Complete Works of George Moore

by George Moore

  But, Madelon, said Abélard, though we should grant that the lamb is no service to man if he be not eaten, thou’lt not have it for thy whole creed that we have not ears and eyes and nostrils wherewith to take out our pleasure. The song of the thrush on the branch, and the song of the lark as he flies heavenward, the fluting of the blackbird in the orchard, and the robin’s dainty ditty from the topmost spray of the coral hedge are voices that we would be loath to be without. But these voices are not the only voices the spring brings us, Madelon interrupted; in the spring the peacock squalls till you’d think he’d bring down the vault of heaven. It’s true that the spring gives back to the seas the sea-birds, that scream all the winter up and down the Seine. And what is all this squeaking and screaming about? Nothing whatever, for the birds don’t understand each other. How canst thou say that the birds don’t understand each other? Abélard asked. The crow talks, and the parrot too. I’ve heard of talking birds, she answered, and know not if they can say all the words that are reported of them, but am full sure that the words they learn from us are roted in them without meaning, just like their own cries. The rook whose caw pleased you a while ago is hardly a better bird under the pasty than the crow that nobody eats. The pigeon is better if he be laid out between slices of good beef, for the neighbourhood of the beef favours him, and the slices of fat bacon with which whoever knows the pigeon overlays him help him a lot, and the hard-boiled egg helps him, too, and we’ve begun to forgive him his monotonous coo, coo, coo, when —

  But Jesus, Mary and Joseph! listen for the life of you, for the bird that has just flown from the rail yonder, flapping like a rook across the fields, is the noisiest bird that spring brings us; from overseas he comes. Hark. And reining in their horses, they heard: cuc-koo, cuc-koo, cuc-koo, repeated from every hillside. No need to wait much longer; we shall have heard enough of them two notes before we get to Brittany, Madelon said, her heels striking her horse into a trot.

  Before the travellers had ridden another league the cry began to strike tediously on the ear, and to forget it Abélard and Héloïse were glad to listen to Madelon, who, nothing loath, continued her patter, asking them, or asking herself, it was not clear which, how it could be that a Christian man should bear with that tiresome bird, his ears cocked at the beginning of the noisy month for his cry, and making it his brag that whereas the neighbour heard cuc-koo on the fifteenth, it was his luck to hear it on the twelfth. Now, she said, the Latin poet of whom you’re always talking, Virgil, did he ever speak of the cuckoo? As neither Héloïse nor Abélard was able to say that he did, Madelon took advantage of their lack of knowledge to declare her belief that the bird had come into favour with the trouvères, for like them he is a wanderer without a home of his own or wit to build one, or too lazy to try, we know not which; the hen just laying an egg on the ground and carrying it about in her bill till a sparrow’s nest is spied in the hedge, or a lark’s nest or a wagtail’s. One is as good as another, for the cuckoo leaves her egg and her offspring. A knowing bird, I will say that for the cuckoo, for she lays but one egg, whereas if she were to lay two, neither the hedge-sparrow nor the wagtail nor the lark would be able to feed the young one; a voracious bird is the young cuckoo, that turns the natural chicks out of the nest so that he may get all the food that the parents can collect; and Lord! it’s said that the two sparrows, the cock and the hen, work so hard to feed the ungainly fowl they have hatched that they never get through the winter but drop off at the first touch of frost, having no strength left in them to fight against hard times. Nor is it strange that I should have no liking for them birds, for it was one of them birds that dropped his egg in me and left me to feed the chick all the days of my life, poor little hedge-sparrow that I am. The story that was on thy lips to relate when thou earnest to my lodging to tell of Héloïse’s trouble is again almost on thy lips, said Abélard, and he waited for Madelon to begin; but she kept a stubborn silence, as if she were sorry for having said so much. Héloïse knows the story well enough, she remarked suddenly, and to encourage her to tell it, Abélard asked her how long it was since she had seen her boy’s father.

  A week come Tuesday, she answered. So he is still in Paris? Abélard replied. Yes. And the boy? Abélard asked. The boy is in Brittany, he is indeed, and in troth my heart is the lighter for the hope of seeing his bonny face again. Madelon doesn’t make the fuss that you do about green fields and the songs of birds. Her spring-tide is in the west yonder, she said. But does the father do nothing for his son? Abélard asked. His son! Madelon answered; he has never owned the boy, though I had him brought to Paris to show him to his father when he was ten; and anybody could see that he was his son, the very spit of him, but he would have none of it. An evil soul must be in him, Abélard said, to deny his son. I could always see that he didn’t believe me. But he must know whether he lay with thee or didn’t, Abélard interjected. Ah, that’s just what he doesn’t know. Doesn’t know whether he lay with thee? It has often seemed strange, Madelon answered, that he should have doubts about such a thing, and the only way I can make it plain to you — Is by telling us how a woman may lie with a man unbeknown to him. Well, there isn’t much of a story, but just this, she said. We’d been keeping company for a couple of years, or more maybe, when one evening returning home along the river we walked into a fog and lost our way, and he said: Madelon, we may be going towards Nantes or we may be going away from it and it would be better for us to sit down and wait till the fog lifts a bit. We hadn’t been sitting there very long before we saw somebody coming through the fog and we called to him; and when he came to us he looked us in the face and said: aren’t you the twain that asked me in the morning the way to an inn? And I said: yes, we did ask the way to an inn in the morning, and had our dinner in it, and ever since have been walking about talking over the years to come, for we are going to be married. Going to be married? he said. In about six months, said I, when Jean comes into the farm that his parents have been promising him this many a day, for they are too old to work it. So the man before us said: you will never be working the farm if you sit on in this fog till it lifts, for there will be no lifting of it till the wind changes, and that will not be till daybreak, if then; the fogs lie heavy and long by the river. Well then, what shall we do? we said, and he answered: a wedded couple like you, for you are as good as wedded, shall never sit out in a fog whilst I have a roof over my head. So we went into the man’s house, and not to make a fool of myself before them all, I said: as we’ll be wedded in six months we may as well be bedded this night. And the man of the house said: well, you can do that, and if I had a sword I would give it to you so that you might lie on either side of it, which is the token that the twain kept their virtue in the old stories; but I have nothing better than a broomstick, but if that will serve, you can have it. We just laughed at him, for he was a comical fellow. And it was some two months after that night that I went to Jean and said: I am quick. And he said: by whom? So I said: by whom could it be but by thyself? And he said: but I never touched thee the night we lay with a broomstick between us. And I answered him: I know naught of a broomstick. He said: broomstick or none, I never crossed over thee that night, nor any other night, and of all nights that was the one that I couldn’t, for I had drunk too much and fell asleep the moment my head was on the pillow, as I remember well. A fine story, a true cuckoo story, said Abélard; and I am minded to hear what answer you made to it. I said: I don’t know what you did, but I know what I did, and that more than once. But you talk, Madelon, as if you believed him. Believed him! I know what happened between us, sure enough, but for all that he thinks that he didn’t beget his son, for by his manner of talking I can see that he is speaking honest, however strange it may seem to me who knows the truth. And that was the only night that thou hadst knowledge of a man? Troth and faith, the only night; and a great hardship it has been to me, but the boy was worth it, and I don’t begrudge any year of labour he has cost me. My heart is light now as the hearts of the birds and th
e beasts, as your own hearts are light, for I am going to Nantes to see my Jean, who’ll be glad to kiss his old mother again. But let’s push on, or we shall be old people before we get there, and let there be no more talking.

  But they hadn’t ridden many minutes before Madelon reined in her horse, and the other horses stopped too, there being leading reins on either side. Now hark to those birds; a dozen if there be one. Tell me if your ears be not wearied of their calling, and wearier would be your bellies if you were to eat him; as well eat a hawk; no good for the spit or the pot or the pie, a polluter of other birds’ nests, a pander, a bawd, and a — Madelon looked to see if she had listeners.

  Do not answer her, Héloïse whispered to Abélard; else her tongue will never cease. It has become as burdensome to me as the bird itself. Talk to me in Latin and I’ll answer thee in Latin. I read distress upon thy face, Héloïse, Abélard answered, and guess thy thoughts to be back in the rue des Chantres at the moment when thy uncle returns to the empty house, and, finding no one, runs to my lodging. It is as thou sayest, Abélard, Héloïse replied sadly. While Madelon prattled of the springtime my uncle was plain before me; and I can see him now wandering about the town like one bereft of all reason, talking of indifferent things, only to break off suddenly, remembering that his niece and his servant were taken from him. And that I was the robber, Abélard answered.

  CHAP. XVI.

  IT WAS AT the end of the third league that Héloïse asked how far they were from the village at which it was arranged they were to rest and bait. Abélard answered her: when the shoulder of yonder hill is passed, thou’lt see it. Her eyes sought the plain vainly for a village. Thine eyes do not see all that’s in the plain, for it rises and dips, he said. Thy village is a phantom, an idea of thy brain, she returned, laughing, to keep me on my pillion, which I have kept till now, wishing to please thee. But the lurching stride of my hackney breaks down my will, and as we shall reach Mortemer on foot as easily as on horseback, I pray thee to let me walk. So the last half of the journey was accomplished by Héloïse on foot, holding on to her stirrup, Abélard walking beside her, Madelon leading the way by a few feet. Now is not my promise fulfilled? he said, pointing to a white gable showing through the morning mist. That is Mortemer, not a thousand feet from here, so get thee into thy pillion, for we shall strike a better appearance if we arrive on horseback.

  On arriving at the inn she could but fall from her horse into the arms of the innkeeper, so weary was she, and in the inn parlour plead that she was stiff and sore. A tub of hot water will take the stiffness out of thee, said Abelard. And while the water is boiling let us walk about the village, for a change of movement to-day will benefit thee almost as much as the bath, and remember that if the Canon should return suddenly from Soissons he will start in pursuit of us. We shall not be safe till we are sailing down the Loire, she said; and obedient to his every wish, followed him down the village street, too tired to eat, and too tired to sleep until the afternoon of the next day. The next village, Coudray, was but two leagues from Mortemer. We must be in Orléans before Fulbert returns to Paris, was the burden of Abelard’s thought as they rode away from Mortemer. At Coudray they passed the night, and to remove all stiffness from Héloïse’s limbs she seated herself in another tub of hot water, to which Abélard added a bottle of vinegar; a sovereign remedy, he said. It was even so, and Héloïse, now completely refreshed, mounted her pillion in the belief that she was a perfect horsewoman. May we not trot a little? she asked. Abélard answered: trotting on a pillion is barely possible; a slight amble is the only change of movement that can be attempted, for to trot one has to rise in one’s stirrups. If we do not get a boat to take us to Tours we shall throw aside our disguises and ride astride to Blois. And with this promise for encouragement Héloïse sat her hackney, watching the country change from an undulating, pleasant, orchard, garden country into a long, somewhat dismal plain. This plain was once forest, and it would not take many years for it to return to forest, Abélard said. Trees are springing up everywhere; groups of trees and woods, but kept within bounds by man’s labour. The words carried their thoughts back to primal Gaul, through which the Druids and their congregations wandered in search of the sacred mistletoe, seeking it where now were large fields of corn many inches high. Pillaged by the ring-doves, Madelon interjected, voracious birds, that the boys armed with rattles can barely drive back into the forest. But I’ll say no more to you bird-lovers, who take pleasure in every kind and sort of bird cry, even that of the worthless cuckoo, a bird that cannot build herself a nest or hatch an egg, but destroys other birds, their eggs at least, and is not herself fit for roasting or boiling, baking or stewing. But I’ll say no more, for I can see that neither likes Madelon’s talk, but would rather listen to the bagpiping of the larks as they go up and come down. Singing a feverish song, Héloïse said: let us hope that we feel our love deeper than the lark feels his. Abélard asked her if she were tired, if she ached in her joints, and would like to spend more than a night at Étampes. She answered him that it might be better to press on to Orléans, for is it not most true that we shall not be safe till on board a barge sailing down the Loire? But how wonderful it will be to sail down a great river, seeing the towns and villages go by. Thou art tired, Héloïse, almost too tired for speech, but rest awaits thee, for we are close to Étampes. A pleasant town, he continued, telling the town before it came into view; one great street with by-streets straggling in and out of the forest, and the principal street not packed like a Paris street, but each house standing in its own garden.

  As they rode into Étampes he asked Héloïse to watch the storied houses and the high-peaked gables filled with picturesque lights and shadows, for they will help thee to forget thine aches, he said. I did not know that a village could be so beautiful, Héloïse answered, as she rode. And riding down the rutted street, and thinking that Étampes wore an air of exaltation and welcome on this fine May afternoon, she snuffed the faint fragrance of the chestnut-trees, now all in flower. Lilac was in bloom in every corner, and laburnum hung golden tassels over every gate. But the best scent of all was the hawthorn, and looking round, they caught sight of the tree hanging over the roadway. A little farther on, hard by the inn whither they were going, a more powerful scent stopped them. Why, sillies, it’s nothing but a flowering currant, the strongest of all scents, said Madelon, and her words set them laughing. Madelon, said Abélard, if the country were less known to thee, perhaps thou wouldst appreciate its beauty more. But here is our inn, and a handsome inn it is, with pink roofs overhung with green branches — Madelon will not deny them some green. Give your horses to the ostlers who come from the archway, and I will help you from your pillions. It would be in keeping with our religious garb to seek a secluded room, but to-morrow we shall be on our way, finding it as best we can through the intricate roads and paths of the forest, so we may indulge ourselves this evening on this terrace overlooking the road. We need a bottle of wine after our long ride, Abélard called back to the innkeeper, and the hour before supper was dreamed under the boughs in Étampes, a forest town, or almost one, not more than ten leagues from Paris. In it Fulbert was forgotten by the lovers, by Madelon, mayhap, for when the sun sank, leaving a quieter sky behind, life seemed a perfect gift, and their joy increased at every moment till they thought their hearts would break.