Meetings that are unexpected
constitute the charm of traveling. Who has not experienced the joy of suddenly
coming across a Parisian, a college friend, or a neighbor, five hundred miles
from home? Who has not passed a night awake in one of those small, rattling
country stagecoaches, in regions where steam is still a thing unknown, beside a
strange young woman, of whom one has caught only a glimpse in the dim light of
the lantern, as she entered the carriage in front of a white house in some
small country town?
And the next morning, when one's
head and ears feel numb with the continuous tinkling of the bells and the loud
rattling of the windows, what a charming sensation it is to see your pretty
neighbor open her eyes, startled, glance around her, arrange her rebellious
hair with her slender fingers, adjust her hat, feel with sure hand whether her
corset is still in place, her waist straight, and her skirt not too wrinkled.
She glances at you coldly and
curiously. Then she leans back and no longer seems interested in anything but
the country.
In spite of yourself, you watch
her; and in spite of yourself you keep on thinking of her. Who is she? Whence
does she come? Where is she going? In spite of yourself you spin a little
romance around her. She is pretty; she seems charming! Happy he who . . . Life
might be delightful with her. Who knows? She is perhaps the woman of our
dreams, the one suited to our disposition, the one for whom our heart calls.
And how delicious even the
disappointment at seeing her get out at the gate of a country house! A man
stands there, who is awaiting her, with two children and two maids. He takes
her in his arms and kisses as he lifts her out. Then she stoops over the little
ones, who hold up their hands to her; she kisses them tenderly; and then they
all go away together, down a path, while the maids catch the packages which the
driver throws down to them from the coach.
Adieu! It is all over. You never
will see her again! Adieu to the young woman who has passed the night by your
side. You know her no more, you have not spoken to her; all the same, you feel
a little sad to see her go. Adieu!
I have had many of these
souvenirs of travel, some joyous and some sad.
Once I was in Auvergne, tramping through
those delightful French mountains, that are not too high, not too steep, but
friendly and familiar. I had climbed the Sancy, and entered a little inn, near
a pilgrim's chapel called Notre-Dame de Vassiviere, when I saw a queer,
ridiculous-looking old woman breakfasting alone at the end table.
She was at least seventy years
old, tall, skinny, and angular, and her white hair was puffed around her
temples in the old-fashioned style. She was dressed like a traveling
Englishwoman, in awkward, queer clothing, like a person who is indifferent to
dress. She was eating an omelet and drinking water.
Her face was peculiar, with
restless eyes and the expression of one with whom fate has dealt unkindly. I
watched her, in spite of myself, thinking: "Who is she? What is the life
of this woman? Why is she wandering alone through these mountains?"
She paid and rose to leave,
drawing up over her shoulders an astonishing little shawl, the two ends of
which hung over her arms. From a corner of the room she took an alpenstock,
which was covered with names traced with a hot iron; then she went out,
straight, erect, with the long steps of a letter-carrier who is setting out on
his route.
A guide was waiting for her at
the door, and both went away. I watched them go down the valley, along the road
marked by a line of high wooden crosses. She was taller than her companion, and
seemed to walk faster than he.
Two hours later I was climbing
the edge of the deep funnel that incloses Lake Pavin in a marvelous and
enormous basin of verdure, full of trees, bushes, rocks, and flowers. This lake
is so round that it seems as if the outline had been drawn with a pair of
compasses, so clear and blue that one might deem it a flood of azure come down
from the sky, so charming that one would like to live in a but on the wooded
slope which dominates this crater, where the cold, still water is sleeping. The
Englishwoman was standing there like a statue, gazing upon the transparent
sheet down in the dead volcano. She was straining her eyes to penetrate below
the surface down to the unknown depths, where monstrous trout which have
devoured all the other fish are said to live. As I was passing close by her, it
seemed to me that two big tears were brimming her eyes. But she departed at a
great pace, to rejoin her guide, who had stayed behind in an inn at the foot of
the path leading to the lake.
I did not see her again that day.
The next day, at nightfall, I
came to the chateau of Murol. The old fortress, an enormous tower standing on a
peak in the midst of a large valley, where three valleys intersect, rears its
brown, uneven, cracked surface into the sky; it is round, from its large
circular base to the crumbling turrets on its pinnacles.
It astonishes the eye more than
any other ruin by its simple mass, its majesty, its grave and imposing air of
antiquity. It stands there, alone, high as a mountain, a dead queen, but still
the queen of the valleys stretched out beneath it. You go up by a slope planted
with firs, then you enter a narrow gate, and stop at the foot of the walls, in
the first inclosure, in full view of the entire country.
Inside there are ruined halls,
crumbling stairways, unknown cavities, dungeons, walls cut through in the
middle, vaulted roofs held up one knows not how, and a mass of stones and
crevices, overgrown with grass, where animals glide in and out.
I was exploring this ruin alone.
Suddenly I perceived behind a bit
of wall a being, a kind of phantom, like the spirit of this ancient and
crumbling habitation.
I was taken aback with surprise,
almost with fear, when I recognized the old lady whom I had seen twice.
She was weeping, with big tears
in her eyes, and held her handkerchief in her hand.
I turned around to go away, when
she spoke to me, apparently ashamed to have been surprised in her grief.
"Yes, monsieur, I am crying.
That does not happen often to me."
"Pardon me, madame, for
having disturbed you," I stammered, confused, not knowing what to say.
"Some misfortune has doubtless come to you."
"Yes. No--I am like a lost
dog," she murmured, and began to sob, with her handkerchief over her eyes.
Moved by these contagious tears,
I took her hand, trying to calm her. Then brusquely she told me her history, as
if no longer ably to bear her grief alone.
"Oh! Oh! Monsieur--if you
knew--the sorrow in which I live--in what sorrow.
"Once I was happy. I have a
house down there--a home. I cannot go back to it any more; I shall never go
back to it again, it is too hard to bear.
"I have a son. It is he! it
is he! Children don't know. Oh, one has such a short time to live! If I should
see him now I should perhaps not recognize him. How I loved him? How I loved
him! Even before he was born, when I felt him move. And after that! How I have
kissed and caressed and cherished him! If you knew how many nights I have
passed in watching him sleep, and how many in thinking of him. I was crazy
about him. When he was eight years old his father sent him to boarding-school.
That was the end. He no longer belonged to me. Oh, heavens! He came to see me
every Sunday. That was all!
"He went to college in
Paris. Then he came only four times a year, and every time I was astonished to
see how he had changed, to find him taller without having seen him grow. They
stole his childhood from me, his confidence, and his love which otherwise would
not have gone away from me; they stole my joy in seeing him grow, in seeing him
become a little man.
"I saw him four times a
year. Think of it! And at every one of his visits his body, his eye, his
movements, his voice his laugh, were no longer the same, were no longer mine.
All these things change so quickly in a child; and it is so sad if one is not
there to see them change; one no longer recognizes him.
"One year he came with down
on his cheek! He! my son! I was dumfounded --would you believe it? I hardly
dared to kiss him. Was it really he, my little, little curly head of old, my
dear; dear child, whom I had held in his diapers or my knee, and who had nursed
at my breast with his little greedy lips--was it he, this tall, brown boy, who
no longer knew how to kiss me, who seemed to love me as a matter of duty, who
called me 'mother' for the sake of politeness, and who kissed me on the
forehead, when I felt like crushing him in my arms?
"My husband died. Then my
parents, and then my two sisters. When Death enters a house it seems as if he
were hurrying to do his utmost, so as not to have to return for a long time
after that. He spares only one or two to mourn the others.
"I remained alone. My tall son
was then studying law. I was hoping to live and die near him, and I went to him
so that we could live together. But he had fallen into the ways of young men,
and he gave me to understand that I was in his way. So I left. I was wrong in
doing so, but I suffered too much in feeling myself in his way, I, his mother!
And I came back home.
"I hardly ever saw him
again.
'He married. What a joy! At last
we should be together for good. I should have grandchildren. His wife was an
Englishwoman, who took a dislike to me. Why? Perhaps she thought that I loved
him too much.
"Again I was obliged to go
away. And I was alone. Yes, monsieur.
"Then he went to England, to
live with them, with his wife's parents. Do you understand? They have him--they
have my son for themselves. They have stolen him from me. He writes to me once
a month. At first he came to see me. But now he no longer comes.
"It is now four years since
I saw him last. His face then was wrinkled and his hair white. Was that
possible? This man, my son, almost an old man? My little rosy child of old? No
doubt I shall never see him again.
"And so I travel about all
the year. I go east and west, as you see, with no companion.
"I am like a lost dog.
Adieu, monsieur! don't stay here with me for it hurts me to have told you all
this."
I went down the hill, and on
turning round to glance back, I saw the old woman standing on a broken wall,
looking out upon the mountains, the long valley and Lake Chambon in the
distance.
And her skirt and the queer
little shawl which she wore around her thin shoulders were fluttering like a
flag in the wind.
No comments:
Post a Comment