“Do you hate him, then?”
“No, mynheer. Why should I hate him?”
“Alexis, there, is a jolly fellow. What do you think of him?”
“I do not think of him, mynheer.”
I changed the subject. She was only a peasant, yet she knew how to rebuff my levity. “Why did you marry, madame?” I asked, and my tone was serious, befitting the question.
“Why does any one marry, mynheer? I was of the age—sixteen.”
“But why did you choose him?” I gestured again toward the old man, still bent over Alexis as he tugged at the cylinder core.
“I did not choose, mynheer. The swallows,” she pointed to the earthen nests, “do they choose? Other people, do they choose?”
“No,” I admitted, astonished at her. “It is Nature. They do not choose.” I felt a sudden respect for the dully smiling enigma before me. Love? choice? romance? the adventure of living?—what were they after all? The stress of towns has bred these fantastic ideas in men’s brains. This country woman knew she was no different from birds and beasts, and she knew that it did not really matter to anybody—not even to herself. In a few slow words, still smiling, she sketched the dull drama of her life: peasant-born, unbeautiful, bought from her family by the old innkeeper as soon as the Church permitted her to marry, twice a mother, but both her children dead, pregnant again: that was the whole story. She did not know that her recital was sad, or that it could inspire pity. She did not even know that it was interesting. She seemed to tell it instinctively, as a bird cries in the thicket or as a tired dog whines at the door.
“Alexis, is the motor ready?” I called.