...uvidaAfter the crise de nerfs that had shattered his hopes of passing this year into the Ministry of the Interior, the student Gérard Dhuyne had been advised by his doctor to take six months of complete rest, and had come in search of it to Grémoire-en-Chaux, his dead parents’ village in Averoigne. Twenty-three years before his father and mother had been married in the black-stoned church of Saint André overlooking the river Isoile, but Gérard had few memories of his childhood in the place, which had ended when his father had, in his own phrase, “emigrated” to Paris.
Suspendisse potenti
Vestimenta maris deo.Q. Horatii Flacci Carmina I v.
«Émigré» was le mot juste, Gérard now realized, for the sleepy countryside of Averoigne seemed a world away from the gas-lit bustle and neurosis of Paris. Yet the sleep had a certain sinister quality to it, for the past lay thick here and even Christianity seemed a recent intruder. In Grémoire, after all, the church was the youngest building, and attendance there was sparse, though not for reason of any socialistic free-thinking or atheism. The villagers were devout enough, but after a different fashion than that pleasing to Mère l’Église, for when Gérard took his morning and afternoon constitutionals he often came across offerings of flower or fruit laid at one or another of the old stone circles on the hills that overlooked Grémoire. He did not disturb them, and indeed had the impulse to make an offering of his own, in thanksgiving for the slow but steady return of his health.
For was he not now able to walk as far as the old flooded quarry in the hills, and wake the next day with but a faint stiffness in his limbs? The quarry was one of his few memories from childhood in Averoigne, but perversely what he remembered had been entirely misleading. Where then its black cliffs had lain bare and its chilly waters lifeless, now plants and animals flourished: trees crowded the cliff-tops, ferns and creepers covered the cliffs, and its waters were full of lilies and rushes, at least in their shallower portions, and were hummed and cruised by a myriad insects: great dragonflies on patrol for prey and rivals, enamel-bright damselflies in blue, red, and green. Gérard had remarked the change to the village priest when, resting on the day after he first managed to walk to the quarry, he was looking over the church.
The priest had appeared silently at his elbow, startling him a little as he stood puzzling out the significance of a frieze based on some obscure passage of marine imagery in the Old Testament, and Gérard had sought for some topic to maintain the halting conversation that ensued.
“The old quarry, mon père, such a surprise to see it flourishing, for I remember as a child, in the company of my departed father, seeing it lie dead at all seasons of the year.”
“Not so much of a surprise, mon fils,” the priest had answered laconically. “Voyez-vous, elle a été exorcisée.”
Gérard had been startled again. It had been exorcised? The priest explained that his predecessor, Père Jean D’Aguîte of pious memory, had become convinced that the place lay under some diabolic interdiction — “A punishment, perhaps, for its having supplied stone for the construction of this very church,” the priest murmured — and had sought permission from his bishop to perform the ceremony. His success was sufficient warrant for his suspicions, for the quarry had flourished thenceforward, though its waters retained much of their former chill and youngsters of the region were under strict instructions never to bathe therein, no matter what the temptation of summer heat, lest they be overtaken by fatal cramps.
“And so it is that they never do bathe therein, mon fils,” the priest concluded.
“I should have thought that the warning might render the site perversely attractive to the rebellious young,” Gérard had commented.
The priest shrugged.
“Perhaps les jeunes of Grémoire are too wise for rebellion, or perhaps there is some additional factor at work to render la carrière unattractive to them. But enough of that, I think. Might I ask whether you have seen our most excellent tapestries, donated by the Discalced Sisters of Sainte Priscille at Vyones?”
He had then shown Gérard over the church and the student had looked at it with new eyes, now that he knew it was built of black stone from the quarry. Of course he should have realized it for himself, especially since the décor of the church primed the mind to make the connexion: fish and underwater life of all and occasionally odd kinds were a strong motif therein. But no: he committed an anachronism there and passed too-harsh judgment on himself. The quarry had not, of course, been flooded when it supplied stone for the church in whenever-it-was it had been built. He had asked the priest, who had pursed his lips and shrugged with peasant-like irony.
“Do you know, mon fils, I am ashamed to admit that I have forgotten? I shall look it up and send a note over to you. You are lodging with Madame Bressier, are you not?”
And later in the day the note had come in a fist more old-fashioned than he might have expected even in a backwater of Averoigne, telling him that the church had been built in 1756 and also that the phrase came from the Livre de Job XL, 20. Gérard was puzzled for a moment by the addendum, then remembered that he had asked the origin of a Latin phrase beneath a stained-glass window — “Lucky to survive la Révolution,” the priest had assured him — depicting some tumult, almost impressionniste in its vigor and lack of realism, of water and weed. The phrase had run AN EXTRAHERE POTERIS HAMO?, “Art thou able to draw out with a hook?”, and the priest explained in the note that a word was missing between the EXTRAHERE and POTERIS; namely LEVIATHAN, «un monstre aquatique dans la tradition juive».
Smiling a little at the quaintness of the priest’s phraseology, Gérard scribbled a few words of thanks and despatched them with the boy who had carried the note over — evidently, and unsurprisingly, some relation of Madame Bressier, for she had whisked him off to her kitchen and he emerged wiping crumbs from his lips. But as he took the note and turned to leave, Gérard halted him with a cry: “Un moment, please. Do you know of anyone in the village who makes rods for fishing?”
Of course the boy did, and Gérard had to cut short his enthusiastic advice as to the best fishing spots along the river Isoile, for he had quite another place in mind. The lifelessness of the old quarry had never been complete, he remembered now: there had been a blazing summer’s day on which, hunting for butterflies with a net sewn by his mother on his tenth or eleventh birthday, he had paused by the quarry to enjoy its coolth and heard a heavy splash in mid-water, exciting ripples that reached him a minute or so later where he stood by the shore. No stone falling from the cliffs could have landed where the splash sounded, and he was sure also that he was alone at the quarry. Yes, there had been fish there before the exorcism and there were surely fish there now, grown greatly in size from their many years unmolested. Tomorrow he would buy a rod and try his luck. Such a soothing occupation, fishing — surely a final balm for his healing nerves.
The morrow dawned clear and hot, and Madame Bressier included a bottle of water in the lunch of bread, cheese and pâté she prepared for him, shaking her head when he told her he would find an abundance of water at the quarry.
“No, monsieur, I would not drink therefrom if I were you, and hélas, nor would I eat any creature you catch, if fish therein you must. No fisherman of Grémoire would set foot near the place, monsieur.”
“Mais elle a été exorcisée,” Gérard told her, smiling, to which she merely shrugged and crossed herself. Evidently prejudice against the quarry lingered and when Gérard left the house the thought crossed his mind to walk down to the Isoile instead and try his luck at one of the spots mentioned by the boy. But no: if the quarry had never been fished, think of what he might draw from it, if his cheap rod did not snap with the strain. Accordingly, he turned his steps resolutely towards the hills. He was glad of Madame Bressier’s water before he arrived, however, for the sun struck fiercely at him as he followed the increasingly faint path to his destination. He paused a minute to drink in the shade of a stone circle, noting without surprise that a withered circlet of flowers laid on one of the stones had been renewed since he last passed that way.
When, finally, he arrived at the quarry, he sighed with relief, for its coolth seemed to flow out over him as it had that day in his childhood and the green of its cliff- and water-vegetation was most refreshing to the eyes. He found a shaded spot on the shore facing the cliffs, baited his hook, and began to fish, casting his hook out among the lilies and the damselflies that stitched the air above them in blue, red, and green. But an hour later, when the shifting sun winkled him out, having sliced his shade away to nothing, he had caught nothing; and half-an-hour at a new spot proved no more fruitful. Perhaps the fish also found the heat oppressive, and sought the shade of the cliffs? He drew in his line, carefully not to snag it on the lilies or other water-weed, and stood, craning his neck over the water, to scan the foot of the cliffs. Là, that looked an excellent spot: a tongue of rock whereon he could sit most comfortably, letting his line down into what looked the deepest and most shaded water of all. The water was clean of vegetation too, so he could fish without concern for snags.
And perhaps he could reach it without undue effort, if his hands and feet could recall their boyhood expertise in climbing. Had he ever climbed here? No, he thought, never. He had been here only three or four times in his boyhood, and remembered the place only for the strength of the impression it had made upon him. Indeed, he recalled now that the very thought of climbing on the naked rock of the cliffs had struck him with dread: not for the prospect of a fall in itself, but for the prospect of a fall into the water. He smiled as he carried his rod and lunch up from the shore to the cliff-top whence he would descend. He felt no dread now, for was not the place exorcised?
On the cliff-top he paused to spy his way down to the tongue of rock, and grunted with satisfaction as he heard a faint splash in the bare water near it and caught a pale glimmer as some grand-père of a fish sank back into the depths. They were there plus sûrement, waiting for his hook. He unpacked the bundle of food Madame Bressier had prepared for him, filling his pockets with its contents, then began his descent, hindered only by his fishing-rod, which he had to tediously lower and retrieve in stages, making careful each time that it was securely lodged, lest it fall and be lost. The plants that flourished on the cliffs were some help here, if not so much in his climbing, for he did not entirely trust the handholds they offered. And yet in five minutes he was safe on the tongue of rock, re-baiting his hook; and five minutes after that he was delightedly lifting his first fish from the water: a fine fat tanche.
“Well, grand-père,” he said, having knocked the fish on the head and laid it aside on a shelf of rock, “let us see whether grand-mère will join you.”
He turned back then to the water, and was about to cast his line again when a blur of white in the corner of his eye, down near the water, attracted his attention. He turned his head to see what it was and, with a sudden thumping in his chest, saw the left hand of a young woman lying flat on rock at the water’s margin. For a moment of horror that sealed the appearance of the hand permanently on his memory — its slimness and beauty, the elegance of the fingers, oddly unmarred by the incipient webbing at their base — he thought it was severed, then he saw the elegant wrist and part-forearm that descended from it to a body concealed in the water; and in the next moment, with a splash, the right hand joined it on the rock and both spread and gripped to lift the head and shoulders of their owner from the water. Gérard saw her face beneath the water as it rose, flashing white out of the darkness, and recognized its beauty even as he was disconcerted by a flash of green in the eyes that gazed upward, seemingly without seeing him.
But when the beautiful head was above water the eyes that met his and widened with surprise were brown as any peasant’s of the region. The girl, who was evidently quite naked, arrested her egress from the water and spoke to him in an accent he did not recognize and that even obscured her meaning for a moment.
“Ô, monsieur!, que faites-vous ici?”
Still startled, he replied brusquely, “Je pêche, mademoiselle”; and after a moment of chagrin joined in the laughter that chimed from her dripping lips.
“But who are you, mademoiselle?” he said. “I thought I should have complete solitude here, even now that the quarry is exorcised.”
“Exorcisée, monsieur? But, as you see, it retains sa succube.”
“En verité sa naïade, mademoiselle,” he returned gallantly; and she bowed her head in acknowledgment, then raised it to answer his original question.
“Qui suis-je? Je suis Priscille, monsieur,” she said; “daughter of the woodcutter Alexandre in the forest of Averoigne.”
“Then you have come some way to swim,” he said, restraining his curiosity at her evident education and intelligence. She shook her head, splattering him with cool droplets of water from her long black hair.
“Non, monsieur. An eave of the forest lies but half a league from here, and I walk very briskly.”
“Do you come every day?” Gérard said, marveling, now that he was over his surprise, at the absurdity of the situation: the beautiful naked girl talking to him from the water of a flooded quarry.
“En été, yes, every day. I swim with my friends the fish, and rest here on the rock a while before I swim back.”
“Then I have disturbed your routine, mademoiselle, for which I am heartily sorry.”
Priscille gave a pretty shrug and prettier pout.
“It is no matter. I can rest in the water as well as out, believe me.”
“I did not see or hear you begin your swim, mademoiselle. Yet surely it commenced after my arrival.”
“Oh, I enter the water over there.”
She nodded over her shoulder to a spot where the cliffs met the shore that faced them from the other side of the water.
“There is a cave, monsieur, where I can leave my clothes, and I always enter the water most silently. I did not see you here in the shade, and would perhaps have turned back if I had.”
“Then I am glad you did not see me,” Gérard said. Priscille shrugged and pouted again, but said nothing. Casting about for something to resume the conversation, Gérard continued: “But from your accent you are not averoignoise, mademoiselle?”
“C’est vrai, monsieur, ni française de rien. My parents are Russian, of a dissenting sect driven out eight years ago, when I was a girl of but nine. Now my mother, que Dieu ait son âme, is dead and I live with and keep house for my father. It is a simple cottage, monsieur, but I would not exchange its hollyhocks and yellow roses for a palace.”
But despite his prompting she would tell him little more of herself, and he was left unsatisfied when she shook her head to the last of his questions and informed him that she must swim to her cave and dress to return home.
“My father awaits me, monsieur, and he will fear that I have met with some misfortune if I do not return soon.”
“I wonder that he allows his jewel to risk itself as it does,” Gérard said with perhaps excessive gallantry; and she shrugged and pouted for the last time and ducked abruptly beneath the water. Yet had not her left hand waved farewell to him as it entered the water last of all? Gérard got quickly to his feet and stared down into the depths into which she had disappeared. But no glimmer of white body interrupted their darkness, and after a minute he sat down again with a grunt of disappointment.
“Priscille,” he said, sampling the word on his tongue. It was sweet, sweet as the girl herself, and he wondered if he should return the following day, to see if she would appear at the fishing-spot again. No, he thought that he should not, but on the day after that he would certainly return. Another splash from the water broke into his thoughts and he looked over at the spot Priscille had pointed out to him as concealing the cave. His heart beat a little faster at the thought he might see her slipping naked from the water, but perhaps she had already done so as he sat lost in his thoughts. Indeed, the heavy curtain of honeysuckle that hung from the cliff at that point would be a more-than-adequate shield for her modesty.
Suddenly overcome by hunger, he ate the food he had carried down with him and fished a further hour, his reveries on the girl interrupted only by his success with two further fat tench. He lined his pockets with fresh leaves torn from the cliff-face before slipping the fish therein and climbing back up the cliff, his rod left behind him. It would be quite safe here, he was sure, and it would be tedious to carry it up with him. Also, Priscille would be sure to see it if she returned tomorrow and would know that he intended to return himself. Ergo, if she was there when he returned the day after, he could conclude that she perhaps felt something of the attraction for him that he felt for her.
Two days later, having said nothing of his meeting with Priscille to the good but perhaps excessively loquacious Madame Bressier, he returned to the quarry, climbing down to his rod with his pockets full of food and sitting on the rock he had occupied before. As he picked up his rod, ready to bait its hook and cast, a laughing voice said from his left: “Ah, c’est mon homme à la canne!”
Startled, he almost dropped the rod.
“Priscille!” he said. The girl’s head was propped coquettishly on her two hands as they rested on a shelf of rock three or so mètres away, holding her above the water as she watched him.
“Mais oui, c’est moi!”
With a splash, moving almost too fast for his eye to follow, she ducked into the water. He dropped the rod and was on his feet in an instant, running forward and staring down into the swirl of her departure. Where had she gone? But suddenly he turned and ran back to where he had been before: there was her left hand again, sliding silently from the water to wave to him from the spot it had emerged on the day he met her. Her right hand followed, and both went flat onto the rock, splaying to take her weight as she pushed her head and shoulders up to join them. Again, as he watched her face rise through the water, he had the impression that her open eyes flashed green, but there they were again above water, widening with mock surprise on his, brown and sparkling with laughter.
“Bonjour, mon homme à la canne,” she said.
He sat down heavily, confused at the strength of the emotion he felt at seeing her again.
“Bonjour, ma naïade,” he said. “Do you know of monsieur le comte and his portrait?”
She shrugged and pouted, and his heart contracted almost painfully in his breast. It was love, par Dieu!
“But are we so much out of the great circle,” she asked, “we woodcutters’ daughters of Averoigne?”
“You are no woodcutter’s daughter, ma naïade.”
“Do you seek to insult the honest trade of my father, monsieur? To say that a woodcutter such as he can raise no daughter well-versed in literature and current affairs?”
“I... I say no such thing,” he stammered, unsure for a moment whether she spoke in jest or earnest. Her laughter broke the ambiguity, echoing weirdly over the water of the quarry.
“Non, mon homme à la canne, I am truly a woodcutter’s daughter, I swear by the bon Dieu, but my father is no common woodcutter. It is a religious vocation with him, monsieur. He humbles himself for his own sins and the sins of his two nations, his natal Russia, his adopted France.”
“And your sins, Priscille, does he humble himself for them?”
“But of course.”
“I do not believe you. You are too beautiful to sin, and I—”
But her laughter interrupted him.
“Thou hast seen me first but two days before, mon homme à la canne, and already my poor beauty brings thee to blasphemy. Dost thou not know that a seemingly sweet rind may conceal a most poisonous flesh?”
“De toi,” he returned, “I cannot believe it.”
“Mais vous blasphémez,” she said with a toss of her head that again splattered him with cool droplets of water from her hair. “I am a mortal maid, mon homme à la canne, and you must not say such things to me, lest the angels be listening and seek to punish us both.”
“An angel is listening,” he returned, and she snorted with anger.
“Bah! Cease your gallantries, mon homme à la canne, or I shall depart.”
And she made as though to duck under the water.
“Non! Excusez-moi, ma naï- mademoiselle. I will speak no more of your beauty, nor provoke the wrath of heaven with the extravagance of my praise.”
“Bien.”
She lifted herself back to her previous position, head, shoulders, and arms above water, breasts — hélas! — and body below it, pressed to the rock on which he sat.
“Let us speak of other things, mon homme à la canne. Tell me, how did Madame Bressier prepare the three fish that you carried away on Tuesday?”
He opened his mouth to reply, then grunted with surprise.
“But you had gone when I caught the latter two,” he said, “and how do you know that I lodge with Madame Bressier?”
“Oh, as for that, it is common knowledge that our few visitors to Grémoire lodge with her. Et les trois poissons, that also is simple. I whispered to the fish of the quarry as I departed, telling them to sacrifice two of their number to the handsome youth who sat fishing.”
“You think me handsome, then?”
“Ah, you twist my words. I described you so to the fish, mon homme à la canne. To them, certainly you are handsome. But” — with a secret momentary smile that told him she knew the answer even as she asked — “you have not said how Madame Bressier prepared your three fish.”
“She did not prepare them at all, Priscille, as I think you know very well. She refused to cook them, and when I insisted that I should cook them for myself&mdash”
She had been nodding smilingly to his words; now she interrupted him again: “When you insisted on cooking them for yourself, she gave you an old pot to boil them in, which she threw out that very evening.”
“Yes. Exactly so. But again I must ask how you know these things.”
She said nothing for a moment, merely reaching down with her left hand and scooping up a handful of water. She said something in a language he did not recognize, then turned her hand over and let the handful fall back.
“What was that you said?” he asked.
“Oh, it was a Russian proverb, mon homme à la canne. ‘Ears are oft sharper below water than above.’ ”
“That was not like any Russian I have ever heard.”
She tossed her head again, pointing her rounded chin at him, smooth and flawless as Grecian marble.
“And what do you expect? Am I like any girl you have ever met? ’Twas an old country dialect I used. The good folk of Moscow, St Petersberg, they would understand it as little as you do, mon homme à la canne.”
“I have a name, Priscille.”
She smiled with an arch of her eyebrows.
“Yes. That is true. But for now you are mon homme à la canne.”
“What will you whisper to the fish today, when you depart and I begin to fish?”
“You shall have three, as before.”
“Then that is good. Though simply cooked, the previous three were excellent eating. But are you not cruel, to order the fish to sacrifice themselves to me?”
“No. The quarry’s waters grow crowded after many unmolested years and my subjects’ quality of life correspondingly decreases. You do those remaining a service.”
“Your subjects? But you are a woodcutter’s daughter.”
“And also a queen, mon homme à la canne. And their lives are mine to do with as I please.”
“Une reine? Then who is your king?”
She pouted, glanced away from him, then looked up again into his eyes.
“As yet, I have no king.”
“But you seek one?”
“Peut-être.”
“What can you offer him? Régner sur des poissons?”
“Non. Pas seulement sur des poissons, sur les eaux tout entières.”
“Ah, then you are queen of all water, that you offer your king its shared dominion? But where then is your palace? Your throne?”
“Can you keep my secret?”
“But of course.”
She nodded down at the water.
“My palace lies beneath, very deep, deeper than you can imagine. It is built of pearl, with a golden throne. But, alas, you have provoked my nostalgie by speaking of it, and I must return there.”
And before he could move or speak, she ducked into the water with a fleeing wave of her left hand. He stood and stared down into the swirl of her departure, but no trace of her could be seen. He swore with disappointment and set to his fishing. In the first half-hour he caught two fish; before the end of the hour he had added a third; in the subsequent two hours he caught not one. She had spoken truly by chance or secret knowledge, and at last he drew in his line and prepared to climb the cliff above him. But he paused a moment, seeming to hear a whisper come to him over the water in promise that they would meet again: «Au revoir, mon homme à la canne!»
He left his rod as before, but it was not neglected two days. No, he returned to his fishing the following day, to discover Priscille waiting for him as she had before, head resting coquettishly on her two hands before she ducked and swam to emerge at her habitual spot. They talked for nearly an hour, first jestingly of her kingdom beneath the water, then of other topics, and again she knew how Madame Bressier had refused to cook his three fish and how he had boiled them for himself in the retrieved old pot.
“And how many shall I catch today, ma reine de l’eau?” he asked.
“Today but two, mon homme à la canne.”
“Deux seulemente?”
“Oui. For if you catch three, you will think that the quarry always yields that number and disregard my claim to power over the fish, and if you catch four, it will be too many for you to comfortably eat. Two will prove my power and leave you eager to return tomorrow to catch three again— Mais non!”
She interrupted herself, raising her left hand, shaking her head.
“Non,” she repeated. “I see in your eyes an incipient gallantry. You mean to tell me that three things will be caught today regardless — two fish and a heart. It is not true, mon homme à la canne. I caught your heart that first day, did I not? Ah, you admit it and I am free to leave you. Au revoir!”
And with a duck and a swirl she was gone. He shrugged, smiling as he thought of how he would see her the following day, and then fished a half-hour to catch two fish, and then a further hour to convince himself that he would catch no more. On the following day he rose early to walk to Ximes, where, for a few francs, he bought a cheap but tasteful bracelet set with a silver fish, meaning it as a gift for Priscille. But when he reached the quarry and climbed down to the tongue of rock, she was not waiting for him; and four hours of fishing later, during which he caught three fish as she had predicted, she had not appeared. He left the bracelet on a rock with a note (Pour la reine de l’eau de la parte de l’homme à la canne), and climbed the cliff unhappily to return to his lodging with Madame Bressier. But when he returned the day after, the bracelet lay undisturbed, and in five hours of fishing he made no catch and saw no Priscille.
On the third day, at the end of a further unrewarded five hours of fishing, he climbed the cliff but did not return at once to his lodging in Grémoire. Instead, deeply worried by her failure to appear, he sought out the eave of the forest of Averoigne mentioned by Priscille, meaning to visit the cottage of her father and enquire after her welfare. Eave and cottage proved easy enough to find, but the hollyhocks and yellow roses of the latter had evidently grown thirty years or more untended: the place was a ruin, and when he entered it, stepping through an empty and sagging doorway, he found it gutted by time and the hands of passing vagabonds.
But as he turned to leave, wondering whether this could indeed be the cottage of which she had spoken, a regular shape in the trampled earthen floor caught his eye, and he bent to prise free what seemed to be a battered old picture, cheaply manufactured and with all its glass gone, but still faintly showing a Madonna and child. Ah, it was une icone, une icone russe, proof that some exile had dwelt here. Dwelt here long before, he reminded himself, laying the icon carefully back to the floor. Priscille must have spun him a tale based on some long-gone Russian family who dwelt here. But where was she now? Where in truth did she dwell? He returned to his lodging in Grémoire and Madame Bressier nodded with satisfaction as he informed her that his day of fishing at the quarry had been fruitless yet again.
“My prayers for you were answered, monsieur,” she said; “namely, that you should have no further luck there, and eat no more fish of its waters.”
He shrugged ruefully, not caring to challenge her prejudice as he should have liked, for Priscille’s sake.
“But tell me, Madame Bressier, is it not true that a family of Russians dwelt near the quarry in years past and that a daughter, perhaps, swam there once a day?”
“Russians? Near the quarry? I never did hear tell — ah, but a moment, monsieur. You recall to me... Yes, you are right, in my girlhood some old Russian did dwell there, but alone, I believe, working as a woodcutter. Leastways I never did hear of any daughter, or that anyone, Heaven forefend, swam in the quarry. Where did you hear of this, monsieur?”
“Idle talk in an inn, Madame Bressier.”
He retired early to bed that night, but was unable to sleep for thought of Priscille. Surely, with her «Au revoir», she had meant to see him again, and he grew sick and despairing by turns in contemplation of her possible present state: that she lay drowned at the bottom of the quarry or had merely tired of the game she played with him, and abandoned her swims till he left Averoigne. At dawn, hollow-headed with lack of sleep, he rose and silently dressed to walk to the quarry. Dew still covered the grass of the hills, and he caught glimpses of several foxes, slinking back to their lairs after a night’s hunting. Arrived at the quarry, he paused atop the cliff and stared down into the water, which was darker than ever beneath him, submerged in lingering night. Then he climbed down to the tongue of rock and found, to his throat-tightening joy, that the bracelet had gone, though the note remained, still folded as though it had not been read.
He waited all day, refusing to fish and staring out fiercely over the water, demanding of it that it yield Priscille to him. It was as night approached that another significance of his demand occurred to him, and he shivered with dread and disgust. If she had drowned three days before, then perhaps today her body would rise, foully bloated, shimmering with decay. He felt sure now that the necklace had been dislodged from its rock by some animal and fallen into the water, or been seized by une pie. He had watched les hirondelles swooping on insect-hunt over the water during the day, unmoved in his grief by their speed and grace, and perhaps les pies came here too, at times. Oh, but it was useless: if he did not climb for home now he would have to stay all night, and he could not rid himself now of the image of Priscille’s corpse rising to the surface in foul corruption.
But as he turned to set hand to the cliff, it came — a whisper over the water: «Gérard! Viens, Gérard!» He spun where he stood, straining his eyes into the gathering dusk. It had been Priscille, her voice, whispering to him, calling him by name as she had never done before.
“Priscille!” he shouted in reply. “Où es tu?”
The whisper came again: «Gérard! Viens, Gérard!» And was that the glimmer of a pale face and outstretched hands on the shore opposite him? Was Priscille there in a dark dress, holding out her hands to him, calling him by name? He turned back to the cliff, meaning to climb it and race around to her, but the whisper came again: «Non, Gérard! Nage à moi!» — “No, Gérard! Swim to me!”
He turned and stared desperately at the shore, trying to make out if a figure truly stood there, holding out its hands to him, shaking its head in impatient urgency. Oh, here the whisper came again: «Gérard, mon amour! Viens! Nage à moi!» “My love”. She had called him “my love”. He began to strip for the swim across the quarry, hopping on his left foot, then his right as he dragged his boots off before wrenching down his trousers, tearing his shirt off, splattering the rock with stray buttons. Now, finally, he could slip into the water and swim to her. The water was cool, welcoming, and he laughed for joy as he kicked off from the rock and began to swim with strong, fluent strokes. A moment later, beneath the water, a slim left hand closed lovingly over his ankle to draw him irresistibly under.