Summer and winter she wore a dimity kerchief fastened
in the back with a pin, a cap which concealed her
hair, a red skirt, grey stockings, and an apron with
a bib like those worn by hospital nurses.
Her face was thin and her voice shrill. When
she was twenty-five, she looked forty. After
she had passed fifty, nobody could tell her age; erect
and silent always, she resembled a wooden figure working
automatically.
Like every other woman, she had had an affair of the
heart. Her father, who was a mason, was killed
by falling from a scaffolding. Then her mother
died and her sisters went their different ways; a farmer
took her in, and while she was quite small, let her
keep cows in the fields. She was clad in miserable
rags, beaten for the slightest offence and finally
dismissed for a theft of thirty sous which she did
not commit. She took service on another farm
where she tended the poultry; and as she was well
thought of by her master, her fellow-workers soon grew
jealous.
One evening in August (she was then eighteen years
old), they persuaded her to accompany them to the
fair at Colleville. She was immediately dazzled
by the noise, the lights in the trees, the brightness
of the dresses, the laces and gold crosses, and the
crowd of people all hopping at the same time.
She was standing modestly at a distance, when presently
a young man of well-to-do appearance, who had been
leaning on the pole of a wagon and smoking his pipe,
approached her, and asked her for a dance. He
treated her to cider and cake, bought her a silk shawl,
and then, thinking she had guessed his purpose, offered
to see her home. When they came to the end of
a field he threw her down brutally. But she grew
frightened and screamed, and he walked off.
One evening, on the road leading to Beaumont, she
came upon a wagon loaded with hay, and when she overtook
it, she recognised Theodore. He greeted her calmly,
and asked her to forget what had happened between
them, as it “was all the fault of the drink.”
She did not know what to reply and wished to run away.
Presently he began to speak of the harvest and of
the notables of the village; his father had left Colleville
and bought the farm of Les Ecots, so that now they
would be neighbours. “Ah!” she exclaimed.
He then added that his parents were looking around
for a wife for him, but that he, himself, was not
so anxious and preferred to wait for a girl who suited
him. She hung her head. He then asked her
whether she had ever thought of marrying. She
replied, smilingly, that it was wrong of him to make
fun of her. “Oh! no, I am in earnest,”
he said, and put his left arm around her waist while
they sauntered along. The air was soft, the stars
were bright, and the huge load of hay oscillated in
front of them, drawn by four horses whose ponderous
hoofs raised clouds of dust. Without a word from
their driver they turned to the right. He kissed
her again and she went home. The following week,
Theodore obtained meetings.
