Nêne/Part 1/Chapter 13

S usual, the Corbiers and the Darus, of Chestnut Hill, had joined forces for the threshing. This year, they were the last of the neighbourhood to thresh. As it was late in the season, they were able to hire the machine and crew cheap; but they saved little because of the usual feasting that terminates the year's threshing time.

It was Saturday, a fast day for the Dissenters but a meat day for the Catholics. So there were two tables set up at the Corbiers' for fear of a row among the tipsy yokels.

All had gone well at breakfast. The Corbiers had thirty-five men working for them,—men of all ages and of various faiths. But as they had been threshing side by side now for more than a month around the countryside, they were used to one another and rarely quarrelled.

Trooper had been let by his employer, a farmer named Rivard, down the valley. He hadn't touched wine during the whole threshing season. Madeleine, who was afraid he might weaken on this last day, stopped him in the passage:

"See here, now! No foolishness! I wouldn't like it"

He had replied:

"I'm feeding the threshing machine and I wouldn't like to be fed to it!"

And since they were alone and he was very fond of this older sister of his, he had gone on frankly:

"Besides, just to see you helps to keep me straight, big sister. If you'd like, I'll sit beside Samuel the Salvationist at the dinner table, and you can put a pitcher of water between us."

The tables were set up in the barn to the left of the farm buildings. Madeleine had her kitchen to herself. She had hired for the day an elderly woman to help her, a Dissenter who followed the threshing machine from one farm to another, washing the dishes and carrying wine to the workers, toward evening, when the men began to get a little too forward with the girls.

Madeleine's two younger sisters had come to help her also: Tiennette and Fridoline; the last more of a red-head than Madeleine, and Tiennette as young and fresh and full of laughter as a shepherdess out of a book.

Madeleine looked after the children and managed everything. Fridoline took charge of the fasters' table, where there was a great supply of food. She was a good cook and the men didn't bother her much because she didn't have much use for their pleasantries; also, perhaps, because she was not particularly good-looking.

Tiennette and the old woman had charge of the meat table, which needed much less care; two or three great platters of meat, cooked hit or miss, with water, butter and salt,—without measuring or tasting, of course. The old woman hung over the pots, looking like a sourceress [sic] who would throw in salt and maledictions together.

Tiennette had plenty of time and to spare. The kitchen work bothered her far less than the men's teasing. There were six of them who carried the grain sacks; not all of them good looking, but all as young as herself—six boys of eighteen years, who trotted in single file through the passage and up to the loft. Gideon, who was one of them, gave himself airs of importance because he was one of the household. He showed the others where to empty their sacks and, in passing, stepped into the kitchen to say:

"The Dathel field has grown big ears all right, but some of the husks are empty."

"That's too bad," said Madeleine, listening to the wheat running from the sacks up there in the loft, which meant the wealth of the farm.

Sometimes the lad would tear down stairs breathlessly and shout in:

"I'm all done up! Tiennette! Tiennette! Come and help me!"

"Stupid!" the girl would reply, "if you put your dirty fingers on my collar I'll box your ears."

Nevertheless she managed to be standing in the hall, waiting for him to pass by again, with a little air of expectancy.

"Tiennette, give me a drink."—"Tiennette, something's burning in your pots!"

"It'll be good enough for you! What table are you going to sit at, you bad boy of a Protestant?"

"Me? At the one where you serve the soup."

"Of course! At the meat table,—you villain of a Protestant!"

"Tiennette, day after Carnival I'll eat your cheeks!"

He teased her with such simple pleasantries, and she pretended to be angry. When they happened to be alone, he kissed her without any ado on her part.

The other five were scarcely less noisy. They, too, teased Tiennette, but she drove them away with loud protests, and as they were all very young, they did not dare to touch her with their soiled hands.

Besides, they had their work, and a minute of fooling meant five minutes of rushing.

Time was short. The threshing machine had to swallow some six thousands sheaves that day, and although she was a great eater, there must be no loitering if the work was to be finished before night.

The feeders at the machine, standing on the narrow footholds at her sides, pushed the ears in carefully. Sometimes they threw in whole sheaves, which she ate up with a pleased bark; a short second, and there came from the depths of her long black jaws a rattle of extraordinary satisfaction; then, instantly, she began all over again to snarl, to rumble and roar.

Six men were serving the machine: two who cut the bands and prepared the sheaves, and four feeders, who threw the grain into the hopper, each in his turn. In all there were some fifty men.

The younger men climbed on top of the stack and flung down the sheaves; the strongest among them were at the sacks; the older men took the slower and more particular work, raking and sorting the broken ears, or were employed at such work as the young fellows avoided on account of the dust.

To build up the straw stacks there were seven or eight husky lads, proud of their strength. The tossers prepared enormous forkfuls for them and when they stuck their forks in and lifted up the load, they were completely hidden under the straw, which seemed to be slowly moving up of its own accord along the long ladders.

One of them, a tall, dark fellow with a very fine voice, sang uninterruptedly an interminable song of almost similar couplets. The others tried to sing with him, but their voices could not follow his. They preferred to howl a sort of accompaniment from the ladder tops, stopping now and then to shout:

"Give us a drink! A drink!"

Then Tiennette came and poured out wine for them, and they all found her good to look at, even those whose affections were already engaged.

It was a great day for drinking. Even the elderly straw-tossers welcomed the bottle and, glass in hand, they told funny stories. Tiennette went from one to the other, gliding between the pitchforks and climbing over the straw, light and nimble as a young white goat. Coming up to the machine, she held up the bottle.

"Hey there, feeders!"

But they didn't hear, so absorbed were they in their strenuous task; or else they shook their heads quickly, as much as to say:

"No, no! Not now!"

The second time Tiennette came around, Boiseriot and Trooper, whose turn it was to rest, called to her. But Trooper took nothing but a drink of water, and Boiseriot remarked on it:

"Water? Are you afraid of a glass of wine to-day—a man like you?"

"I know myself, you see," said Trooper. "After the second glass, I'm inclined to do wild things. When the job's done, I can drink as much as I want. Anyway," he added, pointing at the others, "there'll be enough of them lit up pretty soon, without me."

When Corbier's crew gathered in the barn for the mid-day meal, their joking became at once noisy and rough. The heavy wine flowed fast: Tiennette was kept running to the house for more.

From the end of the meat table a Gideon called for her ten times oftener than anybody else, and she never failed to hear his voice above the others.

"Tiennette, listen!"

Once he leaned over and said something in her ear. At that moment Samuel, the one whom they called the Salvationist, a man in the forties, who sat opposite at the other table, touched Tiennette's arm and said in a low, very polite voice:

"Mademoiselle, will you be good enough to fill this pitcher with water?"

Irritated, she repeated loudly:

"Fill this pitcher with water! hey, here's one of a new kind! He wants water!"

Everybody laughed and Gideon shouted:

"He isn't a man; he's a duck!"

Samuel turned scarlet.

"You're insulting, young man," said he. "I insult nobody. I'm merely living up to my convictions—Besides, if your education hadn't been neglected, you'd know that wine"

Heedless of his surroundings, he turned his feeble frame around on the bench and launched an address, punctuated by lean gestures—a sermon such as are heard at temperance meetings.

At first there was silence, as they didn't know what to make of his talk; but soon they began to jeer at him.

Another one of those queer fellows—this Samuel,—they thought. Wasn't he trying to tell them that it was a sin to drink wine?

Gideon shouted again, delighted with his joke:

"He's a duck!" And when Tiennette brought the pitcher of water he took it excitedly out of her hand and, pouring a glassful, said: "There, duckling! Stick your bill in that!"

Taking no notice of the insolence, Samuel raised his glass:

"I drink the water of Redemption"

Gusts of laughter drowned the rest of his speech. Gideon, still holding the water-pitcher, yelled:

"Don't spare it, old man, if it does you any good!"

At the Dissenter's table, some one disapproved of the boy's behaviour. Corbier motioned to him to keep still.

Samuel kept on talking. Above the general noise, bits of sentences, fragments of Bible quotations stood out:

"There are those who shall weep.— They have eyes but they see not.— Verily I say unto you"

At the meat table, a Protestant argued:

"That doesn't make sense. It is not what enters the body that sullies the soul."

"That's your idea," Boiseriot answered, "but everybody isn't of your faith."

"No," added another Catholic, "a man's a Christian or he isn't.— We have priests to lead us, and all we have to do is follow them. Some folks live like the animals"

The Protestant shrugged his shoulders and cut off a slice of pork; he had ceased to believe very deeply in anything, so these discussions seemed silly to him. But the reply came like a shot from the Dissenters' table.

"That's it! Just follow the shepherd, even if he leads you to a rotten pasture!— Who lives like the animals?"

Immediately the two sides stared at each other with eyes full of hate, the old men as well as the young. The meal ended in a row. The Dissenter who had spoken shouted to Boiseriot and his companion:

"Will you come outside?"

The women had come running toward the barn and stood at the entrance, trembling with apprehension. Fortunately no one was drunk yet; so it didn't come to anything worse than words, so far.

Trooper was one of the calmest of the lot. He argued quietly:

"The Salvationist is right—he stands up for his ideas. Everybody's free to do as he likes. If he wants to drink water, let him. Wine is both good and bad. It warms a man, and then it burns him. He says he doesn't want to poison himself; I agree with him!"

While arguing thus, he poured down several bumpers and little by little the wine whipped up his nerves. Madeleine kept her eyes on him, but she did not want to warn him in the presence of the other men. She was watching Michael also, for she knew he was headstrong, very proud, and harsh in religious discussions. He said not a word, because they were at his house, but he was pale and his jaws were set.

"They're sure to come to blows!" said the old serving woman.

And as she was familiar with this sort of scene, she went along between the two tables, calling to this one and that:

"Keep still, you fool!— Eat your meat, there,—and then drink!"

At his end of the table Samuel, with eyes aflame, kept on preaching. He had stood up to make himself better heard, flinging anathemas right and left, mixing up everything: the curse of alcohol and the blood of Christ, Babylon and the distillers.

The old serving woman gripped his hands, holding them down:

"Keep still! you're a bigger fool than the rest of them, do you hear?"

But nothing could stop him; and Gideon, who at first had laughed at him to the point of tears, being one of those who always laugh at such things, now became angry and threatened to stop the preacher's mouth with his fist. Hadn't he spoken of the looseness of youth, pointing his finger at him and Tiennette?

At last the engineer, seeing the turn things were taking, hurried out, and an imperious whistle pierced the bedlam.

Suddenly calmed, they went out and followed the machine to Chestnut Hill.

On the little threshing floor at Daru's place, ringed about by the farm buildings, the heat became intolerable. There was not a breath of air; a thick dust settled on the men. Samuel, whose job it was to receive the grain behind the winnowing machine, had disappeared from sight in a cloud of dust.

One of the feeders, a tall, lean youth, fell in a faint; he was carried out into the shade and the feeders whose turn of rest it was threw water in his face.

The work was progressing slowly and in silence now; only that devil of a straw passer kept on singing.

Then Daru made the round with an armful of bottles, shouting:

"Come on, fellows, have some muscadet!"

Behind him came the women with more of the wine. Daru went on:

"Taste it; this isnt [sic] dealer's wine! My brother-in-law sends it to me from the Vendée. But go light on it: it's tricky!" The workers, stupid with the heat, poured down this delightful little white wine as if it were tenth rate claret. Dam took alarm and cautioned the women:

"That's enough, take it away, or they won't finish their work."

The women went away, taking along the half emptied bottles. They passed through the barn where Boiseriot and Trooper, exhausted and black of face, were lolling on the cool earthen floor. Boiseriot tasted the wine.

"Here," said he, "that's the right stuff!"

The women left them a full bottle. Trooper drank and smacked his lips.

"Yes!—it picks a fellow up, this does!"

His head was hot and he laughed with contentment, bottle in hand, instantly rested.

"By golly, Boiseriot! Samuel is a poor specimen of a liar; wine is better than water!— I've a good mind to finish the bottle."

The man looked at him sideways with his guileful eyes:

"Finish the bottle! You're not up to it! It would knock you over."

Trooper fell into the trap; he couldn't pass by such a challenge from a Catholic!

"Go along!" he said, disdainfully, "I'm not a weakling, I could drink ten bottles … like this, see!"

He stretched himself flat on his back and, holding the bottle high, let the wine gurgle slowly down his throat.

"Oof! It's gone! Did you see?"

Boiseriot got on his feet. Being called back to the machine just then, they returned to their posts.

The noise had begun again. The straw passers howled boisterously. Others were calling to each other in harsh tones. Two of the older men were having a quarrel: it had started with a religious discussion, and now they were digging up old and buried differences. They hurled insults at each other and would have come to blows if there had been time.

At the feeding shelf Trooper was handling the sheaves with quick movements. The fumes of the wine had begun to muddle his head. He had thrown away his cap; the sun, beating down on his head, finished the confusion of his brain.

The machine stopped, choked off. Trooper had thrown two tangled sheaves into it, at one thrust.

All around mocking laughter arose, and shouts of derision. Trooper, busy cleaning the maws of the thresher, straightened with an oath, ready for a quarrel. Seeing this, the others mocked him only the louder, using their hands as megaphones.

"It's the big one! Booh! Booh!"

Four Catholics called down from above, to egg him on:

"Trooper, you're losing your belt! Trooper, you're wanted in the kitchen! Go and wipe the kids' noses! That's all you're fit for!"

Boiseriot laughed as he pulled out the final fistfuls of straw. At last the thresher began to turn again.

Trooper was white with rage. He had heard some one say, near the winnower: "The little fellow feeds better!" and to his muddled mind this calm statement was a greater insult than the mockery of the men up there, stacking the straw.

"I don't think so: the big one can put it all over him, shoving in the straw."

All around the winnower they were now discussing the work of these two. The discussion soon involved everybody and the old rivalry came to the fore again, the Catholics supporting Boiseriot, the Dissenters Trooper.

The two men, hearing all this, no longer looked at each other. Bent over the feeding shelf, they worked furiously. Boiseriot was the more skilful; he threw out his hands with the agility of a cat. Every one of his thrusts was precise, sent the straw just far enough so it could be caught by the machine. He wasn't even sweating; with his cap drawn over his ears, he did not seem to be at all aware of the heat.

Trooper worked as if he were fighting. Rage dominated him, the drunken rage of his nights of dissipation. The blood had rushed to his head, driving out all his normal instincts, which were gentle and sensible. His jaw set, his eyes wild, he shook all over with an uncontrolled fury against Boiseriot, against the Catholics, against the machine, against the straw, against everything! Throwing his whole weight forward, he swept the shelf with wrathful arms.

"The little fellow feeds better! By golly, I'll show them! Damn them!"

He shouted:

"Bring on the sheaves! Bring 'em on!"

The band cutters pushed the sheaves toward him, and he, with every ounce of his strength, thrust his great arms at the gaping maw

"Ha-a-a!"

There was a cracking of bones. The engineer jumped wild-eyed to the control lever to stop the machine. All the workers, whether singing or quarrelling, those on the stacks, those on the ladders, those at the sheaves,—all stood stock still, hands raised high, a cry of terror strangled in their throats.

On the hopper shelf lay Trooper, face down; the machine had bitten off one of his arms.