“Well, you’ve only got to ask his father to make him give it back.”
Deodat had already thought of this, but how was he to confess to Maloret that he had been fighting with the children? He confided the problem to Juliette, who laughed without mockery, finding it quite natural that one should be carried away by a song.
“You’ve only got to tell Zephe that the children were fighting and you separated them. He’ll believe you.”
Deodat went on his way, walking now at a proper postman’s pace, while feminine cunning gleamed in his china-blue eyes. Juliette watched him go, then walked across the meadow until she came to a lane enclosed between hedges, where Noel Maloret awaited her. He was a square-shouldered boy, very dark-skinned, with his moustache already grown.
“I was beginning to wonder if you were coming,” he said.
“You can wait a quarter of an hour, surely,” said Juliette.
They looked each other in the eyes, but Juliette had a serene and steady gaze which caused that of Noel to become troubled. They had nothing to say to one another, and so they said nothing. But every minute that passed was a disappointment to Juliette.
“It’s hot,” said Noel at length.
“It’s the hot season.”
“I’ve got to be going home to dinner. Shall I see you this evening, as usual?”
“Yes, if you want to.”
Thev separated, and Juliette reflected, not for the first time, that Noel was very silly. .
At first Deodat thought that he was in luck. Zephe was standing in his doorway with Tintin beside him.
“Do you know,” said Dcodat, “just now I came across a crowd of children fighting.”
Zephe turned his solemn face towards his son.
“I don’t mind betting this young limb was going at it harder than any of them.”
“Exactly,” said Deodat, quite forgetting to be artful. “And while I was fighting with them he took a letter which fell out of my bag.”
“Is that true?” asked Zephe.
Tintin protested vigorously, amazed that anyone should suspect him of having taken a letter. A fat lot of time he had for picking up letters when people were bashing him on the head, and kicking him on the behind and going for him all round. But rather than remain under suspicion he preferred to be searched on the spot.
Zephe raised handsome, candid eyes to confront Deodat.
“If he took your letter he must still have it on him. He hasn’t been out of my sight since he got back here. Would you like me to search him?”
Tintin was searched from head to foot. He was made to take off his breeches, his shirt was shaken, his bottom was slapped and the contents of his satchel explored.
“No,” said his father finally. “As you see, he hasn’t got it.”
Deodat could only agree.
“But what will Honore say? It may have been an important letter.”
A sudden gleam appeared in Zephe’s honest eyes. There were at least half a dozen men in Claquebue whose name was Honore. He did not, however, betray his desire to know to which of them the letter was addressed.
“It wasn’t your fault,” he said. “You’ll just have to tell Haudouin what happened.”
“Yes,” said Deodat with a sigh. “I shall just have to tell him.”
And he went off to find Honore, not even remembering that he had one or two letters to deliver on the way. For the space of five hundred yards his life was in ruins.
Meanwhile Zephe Maloret had thrust his son before him into the stable. Taking down a four-thonged whip, he lashed him across the calves and said in his quiet, controlled voice which caused the entire household to tremble: “You’re going to tell me what you’ve done with Hau-douin’s letter or I’ll beat you black and blue.”
Honore loved his wife with an added love for the children she bore him, and marvelled in her pregnancy to see his pleasure thus endowed with substance. His children, his two daughters and three sons, were past desires still warm and living, red-cheeked and bright-eyed; no more than the best and strongest of all the great family of his desires, but so lovely, so demanding, that he could scarcely recall the others. He repeated their words and sang their songs as though they were his own. And so his happiness in love was endless, being reborn in a smile from one of his daughters, in a quarrel between his sons, in their young loves which were also his. At times when he was working in the fields he would be overtaken by a sudden impulse to return to the house, and the blood would rise to his cheeks at the thought of Gustave and Clotilde, the two youngest, the latest embodiments of his love. Perhaps they were playing with the dog, or sprawled on their stomachs absorb-edly following the course of a beetle by the edge of the well. He would laugh to think of it, and then, since the thought of his children had occurred to him, he w'ould pass on to the others, working up the scale from Clotilde to Ernest, or down, or taking them at random, as the case might be. And he would laugh again to think that he had sowed and reaped so fine a harvest, and with no trouble at all, with laughter and pleasure, simply because he carried good seed.
When he took the two younger ones on his knee, or played or disputed with the older ones, he seemed to be remoulding and refining those former desires of his, endowing them with a better shape. And the tenderness he bestowed on the children was unconsciously recalled when he embraced his wife, so that the children in some sort taught him how to make love, and as he grew older he grew more rich in love, until the house was filled with it.
This manifestation of paternal love, mingling pleasure with achievement, outraged the pure-mindedness of Ferdinand. Whenever he came to Claquebue he was moved to blush at the depravity which he perceived in his brother’s family. The children’s words and the father’s laughter, the bearing of them all, bore witness to a license and laxness in the confrontation of sin which carried a taint of hell itself. The whole household, with the possible exception of Adelaide, seemed to take pleasure in flying in the face of that hideous peril of which Ferdinand, in his thoughts, did not hesitate to speak the proper name. If he had dared to speak as frankly to Honore he would have told him that well-conducted children do not amuse themselves in the contemplation, and even in the close inspection, of each other’s bodies. He had caught them at it! The thing would have been disgusting even between a little boy and girl who were unrelated. And when he had come upon Gustave and Clotilde engaged in the abominable pursuit they had rearranged their clothes and greeted him with no more concern than if he had interrupted them in a game of marbles! To have said anything to their father (apart from the fact that it was really not the sort of thing one liked to talk about) would have been to invite his laughter or else a cool rebuff. On one occasion, it had been a weekday, Ferdinand had gone out into the fields to look for Honore, who with his daughter was turning the hay. Juliette was then sixteen. Ferdinand had kissed her on the cheek, saying amiably:
“How our little Juliette is growing!”
“Yes,” said Honore, “she’s a big girl now.”
Juliette laughed, leaning against his shoulder, and he kissed the top of her head, and putting an arm round her cradled one of her breasts in his hand (through the stuff of her blouse, but still!).
“Look how grown up she is!”
Father and daughter laughed together, and the monstrous shamelessness of this behaviour so afflicted Ferdinand that his purity writhed in his stomach.
“No, really, Honore!” he protested. “Really!”
Honore stared at him at first without understanding, and then, letting go his daughter, he took a pace towards him, suddenly so angry that he could scarcely speak.
“You poor devil! You’re like a dung-fly, that spreads muck wherever it goes! Clear out!”