all the devils are let loose on earth on all souls eve—that is a fact known to everybody here in provence. but whether it was one of those loosed devils, or the devil that had grown big in my own inside, that made me do what i did i do not know. what i do know, certainly, is that about dusk on all saints day the thought of how i could force things to be as i wanted them to be came into my heart.
my thought was not a new thought, exactly. it was only that i would do what we had planned to do to make my mother give in to us: get magali into my boat and carry her off with me for a day or two to les saintes. but it came to me with the new meaning that in that way i could make magali give in to me too. when we came back she would be ready enough to marry me, and my mother would be for hurrying our marrying along. it all was as plain and as sure as anything could be. and, as i have[153] said, nobody would think the worse of magali afterward; because that way of cutting through such difficulties is a common way with us in provence.
and all souls eve was the time of all times for doing it. the whole town is in commotion then. in the churches, when the vespers of all saints are finished, the vespers of the dead are said. then, just after sunset, the streets are crowded with our people hurrying to the graveyard with their lanterns for the graves. nothing is thought about but the death-fires. from all the church towers—in jonquières, in the isle, in ferrières—comes the sad dull tolling of bells. after that, for an hour or more, the town is almost deserted. only the very old, and the very young, and the sick with their watchers, and the bell-ringers in the towers, are left there. everybody else is in the graveyard, high up on the hill-side: first busied in setting the lights and in weeping over dead loved ones; and then, when the duty to the dead ones is done with, in walking about through the graveyard to see the show. in provence we take a great interest in every sort of show.
magali and i had no death-fires to kindle, for in the graveyard were no dead of ours. our peo[154]ple were of les saintes maries, and there their graves were—and my father, who was drowned at his fishing, had no grave at all. but we went always to the graveyard on all souls eve, and most times together, that we might see the show with the others and enjoy the bustle of the crowd. and so there was nothing out of the common when i asked her to come with me; and off we started together—leaving my old mother weeping at home for my dead father, who could have no death-fire lit for him because his bones were lying lost to us far away in the depths of the sea.
our house was in the eastern quarter of the town, in jonquières. to reach the graveyard we had to cross the isle, and go through ferrières, and then up the hill-side beyond. but i did not mean that we should do that; and when we had crossed the canal du roi i said to magali that we would turn, before we went onward, and walk down past the fish-market to the end of the isle—that from there we might see the lights glowing in the dusk on the slope rising above us black against the western sky. we had done that before—it is a pretty sight to see all those far-off glittering points of light above, and then to see their glittering reflections[155] near by in the water below—and she willingly came with me.
but i had more in view. down at the end of the isle, along with the other boats moored at the wharf there to be near the fish-market, my boat was lying; and when we were come close to her i said suddenly, as though the thought had entered my head that minute, that we would go aboard of her and run out a little way—and so see the death-fires more clearly because they would be less hidden by the shoulder of the hill. i did not have to speak twice. magali was aboard of the boat on the instant, and was clapping her hands at the notion—for she had, as all our women have, a great pleasure in following any sudden fancy which promises something amusing and also a little strange. and i was quick after her, and had the lines cast off and began to get up the sail.
"oh," she said, "won't the oars do? need we bother with the sail for such a little way?"
but i did not answer her, and went on with what i was doing, while the boat drifted quickly out from land before the gusts of wind which struck us harder and harder as we cleared the point of the isle. until then i had not thought[156] about the weather—my mind had been full of the other and bigger thought. the gusts of wind waked me up a little, and as i looked at the sky i began to have doubts that i could do what i wanted to do; for it was plain that a gale was rising which would make ticklish work for me even out on the gulf of fos—and would make pretty near impossible my keeping on to les saintes over the open sea. and i had about made up my mind that we must go back, and that i must carry out my plan some other time, when there came a hail to us from the shore.
"where are you going?" called a voice—and as we turned our looks shoreward there was jan. he had been following us, i suppose—just as i sometimes had followed him.
before i could answer him, magali spoke. "we are going out on the water to see the death-fires, jan," she said. "we are going only a very little way."
her words angered me. there was something in them that seemed to show that he had the right to question her. that settled me in my purpose. storm or no storm, on i would go. and i brought the boat up to the wind, so as to lay our course straight down the étang[157] de caronte, and called out to him: "we are going where you cannot follow. good-bye!"
and then a gust of wind heeled us over, and we went on suddenly with a dash—as a horse goes when you spur him—and the water boiled and hissed under our bows. in another half-minute we were clear of the shelter of the point, and then the wind came down on us off the hills in a rush so strong that i had to ease off the sheet sharply—and i had a queer feeling about what was ahead of me out on the gulf of fos.
"marius! marius! what are you doing?" magali cried in a shiver of fright: for she knew by that time that something was back of it all in my mind. as she spoke i could see through the dusk that jan was running up the sail of his boat, and in a minute more would be after us.
"i am doing what i ought to have done long ago," i said. "i am taking you for my own. there is nothing to fear, dear magali. you shall not be in danger. i had meant to take you to les saintes. but a gale is rising and we cannot get to les saintes to-night. we will run across the gulf of fos and anchor in the grau de gloria. there is a shepherd's hut[158] near the grau. i will make a fire in it and you can sleep there comfortably, while i watch outside. after all, it makes no difference where we go. i shall have carried you off—when we go back you must be my wife."
she did not understand at first. she was too much frightened with the suddenness of it all, and with the coming of jan, and with the boat flying on through the rushing of the wind. i looked back and saw that jan had got away after us. dimly i could make out his sail through the dusk that lay thick upon the water. beyond it and above it was a broad patch of brightness where all the death-fires were burning together in the graveyard. we had come too far to see any longer those many points of light singly. in a mass, they made against the black hill-side a great bright glow.
