Pierre and Jean
Pierre and JeanCHAPTER ICHAPTER IICHAPTER IIICHAPTER IVCHAPTER VCHAPTER VICHAPTER VIICHAPTER VIIICHAPTER IXCopyright
Pierre and Jean
Guy de Maupassant
CHAPTER I
“ Tschah!” exclaimed old Roland suddenly, after he had
remained motionless for a quarter of an hour, his eyes fixed on the
water, while now and again he very slightly lifted his line sunk in
the sea.Mme. Roland, dozing in the stern by the side of Mme.
Rosemilly, who had been invited to join the fishing-party, woke up,
and turning her head to look at her husband, said:
“ Well, well! Gerome.”And the old fellow replied in a fury:
“ They do not bite at all. I have taken nothing since noon.
Only men should ever go fishing. Women always delay the start till
it is too late.”His two sons, Pierre and Jean, who each held a line twisted
round his forefinger, one to port and one to starboard, both began
to laugh, and Jean remarked:
“ You are not very polite to our guest, father.”M. Roland was abashed, and apologized.
“ I beg your pardon, Mme. Rosemilly, but that is just like
me. I invite ladies because I like to be with them, and then, as
soon as I feel the water beneath me, I think of nothing but the
fish.”Mme. Roland was now quite awake, and gazing with a softened
look at the wide horizon of cliff and sea.
“ You have had good sport, all the same,” she
murmured.But her husband shook his head in denial, though at the same
time he glanced complacently at the basket where the fish caught by
the three men were still breathing spasmodically, with a low rustle
of clammy scales and struggling fins, and dull, ineffectual
efforts, gasping in the fatal air. Old Roland took the basket
between his knees and tilted it up, making the silver heap of
creatures slide to the edge that he might see those lying at the
bottom, and their death-throes became more convulsive, while the
strong smell of their bodies, a wholesome reek of brine, came up
from the full depths of the creel. The old fisherman sniffed it
eagerly, as we smell at roses, and exclaimed:
“ Cristi! But they are fresh enough!” and he went on: “How
many did you pull out, doctor?”His eldest son, Pierre, a man of thirty, with black whiskers
trimmed square like a lawyer’s, his mustache and beard shaved away,
replied:
“ Oh, not many; three or four.”The father turned to the younger. “And you, Jean?” said
he.Jean, a tall fellow, much younger than his brother, fair,
with a full beard, smiled and murmured:
“ Much the same as Pierre—four or five.”Every time they told the same fib, which delighted father
Roland. He had hitched his line round a row-lock, and folding his
arms he announced:
“ I will never again try to fish after noon. After ten in the
morning it is all over. The lazy brutes will not bite; they are
taking their siesta in the sun.” And he looked round at the sea on
all sides, with the satisfied air of a proprietor.He was a retired jeweller who had been led by an inordinate
love of seafaring and fishing to fly from the shop as soon as he
had made enough money to live in modest comfort on the interest of
his savings. He retired to le Havre, bought a boat, and became an
amateur skipper. His two sons, Pierre and Jean, had remained at
Paris to continue their studies, and came for the holidays from
time to time to share their father’s amusements.On leaving school, Pierre, the elder, five years older than
Jean, had felt a vocation to various professions and had tried half
a dozen in succession, but, soon disgusted with each in turn, he
started afresh with new hopes. Medicine had been his last fancy,
and he had set to work with so much ardour that he had just
qualified after an unusually short course of study, by a special
remission of time from the minister. He was enthusiastic,
intelligent, fickle, but obstinate, full of Utopias and
philosophical notions.Jean, who was as fair as his brother was dark, as deliberate
as his brother was vehement, as gentle as his brother was
unforgiving, had quietly gone through his studies for the law and
had just taken his diploma as a licentiate, at the time when Pierre
had taken his in medicine. So they were now having a little rest at
home, and both looked forward to settling in Havre if they could
find a satisfactory opening.But a vague jealousy, one of those dormant jealousies which
grow up between brothers or sisters and slowly ripen till they
burst, on the occasion of a marriage perhaps, or of some good
fortune happening to one of them, kept them on the alert in a sort
of brotherly and non-aggressive animosity. They were fond of each
other, it is true, but they watched each other. Pierre, five years
old when Jean was born, had looked with the eyes of a little petted
animal at that other little animal which had suddenly come to lie
in his father’s and mother’s arms and to be loved and fondled by
them. Jean, from his birth, had always been a pattern of sweetness,
gentleness, and good temper, and Pierre had by degrees begun to
chafe at ever-lastingly hearing the praises of this great lad,
whose sweetness in his eyes was indolence, whose gentleness was
stupidity, and whose kindliness was blindness. His parents, whose
dream for their sons was some respectable and undistinguished
calling, blamed him for so often changing his mind, for his fits of
enthusiasm, his abortive beginnings, and all his ineffectual
impulses towards generous ideas and the liberal
professions.Since he had grown to manhood they no longer said in so many
words: “Look at Jean and follow his example,” but every time he
heard them say “Jean did this—Jean does that,” he understood their
meaning and the hint the words conveyed.Their mother, an orderly person, a thrifty and rather
sentimental woman of the middle class, with the soul of a
soft-hearted book-keeper, was constantly quenching the little
rivalries between her two big sons to which the petty events of
their life constantly gave rise. Another little circumstance, too,
just now disturbed her peace of mind, and she was in fear of some
complications; for in the course of the winter, while her boys were
finishing their studies, each in his own line, she had made the
acquaintance of a neighbour, Mme. Rosemilly, the widow of a captain
of a merchantman who had died at sea two years before. The young
widow—quite young, only three-and-twenty—a woman of strong
intellect who knew life by instinct as the free animals do, as
though she had seen, gone through, understood, and weighted every
conceivable contingency, and judged them with a wholesome, strict,
and benevolent mind, had fallen into the habit of calling to work
or chat for an hour in the evening with these friendly neighbours,
who would give her a cup of tea.Father Roland, always goaded on by his seafaring craze, would
question their new friend about the departed captain; and she would
talk of him, and his voyages, and his old-world tales, without
hesitation, like a resigned and reasonable woman who loves life and
respects death.The two sons on their return, finding the pretty widow quite
at home in the house, forthwith began to court her, less from any
wish to charm her than from the desire to cut each other
out.Their mother, being practical and prudent, sincerely hoped
that one of them might win the young widow, for she was rich; but
then she would have liked that the other should not be
grieved.Mme. Rosemilly was fair, with blue eyes, a mass of light
waving hair, fluttering at the least breath of wind, and an alert,
daring, pugnacious little way with her, which did not in the least
answer to the sober method of her mind.She already seemed to like Jean best, attracted, no doubt, by
an affinity of nature. This preference, however, she betrayed only
by an almost imperceptible difference of voice and look and also by
occasionally asking his opinion. She seemed to guess that Jean’s
views would support her own, while those of Pierre must inevitably
be different. When she spoke of the doctor’s ideas on politics,
art, philosophy, or morals, she would sometimes say: “Your
crotchets.” Then he would look at her with the cold gleam of an
accuser drawing up an indictment against women—all women, poor weak
things.Never till his sons came home had M. Roland invited her to
join his fishing expeditions, nor had he ever taken his wife; for
he liked to put off before daybreak, with his ally, Captain
Beausire, a master mariner retired, whom he had first met on the
quay at high tides and with whom he had struck up an intimacy, and
the old sailor Papagris, known as Jean Bart, in whose charge the
boat was left.But one evening of the week before, Mme. Rosemilly, who had
been dining with them, remarked, “It must be great fun to go out
fishing.” The jeweller, flattered by her interest and suddenly
fired with the wish to share his favourite sport with her, and to
make a convert after the manner of priests, exclaimed: “Would you
like to come?”
“ To be sure I should.”
“ Next Tuesday?”
“ Yes, next Tuesday.”
“ Are you the woman to be ready to start at five in the
morning?”She exclaimed in horror:
“ No, indeed: that is too much.”He was disappointed and chilled, suddenly doubting her true
vocation. However, he said:
“ At what hour can you be ready?”
“ Well—at nine?”
“ Not before?”
“ No, not before. Even that is very early.”The old fellow hesitated; he certainly would catch nothing,
for when the sun has warmed the sea the fish bite no more; but the
two brothers had eagerly pressed the scheme, and organized and
arranged everything there and then.So on the following Tuesday the Pearl had dropped anchor
under the white rocks of Cape la Heve; they had fished till midday,
then they had slept awhile, and then fished again without catching
anything; and then it was that father Roland, perceiving, rather
late, that all that Mme. Rosemilly really enjoyed and cared for was
the sail on the sea, and seeing that his lines hung motionless, had
uttered in a spirit of unreasonable annoyance, that vehement
“Tschah!” which applied as much to the pathetic widow as to the
creatures he could not catch.Now he contemplated the spoil—his fish—with the joyful thrill
of a miser; seeing as he looked up at the sky that the sun was
getting low: “Well, boys,” said he, “suppose we turn
homeward.”The young men hauled in their lines, coiled them up, cleaned
the hooks and stuck them into corks, and sat waiting.Roland stood up to look out like a captain.
“ No wind,” said he. “You will have to pull, young
‘uns.”And suddenly extending one arm to the northward, he
exclaimed:
“ Here comes the packet from Southampton.”Away over the level sea, spread out like a blue sheet, vast
and sheeny and shot with flame and gold, an inky cloud was visible
against the rosy sky in the quarter to which he pointed, and below
it they could make out the hull of the steamer, which looked tiny
at such a distance. And to southward other wreaths of smoke,
numbers of them, could be seen, all converging towards the Havre
pier, now scarcely visible as a white streak with the lighthouse,
upright, like a horn, at the end of it.Roland asked: “Is not the Normandie due to-day?” And Jean
replied:
“ Yes, to-day.”
“ Give me my glass. I fancy I see her out
there.”The father pulled out the copper tube, adjusted it to his
eye, sought the speck, and then, delighted to have seen it,
exclaimed:
“ Yes, yes, there she is. I know her two funnels. Would you
like to look, Mme. Rosemilly?”She took the telescope and directed it towards the Atlantic
horizon, without being able, however, to find the vessel, for she
could distinguish nothing—nothing but blue, with a coloured halo
round it, a circular rainbow—and then all manner of queer things,
winking eclipses which made her feel sick.She said as she returned the glass:
“ I never could see with that thing. It used to put my
husband in quite a rage; he would stand for hours at the windows
watching the ships pass.”Old Roland, much put out, retorted:
“ Then it must be some defect in your eye, for my glass is a
very good one.”Then he offered it to his wife.
“ Would you like to look?”
“ No, thank you. I know before hand that I could not see
through it.”Mme. Roland, a woman of eight-and-forty but who did not look
it, seemed to be enjoying this excursion and this waning day more
than any of the party.Her chestnut hair was only just beginning to show streaks of
white. She had a calm, reasonable face, a kind and happy way with
her which it was a pleasure to see. Her son Pierre was wont to say
that she knew the value of money, but this did not hinder her from
enjoying the delights of dreaming. She was fond of reading, of
novels, and poetry, not for their value as works of art, but for
the sake of the tender melancholy mood they would induce in her. A
line of poetry, often but a poor one, often a bad one, would touch
the little chord, as she expressed it, and give her the sense of
some mysterious desire almost realized. And she delighted in these
faint emotions which brought a little flutter to her soul,
otherwise as strictly kept as a ledger.Since settling at Havre she had become perceptibly stouter,
and her figure, which had been very supple and slight, had grown
heavier.This day on the sea had been delightful to her. Her husband,
without being brutal, was rough with her, as a man who is the
despot of his shop is apt to be rough, without anger or hatred; to
such men to give an order is to swear. He controlled himself in the
presence of strangers, but in private he let loose and gave himself
terrible vent, though he was himself afraid of every one. She, in
sheer horror of the turmoil, of scenes, of useless explanations,
always gave way and never asked for anything; for a very long time
she had not ventured to ask Roland to take her out in the boat. So
she had joyfully hailed this opportunity, and was keenly enjoying
the rare and new pleasure.From the moment when they started she surrendered herself
completely, body and soul, to the soft, gliding motion over the
waves. She was not thinking; her mind was not wandering through
either memories or hopes; it seemed to her as though her heart,
like her body, was floating on something soft and liquid and
delicious which rocked and lulled it.When their father gave the word to return, “Come, take your
places at the oars!” she smiled to see her sons, her two great
boys, take off their jackets and roll up their shirt-sleeves on
their bare arms.Pierre, who was nearest to the two women, took the stroke
oar, Jean the other, and they sat waiting till the skipper should
say: “Give way!” For he insisted on everything being done according
to strict rule.Simultaneously, as if by a single effort, they dipped the
oars, and lying back, pulling with all their might, began a
struggle to display their strength. They had come out easily, under
sail, but the breeze had died away, and the masculine pride of the
two brothers was suddenly aroused by the prospect of measuring
their powers. When they went out alone with their father they plied
the oars without any steering, for Roland would be busy getting the
lines ready, while he kept a lookout in the boat’s course, guiding
it by a sign or a word: “Easy, Jean, and you, Pierre, put your back
into it.” Or he would say, “Now, then, number one; come, number
two—a little elbow grease.” Then the one who had been dreaming
pulled harder, the one who had got excited eased down, and the
boat’s head came round.But to-day they meant to display their biceps. Pierre’s arms
were hairy, somewhat lean but sinewy; Jean’s were round and white
and rosy, and the knot of muscles moved under the
skin.At first Pierre had the advantage. With his teeth set, his
brow knit, his legs rigid, his hands clinched on the oar, he made
it bend from end to end at every stroke, and the Pearl was veering
landward. Father Roland, sitting in the bows, so as to leave the
stern seat to the two women, wasted his breath shouting, “Easy,
number one; pull harder, number two!” Pierre pulled harder in his
frenzy, and “number two” could not keep time with his wild
stroke.At last the skipper cried: “Stop her!” The two oars were
lifted simultaneously, and then by his father’s orders Jean pulled
alone for a few minutes. But from that moment he had it all his own
way; he grew eager and warmed to his work, while Pierre, out of
breath and exhausted by his first vigorous spurt, was lax and
panting. Four times running father Roland made them stop while the
elder took breath, so as to get the boat into her right course
again. Then the doctor, humiliated and fuming, his forehead
dropping with sweat, his cheeks white, stammered out:
“ I cannot think what has come over me; I have a stitch in my
side. I started very well, but it has pulled me up.”Jean asked: “Shall I pull alone with both oars for a
time?”
“ No, thanks, it will go off.”And their mother, somewhat vexed, said:
“ Why, Pierre, what rhyme or reason is there in getting into
such a state. You are not a child.”And he shrugged his shoulders and set to once
more.Mme. Rosemilly pretended not to see, not to understand, not
to hear. Her fair head went back with an engaging little jerk every
time the boat moved forward, making the fine wayward hairs flutter
about her temples.But father Roland presently called out:
“ Look, the Prince Albert is catching us up!”They all looked round. Long and low in the water, with her
two raking funnels and two yellow paddle-boxes like two round
cheeks, the Southampton packet came ploughing on at full steam,
crowded with passengers under open parasols. Its hurrying, noisy
paddle-wheels beating up the water which fell again in foam, gave
it an appearance of haste as of a courier pressed for time, and the
upright stem cut through the water, throwing up two thin
translucent waves which glided off along the hull.When it had come quite near the Pearl, father Roland lifted
his hat, the ladies shook their handkerchiefs, and half a dozen
parasols eagerly waved on board the steamboat responded to this
salute as she went on her way, leaving behind her a few broad
undulations on the still and glassy surface of the
sea.There were other vessels, each with its smoky cap, coming in
from every part of the horizon towards the short white jetty, which
swallowed them up, one after another, like a mouth. And the fishing
barks and lighter craft with broad sails and slender masts,
stealing across the sky in tow of inconspicuous tugs, were coming
in, faster and slower, towards the devouring ogre, who from time to
time seemed to have had a surfeit, and spewed out to the open sea
another fleet of steamers, brigs, schooners, and three-masted
vessels with their tangled mass of rigging. The hurrying steamships
flew off to the right and left over the smooth bosom of the ocean,
while sailing vessels, cast off by the pilot-tugs which had hauled
them out, lay motionless, dressing themselves from the main-mast to
the fore-tops in canvas, white or brown, and ruddy in the setting
sun.Mme. Roland, with her eyes half-shut, murmured: “Good
heavens, how beautiful the sea is!”And Mme. Rosemilly replied with a long sigh, which, however,
had no sadness in it:
“ Yes, but it is sometimes very cruel, all the
same.”Roland exclaimed:
“ Look, there is the Normandie just going in. A big ship,
isn’t she?”Then he described the coast opposite, far, far away, on the
other side of the mouth of the Seine—that mouth extended over
twenty kilometres, said he. He pointed out Villerville, Trouville,
Houlgate, Luc, Arromanches, the little river of Caen, and the rocks
of Calvados which make the coast unsafe as far as Cherbourg. Then
he enlarged on the question of the sand-banks in the Seine, which
shift at every tide so that even the pilots of Quilleboeuf are at
fault if they do not survey the channel every day. He bid them
notice how the town of Havre divided Upper from Lower Normandy. In
Lower Normandy the shore sloped down to the sea in pasture-lands,
fields, and meadows. The coast of Upper Normandy, on the contrary,
was steep, a high cliff, ravined, cleft and towering, forming an
immense white rampart all the way to Dunkirk, while in each hollow
a village or a port lay hidden: Etretat, Fecamp, Saint-Valery,
Treport, Dieppe, and the rest.The two women did not listen. Torpid with comfort and
impressed by the sight of the ocean covered with vessels rushing to
and fro like wild beasts about their den, they sat speechless,
somewhat awed by the soothing and gorgeous sunset. Roland alone
talked on without end; he was one of those whom nothing can
disturb. Women, whose nerves are more sensitive, sometimes feel,
without knowing why, that the sound of useless speech is as
irritating as an insult.Pierre and Jean, who had calmed down, were rowing slowly, and
the Pearl was making for the harbour, a tiny thing among those huge
vessels.When they came alongside of the quay, Papagris, who was
waiting there, gave his hand to the ladies to help them out, and
they took the way into the town. A large crowd, the crowd which
haunts the pier every day at high tide—was also drifting homeward.
Mme. Roland and Mme. Rosemilly led the way, followed by the three
men. As they went up the Rue de Paris they stopped now and then in
front of a milliner’s or a jeweller’s shop, to look at a bonnet or
an ornament; then after making their comments they went on again.
In front of the Place de la Bourse Roland paused, as he did every
day, to gaze at the docks full of vessels—theBassin du Commerce, with other docks
beyond, where the huge hulls lay side by side, closely packed in
rows, four or five deep. And masts innumerable; along several
kilometres of quays the endless masts, with their yards, poles, and
rigging, gave this great gap in the heart of the town the look of a
dead forest. Above this leafless forest the gulls were wheeling,
and watching to pounce, like a falling stone, on any scraps flung
overboard; a sailor boy, fixing a pulley to a cross-beam, looked as
if he had gone up there bird’s-nesting.
“ Will you dine with us without any sort of ceremony, just
that we may end the day together?” said Mme. Roland to her
friend.
“ To be sure I will, with pleasure; I accept equally without
ceremony. It would be dismal to go home and be alone this
evening.”Pierre, who had heard, and who was beginning to be restless
under the young woman’s indifference, muttered to himself: “Well,
the widow is taking root now, it would seem.” For some days past he
had spoken of her as “the widow.” The word, harmless in itself,
irritated Jean merely by the tone given to it, which to him seemed
spiteful and offensive.The three men spoke not another word till they reached the
threshold of their own house. It was a narrow one, consisting of a
ground-floor and two floors above, in the Rue Belle-Normande. The
maid, Josephine, a girl of nineteen, a rustic servant-of-all-work
at low wages, gifted to excess with the startled animal expression
of a peasant, opened the door, went up stairs at her master’s heels
to the drawing-room, which was on the first floor, and then
said:
“ A gentleman called—three times.”Old Roland, who never spoke to her without shouting and
swearing, cried out:
“ Who do you say called, in the devil’s name?”She never winced at her master’s roaring voice, and
replied:
“ A gentleman from the lawyer’s.”
“ What lawyer?”
“ Why, M’sieu ‘Canu—who else?”
“ And what did this gentleman say?”
“ That M’sieu ‘Canu will call in himself in the course of the
evening.”Maitre Lecanu was M. Roland’s lawyer, and in a way his
friend, managing his business for him. For him to send word that he
would call in the evening, something urgent and important must be
in the wind; and the four Rolands looked at each other, disturbed
by the announcement as folks of small fortune are wont to be at any
intervention of a lawyer, with its suggestions of contracts,
inheritance, lawsuits—all sorts of desirable or formidable
contingencies. The father, after a few moments of silence,
muttered:
“ What on earth can it mean?”Mme. Rosemilly began to laugh.
“ Why, a legacy, of course. I am sure of it. I bring good
luck.”But they did not expect the death of any one who might leave
them anything.Mme. Roland, who had a good memory for relationships, began
to think over all their connections on her husband’s side and on
her own, to trace up pedigrees and the ramifications of
cousin-ship.Before even taking off her bonnet she said:
“ I say, father” (she called her husband “father” at home,
and sometimes “Monsieur Roland” before strangers), “tell me, do you
remember who it was that Joseph Lebru married for the second
time?”
“ Yes—a little girl named Dumenil, a stationer’s
daughter.”
“ Had they any children?”
“ I should think so! four or five at least.”
“ Not from that quarter, then.”She was quite eager already in her search; she caught at the
hope of some added ease dropping from the sky. But Pierre, who was
very fond of his mother, who knew her to be somewhat visionary and
feared she might be disappointed, a little grieved, a little
saddened if the news were bad instead of good, checked
her:
“ Do not get excited, mother; there is no rich American
uncle. For my part, I should sooner fancy that it is about a
marriage for Jean.”Every one was surprised at the suggestion, and Jean was a
little ruffled by his brother’s having spoken of it before Mme.
Rosemilly.
“ And why for me rather than for you? The hypothesis is very
disputable. You are the elder; you, therefore, would be the first
to be thought of. Besides, I do not wish to marry.”Pierre smiled sneeringly:
“ Are you in love, then?”And the other, much put out, retorted: “Is it necessary that
a man should be in love because he does not care to marry
yet?”
“ Ah, there you are! That ‘yet’ sets it right; you are
waiting.”
“ Granted that I am waiting, if you will have it
so.”But old Roland, who had been listening and cogitating,
suddenly hit upon the most probable solution.
“ Bless me! what fools we are to be racking our brains.
Maitre Lecanu is our very good friend; he knows that Pierre is
looking out for a medical partnership and Jean for a lawyer’s
office, and he has found something to suit one of
you.”This was so obvious and likely that every one accepted
it.
“