into the body and arms. She was exhausted, and each swing forward became fainter. At last she swayed sideways, and fell.

  Here she lay, a shapeless heap, for ten minutes and more. The morning wind began to boom dully over the flats, and to move afresh dead leaves which had lain still since yesterday. The woman desperately turned round upon her knees, and next rose to her feet. Steadying herself by the help of one crutch, she essayed a step, then another, then a third, using the crutches now as walking-sticks only. Thus she progressed till descending Mellstock Hill another milestone appeared, and soon the beginning of an iron-railed fence came into view. She staggered across to the first post, clung to it, and looked around.

  The Casterbridge lights were now individually visible. It was getting towards morning, and vehicles
might be hoped for, if not expected soon. She listened. There was not a sound of life save that acme and sublimation of all dismal sounds, the bark of a fox, its three hollow notes being rendered at intervals of a minute with the precision of a funeral bell.

  ‘Less than a mile!’ the woman murmured. ‘No; more,’ she added, after a pause. ‘The mile is to the county hall, and my resting-place is on the other side Casterbridge. A little over a mile, and there I am!’ After an interval she again spoke. ‘Five or six steps to a yard – six perhaps. I have to go seventeen hundred yards. A hundred times six, six hundred. Seventeen times that. O pity me, Lord!’

  Holding to the rails, she advanced, thrusting one hand forward upon the rail, then the other, then leaning over it whilst she dragged her feet on beneath.

  This woman was not given to soliloquy; but extremity of feeling lessens the individuality of the weak, as it increases that of the strong. She said again in the same tone, ‘I’ll believe that the end lies five posts forward, and no further, and so get strength to pass them.’

  This was a practical application of the principle that a half-feigned and fictitious faith is better than no faith at all.

  She passed five posts and held on to the fifth.

  ‘I’ll pass five more by believing my longed-for spot is at the next fifth. I can do it.’

  She passed five more.

  ‘It lies only five further.’

  She passed five more.

  ‘But it is five further.’

  She passed them.

  ‘That stone bridge is the end of my journey,’ she said, when the bridge over the Froom was in view.

  She crawled to the bridge. During the effort each breath of the woman went into the air as if never to return again.

  ‘Now for the truth of the matter,’ she said, sitting down. ‘The truth is, that I have less than half a mile.’ Self-beguilement with what she had known all the time to be false had given her strength to come over half a mile that she would have been powerless to face in the lump. The artifice showed that the woman, by some mysterious intuition, had grasped the paradoxical truth that blindness may operate more vigorously than prescience, and the short-sighted effect more than the far-seeing; that limitation, and not comprehensiveness, is needed for striking a blow.