At the edge of a road, a very small child sat on a heap of clothes, legs apart, playing with a potato that every now and then he let fall into his frock, while five women, bent double, with rumps in the air, were setting out colza seedlings in the nearby field. Moving slowly and methodically all down the big trench that the plough had just turned up, they thrust in a pointed wooden stick; the plant, already a little withered and lying limply over on its side, was thrust into the hole; then they covered up the root and went on with their work.
A man walking past, a whip in his hand, his feet thrust into sabots, stopped beside the child and lifted him up to be kissed. At that, one of the women straightened herself and came to him. She was a big red-faced girl, large of hip and waist and shoulder, a tall Norman female, with yellow hair and florid skin.
She spoke in a decided voice.
“Hullo, Césaire; well?”
The man, a slight sad-faced boy, murmured:
“There’s nothing doing, as usual.”
“He won’t?”
“He won’t.”
“What you going to do?”
“How do I know?”
“Go and see the priest.”
“All right.”
“Go and see him right now.”
“All right.”
They stood looking at each other. He was still holding the child in his arms. He kissed it again and set it down once more on the women’s clothes.
Across the skyline, between two farms, moved a horse plough driven by a man. Beast, machine and labourer passed with slow easy movements across the sombre evening sky.
“What’d he say, your dad?”
“He said he wouldn’t have it.”
“Why wouldn’t he have it?”
With a gesture the boy drew her attention to the child he had just set down on the ground, then with a glance he indicated the man behind the distant plough.
“Because your brat’s his,” he said slowly.
The girl shrugged her shoulders. “Lord, doesn’t everyone know it’s Victor’s? And what o’ that? I got myself into trouble. Am I the only one? My ma was in trouble before me, and yours too, before she married your dad. Who hasn’t got themselves into trouble about here? I went wrong with Victor, but didn’t he catch me in the barn when I was asleep? And then I went wrong again when I wasn’t asleep. I’d ha’ married him, I would, if he hadn’t been a servant. Am I any the worse for that?”
The man said simply:
“I want you as you are, I do, with or without the brat. It’s only my dad that’s against it. But I’ll get over that.”
“Go and see the priest at once,” she answered.
“I’m going.”
And he lumbered off with his heavy countryman’s gait; while the girl, her hands on her hips, went back to planting colza.
The fact was that the man now walking away, Césaire Houldrèque, son of old deaf Amable Houlbrèque, wanted, against his father’s will, to marry Céleste Lévesque, who had had a child by Victor Lecoq, a mere servant lad employed at the time on her parents’ farm, and dismissed for that very reason.
In the fields, moreover, caste divisions do not exist, and if the servant is thrifty, he can take a farm himself and become the equal of his old master.
So Césaire Houlbrèque went off, his whip under his arm, chewing the cud of his thoughts, and lifting one after another his heavy wooden shoes slimed with mud. He was sure he wanted to marry Céleste Lévesque, he wanted her with her child, because she was the woman he needed. He couldn’t have said why, but he knew it, he was sure of it. He had only to look at her to be convinced of it and feel all strange and stirred up, and half dazed with happiness. It even gave him pleasure to kiss the little boy, Victor’s little boy, because he was born of her body.
And he stared without any resentment at the distant outline of the man driving the plough at the edge of the sky.
But old Amable would not have the marriage. He opposed it with the pigheaded obstinacy of a deaf man, a fury of obstinate rage.
In vain Césaire had shouted in his ear, the ear that could still hear a little.
“I’ll look well after you, dad. I tell you she’s a good girl, a decent girl, and a good manager too.”
“As long as I live,” the old man repeated, “I’ll not see it happen.”
And nothing could persuade him, nothing could break down his savage determination. One hope only was left to Césaire. Old Amable feared the priest because he dreaded the death he felt approaching. He feared little enough the good God, or the devil, or hell, or purgatory, of which he had the haziest notions, but he feared the priest, who stood in his mind for the day of his burying, very much as a man might dread doctors through a horror of disease. For the past week Céleste, who knew this weakness of the old man, had been urging Césaire to see the priest; but Césaire had hesitated, because he was not himself very fond of black gowns; in his mind they stood for hands always outstretched for alms or for the holy bread.
He had made up his mind now, however, and he went towards the rectory, turning over in his mind how he would set forth his business.
Father Raffin, a small active priest, thin and always clean-shaven, was waiting for his dinner hour and warming his feet in front of his kitchen fire.
He merely turned his head as he saw
