"god keep you from the she-wolf, and from your heart's deep desire!"
my old mother, god rest her, said that to me when first she began to see that my love was set on magali—and saw, too, that i was winning from magali the love that belonged to jan, who had her promise.
[140] "it is an old man's lifetime, mother," i said, "since a wolf has been seen near les martigues." and i laughed and kissed her.
"worse than a wolf is a heart that covets what it may not have, marius," she answered. "magali is as good as jan's wife, and you know it. for a year she has been promised to him. she is my dead sister's child, and she is in my care—and in your care too, because you and she and i are all that is left of us, and you are the head of our house, the man. you are doing wickedness in trying to take her away from jan—and jan your own close friend, who saved your life out of the sea. the match is a good match for magali, and she was contented with it until you—living here close beside her in your own house—began to steal away her heart from him. it is rascal work, marius, that you are doing. you are playing false as a house-father and false as a friend—and god help me that i must speak such words to my own son! that is why i say, and i say it solemnly, 'god keep you from the she-wolf, and from your heart's deep desire!' that desire has no right to be in your heart, marius. drag it out of your heart and cast it away!"
but i only laughed and kissed her again,[141] and told her that i would take good care of myself if a she-wolf tried to eat me—and so i went away, still laughing, to my fishing in the gulf of fos.
but i did not laugh when i was alone in my boat, slipping down the étang de caronte seaward. what she had said had made me see things clearly which until then had been half hid in a haze. we had slipped into our love for each other, magali and i, softly and easily—just as my boat was slipping down the étang. every day of our lives we were together, in the close way that housemates are together in a little house of four rooms. before i got up in the morning i could hear her moving near me, only a thin wall between us; and her movements, again, were the last sounds that i heard at night. she waited on me at my meals. she helped my mother to mend my clothes—the very patches on my coat would bring to my mind the sight of her as she sat sewing at night beside the lamp. we were as close together as a brother and a sister could be; and in my dulness i had fancied for a long while that what i had felt for her was only what a brother would feel.
what first opened my eyes a little was the[142] way that i felt about it when she gave her promise to jan. for all our lives jan and i had been close friends: and most close since that day when the squall struck our boats, as we lay near together, and i went overboard, and jan—letting his own boat take its chances—came overboard after me because he knew that i could not swim. it was by a hair's-breadth only that we were not drowned together. after we were safe i told him that my life was his. and i meant it, then. until magali came between us i would have died for him with a right good will. after that i was ready enough that he should do the dying—and so be gone out of my way.
when he got magali's promise, i say, my ugly feeling against him began. but it was not very strong at first, and i was not clear about it in my own mind. all that i felt was that, somehow, he had got between me and the sun. for one thing, i did not want to be clear about it. down in the roots of me i knew that i had no right to that sunshine, and that jan had—and i could not help thinking about how he had come overboard after me and had held me up there in the tumbling sea, and how i had told him that my life was his. but with this[143] went a little thin thought, stirring now and then in the bottom of my mind though i would not own to it, that in giving him my life—which still was his if he wanted it—i had not given him the right to spoil my life for me while leaving me still alive. and i did my best not to think one way or the other, and was glad that it all was a blur and a haze.
and all the while i was living close beside magali in that little house, with the sound of her steps always near me and the sound of her voice always in my ears. she had a very sweet voice, with a freshness and a brightness in it that seemed to me like the brightness of her eyes—and magali's great black eyes were the brightest eyes that ever i saw. even in arles, where all the women are beautiful, there would be a buzz among the people lining les lices when magali walked there of a feast-day, wearing the beautiful dress that our women wear here in provence. to look at her made you think of an easter morning sun.
