Martin’s Girl
It happened to him one Sunday after Mass. He came out of church and was following the sunken road that led to his house, when he found himself behind Martin’s girl, who also was on her way home.
The head of the house marched beside his daughter with the consequential step of the prosperous farmer. Disdaining a smock, he wore a sort of jacket of grey cloth, and on his head a wide-brimmed felt hat.
She, squeezed into stays that she only laced once a week, walked along stiffly, swinging her arms a little, her waist compressed, broad-shouldered, her hips swinging as she walked.
On her head she wore a flower-trimmed hat, the creation of an Yvetot milliner, that left bare all her strong, supple, rounded neck; short downy hairs, bleached by sun and open air, blew about it.
Benoist saw only her back, but her face was familiar enough to him, although he had never really looked at it.
“Dammit,” he said abruptly, “she’s a rare fine wench after all, is Martin’s girl.” He watched her walking along, filled with a sudden admiration, his senses stirred. He did not in the least need to see her face again. He kept his eyes fixed on her figure; one thought hammered in his mind, as if he had said it aloud: “Dammit, she’s a rare fine wench.”
Martin’s girl turned to the right to enter Martin’s Farm, the farm belonging to Jean Martin, her father; she turned round and looked behind her. She saw Benoist, whom she thought a very queer-looking fellow.
“Good morning, Benoist,” she called.
“Good morning, lass; good morning, Martin,” he answered, and walked on.
When he reached his own house, the soup was on the table. He sat down opposite his mother, beside the hired man and the labourer, while the servant girl went to draw the cider.
He ate some spoonfuls, then pushed away his plate.
“Are you sick?” his mother asked.
“No,” he answered. “It feels like I had porridge in my stomach and it spoils my appetite.”
He watched the others eating, every now and then breaking off a mouthful of bread that he carried slowly to his lips and chewed for a long time. He was thinking of Martin’s girl: “She’s a rare fine wench after all.” And to think he had never noticed it until this moment, and that it had come upon him like this, out of a clear sky, and so desperately that he could not eat.
He hardly touched the stew. His mother said:
“Come, Benoist, make yourself eat a morsel; it’s a bit of loin, it’ll do you good. When you’ve no appetite, you ought to make yourself eat.”
He swallowed a little, then pushed his plate aside again—no, it was no better.
When the meal was over, he went off round the fields, and gave the labourer the afternoon off, promising to look to the beasts on the way round.
The countryside was deserted, it being the day of rest. Under the noon sun, the cows lay placidly about in a field of clover, wide-bellied, chewing the cud. Unyoked ploughs were waiting in the corner of a ploughed field; and the wide brown squares of upturned fields, ready for the sowing, stretched between patches of yellow covered with the rotting stubble of corn and oats long since gathered in.
An autumn wind, a rather dry wind, blew over the plain with the promise of a fresh evening after sunset. Benoist sat down on the edge of a dike, rested his hat on his knees, as if he needed the air on his head, and declared aloud, in the silent countryside: “As fine girls go, she’s a rare fine one.”
He was still thinking about her when night came, in his bed, and in the morning, when he woke.
He was not unhappy, he was not restless: he could hardly say what his feelings were. It was something that held him, something that had fastened on his imagination, an idea that obsessed him and roused something like a thrill in his heart. A big fly sometimes gets shut up in a room. You hear it fly round, buzzing, and the sound obsesses and irritates. Suddenly it stops: you forget it, but all at once it begins again, forcing you to raise your head. You can neither catch it nor chase it nor kill it nor make it keep still. It settles for a brief moment, and begins droning again.
Just so, the memory of Martin’s girl flitted distractedly through Benoist’s mind like an imprisoned fly.
Then he was seized with desire to see her again, and walked several times past Martin’s Farm. At last he caught a glimpse of her hanging washing on a line stretched between two apple trees.
It was warm: she had taken off everything but a short petticoat, and the single chemise she wore clearly revealed the curve of her body when she lifted her arms to peg out the
