“Come, Sanxi,” said his mother, taking him by the shoulders. “Here is your father, your good father of whom we have talked so many times. Salute him.”
“Ah, my little monsieur,” exclaimed a great voice, “it is good to see you,” and Sanxi, clinging like a kitten to his mother’s skirts, so that she had to disengage his fingers one by one, felt himself hoisted into the air and then folded close to a hard shoulder, smelt the reek of leather and horse-sweat, and then felt the wiry beard rubbed joyously against his face.
“Mama!” he cried. “Mama!”
“It is the strangeness,” he heard his mother’s voice saying apologetically. “Do not hold it against him. Consider, how sudden and how strange—for him, as for me.”
“Tonnèrre!” cried the great voice. “He is hard to hold. But never mind. We shall be friends, in time.”
The boy felt himself set on his feet firmly, and then his parents turned away from him. Some people pushed in between him and his mother, and as the crowd moved toward the door, everyone laughing and talking, it carried her along, clinging to the arm of the stranger. The swineherd and the boy who cared for the horses were the last to leave the room. They lagged behind, buffeting each other out of sheer good will, and the swineherd, turning, saw young Sanxi still standing in front of his mother’s chair.
“What a fine day for you,” he called. “It isn’t everyday that a boy gets a father.”
An hour later Sanxi had recovered himself sufficiently to dare sit beside his father on the long bench before the fireplace. On the other side of his father was the priest; in front of him, on a stool, was Uncle Pierre. His mother kept coming and going from the table to the fireplace, pausing sometimes with her hand on the shoulder of Uncle Pierre to gaze happily and incredulously at his father.
Uncle Pierre had to tell again how he had met Sanxi’s father, “away by the church, far from the road to the farm. I knew him at once, and that from the back of his head. I cried, ‘Hollah, Martin, my nephew, where are you going, away so far from your own house? You have returned,’ I said. ‘Pray do not leave us before you have seen your own roof.’ And what answer did he make, this excellent man? ‘I am going,’ said he, ‘to the church to give thanks to God for my safe return and to pray for the soul of my father of whose death I learned only yesterday.’”
The priest nodded with grave approval; the uncle wiped an actual tear from his eye.
“So then I cried, ‘Good boy, embrace me, Martin, embrace your old Uncle Pierre,’ and together we went and knelt in the church. I am glad that I have lived to see this day.”
Then Sanxi’s father had to hear from the priest and from Uncle Pierre all the story of how Sanxi’s grandfather had fallen from his horse and been killed instantly, and of how his grandmother had died very quietly in her bed with all her family and her servants round about, weeping, all save her son Martin, and through all these recitals Sanxi was puzzled to see how his mother alternately wept and smiled. His father did not cry. He was very serious, very serious and strong, and Sanxi, sitting beside him, observed minutely all the straps and buckles of his armor and how the metal of his gorget had chafed the leather of his jerkin, and began to admire him, silently.
For the rest of the day he attached himself to his father’s person, like a small dog who does not mind whether he is noticed or not, provided he is permitted to be present. He heard his father’s brief account of his wanderings. He listened to the servants as they poured out to his father their stories of everything that had taken place since his departure, eight years ago. He even listened unnoticed while Uncle Pierre went over the business of the house with his father. And in the evening there were violins and flutes, roast meat as if it were a fête day, and neighbors riding in from miles around to welcome his father home. Sanxi had not known that his own household could be so gay. The very walls of the kitchen were animated and seemed to tremble in the ruddy glow from the chimney. The copper vessels winked and blazed. The glazed pottery on the dresser also gave back the quivering light, and his father’s armor, as he flung himself back in his chair, or rose to meet a newcomer, was momentarily like the sky of an autumn sunset. But the seasons are tyrannical for the farmer. In the morning the flutes and violins were put away, and before dawn the men were about the usual work of the farm. The master to the fields, the mistress to the dairy—everything was just as usual until evening, and then, after supper before the hour for prayers, there was much talk by the fireplace of foreign lands, sieges and marches, the slaying of heretics, and finally, instead of his mother saying, “Prayers, my friends,” there was the master of the house, like Sanxi’s grandfather, announcing,
“My children, it is time for prayer.”
The estate prospered surprisingly after the return of the master. The vigor of the man was contagious, and he had a way of noticing the work that a servant was doing and saying a word of approval that the old master had never had. For Bertrande, as for Sanxi, it was a new life, almost a new world. Gladly she surrendered the responsibilities of the farm to her husband’s care, and surrendered herself to his love. From having been a widow for eight years, she was suddenly again a wife. The loneliness of the house was dissipated. Even when there were not old friends come from a distance to greet Martin Guerre, even when the priest was not established in the corner of the hearth to hear accounts of the world below the mountains, there was good conversation in the house, and sometimes music, and Sanxi flourished and grew manly in the companionship of a hero. His newly-found father was no less to him.
At the end of a few months Bertrande found herself with child. She rejoiced thereat, and she also trembled, for at times a curious fear assailed her, a fear so terrible and unnatural that she hardly dared acknowledge it in her most secret heart. What if Martin, the roughly bearded stranger, were not the true Martin, the one whom she had kissed farewell that noonday by the side of the freshly planted field? Her sin, if such indeed were a fact, would be most black, for had she not experienced an instinctive warning? On the night of his return, overcome by desire and astonishment, she had trembled in his embrace and murmured again and again:
“Martin, it is so strange, I cannot believe it to be true.”
To which the bearded traveler had replied:
“Poor little one, you have been too long alone.”
In the morning her fear had vanished, Martin’s family and friends, the servants, the very animals of the place, it seemed, affirming his identity, and putting her heart at peace.
So she had been happy, and had rejoiced in the presence of this new Martin even more than in that of the old, and it was not until she began to feel the weight of the child in her body that the fear returned. Even so, it did not stay. It was like the shadow of a dark wing sweeping suddenly across the room, and then departing swiftly as it had come, leaving all things standing as usual under the cold, normal light of day. But one day, seeing Martin returning from a ride with Sanxi, and seeing the easy comradeship between the two, she said aloud:
“It is not possible that this man should be Martin Guerre. For Martin Guerre, the son of the old master, proud and abrupt, like the old master, could never in this world speak so gaily to his own son. Ah! unhappy woman that I am, so to distrust the Good God who has sent me this happiness! I shall be punished. But this is also punishment in itself.”
No one heard her speak, and, weeping bitterly, she withdrew to her own room where she remained until a servant came to find her at the hour of the evening meal. Nevertheless, in spite of her contrition, she could not refrain, the moment that they were left alone that evening, from accusing her husband of being other than the man he represented, and of asking for proof of his identity.
She had expected passionate proof or passionate denial. The man before her regarded her gravely, even tenderly, and said:
“Proof? But why proof? You have seen me. You have felt the touch of my lips. Behold my hands. Are they not scarred even as you remember them? Do you remember the time my father struck me and broke my teeth? They are still broken. You have spoken with me;