The Wife of Martin Guerre

by Janet Lewis

  It had come to be a fixed idea with her that Martin was dead. It was incredible to her that any man could stand so calmly to face the extravagant charges brought against him as Arnaud du Tilh had done, if he had not certain knowledge that the man was dead whose place he usurped. Justly or unjustly she believed also that du Tilh had had something to do with Martin’s death. Being so bereaved, and so unjustly blamed, herself, she would have welcomed almost any plan that would have given her back the sympathy and understanding of those she loved. And they had entreated her to withdraw the charges against du Tilh. Well, and if she did? Was it too late? Might she not restore to them the happier days?

  “I, Madame? I could wish you still to be deceived.”

  The words recurred to her again and again. Might she not purchase for her people with this one secret weight of shame against her soul the peace and happiness which she desired for them, and for herself their forgiveness and gratitude?

  Again, if the court of Toulouse should reverse the decision of the court of Rieux, what then? Might she not feel released from this necessity of pursuit and revenge? The judges of Toulouse were very learnèd men and very near to the king in authority. The king, in turn, was appointed of God. Might she not consider it in some sense an indication from heaven, if the court should command her to receive this man as her husband, and might she not thereby find peace?

  She had not seen the man whom she accused since the day in court when she had cried out against the sentence of death. His face had grown a little shadowy, the whole quality of his person a little unreal. Riding in the late afternoon under the shadow of trees, and out from that shadow into the light of a meadow, then again into the shadow of other, farther trees, she let herself slip for a time into a dream of surrender, and drooping over the saddle-bow, giving herself easily to the slow motion of the horse, she thought only of the restored tranquillity in the big kitchen, the contented faces bent above the evening meal—little of the man seated in the chair by the hearth, and, for the time being, nothing of herself in that new and impossible relationship. Meanwhile Pierre Guerre rode before her, and when she lifted her eyes from the roadway, or from the contemplation of the roadside grass, she saw his broad and honest back going steadily on.

  She remembered then that he was not only her one supporter in the task which she had undertaken, but that he was also the one remaining defender of the old authority of her husband’s house. He was that authority, simple and direct, without need of subterfuge or of superfluous charm, which before the coming of the stranger had kept them all in a secure and wholesome peace. He was for her that day a tradition more potent than the church. In her country the church had sometimes been denied, but even the Albigenses, hunted from town to town, from town to mountain cavern, and mercilessly destroyed for that denial, had never denied the tradition of which Pierre Guerre was the symbol. When she lay down that night in a strange bed in a strange valley, it was with a fatigue which overwhelmed body and soul, so that she felt she would have been fortunate never to waken.

  On the third day of their journey they had come to the lowlands, and the September heat was excessive. There were no more cool ravines with belated shadows, where the water dripped from rocks, and where ferns grew. Now the fields lay parched and dusty. A white dust rose constantly from the road under the horses’ hooves, and the leaves of the plane trees were dulled by dust. Earlier in the day they traversed the waste lands, filled with rocks and patches of wild lavender. At noon the heat was so great that they stopped to rest for nearly three hours under a grove of plane trees. Here there was shade for them and for their beasts, but the cicadas, boring into the bark of the trees for cooling drinks in the hot weather, beat their cymbals so loud in their great content, at the heat, at the sweet liquid which they sucked all day, that the whole grove rang, harshly reverberant. The air seemed to tremble to the sound, and for Bertrande they were a torment made audible. She was glad to resume the way, although the noise of the cicadas accompanied them still, now near, now far, as they passed other groves.

  The Garonne ran, broader now, no longer splashing and sparkling, but sullenly, a yellow flood weighted with earth from the mountain-sides where the goats browsed. They crossed it toward evening over a wooden bridge into the city of Toulouse. Farther downstream, the first four arches of the Pont Neuf, the new stone bridge which was to be so well and so cleverly constructed that it would withstand even the most violent of the spring floods, projected its incompleted ramp less than half way across the yellow tide. Before them on the quay, the western sunlight shone full upon the whitened brick façade of Notre Dame de la Dalbade, and behind them the Pyrenees, of which a long spur had accompanied them almost to the city, retreated range upon snowy range, now turning slowly rose-color, far away, even into Spain. Behind La Dalbade lay Toulouse, a huddle of buildings of a dusty, rose-colored brick, intricate, noisy and odorous. The mountain peasants crossed the quay, passed the white façade of the church, and plunged into the network of echoing streets.

  They found an inn and ordered supper, after engaging lodging for the night. The ordinary was full of guests, mostly merchants from the neighboring small towns, with a sprinkling of city men. Bertrande found a place in a corner, and, leaning back against the stained plastered wall, took refuge from herself and her companions in the public confusion of the room. Gradually, through the fog of personal misery which enveloped her, she observed that the talk was not general and easy, as one might have expected it to be, but that a group of men was giving great attention to a small number of travelers, and that there was a great deal of head-shaking, and of sober looks. When the hostess brought her supper, she detained her long enough to ask of what the men were talking.

  “Of Amboise, Madame. You have heard nothing of Amboise?”

  Bertrande shook her head.

  “You are Catholic, Madame?”

  Bertrande nodded.

  “And so am I, Madame, but Amboise was the work of the Guises. God be praised, we have no such Catholics in Toulouse. It seems there was a conspiracy of a sort, not greatly proved—there was more talk than evidence. And for that—every kind of death: hangings, decapitations, drownings, without number every day, and so for a whole month. I am Catholic like yourself, Madame, but in Toulouse for every Catholic there is at least one Protestant. And they are good people, Madame. I promise you, I would as soon cut off my own head as that of my neighbor, and that for his being merely a Protestant!”

  “But judging from those faces,” said Pierre Guerre, indicating the talkers on the other side of the room, “one would think it a rebellion sooner than a conversation.”

  “A rebellion, yes,” said the hostess. “I would not think it impossible. Toulouse has not always been bound to the French crown.”

  She went off, and the somber discussion continued, never more animated, never less intense, like a storm cloud that hangs patiently at the edge of an horizon, waiting for a wind to blow it into action.

  “I do not know what is the matter with the world,” said Pierre Guerre. “It seems to be breaking up in little pieces. In the days of Francis we were strongly French.”

  The room in which they slept, the entire party of mountaineers, for the inn was crowded, was hot and close. In the morning the streets were still warm and in the unmoving air the odors and stenches of the previous days remained, like a kind of disembodied refuse. There was none of the early morning crispness of the mountains, nor the amplitude of the purified air in which odors of the farm, of the beasts and of cooking, stood like symbols of the force and vigor, the healthiness of life. Bertrande awoke unrefreshed and felt in the air, as in her mind, the sultriness which paralleled the sullen temper of the men in the eating-room the evening before.

  After the cup of wine, which seemed sour, and a piece of bread, which seemed bitter, she followed Pierre Guerre bare-headed through the streets to the council chambers of the Parliament in the Château Narbonnais.

  The streets were crowded. People were speaking,
not the mountain patois, but Languedocien, and with a curiously clanging, hard resonance, which made, in the narrower passages, everything seem to be spoken twice, re-echoed in metallic vigor from the dusty walls. And all the way Bertrande asked of herself, What am I doing here, in this unhappy town, in this prolonged stench, this heat, this desolating strangeness? I am pursuing a man to his death, a man who has been many times kind to me, who is the father of my smallest child. I am destroying the happiness of my family. And why? For the sake of a truth, to free myself from a deceit which was consuming me and killing me. She remembered herself speaking to Martin’s sister.

  “What would you have, my sister? The truth is only the truth. I cannot change it.”

  The sister had replied:

  “It is true only for you.”

  “And might I be wrong?” she asked herself again as she mounted the stone steps and stood waiting before the great, closed door. She felt, in approaching this tribunal of Toulouse, a finality she had not felt at Rieux. It would not be possible for her to appeal this decision. It waited for her, behind those doors, in the quality of a doom. Suddenly her confidence deserted her, and terror engulfed her. She saw herself as borne forward helplessly on a great tide of misunderstanding and mischance to commit even a greater sin than that of which she had been afraid. The words of the priest returned to her. It had been holy counsel; she had refused it. She broke into a heavy sweat which turned cold on her skin and made her shudder even in the meridional heat. She was dizzied. The door before her grew insubstantial, invisible, as if she had walked into an icy cloud on the summit of La Bancanère. Blindly, she reached out her hand for Uncle Pierre, and, the doors being opened, she entered the courtroom leaning on his arm.

  The judges of Toulouse wished to confront the two accusers with the accused, but singly, feeling that much might be revealed to the acute observer in the countenances of the accusers which had not been recorded in the account of the case forwarded to them by the judges of Rieux. Accordingly, once inside the courtroom, Bertrande was constrained to leave the support of Uncle Pierre, and, attended by a guard, advanced before the very seat of the judges. A hum of voices which had filled the room ceased suddenly as she appeared. In the abrupt silence she heard the admonition and then the question of the judge and, lifting her eyes, saw before her at the distance of only a few feet, the man for whom she had felt for one extraordinary year a great and joyous passion. He was regarding her with a look at once patient, tender and ironic. In her distress she saw no other face, and could not bear the contemplation of that tender gaze. She looked down, dropping her head forward, while the blood beat upward into her face and then receded. Who was this Arnaud du Tilh? What manner of man was he that he did not return her hatred with hatred, and why had he not made good his escape from this most dangerous justice on the day when she had first suspected him? Her face turned very white, while a return of the giddiness which had seized her just before she entered the court made it almost impossible for her to continue standing. She replied to the questions of the judges in a half-audible voice, and was then escorted to a small doorway through which she gained the courtyard, the sunlight, and a degree of solitude. She was instructed to return to the inn and to remain there until sent for. She went to her room and lay down.

  Inside of an hour Pierre Guerre, who had been similarly instructed, joined her there. He was morose, annoyed at being detained at the inn, feeling himself a prisoner and having no occupation, large or small, with which to while away the time. He felt that he had behaved badly at the trial, and it was true that, although his conviction was as sound as ever, his manner had been hesitating, and embarrassed. He had felt himself stared at and smiled at as a peasant, a mountaineer. He had overheard, as the guard led him through the crowded room, an amused comment on his dress, the wit of which he had not understood, but the intent of which he had understood only too well. Annoyed at the crowd, humble before the judges, suddenly for the first time in his life acutely self-conscious, he had lost, for the space of five minutes, the simple dignity which had lent, at Rieux, such great weight to his testimony. Added to this discomfort was the spectacle of the impostor who had lost during his period of imprisonment some of his healthy brown color but none of his air of being arrogantly in the right.

  “We are lost,” said old Pierre to himself as he returned to the inn. “If it depended on me, we are lost indeed.”

  He dared not mention his discomfort to his niece, but it was the principal reason for the morose silence with which he rejoined her and set himself to wait out the day.

  Bertrande lay upon the bed and regarded the stained canopy. Or she turned her head idly and surveyed the wall, or the figure of old Pierre seated on a straight bench under the window. She felt a great illness. A weight seemed to lie upon her breast which made breathing difficult, and the air which entered her lungs, after she had made so great an effort to expand them, contained no freshness, no reviving quality. Her mind had gone numb through prolonged self-examination. Exhausted and trapped by all these walls, by all these circumstances, she lay still and remembered that the one thing she desired was to be free of Arnaud du Tilh.

  Meanwhile the court was proceeding with the examination of witnesses. One hundred and fifty witnesses had been called from the hearing at Rieux, and thirty new ones. Jean Espagnol testified as he had done at the former trial, and introduced a friend, Pelegrin de Liberos by name.

  Pelegrin de Liberos, being sworn, testified that he was an old friend of Arnaud du Tilh, and that Arnaud had recently not only admitted his identity to him, but had given him a handkerchief to be delivered to Arnaud’s brother, Jean du Tilh.

  Gradually a body of information was built up, minute details contributed now by one witness, now by another. The shoemaker of Artigues testified that the foot of Martin Guerre exceeded slightly that of the accused. Certain witnesses to the number of five who had formerly testified with assurance that the accused was indeed Martin Guerre, now declared that they could not be sure whether he was or whether he was not. Of the thirty new witnesses, twelve declared themselves unable to make any decision regarding the identity of the accused. He might be either Martin Guerre or Arnaud du Tilh, for all they could observe. On the other hand, seven of the new witnesses were quite sure that he was du Tilh, and ten were equally convinced that he was Martin Guerre. It was established that Martin Guerre had appeared to be taller and more slender than Arnaud du Tilh, and that he had been somewhat round-shouldered. However there was also the argument that since the accused was eleven years older than was Martin Guerre when last seen, the natural increase in weight and age might make him seem shorter than had appeared Martin Guerre, the boy of twenty.

  Still, as the day went on, it was decided beyond a doubt that Martin Guerre had two teeth broken in the lower left jaw, as had also the accused; that Martin Guerre had a scar on the right eyebrow and the trace of an ulcer on one cheek, as had also the accused; that Martin Guerre had a drop of extravasated blood in the left eye, as had also the prisoner; that Martin Guerre had the nail of the left forefinger missing, and three warts on the left hand, two of which were on the little finger, as had also the man in fetters. So that the evidence tended well toward the defense, when there appeared before the judges an old man in the clothes of a mountaineer but with a somewhat more distinguished bearing than the costume might have seemed to warrant. He was sworn and his name was asked.

  “I am called Carbon Bareau.”

  “And do you recognize the prisoner?”

  “Gentlemen, this man in irons is the child of my own sister.”

  The old man then began to weep, and it was some time before he had recovered composure sufficient to continue.

  “I have loved this boy,” he said at last, “for he has a way with him, a way of stealing the heart, but I have feared for him ever since he grew old enough to talk. He has had no respect for the laws, gentlemen. It breaks my heart to say that he has even declared there is no God. He has revered his parents n
ot at all. With no faith, no respect for family, nor for the law of the kingdom, what could one hope for, gentlemen? He has a good heart, that is all. But what is a good heart when he can so disgrace an honorable family?”

  The two brothers of Arnaud du Tilh were then called and testified that the prisoner “resembled” their brother. Further than that they would not commit themselves.

  After this came a long succession of witnesses for the defense, forty–five people all of blameless reputation and well-qualified to know what they were talking about. Martin’s four sisters testified that the accused was their brother, as did also two brothers-in-law. Many people who had been guests at the wedding of Bertrande and Martin testified that the accused was certainly Martin Guerre. The curé of Artigues testified in favor of his friend.

  Last witness of all came the old housekeeper who had brought to the bridal couple the little midnight repast, or réveillon. She had a story to tell after she had identified the prisoner as her young master. She stood before the judges with her hands clasped firmly at her belt, her brown eyes, good, honest, kind, fixed steadily upon the revered faces, and cleared her throat. Shortly after the return of Monsieur, she testified, she had heard Madame remark to Monsieur that she had kept certain chests unopened since his departure, so long ago. Upon hearing this, Monsieur had described certain white culottes wrapped in a piece of taffeta and requested that they be fetched him. Whereupon Madame had given to the housekeeper the key to the chest and requested her to fetch the pantalons, and the housekeeper had done so, finding them wrapped exactly as Monsieur had described. She made her recital bravely, greatly impressed herself at the gravity with which the judges heard it, and then, trembling with triumph and embarrassment, crept back to her place.