Abbe Mouret's Transgression: Chapter 12

Chapter 12

Brother Archangias dined at the parsonage every Thursday. As a rule he
came early so as to talk over parish matters. It was he who, for the
last three months, had kept the Abbe informed of all the affairs of the
valley. That Thursday, while waiting till La Teuse should call them,
they strolled about in front of the church. The priest, on relating his
interview with Bambousse, was surprised to find that the Brother thought
the peasant's reply quite natural.

'The man's right,' said the Ignorantin.* 'You don't give away chattels
like that. Rosalie is no great bargain, but it's always hard to see your
own daughter throw herself away on a pauper.'

* A popular name in France for a Christian Brother.--ED.

'Still,' rejoined Abbe Mouret, 'a marriage is the only way of stopping
the scandal.'

The Brother shrugged his big shoulders and laughed aggravatingly. 'Do
you think you'll cure the neighbourhood with that marriage?' he
exclaimed. 'Before another two years Catherine will be following her
sister's example. They all go the same way, and as they end by marrying,
they snap their fingers at every one. These Artauds flourish in it all,
as on a congenial dungheap. There is only one possible remedy, as I have
told you before: wring all the girls' necks if you don't want the
country to be poisoned. No husbands, Monsieur le Cure, but a good thick
stick!'

Then calming down a bit, he added: 'Let every one do with their own as
they think best.'

He went on to speak about fixing the hours for the catechism classes;
but Abbe Mouret replied in an absent-minded way, his eyes dwelling on
the village at his feet in the setting sun. The peasants were wending
their way homewards, silently and slowly, with the dragging steps of
wearied oxen returning to their sheds. Before the tumble-down houses
stood women calling to one another, carrying on bawling conversations
from door to door, while bands of children filled the roadway with the
riot of their big clumsy shoes, grovelling and rolling and pushing each
other about. A bestial odour ascended from that heap of tottering
houses, and the priest once more fancied himself in Desiree's
poultry-yard, where life ever increased and multiplied. Here, too, was
the same incessant travail, which so disturbed him. Since morning his
mind had been running on that episode of Rosalie and Fortune, and now
his thoughts returned to it, to the foul features of existence, the
incessant, fated task of Nature, which sowed men broadcast like grains
of wheat. The Artauds were a herd penned in between four ranges of
hills, increasing, multiplying, spreading more and more thickly over the
land with each successive generation.

'See,' cried Brother Archangias, interrupting his discourse to point to
a tall girl who was letting her sweetheart snatch a kiss, 'there is
another hussy over there!'

He shook his long black arms at the couple and made them flee. In the
distance, over the crimson fields and the peeling rocks, the sun was
dying in one last flare. Night gradually came on. The warm fragrance of
the lavender became cooler on the wings of the light evening breeze
which now arose. From time to time a deep sigh fell on the ear as if
that fearful land, consumed by ardent passions, had at length grown calm
under the soft grey rain of twilight. Abbe Mouret, hat in hand,
delighted with the coolness, once more felt quietude descend upon him.

'Monsieur le Cure! Brother Archangias!' cried La Teuse. 'Come quick! The
soup is on the table.'

It was cabbage soup, and its odoriferous steam filled the parsonage
dining-room. The Brother seated himself and fell to, slowly emptying the
huge plate that La Teuse had put down before him. He was a big eater,
and clucked his tongue as each mouthful descended audibly into his
stomach. Keeping his eyes on his spoon, he did not speak a word.

'Isn't my soup good, then, Monsieur le Cure?' the old servant asked the
priest. 'You are only fiddling with your plate.'

'I am not a bit hungry, my good Teuse,' Serge replied, smiling.

'Well! how can one wonder at it when you go on as you do! But you would
have been hungry, if you hadn't lunched at past two o'clock.'

Brother Archangias, tilting into his spoon the last few drops of soup
remaining in his plate, said gravely: 'You should be regular in your
meals, Monsieur le Cure.'

At this moment Desiree, who also had finished her soup, sedately and in
silence, rose and followed La Teuse to the kitchen. The Brother, then
left alone with Abbe Mouret, cut himself some long strips of bread,
which he ate while waiting for the next dish.

'So you made a long round to-day?' he asked the priest. But before the
other could reply a noise of footsteps, exclamations, and ringing
laughter, arose at the end of the passage, in the direction of the yard.
A short altercation apparently took place. A flute-like voice which
disturbed the Abbe rose in vexed and hurried accents, which finally died
away in a burst of glee.

'What can it be?' said Serge, rising from his chair.

But Desiree bounded in again, carrying something hidden in her
gathered-up skirt. And she burst out excitedly: 'Isn't she queer? She
wouldn't come in at all. I caught hold of her dress; but she is awfully
strong; she soon got away from me.'

'Whom on earth is she talking about?' asked La Teuse, running in from
the kitchen with a dish of potatoes, across which lay a piece of bacon.

The girl sat down, and with the greatest caution drew from her skirt a
blackbird's nest in which three wee fledglings were slumbering. She laid
it on her plate. The moment the little birds felt the light, they
stretched out their feeble necks and opened their crimson beaks to ask
for food. Desiree clapped her hands, enchanted, seized with strange
emotion at the sight of these hitherto unknown creatures.

'It's that Paradou girl!' exclaimed the Abbe suddenly, remembering
everything.

La Teuse had gone to the window. 'So it is,' she said. 'I might have
known that grasshopper's voice---- Oh! the gipsy! Look, she's stopped
there to spy on us.'

Abbe Mouret drew near. He, too, thought that he could see Albine's
orange-coloured skirt behind a juniper bush. But Brother Archangias, in
a towering passion, raised himself on tiptoe behind him, and, stretching
out his fist and wagging his churlish head, thundered forth: 'May the
devil take you, you brigand's daughter! I will drag you right round the
church by your hair if ever I catch you coming and casting your evil
spells here!'

A peal of laughter, fresh as the breath of night, rang out from the
path, followed by light hasty footsteps and the swish of a dress
rustling through the grass like an adder. Abbe Mouret, standing at the
window, saw something golden glide through the pine trees like a
moonbeam. The breeze, wafted in from the open country, was now laden
with that penetrating perfume of verdure, that scent of wildflowers,
which Albine had scattered from her bare arms, unfettered bosom, and
streaming tresses at the Paradou.

'An accursed soul! a child of perdition!' growled Brother Archangias, as
he reseated himself at the dinner table. He fell greedily upon his
bacon, and swallowed his potatoes whole instead of bread. La Teuse,
however, could not persuade Desiree to finish her dinner. That big baby
was lost in ecstasy over the nestlings, asking questions, wanting to
know what food they ate, if they laid eggs, and how the cockbirds could
be known.

The old servant, however, was troubled by a suspicion, and taking her
stand on her sound leg, she looked the young cure in the face.

'So you know the Paradou people?' she said.

Thereupon he simply told the truth, relating the visit he had paid to
old Jeanbernat. La Teuse exchanged scandalised glances with Brother
Archangias. At first she answered nothing, but went round and round the
table, limping frantically and stamping hard enough with her heels to
split the flooring.

'You might have spoken to me of those people these three months past,'
said the priest at last. 'I should have known at any rate what sort of
people I was going to call upon.'

La Teuse stopped short as if her legs had just broken.

'Don't tell falsehoods, Monsieur le Cure,' she stuttered, 'don't tell
them; you will only make your sin still worse. How dare you say I
haven't spoken to you of the Philosopher, that heathen who is the
scandal of the whole neighbourhood? The truth is, you never listen to me
when I talk. It all goes in at one ear and out at the other. Ah, if you
did listen to me, you'd spare yourself a good deal of trouble!'

'I, too, have spoken to you about those abominations,' affirmed the
Brother.

Abbe Mouret lightly shrugged his shoulders. 'Well, I didn't remember
it,' he said. It was only when I found myself at the Paradou that I
fancied I recollected certain tales. Besides, I should have gone to that
unhappy man all the same as I thought him in danger of death.'

Brother Archangias, his mouth full, struck the table violently with his
knife, and roared: 'Jeanbernat is a dog; he ought to die like a dog.'
Then seeing the priest about to protest he cut him short: 'No, no, for
him there is no God, no penitence, no mercy. It would be better to throw
the host to the pigs than carry it to that scoundrel.'

Then he helped himself to more potatoes, and with his elbows on the
table, his chin in his plate, began chewing furiously. La Teuse, her
lips pinched, quite white with anger, contented herself with saying
dryly: 'Let it be, his reverence will have his own way. He has secrets
from us now.'

Silence reigned. For a moment one only heard the working of Brother
Archangias's jaws, and the extraordinary rumbling of his gullet.
Desiree, with her bare arms round the nest in her plate, smiled to the
little ones, talking to them slowly and softly in a chirruping of her
own which they seemed to understand.

'People say what they have done when they have nothing to hide,'
suddenly cried La Teuse.

And then silence reigned again. What exasperated the old servant was the
mystery the priest seemed to make about his visit to the Paradou. She
deemed herself a woman who had been shamefully deceived. Her curiosity
smarted. She again walked round the table, not looking at the Abbe, not
addressing anybody, but comforting herself with soliloquy.

'That's it; that's why we have lunch so late! We go gadding about till
two o'clock in the afternoon. We go into such disreputable houses that
we don't even dare to tell what we've done. And then we tell lies, we
deceive everybody.'

'But nobody,' gently interrupted Abbe Mouret, who was forcing himself to
eat a little more, so as to prevent La Teuse from getting crosser than
ever, 'nobody asked me if I had been to the Paradou. I have not had to
tell any lies.'

La Teuse, however, went on as if she had never heard him.

'Yes, we go ruining our cassock in the dust, we come home rigged up
like a thief. And if some kind person takes an interest in us, and
questions us for our own good, we push her about and treat her like a
good-for-nothing woman, whom we can't trust. We hide things like a
slyboots, we'd rather die than breathe a word; we're not even
considerate enough to enliven our home by relating what we've seen.'

She turned to the priest, and looked him full in the face.

'Yes, you take that to yourself. You are a close one, you're a bad man!'

Thereupon she fell to crying and the Abbe had to soothe her.

'Monsieur Caffin used to tell me everything,' she moaned out.

However, she soon grew calmer. Brother Archangias was finishing a big
piece of cheese, apparently quite unruffled by the scene. In his opinion
Abbe Mouret really needed being kept straight, and La Teuse was right in
making him feel the reins. Having drunk a last glassful of the weak
wine, the Brother threw himself back in his chair to digest his meal.

'Well now,' finally asked the old servant, 'what did you see at the
Paradou? Tell us, at any rate.'

Abbe Mouret smiled and related in a few words how strangely Jeanbernat
had received him. La Teuse, after overwhelming him with questions, broke
out into indignant exclamations, while Brother Archangias clenched his
fists and brandished them aloft.

'May Heaven crush him!' said he, 'and burn both him and his witch!'

In his turn the Abbe then endeavoured to elicit some fresh particulars
about the people at the Paradou, and listened intently to the Brother's
monstrous narrative.

'Yes, that little she-devil came and sat down in the school. It's a long
time ago now, she might then have been about ten. Of course, I let her
come; I thought her uncle was sending her to prepare for her first
communion. But for two months she utterly revolutionised the whole
class. She made herself worshipped, the minx! She knew all sorts of
games, and invented all sorts of finery with leaves and shreds of rags.
And how quick and clever she was, too, like all those children of hell!
She was the top one at catechism. But one fine morning the old man burst
in just in the middle of our lessons. He was going to smash everything,
and shouted that the priests had taken his child from him. We had to get
the rural policeman to turn him out. As to the little one, she bolted. I
could see her through the window, in a field opposite, laughing at her
uncle's frenzy. She had been coming to school for the last two months
without his even suspecting it. He had regularly scoured the country
after her.'

'She's never taken her first communion,' exclaimed La Teuse below her
breath with a slight shudder.

'No, never,' rejoined Brother Archangias. 'She must be sixteen now.
She's growing up like a brute beast. I have seen her running on all
fours in a thicket near La Palud.'

'On all fours,' muttered the servant, turning towards the window with
superstitious anxiety.

Abbe Mouret attempted to express some doubt, but the Brother burst out:
'Yes, on all fours! And she jumped like a wild cat. If I had only had a
gun I could have put a bullet in her. We kill creatures that are far
more pleasing to God than she is. Besides, every one knows she comes
caterwauling every night round Les Artaud. She howls like a beast. If
ever a man should fall into her clutches, she wouldn't leave him a scrap
of skin on his bones, I know.'

The Brother's hatred of womankind was boiling over. He banged the table
with his fist, and poured forth all his wonted abuse.

'The devil's in them. They reek of the devil! And that's what bewitches
fools.'

The priest nodded approvingly. Brother Archangias's outrageous violence
and La Teuse's loquacious tyranny were like castigation with thongs,
which it often rejoiced him to find lashing his shoulders. He took a
pious delight in sinking into abasement beneath their coarse speech. He
seemed to see the peace of heaven behind contempt of the world and
degradation of his whole being. It was delicious to inflict
mortification upon his body, to drag his susceptible nature through a
gutter.

'There is nought but filth,' he muttered as he folded up his napkin.

La Teuse began to clear the table and wished to remove the plate on
which Desiree had laid the blackbird's nest. You are not going to bed
here, I suppose, mademoiselle,' she said. 'Do leave those nasty things.'

Desiree, however, defended her plate. She covered the nest with her bare
arms, no longer gay, but cross at being disturbed.

'I hope those birds are not going to be kept,' exclaimed Brother
Archangias. 'It would bring bad luck. You must wring their necks.'

And he already stretched out his big hands; but the girl rose and
stepped back quivering, hugging the nest to her bosom. She stared
fixedly at the Brother, her lips curling upwards, like those of a wolf
about to bite.

'Don't touch the little things,' she stammered. 'You are ugly.'

With such singular contempt did she emphasise that last word that Abbe
Mouret started as if the Brother's ugliness had just struck him for the
first time. The latter contented himself with growling. He had always
felt a covert hatred for Desiree, whose lusty physical development
offended him. When she had left the room, still walking backwards, and
never taking her eyes from him, he shrugged his shoulders and muttered
between his teeth some coarse abuse which no one heard.

'She had better go to bed,' said La Teuse. 'She would only bore us
by-and-by in church.'

'Has any one come yet?' asked Abbe Mouret.

'Oh, the girls have been outside a long time with armfuls of boughs. I
am just going to light the lamps. We can begin whenever you like.'

A few seconds later she could be heard swearing in the sacristy because
the matches were damp. Brother Archangias, who remained alone with the
priest, sourly inquired: 'For the month of Mary, eh?'

'Yes,' replied Abbe Mouret. 'The last few days the girls about here were
hard at work and couldn't come as usual to decorate the Lady Chapel. So
the ceremony was postponed till to-night.'

'A nice custom,' muttered the Brother. 'When I see them all putting up
their boughs I feel inclined to knock them down and make them confess
their misdeeds before touching the altar. It's a shame to allow women to
rustle their dresses so near the holy relics.'

The Abbe made an apologetic gesture. He had only been at Les Artaud a
little while, he must follow the customs.

'Whenever you like, Monsieur le Cure, we're ready!' now called out La
Teuse.

But Brother Archangias detained him a minute. 'I am off,' he said.
'Religion isn't a prostitute that it should be decorated with flowers
and laces.'

He walked slowly to the door. Then once more he stopped, and lifting one
of his hairy fingers added: 'Beware of your devotion to the Virgin.'

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