When he had finished washing, she came over to him with the warm towels and began drying him. Guccio thought that, if he could leave at once and push on his way at a gallop, he might have a chance of overtaking Marie on the road to Neauphle, or at least of finding her in the town.
‘What a pretty skin you have, Messire,’ said Dame Eliabel in a lively but, nevertheless, somewhat uncertain voice. ‘A woman might well be jealous of such a smooth skin. I suspect there are many who find it attractive. I have no doubt that your lovely olive colouring pleases them.’
While she said this, she was stroking his back, all the length of his vertebrae, with the tips of her fingers. It tickled Guccio, who turned round laughing.
Dame Eliabel looked disturbed, breathless, and there was a peculiar smile upon her face. Guccio quickly put on his shirt.
‘Ah, how wonderful youth is!’ said Dame Eliabel. ‘Only to look at you, I wager you enjoy every moment of it and profit by every opportunity it offers.’
Guccio dressed himself as decently as he could. Madame de Cressay fell silent for a moment and he could hear her breath coming in gasps. Then she said in the same tone of voice, ‘Well, my dear Messire, what are you going to do about our debt?’
‘Here it comes,’ thought Guccio.
‘You can ask us for what you please,’ she went on. ‘You are our benefactor and we bless you. If you want the gold that you made that thief of a Provost give us back, it’s yours, take it away: a hundred pounds if you like. But you have seen our circumstances and you have already shown that you have a heart.’
As she said this, she was watching Guccio buckling his breeches, and it did not seem to him a suitable moment to discuss business.
‘The man who saved us cannot destroy us now,’ she went on. ‘You people who live in towns cannot understand how difficult our life is. If we haven’t yet repaid our debt to the bank, it is because we cannot do so. The government officials thieve from us: you have shown this to be the case. Serfs no longer work as they did in the past. Since the Orders in Council,15 the idea of freedom has gone to their heads: one can get nothing out of them these days, and really the clodhoppers are almost on the point of thinking themselves of the same species as you or I. For though you are not noble,’ she said to underline the honour she was doing him by placing him on her side of the divide, ‘you certainly very much deserve to be. If you add the fact that whatever we may harvest one year, bad weather deducts it the next, and that our menfolk spend the little one is able to save at the wars, if they don’t go and get killed into the bargain.’
Guccio, who had but one idea in his head, and that to find Marie, tried to evade the implication.
‘It is not I but my uncle who decides these things,’ he said. But he already knew he was beaten.
‘You can show your uncle that this is no bad investment; I can only wish for his sake that he never has less honest debtors. Give us another year; we will pay you interest. Do this for me! I shall be most grateful to you,’ said Dame Eliabel, seizing his hand.
Then, with a certain modest confusion, which nevertheless did not prevent her gazing into his eyes, she added, ‘Do you know, sweet Messire, that since your arrival yesterday – a woman doubtless should not say these things, but there it is – I have felt a peculiar friendship for you; and there is nothing I would not do to give you pleasure?’
Guccio had not the presence of mind to reply, ‘Well then, pay your debt and I shall be happy.’
From all the evidence it appeared that the widow was prepared to pay in her own person, and one might well have asked if she were submitting to sacrifice to evade the debt, or whether she was merely using the debt as an opportunity of personal sacrifice.
As a good Italian, Guccio thought that it would be extremely pleasing to have both mother and daughter at the same time. Dame Eliabel still had many charms, particularly for those who did not mind a certain fullness of figure, her hands were soft and her bosom, abundant as it might be, seemed nevertheless to preserve a certain firmness; but this could be no more than an additional amusement. To risk missing the younger in order to linger with the older would destroy the enjoyment of the game.
Guccio managed to get away by pretending that he was touched by Dame Eliabel’s advances and by assuring her that he would most certainly arrange the matter; but that, in order to do this, he must go at once to Neauphle and confer there with his clerks.
He went out into the courtyard, found the lame man, persuaded him to saddle his horse, leapt into the saddle and went on his way towards the town. There was no Marie upon the road. While he galloped along, he asked himself if the girl were really as beautiful as he had thought her to be the day before, if he had not counted too much upon the promise he had thought to see in her eyes, and whether indeed the whole business, which was perhaps but an after-dinner illusion, were worth his haste. For there are women who, when they look at you, seem to surrender to you in the first instant; but that is merely their natural expression; they look at a piece of furniture, at a tree, in exactly the same way and, in the end, give nothing at all.
Guccio saw no sign of Marie in the town square. He looked down many of the side-streets, went into the church, but only stayed there long enough to cross himself and fail to find her. Then he went to the bank. There he accused the three clerks of having misinformed him. The Cressays were people of quality, both honourable and solvent. Their credit must be prolonged. As for the Provost, he was frankly a scoundrel. As he shouted all this out, Guccio never stopped looking out of the window. The employees wagged their heads as they gazed at the young fool who changed his mind from one day to the next. They thought it would be a great pity if the bank should ever fall completely under his control.
‘It may well be that I shall come back here fairly frequently: this branch obviously requires close supervision,’ he said to them by way of good-bye.
He leapt into the saddle and the gravel flew under his horse’s hooves. ‘Perhaps she has taken a short cut,’ he told himself. ‘In that case I shall see her at the castle, but it may be difficult to see her alone.’
Shortly after he left the town, he saw a figure hurrying towards Cressay and recognised Marie. Suddenly he heard the birds singing, realised that the sun shone, that it was April and that the tender young leaves were burgeoning on the trees. Because of a girl, walking between green fields, the spring, of which for three days Guccio had been unaware, suddenly burst upon him.
He slowed his pace and caught Marie up. She looked at him, not particularly surprised that he should be there, but rather as if she had just received the most wonderful present in the world. Walking had put some colour in her cheeks, and Guccio thought that she was even prettier than he had imagined her to be the day before.
He offered to take her up on the crupper. She smiled acquiescence, and once again her lips parted like a fruit. He drew his horse into the bank, and leant down to give Marie the support of his arm and shoulder. The girl was very light; she hoisted herself up with agile grace, and they hurried on. At first they rode in silence. Guccio was tongue-tied. For once the boastful fellow could find nothing to say.
He realised that Marie hardly dared put her hands on him to retain her balance. He asked her if she were accustomed to riding thus.
‘Only,’ she said, ‘with my father or my brothers.’ She had never travelled like this before, her body to a stranger’s back. Little by little she gained courage and grasped the young man more firmly by the shoulders.
‘Are you in a hurry to get home?’ he asked.
She didn’t answer, and he turned his horse into a side road in order to stay upon the high ground.
‘Yours is a beautiful part of the country,’ he went on after another silence, ‘as beautiful as Tuscany.’
This was a lover’s compliment he was making her and, indeed, he had never before felt so strongly the charm of the Île-de-France. Guccio’s gaze wandered to the far blue distances, to the horizon of hills and forests