NIGHTS OF THE ROUND TABLE Read online

  ‘How annoyed he would be, the good Père Danou, if you told him he but kept alive the last memory of an antique superstition!’ murmured Réné, his eyes crinkled with laughter.

  The Professor nodded.

  ‘H’m. Yes. Yet the whole world believed it once—that before the land can hope to bear good crops, to be fruitful, that it must be “christened” as it were, by the mating of man with woman in those same fields. A simple idea—a great idea—like many of the ideas that spring from the simple minds of the world—before it became complicated with theories and too-wise fools like me! Eh, my son?’

  ‘The Professor’s large hand clapped his pupil affectionately on the shoulder as he rose heavily to his feet. Screwing his eyes up, he looked at his watch.

  ‘Almost six . . . I have but just time to lumber down to my train. . . . Aie—and it will be lumbering! I am less young and agile than I was. It was a good thought of yours that I should bring my bag with me, that we could spend more time up here with our books. . . . Where is that poor imbecile of a lad, your protégé, eh?’

  ‘Oh hush—he may be close here!’ protested Réné.

  He scrambled to his feet, peering about him.

  ‘Pierre—hey, Pierre!’

  A shambling form rose suddenly beside them from behind a tangled thornbush, rubbing the burrs from his wild light hair.

  Pierre Loutrec was that pathetic thing, a hopeless imbecile; from birth he had been the butt of the village, teased and bullied and chased from pillar to post by his contemporaries, shooed away by busy housewives, screamed at and shunned by girls who his odd looks and grunting speech affrighted—even his own mother, proud of her handsome elder boy, Jean-Jacques, and her strapping daughters Germaine and Louise, had hated the last-born, with his hideous vacant face, tow-white hair, and slobbering grin, and done her best to ignore his existence and hide him from the sight of her small world. But for the opinion of her neighbours she would have sent the child away, but your French villager is rigidly pious, and to get rid of a child, obviously ‘afflicted by God’, would have caused an outcry of horror at her impiety that she could not face—so poor foolish Pierre stayed, though at times one might have been tempted to wonder whether he would not have been better off amongst strangers. The only creature that was consistently kind to him was his brother Jean-Jacques—with a careless kindness born of a real sense of pity for the pathetic travesty of manhood that yet bore his name and shared his blood—and this resulted in a passion of devotion, a desperate slavish love and affection of the existence of which casual Jean-Jacques certainly never dreamed. For Jean-Jacques, for him only, Pierre lived—the rest of the world might ill-treat him, laugh at him, be cruel and taunting and bitter, yet while Jean-Jacques dwelt therein it was a good world and he wished for no change in it; only to share the same roof, eat the same food, and be privileged to serve his idol in some sort—this meant heaven to Pierre Loutrec, and he needed no other.

  As time went on his two sisters married and left little Briéres for distant villages—Mère Loutrec, growing sickly and querulous, died one bitter winter, and now at last Jean-Jacques discovered the worth of Pierre’s strong frame and passionate devotion to him. The idiot, while hopelessly stupid, could work under direction with painstaking care and apparent exhaustless strength, and proud of the honour of being dragged from the chimney-corner into the fields to work beside his idol, threw himself into his task with an energy that made Jean-Jacques, who was a practical man, curse himself that he had never insisted on Pierre’s joining him at work before. But la mère had been so insistent that she would not have him seen outside more than she could help . . . she had apparently lied when she said he was weak-wristed and would be useless in the fields . . . yes, yes, that would be for fear he should insist that Pierre come and take his part with the others! Privately, Jean-Jacques suspected something not quite regular about the birth of Pierre; he was so lintwhite and lanky, while they were the dark, stocky peasant type . . . eh, well, la mère had been a buxom, dark-eyed beauty in her youth and Loutrec away very often on business. There had been talk of a fair-haired stranger in the village once—Jean-Jacques remembered being dandled on his knee—but he had gone away suddenly, and Jean-Jacques also remembered a great scene and outcry afterwards between his mother and father, and later finding his mother weeping very bitterly, all alone. They found Loutrec dead a few weeks later in a mountain stream—an accident of course, they said—a sad thing for Mère Loutrec, left a widow so young—with all those children!

  Doubtless the gossips of the village counted the months on their fingers with great care when the little Pierre was born . . . but the kindly old curé reproached them vigorously for talking scandal, and after a while the talk died down. Yet now and then it revived in Jean-Jacques’s mind as he glanced sideways at his brother’s strange pale face with its falling light hair, working doggedly, patiently in the furrow beside him. Well! He shrugged his shoulders philosophically. He was a good workman—and a good fellow, if his wits were gone a-wandering, nobody in Briéres had a better partner to work with—aho! between them they’d soon set the village talking about crops! He’d show them—he, Jean-Jacques Loutrec—what cultivation meant! In the pride of his heart he would stride about his little estate like a monarch surveying his realm, at first—despite his genuine sorrow at his mother’s death the sense of possession rioted within him headily as he counted the group of fields; the tiny vineyard, the orchard, the paddock where two fat cows grazed, the garden, every corner crammed with green things good to eat or to sell. The little farm had done fairly well, while la mère was alive—but now therewas a Man in charge—and with Pierre’s patience and strength to help him—Dieu, how he would succeed! Never should there be such primeurs, such succulent young carrots and lettuces and endive, such luscious plums, pears, apricots as should ripen on the crowded trees—such bumper crops, wheat and maize and rye, as should carpet these dear fields of his . . . yet, after the first year, Jean-Jacques’s head drooped low and some of the springing insolence went from his gait.

  For the crops failed, unaccountably, and where a thicket of waving green should have greeted the eye but a few stunted spears of rye and maize pierced the tumbled earth, mocked by the surrounding burgeoning—for of all the village, Jean-Jacques’s fields were the sole to fail. And a second year it was so—now the Professor waved his hand towards them as he strode past with Réné Baudin on their way to the tiny station; pitiful bare spaces of earth staring blankly up at the arching blueness like blind eyes—as void of warmth and colour as poor Pierre’s own!

  ‘There—that’s a curious thing, see? Just that group of fields barren, unproductive—one wonders why?’

  ‘They belong to Jean-Jacques Loutrec, this poor fellow’s brother,’ said Réné in a low tone, turning to watch the stoop-shouldered follower shambling behind them in the dust. From under his matted white eyelashes the idiot was staring at the Professor—his thick, twisted lips hung apart, slack and drooling—only the great muscular hands grasping the handle of the valise slung over his shoulder seemed to belong to true manhood, and Réné felt a curious mixture of sudden pity and half-ashamed disgust sweep over him. He turned again to his companion. What did it matter whether the poor fellow heard or not? He did not understand.

  ‘He’s had bad luck the last two seasons, Loutrec—yet he works hard enough. Just married, too—the daughter of the miller here, Marie-Blanche Audoux. A pretty sharp-tongued little wench—but she’s a good worker, like all these girls of the Loire district. Keeps the house like a pin and works in the fields as well—I don’t think poor Pierre gets quite as easy a time now as he did in the days when Jean-Jacques and he were alone together. She hates having him around, and is always at Jean to send him away—but of course he won’t. Pierre’s worth two men as a workman, and doesn’t cost a wage either!’

  The Professor’s gruff laugh rang out.

  ‘Well, well—it does not look as if all their work on Monsieur Jean-Jacques’s land is do
ing very much good! Now in the old days they would say at once that the land had not been fertilized, so how could it bring forth? and the villagers would make a festa and wreathe the hedges with flowers and make libations with wine, while upon the fresh-turned ground Jean-Jacques and his Marie-Blanche made their marriage bed of sweet green leaves and branches, and the spell would be broken that binds the land to barrenness, and all would be well in the house of Loutrec!’

  With a sudden laughing movement he turned to clap Réné on the back again, and started—the idiot had edged silently up to his elbow to listen till the dreadful loose-lipped face, with its blinking eyes and white brows, knitted now in what seemed some desperate effort of comprehension, was almost close to his own—both men started involuntarily, and Réné cried out angrily, ashamed of his momentary fright.

  ‘Va t’en, Pierre! Clumsy owl—what are you doing to walk like that upon our heels—get back, for shame! Where are your manners?’

  Abashed, the imbecile shrank back, muttering some unintelligibility—his speech was a mere tangle of gutturals, as his mouth was roofless—and Réné, turning into the little station drive with the Professor, laughingly apologised for the momentary annoyance. Climbing into the waiting train, the older man took the valise from the slouching figure’s hands, and giving him a few sous, watched him shamble away shuffling his sabots in the velvet dust, with a curious interest.

  ‘Poor fellow! It is no matter, Réné—to find that face thrust close over your shoulder is a shock, I admit, but it is not that that interests me at the moment. Utterly imbecile—of course; the head is hopelessly malformed. Yet do you know, at the moment, under that strained expression of attention, it almost seemed to me as if he understood?’

  * * * * *

  As a matter of fact, the learned Professor was wrong—and yet not quite wrong. In the hopelessly jumbled, wandering mind that was poor Pierre’s, one thing and one thing only stood out, firm and unalterable always like a solitary rock in a dark and desert land. His love for Jean-Jacques. Jean-Jacques, carelessly kind, the sun, the moon, and the dancing stars in his shadowed sky—Jean-Jacques’s happiness the one thing for which the poor witless brain longed with a ceaseless longing, and for which, could he but have grasped the meaning of prayer, he would gladly have worn out his knees with praying.

  Because Jean-Jacques had wanted her, he endured in sullen silence the advent of brisk, dark-eyed Marie-Blanche, though his soul was torn with bitter jealously, and for days he sat in dour speechlessness watching her as she tidied and cooked and mended for Jean-Jacques-his god. But his god was happy to have her there—how his eyes softened, his voice warmed to a deeper note when she greeted him! Well, well, Pierre sullenly did not understand, but accepted the change in silence, and worked on at his brother’s side as before. Yet even the advent of this woman, with the bright eyes and the smooth dark hair, did not make Jean-Jacques happy for more than a little. In some way that Pierre tried dimly, gropingly, to understand, the fields—the land that so sadly persisted in remaining barren, unfruitful—it seemed to depend on these, the happiness of the house of Jean-Jacques Loutrec, and for long in the dimness of his poor clouded mind, the idiot tried to fathom why this should be? He could not grasp cause and effect at all—the fact that their land was barren and the rest of the valley fat and blossoming with crops conveyed nothing to his mind but that it made Jean-Jacques unhappy—the connection between a series of bad seasons and a shortage of food did not strike him; Marie-Blanche talked much and cried sometimes—but the crisp brown rolls were regularly baked, the soupe maigre, the omelettes and the savoury ragouts steamed each meal-time in the tiny kitchen, and Pierre could not understand that there might come a time when this did not happen.

  But he did understand Jean-Jacques—and when the big man stood sometimes at the door surveying his patiently-tilled fields, flat and empty beside their fruitful neighbours, his bitter silence struck an exquisite agony of sorrow and longing to help in the dumb soul of the imbecile, so that he crept away like an animal, clenching his teeth on the sharpness of the pang that tore him at the sight of his brother’s pain. . . . For days now Jean-Jacques had been silent, brooding over his beloved land like a mother over a sickly child, oblivious even of Marie-Blanche’s coaxing ways, and the swelling anguish of sorrow in Pierre’s heart had grown till it felt like a dead weight. Round and round in circles went the feeble mind, hunting for some way to help—some way to force the cruel earth to wake and bring forth her children, the corn, the vines, the fruit, the just reward of Jean-Jacques’s diligent work and waiting—there must be some way! As always, Pierre’s mind was bent upon this ceaseless question when the two men, Réné Baudin and his friend, had hailed him to carry the Professor’s bag—there was little to do in the cottage, and he was glad of an excuse to get away from Marie-Blanche’s whisking broom and scolding tongue, so he had slouched up willingly enough. Réné Baudin he knew—the young student came down to little Briéres-sur-Loire every summer to read for three months—it was warm and pleasant as he lay chewing a blade of grass in the shade of the laden trees in Vaudron’s orchard, and at first the eager talk of the two men passed idly, blankly over his head, as the rippling of a shallow stream passes over a stone. They talked—and talked—and talked, these clever men! Ma foi, how they talked . . . yet one said they were clever and knew how to do everything? Dieu, if he was only clever, and could find out how to cure the wicked fields of their idleness—could force them to flower for dear Jean-Jacques, so that he laughed and sang again, and lost the deep lines that marked his brown face now so sadly—suddenly he sat up, listening, intent. They were talking about the earth, these messieurs—how difficult it was to understand though—wait, he would listen carefully . . . parting the bushes, he crept near, and lying flat on his chest under the bushes, listened with painful eagerness, his dusty white brows wrinkled with anxiety. If only he could hear enough to find some cure—some help—they were saying that when a field would not bear fruit . . .

  The Professor in his parting words was wrong, yet not quite wrong—for Pierre had not ‘understood’, yet with the suddenness typical of a weak mentality, he had seized on one essential point of the conversation between the two men with a fierce intensity of hope. His mind fastened on it with an immovable tenacity, limpet like, turning it over and over, leaving it, forgetting it, but returning to it again at once . . . the fields, the barren fields, and Jean-Jacques’s happy face once more smiling on him! He laughed and chortled uncouthly to himself as he shuffled back to the cottage in the fading evening light, stopping to watch his shadow, humped and gnome-like, dance along the low white-washed walls, and nodding till his loose hair, flopping in the breeze, gave it a grotesque Pan-like effect in silhouette. He laughed again hoarsely, and cracked his fingers as he entered the cottage, and saw his brother sitting listlessly at the table, his brooding eyes fixed on the fireplace—ha, ha! He knew—he knew—he, little Pierre, the foolish one. They did not know, but he did—he knew the way! Grinning, he tried clumsily to fondle his brother’s inert hand, and Marie-Blanche, to whom his presence was a perpetual annoyance, pushed him away impatiently.

  ‘Assez, assez! Get away, thou—eat thy soup and be silent! Dieu, Jean, must I always have to face a creature like that across my table?’

  Abashed, Pierre drew back, and taking up his bowl of broth and a hunch of bread, slunk away to the chimney corner—Jean-Jacques, rousing himself from his gloomy reverie for a moment, looked after him with a faint frown of compassion.

  ‘Tais-toi, Marie . . . don’t say those things, my pretty one. He means no harm—the good God made him witless, ’tis no fault of his.’

  Marie, propping her elbows on the table, shrugged as she dipped her bread in her soup . . . but she lowered her voice as she replied.

  ‘Zut! I know it—but thou art too kind, Jean. He eats enormously, tu sait, and we are not rich, these days. Also—he makes me sick to look at him sometimes, with that blank face and dropped lip—ugh! I wish—’
r />   ‘I know,’ admitted Jean-Jacques with a puzzled sigh. ‘But though he eats, see you, he works also—diable, how he works! And thou knowest, my heart, I need a strong workman—I cannot till the land alone. Nowhere could I find another man that works as Pierre does—and without wage either. Ma petite pigeonne, be kind and smile at poor Pierre—for my sake!’

  ‘Because of thee and the land—I try,’ conceded the girl with a wry smile. ‘And yet for all thy work, Jean, the land is still stubborn—almost it seems that le bon Dieu has laid some curse upon it, or upon us! I breathed a word of this to Père Danou and he reproached me for unfaithfulness, and laid a penance on me—’

  ‘The land accursed?’ Jean laughed desolately as he rose and stretched his muscular arms above his head. ‘Would I could find a way to lift the curse, ma mignonne—for lifted it must be, and soon! These two years . . .’

  Both turned sharply at a sudden noise. From his corner the idiot had crept close to them, and now stood mouthing eagerly in his piteous jargon, waving his half-empty bowl in one hand, his bread in the other, his eyes bright with excitement, agitation. . . . Marie-Blanche shrank against her husband as he stared, then laughed, clapping the imbecile on the back.

  ‘Ha, ha! He means nothing, Marie—he, he, mon brave, mon vieux coco, mon Pierre! Que veux-tu, alors? Now, now, go thou and eat up the good bread and soup—and a bite of cheese to follow, for a good lad, eh? No?’ His brows creased, puzzled, as the other persisted, jabbering rapid, agitated gutturals, his forehead twitching painfully in a pathetic effort to express himself intelligibly.

  Standing back Jean-Jacques scratched his head, utterly at a loss. He could comprehend generally, or more or less, his brother’s twisted speech, but this seemed more than usually garbled—vaguely he made out allusions to ‘spells’ the ‘fields’ . . . then more wild talk about ‘M. Réné and another man . . . and again, the ‘spell’—giving up the unequal struggle, Jean-Jacques laughed and shook his head.