“It draws the blood from the head,” she said.
She told me stories, while she stitched away at the linen with her long crooked fingers that moved so swiftly; the eyes behind her magnifying-spectacles—age had weakened her sight—seemed to me enormous, strangely deep, double the usual size.
She had, so much I can recall from the things she told me, things that stirred my child’s heart, the kindly soul of a humble woman. She saw life with a crude simplicity. She told me the happenings of the town, the story of a cow that ran away from the stable and was found one morning in front of Prosper Malet’s mill, watching the wooden sails go round, or the story of the hen’s egg discovered in the belfry of the church, no one ever being able to understand what sort of a fowl had gone there to lay it, or the story of Jean-Jean Pilar’s dog who had recaptured ten leagues from the village the breeches that a passerby had stolen from his master while they were drying before the door after a shower of rain. She told me these simple stories in such a way that they assumed in my mind the stature of unforgettable dramas, of sublime and mysterious poems; and the ingenious tales invented by poets that my mother told me in the evenings had not the savour, the breadth, the force of the peasant woman’s narratives.
But one Tuesday, as I had spent the whole morning listening to Mother Clochette, I took it into my head to go and see her again later in the day, after gathering walnuts with our manservant in Hallets Wood behind Noirpré farm. I remember it all as vividly as the happenings of yesterday.
But when I opened the door of the linen room I saw the old dressmaker stretched out on the floor beside her chair, face downwards, her arms flung out, one hand still holding a needle, the other one of my shirts. One of her legs, blue-stockinged, the long one I am sure, was lying under her chair; and her spectacles had rolled far away from her and were glittering beside the wall.
I ran away, screaming wildly. People came running up, and a few minutes later I was told that Mother Clochette was dead.
I could not tell you what profound grief, poignant dreadful grief, seized my childish heart. I crept downstairs to the drawing room and hid myself in a dark corner, in the depths of a vast old couch where I knelt and cried. I must have been there a long time, for it grew dark.
Suddenly a lamp was brought in, but no one saw me and I heard my father and mother talking to the doctor, whose voice I recognised.
They had sent to fetch him at once and he was explaining the cause of the accident. I could not understand more of it than that. Then he sat down, and accepted a glass of wine and a biscuit.
He went on talking, and what he said then remains and will remain graven on my heart till I die. I believe that I can reproduce almost exactly the phrases he used.
“Poor woman,” he said. “She was my first patient in this place. She broke her leg the day I arrived, and I hadn’t had time to wash my hands after getting out of the coach when I was sent for in great haste, for it was serious, very serious.
“She was seventeen years old, and she was a beautiful girl, very beautiful, very beautiful indeed. It’s almost incredible, isn’t it? As for the story, I’ve never told it, and no one has ever known it except me—and one other person who is no longer living in the district. Now that she is dead, there’s no need for discretion.
“At that time a young assistant schoolmaster had just come to the town; he was a handsome fellow, with the figure of a sergeant-major. All the girls were running after him, and he looked down his nose at them; besides, he was afraid of his superior, old Grabu, the head master, who often got out of bed the wrong side.
“Old Grabu was even then employing as dressmaker the fair Hortense, who has just died in your house: she was nicknamed Clochette later, after her accident. The young assistant was pleased to notice the beautiful child, who was doubtless flattered at being chosen out by this superb scorner of women: she loved him at once and he arranged a first meeting in the school loft, after dark, at the end of one of her sewing days.
“So she made a show of going home, but instead of going downstairs and leaving Grabu’s house, she went up the stairs and hid herself in the hay to wait for her love. He was very soon with her and had begun to tell her how much he loved her when the door of this loft opened and the head master appeared and asked:
“ ‘What are you doing up here, Sigisbert?’
“The young assistant felt that he was caught: at his wit’s end, he made the stupid answer:
“ ‘I came up here for a little rest in the hay, Monsieur Grabu.’
“The loft was very high, very big and completely dark; and Sigisbert thrust the frightened young girl as far back as possible, repeating: ‘Get back, hide yourself. I shall lose my job, do you hear? Hide yourself, can’t you?’
“The head master heard him murmuring and added: ‘So you’re not here alone?’
“ ‘Of course I am, Monsieur Grabu.’
“ ‘Of course you’re not: you’re speaking to someone.’
“ ‘I swear I am, Monsieur Grabu.’
“ ‘I’ll soon find out,’ answered the old man; he shut and locked the door and went down to get a candle.
“Then the young man turned coward, as often happens in these affairs, and lost his head. It seems that he flew into a rage at once and repeated: ‘Hide yourself so that he can’t find you. You’ll have me starving all the rest
