“It was well done,” she answered, “but I am afraid for you.”
“I am afraid for myself,” he said with a smile. “Without a doubt, he would flay me. Therefore I am going away. When he has had time to reflect, he will see that it was well done, and he will forgive me. Then I can return. You remember the bear?”
He rubbed his hand reminiscently along his jaw while Bertrande also smiled a little.
“You will have to be gone at least a week,” she said. “Perhaps longer. If I could send you word . . .”
“Eight days should be enough,” said Martin. “It is done for the good of the house—he will see that. And it is better that you should not know where I am in case he asks you. I shall go to Toulouse, then further, so that you can answer honestly, ‘I do not know where he is.’ Embrace my little son for me, and do not be disturbed.”
She kissed him on both cheeks, feeling the warmth of the sun upon his flesh, caressing with her hand the short smooth beard, and then, in a brief premonition of disaster, held to his arm and would not let him go.
“Do not distress yourself,” he repeated tenderly. “I shall be safe. I shall enjoy myself, moreover. And I shall see you in a week.”
So he went off. Once he turned to wave with a free, elated gesture, and then the shadows of the trees engulfed his figure. Bertrande returned to the farm, swinging the empty jug from a forefinger and thinking of the path which led down the valley beside the torrent falling and tumbling toward the Neste. Once she stepped aside to let pass a herd of swine being driven up into the oak forest to feed on acorns. She greeted the swineherd absently, thinking of Martin’s journey, and how he would pass village after village, ford the cold streams, follow the narrow passes beside the Neste and eventually emerge into the greater valley of the Garonne, see the level fields, the walled cities, broad roads traversed by bands of merchants and armed men. The woods were still after the passage of the beasts—no insects and few birds. She wished that she might have gone with Martin. At the farm she found Sanxi, and was glad that she had not gone.
The afternoon passed as usual, but at suppertime, when Monsieur Guerre asked her where Martin was, and she answered, as had been arranged between them, “I do not know,” she trembled beneath the cold gray gaze, penetrating and clear as a beam of light reflected from a wall of ice.
When it was learned that certain baskets of grain had been removed from the granary, the anger of Monsieur Guerre was terrible, as she had known it would be, and she was thankful that Martin’s shoulders were beyond the reach of his father’s heavy whip. At the end of a week the anger of Monsieur Guerre had not abated. Apprehensively Bertrande listened at the approach of every passer-by, started and turned cold each time the door to the house creaked on its broad hinges, and hoped that Martin might be fortunately delayed. Again and again she wished that some arrangement had been made between them by which she might meet and warn him. As week followed week, alarm at his prolonged absence began to mingle with the fear of his premature return. At the end of a month she was almost certain that some evil must have befallen him, and in great fear and agitation presented herself before the father of the family and confessed all that she knew of Martin’s design.
Monsieur Guerre listened to her in silence, without moving a finger. Then he answered coldly:
“Madame, that my son should have become a thief is the greatest shame I have ever been asked to bear. Since he is my son, my only son, and since the welfare of the house depends upon the succession of an heir, I consider it my duty to forgive him. When he returns and confesses his crime, and has borne his punishment, I shall withdraw my anger. Until that time, no matter how distant it may be, rest assured, Madame, my anger shall exist. You may return to your work, Madame.”
It was terrible to her to be addressed in this manner by a man whom she so greatly respected. “For their children,” wrote the learned Etienne Pasquier a few years later, “fathers and mothers are the true images of God upon earth,” and this was not an opinion which Pasquier imposed upon his time, but one in which he had been schooled. Bertrande admitted the inflexible justice of Martin’s father, and regretted bitterly that she had fallen in with Martin’s plans for avoiding punishment. How much better if he had stayed and submitted! He would now be forgiven and all would be well. She now prayed that he return at once. But the winter deepened about the village of Artigues, the ways were blocked with snow, and as even the mountain torrent became locked under ice she abandoned all hope of seeing him that winter.
It was lonely without him. The days, shortened by the double shadow of winter and of the steep mountain-sides, held little gaiety for the wife of Martin Guerre, and the nights were unutterably long. When spring came, the snow melted and all the valley was murmurous with the sound of rushing water. Still Martin delayed his return, and she said to herself:
“It is too early to hope for him. All the streams are flooded, the fords are impassable. Men and horses have been drowned trying to cross La Neste in flood.”
She said this, but still her heart unreasonably demanded that he return and that quickly. With the first fine weather, the young wheat sprouting, the vines beginning to put forth tufts of silvery, crumpled leaves, with the half-wooded, half-cultivated valley ringing, now far, now near, with birdsong, her own youth and beauty quickened; and together with her consciousness of her youth, her beauty, her desire deepened for her husband. Somehow, with the winter, had died the fear that Martin might have been hurt or killed. She was at that time too young to believe in the reality of death. The reviving season held only her love and her impatience.
But spring went by, and Martin did not return. Through the deepening summer she looked for him in vain and only when the first heavy snow again closed the mountain passes did she admit to herself that her husband had left her. She knew that he had found the experience of liberty sweet, that to be master of his own actions was more precious to him than the society of his wife, the enjoyment of his son, or his share in the prosperity of the house. She believed that Martin was waiting until the time when he might return as head of the house, that he could not brook the idea of returning, not only to punishment, but to the continued rigors of his father’s authority. She said nothing of this to anyone, but the thought was not an easy one to live with.
He had deserted her in the full beauty of her youth, in the height of her great passion, he had shamed her and wounded her, and when he returned, if he should return after the death of his father, his authority would be as great as his father’s then was, and to murmur against his treatment of her would then be improper in the highest degree.
Martin’s absence weighed upon the whole family. Although his father never mentioned his name, it was evident to those who knew him well that he had aged since Martin’s departure. The second year after the disappearance of her son, Madame Guerre died. She was not an old woman, and it may have been possible, as her daughters believed, that the illness from which she suffered during the last year of her life was greatly aggravated by the prolonged absence of her son. Bertrande assumed her duties and mourned her, for whatever their differences, always unexpressed by Bertrande, on other matters, the deserted wife had felt that her mother-in-law retained no anger against Martin. With Monsieur Guerre it was quite another matter. However perfect his courtesy to her, Bertrande felt always in his presence the just, inflexible displeasure that he maintained toward her husband, and she was reminded, also, that she had shared in Martin’s plan. To his original offense, as time went by, Martin was also adding the greater offense of neglecting his inheritance.
The displeasure of Monsieur Guerre had become as necessary and inevitable a part of his character as his spine was of his body. When he entered a room that displeasure entered with him. The household, meanwhile, had changed and was no longer gay. Martin’s elder sisters had married and lived elsewhere. The youngest, having married a cadet, or younger son, still lived at home and her husband had