The Wild Land

by Isobel Chace

  “He was angry last night,” she admitted, “but Charles came along as soon as I cried out. He didn’t do me any harm.”

  “But why?” Marie-Françoise asked. “Why should he attack you? I have asked and asked myself. Usually it is easy to see when he will be angry, but this time—You had done nothing to him.”

  Emma was silent.

  “Hush, my love,” Sam said gently. “You’re in my care now.”

  “Your care?” Emma asked sharply. “What about Charles?” She was surprised at her own furious spurt of indignation. “What about Charles?” she repeated.

  Marie-Françoise looked embarrassed. Her eyes sought Sam’s for help.

  “It happened so quickly,” she said helplessly. “Before Sam came there was nobody else but Charles! He was rich and good-looking. I—I didn’t look for anything more. I was stupid, but I would have done anything to get away from Papa! I was always talking about it.”

  Emma began to make them both some coffee with mechanical movements. They couldn’t do this to Charles! And yet, under her indignation, lay a small, smothered gladness. Charles was not going to marry Marie-Françoise after all!

  “Does Charles know?” she asked.

  Sam chuckled.

  “Of course he knows, honey. Why do you suppose he’s been doing so much for us at the house?”

  “For you? But he bought it himself. Did—didn’t he?”

  “I bought it. I thought it would be a good thing for Marie-Françoise to have a stake in her homeland. We shall have to live mostly in the States, but Charles will keep an eye on the place for us and we’ll be coming and going all the time.”

  “I don’t believe you!” Emma said weakly. “I don’t believe you. Charles asked me to help him choose the colors and materials and things. And Marie-Françoise was over with us all the time—looking perfectly miserable!”

  “I was miserable!” Marie-Françoise interjected. “I did not know what to do, you see. It seemed so dreadful to marry Sam when he had just bought Papa’s manade. I thought he would think I just wanted security, you see, when really I loved him very much—”

  Sam kissed her lightly on the mouth, forcing her to break off her sentence.

  “Oh, Sam,” she whispered.

  Emma poured out the coffee with shaking hands. So Charles had known all the time, and yet he hadn’t told her. It came to her abruptly that he might not be going to marry Marie-Françoise, but it didn’t really make very much difference after all. He still wasn’t in love with her! She would have to go back to England—and she didn’t want to go. She wanted to stay with Charles in this land that had wound itself into her heart. The wild land, the land of chaos, where God had forgotten to separate the waters from the land.

  The gardiens came from all over the Camargue, their tough little white ponies sprightly and ready for the fun, until it seemed that men in checked shirts and carrying tridents were everywhere. The drive to Les Saintes Maries had begun. Emma took up her position beside her grandmother, keeping a careful eye on the ferocious bulls in the middle of the group.

  It was easy enough, provided they kept at a steady, even pace and allowed nothing to upset the quick tempers of the highly-strung black bulls. But when they came to the outskirts of the little town, the fun really began. It was the maddest game Emma had ever taken part in.

  The gipsies were everywhere, their exciting music echoing through the streets, with little groups of them performing impromptu dances wherever they happened to be. A strong man burst his way out of a half-inch chain and the fortune-tellers did a roaring trade among the sightseers. But all, it seemed, united together in trying to break up the close formation of the gardiens around the bulls.

  They raced through the streets, jostling the bulls onward, while the braver of the local youths came closer and closer, determined to foil the attempts of the gardiens to keep control and to let the bulls loose to career through the open streets, charging anything and anyone to whom they took exception. It was dangerous, foolhardy, and great fun!

  They stormed down the streets toward the Arena, the bulls angry, the crowds roaring their approval. Someone hauled open the gate that closed the entrance to the toril, the pen that was to hold the bulls, and with grim faces the gardiens made a final effort and they were safely inside. The feat had been completed. The abrivado was a success.

  Grinning gardiens took themselves off to the cafes and the shops, granted the freedom of the town as they always were if they could achieve the task of getting the bulls through the barracking crowds without any of them breaking away.

  The Course Libre was not a very big affair, but Madame was delighted with the spirit of the animals during their fifteen minutes each in the ring. Emma was better pleased with the razateurs, who had nothing but their wit and speed to defend themselves, making their superb leaps over the barriers, often followed by the angry bull. Spectators, the management announced frenziedly at regular intervals, attended entirely at their own risk! The prize money ticked up as the minutes went by and the general excitement became positively frantic. Time and again Emma would shut her eyes to close out some impossible leap and would remember Charles doing the same thing at the manade.

  “Oh, oh! Il est brave! Il est formidable!”

  She found herself joining in the general clamour, but in her heart she was referring to Charles. He was brave! And formidable, in both the English and the French sense of the word.

  Cyclone was perhaps the most famous of the Mas Camarica bulls, and when, after his fifteen minutes in the ring, he trotted back to the toril with his red cocarde still firmly attached to his horns, the applause came like thunder round the Arena. He was brave! He was magnificent! He was a bull to be noted and watched again, and tomorrow his fortune would be made by a lengthy piece in the local paper dedicated entirely to him.

  Madame’s eyes shone.

  “Go and find Charles,” she whispered to Emma. “I want to be beside him when we take the bulls home. I want to share the applause. It is right that I should, n’est-ce pas?”

  Emma went reluctantly. He was standing in the centre of a little group of men, his hat worn in his own inimitable manner, yarning about bulls and horses. Masculine talk, she thought. And how well he did it leaning against a post, with his laughter cracking out at intervals. He looked quite different now from the man who had comforted her the evening before, even putting up her hair for her.

  It took courage to go up to the group and to give him her grandmother’s message, though he made it very easy for her, tipping hit hat to her with a cheerful nonchalance, although she was quite sure that he would rather stay where he was with his friends. The men all grinned at her, however, and they departed together, going back to the stands where her grandmother was waiting.

  And how gentle he was with Madame, Emma thought, as he deferred to the old lady’s wishes and organized the men, teasing her a little, making her feel proud and feminine despite her much greater age and her way of life. Oh yes, he certainly knew the way to wind anything feminine around his little finger. It wasn’t only the men he was good with.

  “And now, Miss Emma Howard,” he said, turning to her when he had finished making all the arrangements. He said it in English—“Mees Emma ’Oward”—and her heart turned right over. “And now, Miss Emma Howard, come and have a free cup of coffee on the town.”

  “Oh, but—” she began. “Do you think I should? I mean I’m not a real gardienne, am I?”

  He laughed.

  “You looked pretty real to me,” he assured her, “riding that mare as if you’d been born to it!”

  She blushed.

  “She doesn’t roll often nowadays,” she said defensively. “And that wasn’t what I meant!” She still wasn’t sure that the others would like her claiming a part in the success of the abrivado. Charles however had no such doubts. He tucked her hand firmly into his arm and led her away into the town, choosing a discreet little cafe that was almost deserted.

  He chose a
table in the corner and went up to the counter to order their coffee and ice-cream.

  “Black or white?” he asked her with a touch of mischief.

  “Black,” she said before she had thought, and promptly regretted it. She was always forgetting that the French roasted their coffee beans longer than the English and that the flavour was correspondingly heavier. “And no sugar,” she added uncertainly.

  He brought it to her with a chuckle and she saw that he had ordered white after all.

  “Why didn’t you tell me it was Sam who had bought Monsieur Clement’s place?” she asked him as he sat down opposite her.

  His dark brown eyes met hers.

  “I thought he would be telling you himself,” he said simply. His brown hands came across the table and covered hers. “Did he tell you he is going to marry Marie-Françoise?”

  She nodded.

  “I never even suspected that they were interested in one another, did you?” she asked brightly.

  The pain in his eyes shook her.

  “I saw them together,” he said. “It is much better this way, ma mie. He is not the man for you.”

  “Sam?” she exclaimed. “I should think not! I’d never be able to forget the way he pulled my plaits when we were young—” She broke off with a gasp.

  “Charles! You don’t mean that you thought that I—that Sam and I—”

  “Why not?” he demanded. “You kissed him eagerly enough!”

  She blushed.

  “I didn’t kiss him, he kissed me,” she denied. “And he wasn’t the only one to do that, either!”

  Sudden amusement flickered across Charles’s face. “No, he wasn’t, was he?” he remembered with satisfaction.

  She took a hasty sip of coffee and almost choked. The laughter had come back into his eyes with a vengeance. Without a word he took the cup away from her and pushed her ice-cream towards her.

  “Grand’mere told me that you are the real owner of the Mas Camarica,” she said painfully. “I think you might have told me yourself and not let me go on making a fool of myself.”

  He sat back in his chair with a lazy air, but she wasn’t deceived, she could feel his eyes watching her.

  “I wasn’t sure you’d stay if you knew for sure that you were my guest rather than Tante Marrsha’s,” he said at last. “I didn’t want you rushing back to England before we really got to know one another.”

  “Was that important?”

  He took her hands in his again. His felt so pleasantly strong that she could not have drawn her own away to save her life.

  “Wasn’t it?” he asked.

  Her eyes almost met his, and then fell again. An incredulous excitement gripped her, making her heart race within her.

  “I—I don’t know,” she said inadequately. She pulled her hands away and put them in her lap, feeling suddenly bereft. “This is a ridiculous conversation. Let’s go and join the others.”

  He shook his head.

  “Not this time, Emma. Will you have some more coffee, my love, or shall we walk along the front?”

  But she didn’t have very much choice after all, for when he rose and stood aside for her to precede him out of the cafe she hadn’t the courage to withstand him. She walked meekly out into the open air and out of the town towards a tiny windmill that turned lazily in the distance far from the crowds and the gipsy music. It was a sight that she knew she would never forget. It was also very hot and she slipped off her cardigan, forgetting the bruises on her arms that showed up dark and vivid against her skin. The sudden tightening of Charles’s jaw reminded her abruptly.

  “How dared he!” he said darkly. “How dared he frighten you!” He touched her arm in a light caress. “Have you many more?”

  She nodded gravely.

  “But you needn’t think I’m going to show them to you,” she said with sudden laughter. “Oh, Charles, my dear, don’t look like that. I wasn’t badly hurt.”

  The need to comfort him made her move towards him, and then it was too late to retract, and she was in his arms.

  He didn’t kiss her immediately. He just held her quite gently against him, and she clung to him, aware only of her need of him.

  “But you don’t love me,” she said at last.

  His eyebrows shot upward.

  “Are you so sure?” he asked.

  She pounded on his chest with her closed fists until he forcibly stopped her by kissing her hard, his arms closing satisfactorily about her.

  “You are abominable!” she told him when she could. “What kind of argument is that?”

  He laughed.

  “A French argument,” he retorted. “It seems conclusive. We shall get married as soon as possible, and”—a hint of mischief entered his voice—“I shall clear the trees from your land and plant it with rice—”

  She reached up and kissed him back.

  “I always knew you’d do anything to get my land,” she said placidly. “But you wait, the English are not so easily defeated!”

  The lines round his eyes deepened in the way that had grown so familiar to her.

  “How so?” he asked her.

  “I haven’t said I’ll marry you yet.”

  He sat down on a sandbank and laughingly pulled her down beside him.

  “You have no choice. If you refuse to marry me, I shall turn your grandmother out of my house.”

  Her eyes searched his, now completely serious.

  “I thought you were going to marry Marie-Françoise,” she said.

  “Perhaps, if you had not come to visit Tante Marrsha. I was sorry for her and I liked her. But you, my love, have had all my heart ever since you stepped off the train.” He took her back into his arms and kissed her again. She had a fleeting memory of her grandmother saying that there was no finer language than French for the subtleties of love. Perhaps she was right after all, she thought, for on Charles’s lips it sounded truly magnificent.

  “I love you too,” she whispered. “I always did. I was terribly unhappy when I thought you were in love with Marie-Françoise.”

  “And you’ll marry me?”

  She nodded, and buried her face in his shoulder. She was defeated after all and it was a wonderful feeling. She had come home.

  They rode home together across the Camargue, their hands linked. There had been no mistral after all, nothing to spoil Sara’s Day. Behind them the gipsies were still making the most of it, their haunting music floating across the flat land as they prepared to dance their way for into the night.

  Madame was waiting for them at the manade. She came out of the doorway to meet them, looking every inch the aristocrat she was. She looked from one to the other of them with a slight smile touching her lips.

  “Do we celebrate in champagne or in our own wine?” she asked.

  Charles looked at Emma.

  “In our own wine, of course,” she said, the pride of possession deep in her voice. And her grandmother put an arm round each of them and led them into the house.

  THE END