The peasant's coarse, good-humored face broke into a broad laugh.
"Pardon, mam'selle—j'n bougeons pas. Not' maitre e encoléré; e' son jour—faut pas l'irriter—aujou'hui."
Meantime, during the noise of our forced exit and the ensuing dialogue, the scene within had evidently changed in character, for the blows had ceased. Steps could be heard crossing and recrossing the wooden floor. A creaking sound succeeded to the beating—it was the creaking and groaning of a wooden staircase bending beneath the weight of a human figure. In an upper chamber there came the sound of a quiet, subdued sobbing now. They were the sobs of the girl. She at least had been released.
A face, cruel, pinched, hardened, with flaming agate eyes and an insolent smile, stood looking out at us through the dulled, dusty window-pane. It was the fury.
Meanwhile the peasant was still defending his post. A moment later the tall frame of the farmer suddenly filled the open doorway. The peasant well-nigh fell into his master's arms. The farmer's face was still terrible to look upon, but the purple stain of passion was now turned to red. There was a mocking insolence in his tone as he addressed us, that matched with the woman's unconcealed glee.
"Will you not come in, mesdames? Will you not rest a while after your long walk?" On the man's hard face there was still the shadow of a sinister cruelty as he waved his hand toward the room within.
The peasant's good-humored, loutish smile, and his stupid, cow-like eyes, by contrast, were the eyes and smile of a benevolent deity.
The smile told us we were right, as we slunk away toward the open road. The head kept nodding approval as we vanished presently beneath the shade of the protecting trees.
The fields, as we swept rapidly past them, were as bathed in peace as when we had left them; there was even a more voluptuous content abroad: for the twilight was wrapping about the landscape its poppied dusk of gloom and shadow. Above, the birds were swirling in sweeping circles, raining down the ecstasy of their night-song; still above, far beyond them, across a zenith pure, transparent, ineffably pink, illumined wisps of clouds were trailing their scarf-like shapes. It was a scene of beatific peace. Across the fields came the sound of a distant bell. It was the Angelus. The ploughmen stopped to doff their hats, the women to bend their heads in prayer.
And in our ears, louder than the vibrations of the hamlet bell, louder than the bird-notes and the tumult of the voluptuous insect whirr, there rang the thud, thud of cruel blows falling on quivering human flesh.