"S'il est assez méchant, lui? Ah, mesdames, what do you think of one who goes forth dry, with clean sabots, that I, myself, have washed, and behold him returned, après un tout p'tit quart d'heure, stinking with filth? Bah! it's he that will catch it when his father comes home!" And meanwhile the mother's hand descends, lest justice should cool ere night.
[Illustration: A VILLERVILLE FISH-WIFE]
There were other groups that crowded the doorsteps; there were young mothers that sat there, with their babes clasped to the full breasts, in whose eyes was to be read the satisfied passion of recent motherhood; there were gay clusters of young Norman maidens, whose glances, brilliant and restless, were pregnant with all the meaning of unspent youth. The figures of the fishermen, toiling up the street with bared legs and hairy breast, bending beneath their baskets alive with fish, stopped to have a word or two, seasoned with a laugh, with these latter groups. There were also knots of patient old men, wrecks that the sea had tossed back to earth, to rot and die there, that came out of the black little houses to rest their bones in the sun. And everywhere there were groups of old women, or of women still young, to whom the look of age had come long before its due time.
The village seemed peopled with women, sexless creatures for the most part, whom toil and the life on the mussel-bed or in the field had dried and hardened into mummy shapes. Only these, the old and the useless, were left at home to rear the younger generation and to train them to take up the same heavy burden of life. The coifs of these old hags made dazzling spots of brightness against the gray of the walls and the stuccoed houses; clustered together, the high caps that nodded in unison to the chatter were in startling contrast to the bronzed faces bending over the fish-nets, and to the blue-veined, leathery hands that flew in and out of the coarse meshes with the fluent ease of long practice.
With one of these old women we became friends. We had made her acquaintance at a poetic moment, under romantic circumstances. We were all three watching a sunset, under a pink sky; we were sitting far out on the grasses of the cliff. Her house was in the midst of the grasses, some little distance from the village, attached to it only as a ragged fringe might edge a garment. It was a thatched hut; yet there were circumstances in the life of the owner which had transformed the interior into a luxurious apartment. The owner of the hut was herself hanging on the edge of life; she was a toothless, bent, and withered old remnant; but her vigor and vivacity were those of a witch. Her hands and eyes were ceaselessly active; she was forever busy, fingering a fish-net, or polishing her Normandy brasses, or stirring some dark liquid in an iron pot over the dim fire.
At our first meeting, conversation had immediately engaged itself; it had ended, as all right talk should, in friendship. On this morning of our visit, many a gay one having preceded it, we found our friend arrayed as if for an outing. She had mounted her best coif, and tied across her shrivelled old breast was a vivid purple silk kerchief.
"Tiens, mes enfants, soyez les bienvenues," was her gay greeting, seasoned with a high cackling laugh, as she waved us to two rickety chairs. "No, I'm not going out, not yet; there is plenty of time, plenty of time. It is you who are good, si aimables, to come out here to see me. And tired, too, hein, with the long walk? Tiens, I had nearly forgotten; there's a bottle of wine open below—you must take a glass."
She never forgot. The bottle of wine had always just been opened; the cork was always also miraculously rebellious for a cork that had been previously pulled. Although our ancient friend was a peasant, her cellar was the cellar of a gourmet. Wonderful old wines were hers! Port, Bordeaux, white wines, of vintages to make the heart warm; each was produced in turn, a different vintage and wine on each one of our visits, but no champagne. This was no wine for women—for the right women. Champagne was a bad, fast wine, for fast, disreputable people. "C'est un vrai poison, qui vous infecte," she had declared again and again, and when she saw her daughter drinking it, it made her shudder; she confessed to having a moment of doubt; had Paris, indeed, really brought her child no harm? Then the old mere would shrug her bent shoulders and rub her hands, and for a moment she would be lost in thought. Presently the cracked old laugh would peal forth again, and, as she threw back her head, she would shake it as if to dispel some dark vision.
To-day she had dropped, almost as soon as we entered, into a narrow trap-door, descending a flight of stone steps. We could hear a clicking of bottles and a rustling of straw; and then, behold, a veritable fairy issuing from the bowels of the earth, with flushes of red suffusing the ribbed, bewrinkled face, as the old figure straightens its crookedness to carry the dusty bottle securely, steadily, lest the cloudy settling at the bottom should be disturbed. What a merry little feast then began! We had learned where the glasses were kept; we had been busily scouring them while our hostess was below. Then wine and glasses, along with three chairs, were quickly placed on the pine table at the door of the old house. Here, on the grass of the cliffs, we sat, sipping our wine, enjoying the sea that lay at our feet, and above, the sunlit sky. To our friend both sky and sea were familiar companions; but the fichu was a new friend.
"Yes, it is very beautiful, as you say," she said, in answer to our admiring comments. "It came from Paris, from my daughter. She sent it to me; she is always making me gifts; she is one who remembers her old mother! Figure to yourselves that last year, in midwinter, she sent me no less than three gowns, all wool! What can I do with them? C'est pour me flatter, c'est sa manière de me dire qu'il faut vivre pour longtemps! Ah, la chère folle! But she spoils me, the darling!"