bundle of contraband
Marianne
Monsieur le Curé slid the long chair up to my fire, bent his straight, black body forward, and rubbing his chilled hands briskly before the blazing logs, announced with a smile of content:
"Marianne is out of jail."
"Sacristi!" I exclaimed, "and in mid-winter! It must be cold enough in that hut of hers by the marsh—poor old girl."
"And not a sou to be earned fishing," added the curé.
"Tell me about this last crime of hers," I asked.
Monsieur le Curé's face grew serious, then again the smile of content spread to the corners of his firm mouth.
"Oh! Nothing very gruesome," he confessed, then after a moment's silence he continued slowly: "Her children needed shoes and warm things for the winter. Marianne stole sixtymètresof nets from the fishing crew at 'The Three Wolves'—she is hopeless, my friend." With a vibrant gesture he straightened up in his chair and flashed his keen eyes to mine. "For ten years I have tried to reform her," he declared. "Bah!"—and he tossed the stump of his cigarette into the blaze.
"You nursed her once through the smallpox," said I, "when no one dared go near her. The mayor told me so. I should thinkthatwould have long ago persuaded her to do something for you in return."
"We go where we are needed," he replied simply. "She will promise me nothing. One might as well try to make a faithful parishioner of a gipsy as to change Marianne for the better." He brought his fist down sharply on the broad arm of his chair. "I tell you," he went on tensely, "Marianne is a woman of no morals and no religion—a woman who allows no oneto dictate to her save a gendarme with a warrant of arrest. Hardly a winter passes but she goes to jail. She is a confirmed thief, a bad subject," he went on vibrantly. "She can drink as no three sailors can drink—and yet you know as well as I do," he added, lowering his voice, "that there is not a mother in Pont du Sable who is as good to her children as Marianne."
"They are a brave little brood," I replied. "I have heard that the eldest boy and girl Marianne adopted, yet they resemble their mother, with their fair curly hair and blue eyes, as much as do the youngest boys and the little girl."
"Marianne has had many lovers," returned the curé gravely. "There is not one of that brood of hers that has yet been baptized." An expression of pain crossed his face. "I have tried hard; Marianne is impossible."
"Yet you admit she has her qualities."
"Yes, good qualities," he confessed, filling a fresh cigarette paper full of tobacco. "Good qualities," he reiterated. "She has brought up her children to be honest and she keeps themclean. She has never stolen from her own village—it is a point of honour with her. Ah! you do not know Marianne as I know her."
"It seems to me you are growing enthusiastic over our worst vagabond," I laughed.
"I am," replied the curé frankly. "I believe in her; she is afraid of nothing. You see her as a vagabond—an outcast, and the next instant,Parbleu!she forces out of you your camaraderie—even your respect. You shake her by the hand, that straight old hag with her clear blue eyes, her square jaw and her hard face! She who walks with the stride of a man, who is as supple and strong as a sailor, and who looks you squarely in the eye and studies you calmly, at times disdainfully—even when drunk."
It was late when Monsieur le Curé left me alone by my fire. I cannot say "alone," for the Essence of Selfishness, was purring on my chest.
In this oldnormandhouse of mine by the marsh, there comes a silence at this hour whichis exhilarating. Out of these winter midnights come strange sounds, whirring flights of sea-fowl whistle over my roof, in late for a lodging on the marsh. A heavy peasant's cart goes by, groaning in agony under the brake. When the wind is from the sea, it is like a bevy of witches shrilling my doom down the chimney. "Aye, aye, 'tis he," they seem to scream, "the stranger—the s-t-r-a-n-g-e-r." One's mind is alert at this hour—one must be brave in a foreign land.
And so I sat up late, smoking a black pipe that gurgled in unison with the purring on my chest while I thought seriously of Marianne.
I had seen her go laughing to jail two months ago, handcuffed to a gendarme on the back seat of the last car of the toy train. It was an occasion when every one in the lost village came charitably out to have a look. I remembered, too, she sat there as garrulous as if she were starting on a holiday—a few of her old cronies crowded about her. One by one, her children gave their mother a parting hug—there were no tears—and the gendarme sat beside herwith a stolid dignity befitting his duty to theRépublique. Then the whistle tooted twice—a coughing puff of steam in the crisp sunlight, a wheeze of wheels, and the toy train rumbled slowly out of the village with its prisoner. Marianne nodded and laughed back at the waving group.
"Bon voyage!" croaked a little old woman, lifting her claw. She had borrowed five francs from the prisoner.
"Au revoir!" laughed back Marianne, but the words were faint, for the last car was snaking around the bend.
Thus Marianne went to jail. Now that she is back, she takes her return as carelessly and unblushingly as ademi-mondainedoes her annual return from Dinard.
When Marianne was eighteen, they tell me, she was the prettiest girl in Pont du Sable, that is to say, she was prettier than Emilienne Dagèt at Bar la Rose, or than Berthe Pavoisiér, the daughter of the miller at Tocqueville, who is now in Paris. At eighteen, Marianne was slim and blonde; moreover, she was as bold as ahawk, and smiled as easily as she lied. At twenty, she was rated as a valuable member of any fishing crew that put out from the coast, for they found her capable during a catch, and steady in danger, always doing her share and a little more for those who could not help themselves. She is still doing it, for in her stone hut on the edge of the marsh that serves as shelter for her children and her rough old self, she has been charitable and given a winter's lodging to three old wrecks of the sea. There are no beds, but there are bunks filled with marsh-hay; there is no furniture, but there are a few pots and pans, and in one corner of the dirt floor, a crackling fire of drift wood, and nearly always enough applejack for all, and now and then hot soup. Marianne wrenches these luxuries, so to speak, out of the sea, often alone and single-handed, working as hard as a gull to feed her young.
The curé was right; Marianne had her good qualities—I was almost beginning to wonder to myself as I pulled drowsily at the black pipe if her good qualities did not outweigh her badones, when the Essence of Selfishness awakened and yawned. And so it was high time to send this spoiled child of mine to bed.
Marianne called her "ma belle petite," though her real name was Yvonne—Yvonne Louise Tournéveau.
Yvonne kept her black eyes from early dawn until dark upon a dozen of the Père Bourron's cows in her charge, who grazed on a long point of the marsh, lush with salt grass, that lay sheltered back of the dunes fronting the open sea.
Now and then, when a cow strayed over the dunes on to the hard beach beyond to gaze stupidly at the breakers, the little girl's voice would become as authoritative as a boy's. "Eh ben, tu sais!" she would shout as she ran to head the straggler off, adding some sound whacks with a stick until the cow decided to lumber back to the rest. "Ah mais!" Yvonne would sigh as she seated herself again in the wire-grass, tucking her firm bronzed legs under a patched skirt that had once served as a winter petticoat for the Mère Bourron.
Occasionally a trudging coast guard or a lone hunter in passing would call "Bonjour!" to her, and since she was pretty, this child of fifteen, they would sometimes hail her with "Ça va, ma petite!" and Yvonne would flush and reply bravely, "Mais oui, M'sieur, merci."
Since she was only a little girl with hair as black as a gipsy's, a ruddy olive skin, fresh young lips and a well-knit, compact body, hardened by constant exposure to the sea air and sun, no one bothered their heads much about her name. She was only a child who smiled when the passerby would give her a chance, which was seldom, and when she did, she disclosed teeth as white as the tiny shells on the beach. There were whole days on the marsh when she saw no one.
At noon, when the cracked bell in the distant belfry of the gray church of Pont du Sable sent its discordant note quavering across the marsh, Yvonne drew forth a sailor's knife from where it lay tucked safe within the breast of her coarse chemise, and untying a square of blue cotton cloth, cut in two her portion of peasantbread, saving half the bread and half a bottle of Père Bourron's thinnest cider for the late afternoon.
There were days, too, when Marianne coming up from the sea with her nets, stopped to rest beside the child and talk. Yvonne having no mother which she could remember, Marianne had become a sort of transient mother to her, whom the incoming tide sometimes brought her and whom she would wait for with uncertain expectancy, often for days.
One afternoon, early in the spring, when the cows were feeding in the scant slanting shade of the dunes, Yvonne fell asleep. She lay out straight upon her back, her brown legs crossed, one wrist over her eyes. She slept so soundly that neither the breeze that had sprung up from the northeast, stirring with every fresh puff the stray locks about her small ears, or the sharp barking of a dog hunting rabbits for himself over the dunes, awakened her. Suddenly she became conscious of being grasped in a pair of strong arms, and, awakening with a little scream, looked up into the grinning face of Marianne,who straightway gave her a big, motherly hug until she was quite awake and then kissed her soundly on both cheeks, until Yvonne laughed over her fright.
"Oh, mon Dieu!but I was frightened," sighed the child, and sat up straight, smoothing back her tumbled hair. "Oh! la! la!" she gasped.
"They are beauties,hein!" exclaimed Marianne, nodding to an oozing basketful of mackerel; then, kneeling by the basket, she plunged her red hands under the slimy, glittering mass of fish, lifting and dropping them that the child might see the average size in the catch.
"Eh ben!" declared Marianne, "some day when thou art bigger,ma petite, I'll take thee where thou canst make some silver. There's half a louis' worth there if there's a sou!" There was a gleam of satisfaction in her eyes, as she bent over her basket again, dressed as she was in a pair of fisherman's trousers cut off at the knees.
"One can play the lady on half a louis," she continued, covering her fish from the sun withher bundle of nets. "My man shall have a full bottle of the best to-night," she added, wiping her wet hands across her strong bare knees.
"How much 'cake' does that old crab of a Bourron pay thee?" she inquired, turning again to the child.
"Six sous a day, and then my food and lodging," confessed Yvonne.
"He won't ruin himself," muttered Marianne.
"They say the girl at the Three Wolves gets ten," added the child with awe, "but thou knowest how—she must do the washing besides."
Marianne's square jaw shut hard. She glanced at Yvonne's patched skirt, the one that had been the Mère Bourron's winter petticoat, feeling its quality as critically as a fashionable dressmaker.
"Sacristi!" she exclaimed, examining a rent, "there's one door that the little north wind won't knock twice at before he enters. Keep still,ma petite, I've got thread and a needle."
She drew from her trousers' pocket a leather wallet in which lay four two-sous pieces, an iron key and a sail needle driven through a ball of linen thread. "It is easily seen thou art not in love," laughed Marianne, as she cross-stitched the tear. "Thou wilt pay ten sous for a ribbon gladly some day when thou art in love."
The child was silent while she sewed. Presently she asked timidly, "One eats well there?"
"Where?"
"But thou knowest—there."
"In the prison?"
"Mais oui," whispered Yvonne.
"Of course," growled Marianne, "one eats well; it is perfect.Tiens!we have the good soup, that is well understood; and now and then meat and rice."
"Oh!" exclaimed the child in awe.
"Mais oui," assured Marianne with a nod, "and prunes."
"Where is that, the prison?" ventured the child.
"It is very far," returned Marianne, bitingoff the thread, "and it is not for every one either," she added with a touch of pride—"only I happen to be an old friend and know the judge."
"And how much does it cost a day, the prison?" asked Yvonne.
"Notthat," replied Marianne, snipping her single front tooth knowingly with the tip of her nail.
"Mon Dieu!and they give you all that for nothing?" exclaimed the child in astonishment. "It ischic, that,hein!" and she nodded her pretty head with decision, "Ah mais oui, alors!" she laughed.
"I must be going," said Marianne, abruptly. "My young ones will be wanting their soup." She flattened her back against her heavy basket, slipped the straps under her armpits and rose to her feet, the child passing the bundle of nets to her and helping her shoulder them to the proper balance.
"Au revoir, ma belle petite," she said, bending to kiss the girl's cheek; then with her free hand she dove into her trousers' pocket anddrew out a two-sous piece. "Tiens," she exclaimed, pressing the copper into the child's hand.
Yvonne gave a little sigh of delight. It was not often she had two sous all to herself to do what she pleased with, which doubles the delight of possession. Besides, the Mère Bourron kept her wages—or rather, count of them, which was cheaper—on the back page of a greasy book wherein were registered the births of calves.
"Au revoir," reiterated Marianne, and turned on her way to the village down the trail that wound through the salt grass out to the road skirting the bay. Yvonne watched her until she finally disappeared through a cut in the dunes that led to the main road.
The marsh lay in the twilight, the curlews were passing overhead bound for a distant mud flat for the night. "Courli! Courli!" they called, the old birds with a rasp, the young ones cheerfully; as one says "bonsoir." The cows, conscious of the fast-approaching dark, were moving toward the child. She stood still untilthey had passed her, then drove them slowly back to the Père Bourron's, her two-sous piece clutched safe in her hand.
It was dark when she let down the bars of the orchard, leading into the farm-yard. Here the air was moist and heavy with the pungent odour of manure; a turkey gobbler and four timid hens roosting in a low apple tree, stirred uneasily as the cows passed beneath them to their stable next to the kitchen—a stable with a long stone manger and walls two feet thick. Above the stable was a loft covered by a thatched roof; it was in a corner of this loft, in a large box filled with straw and provided with a patchwork-quilt, that Yvonne slept.
A light from the kitchen window streamed across the muddy court. The Père and Mère Bourron were already at supper. The child bolted the stable door upon her herd and slipped into her place at table with a timid "Bonsoir, m'sieur, madame," to her masters, which was acknowledged by a grunt from the Père Bourron and a spasm of coughing from his spouse.
The Mère Bourron, who had the dullish roundeye of a pig that gleamed suspiciously when she became inquisitive, had supped well. Now and then she squinted over her fat jowls veined with purple, plying her mate with short, savage questions, for he had sold cattle that day at the market at Bonville. Such evenings as these were always quarrelsome between the two, and as the little girl did not count any more than the chair she sat in, they argued openly over the day's sale. The best steer had brought less than the Mère Bourron had believed, a shrewd possibility, even after a month's bargaining. When both had wiped their plates clean with bread—for nothing went to waste there—the child got up and brought the black coffee and the decanter of applejack. They at last ceased to argue, since the Mère Bourron had had the final word. Père Bourron sat with closed fists, opening one now and then to strengthen his coffee with applejack. Being a short, thickset man, he generally sat in his blouse after he had eaten, with his elbows on the table and his rough bullet-like head, with its crop of unkempt hair, buried in his hands.
When Yvonne had finished her soup, and eaten all her bread, she rose and with another timid "Bonsoir" slipped away to bed.
"Leave the brindle heifer tied!" shrilled madame as the child reached the courtyard.
"Mais, oui madame, it is done," answered Yvonne, and crept into her box beneath the thatch.
At sixteen Yvonne was still guarding the cows for the Bourrons. At seventeen she fell in love.
He was a slick, slim youth named Jean, with a soapy blond lock plastered under the visor of his leather cap pulled down to his red ears. On fête days, he wore in addition a scarlet neck-tie girdling his scrawny throat. He had watched Yvonne for a long time, very much as the snake in the fable saved the young dove until it was grown.
And so, Yvonne grew to dreaming while the cows strayed. Once the Père Bourron struck at her with a spade for her negligence, but missed. Another night he beat her soundly for lettinga cow get stalled in the mud. The days on the marsh now became interminable, for he worked for Gavelle, the carpenter, a good threekilomètresback of Pont du Sable and the two could see each other only on fête days when he met her secretly among the dunes or in the evenings near the farm. He would wait for her then at the edge of the woods skirting the misty sea of pasture that spread out below the farm like some vast and silent dry lake, dotted here and there with groups of sleeping cattle.
She saw Marianne but seldom now, for the latter fished mostly at the Three Wolves, sharing her catch with a crew of eight fishermen. Often they would seine the edge of the coast, their boat dancing off beyond the breakers while they netted the shallow water, swishing up the hard beach—these gamblers of the sea. They worked with skill and precision, each one having his share to do, while one—the quickest—was appointed to carry their bundle of dry clothes rolled in a tarpaulin.
Marianne seemed of casual importance to her now. We seldom think of our best friendsin time of love. Yvonne cried for his kisses which at first she did not wholly understand, but which she grew to hunger for, just as when she was little she craved for all she wanted to eat for once—and candy.
She began to think of herself, too—of Jean's scarlet cravat—of his new shoes too tight for him, which he wore with the pride of a village dandy on fête days and Sundays—and of her own patched and pitifully scanty wardrobe.
"She has nothing, that little one," she had heard the gossips remark openly before her, time and time again, when she was a child. Now that she was budding into womanhood and was physically twice as strong as Jean, now that she was conscious ofherself, she began to know the pangs of vanity.
It was about this time that she bought the ribbon, just as Marianne had foretold, a red ribbon to match Jean's tie, and which she fashioned into a bow and kept in a paper box, well hidden in the straw of her bed. The patched skirt had long ago grown too short, and was now stuffed into a broken window beyond the cowmanger to temper the draught from the neck of a sick bull.
She wore now, when it stormed, thick woollen stockings and sabots; and another skirt of the Mère Bourron's fastened around a chemise of coarse homespun linen, its colour faded to a delicious pale mazarine blue, showing the strength and fullness of her body.
She had stolen down from the loft this night to meet him at the edge of the woods.
"Where is he?" were his first words as he sought her lips in the dark.
"He has gone," she whispered, when her lips were free.
"Where?"
"Eh ben, he went away with the Père Detour to the village—madame is asleep."
"Ah, good!" said he.
"Mon Dieu!but you are warm," she whispered, pressing her cheek against his own.
"I ran," he drawled, "the patron kept me late. There is plenty of work there now."
He put his arm around her and the twowalked deeper into the wood, he holding her heavy moist hand idly in his own. Presently the moon came out, sailing high among the scudding clouds, flashing bright in the clear intervals. A white mist had settled low over the pasture below them, and the cattle were beginning to move restlessly under the chill blanket, changing again and again their places for the night. A bull bellowed with all his might from beyond the mysterious distance. He had evidently scented them, for presently he emerged from the mist and moved along the edge of the woods, protected by a deep ditch. He stopped when he was abreast of them to bellow again, then kept slowly on past them. They had seated themselves in the moonlight among the stumps of some freshly cut poplars.
"Dis donc, what is the matter?" he asked at length, noticing her unusual silence, for she generally prattled on, telling him of the uneventful hours of her days.
"Nothing," she returned evasively.
"Mais si; bon Dieu!thereissomething."
She placed her hands on her trembling knees.
"No, I swear there is nothing, Jean," she said faintly.
But he insisted.
"One earns so little," she confessed at length. "Ten sous a day, it is not much, and the days are so long on the marsh. If I knew how to cook I'd try and get a place like Emilienne."
"Bah!" said he, "you are crazy—one must study to cook; besides, you are not yet eighteen, the Père Bourron has yet the right to you for a year."
"That is true," confessed the girl simply; "one has not much chance when one is an orphan. Listen, Jean."
"What?"
"Listen—is it true that thou dost love me?"
"Surely," he replied with an easy laugh.
"Listen," she repeated timidly; "if thou shouldst get steady work—I should be content ... to be..." But her voice became inaudible.
"Allons!... what?" he demanded irritably.
"To ... to be married," she whispered.
He started. "Eh ben! en voilàan idea!" he exclaimed.
"Forgive me, Jean, I have always had that idea——" She dried her eyes on the back of her hand and tried hard to smile. "It is foolish, eh? The marriage costs so dear ... but if thou shouldst get steady work..."
"Eh ben!" he answered slowly with his Normand shrewdness, "I don't say no."
"I'll help thee, Jean; I can work hard when I am free. One wins forty sous a day by washing, and then there is the harvest."
There was a certain stubborn conviction in her words which worried him.
"Eh ben!" he said at length, "we might get married—that's so."
She caught her breath.
"Swear it, Jean, that thou wilt marry me, swear it upon Sainte Marie."
"Eh voilà, it's done.Oui, by Sainte Marie!"
She threw her arms about him, crushing him against her breast.
"Dieu!but thou art strong," he whispered.
"Did I hurt thee?"
"No—thou art content now?"
"Yes—I am content," she sobbed, "I am content, I am content."
He had slipped to the ground beside her. She drew his head back in her lap, her hand pressed hard against his forehead.
"Dieu!but I am content," she breathed in his ear.
He felt her warm tears dropping fast upon his cheek.
All night she lay in the straw wide awake, flushed, in a sort of fever. At daylight she drove her cows back to the marsh without having barely touched her soup.
Far across the bay glistened the roof of a barn under construction. An object the size of a beetle was crawling over the new boards.
It was Jean.
"I'm a fool," he thought, as he drove in a nail. Then he fell to thinking of a girl in his own village whose father was as rich as the Père Bourron.
"Sacré Diable!" he laughed at length, "if every one got married who had sworn by Sainte Marie, Monsieur le Curé would do a good business."
A month later Père Bourron sold out a cartful of calves at the market at Bonville. It was late at night when he closed his last bargain over a final glass, climbed up on his big two-wheeled cart, and with a face of dull crimson and a glazed eye, gathered up the reins and started swaying in his seat for home. A boy carrying milk found him at daylight the next morning lying face down in the track of his cart, dead, with a fractured skull. Before another month had passed, the Mère Bourron had sold the farm and gone to live with her sister—a lean woman who took in sewing.
Yvonne was free.
Free to work and to be married, and she did work with silent ferocity from dawn until dark, washing the heavy coarse linen for a farm, and scrubbing the milk-pans bright until often long after midnight—and saved. Jean worked too,but mostly when he pleased, and had his hair cut on fête days, most of which he spent in the café and saw Yvonne during the odd moments when she was free.
Life over the blacksmith's shop, where she had taken a room, went merrily for a while. Six months later—it is such an old story that it is hardly worth the telling—but it was long after dark when she got back from work and she found it lying on the table in her rough clean little room—a scrap of paper beside some tiny worsted things she had been knitting for weeks.
"I am not coming back," she read in an illiterate hand.
She would have screamed, but she could not breathe. She turned again, staring at the paper and gripping the edge of the table with both hands—then the ugly little room that smelt of singed hoofs rocked and swam before her.
When she awoke she lay on the floor. The flame of the candle was sputtering in its socket. After a while she crawled to her knees in thedark; then, somehow, she got to her feet and groped her way to the door, and down the narrow stairs out to the road. She felt the need of a mother and turned toward Pont du Sable, keeping to the path at the side of the wood like a homeless dog, not wishing to be observed. Every little while, she was seized with violent trembling so that she was obliged to stop—her whole body ached as if she had been beaten.
A sharp wind was whistling in from the sea and the night was so black that the road bed was barely visible.
It was some time before she reached the beginning of Pont du Sable, and turned down a forgotten path that ran back of the village by the marsh. A light gleamed ahead—the lantern of a fishing-boat moored far out on the slimy mud. She pushed on toward it, mistaking its position, in her agony, for the hut of Marianne. Before she knew it, she was well out on the treacherous mud, slipping and sinking. She had no longer the strength now to pull her tired feet out. Twice she sank in the slime above her knees. She tried to go back butthe mud had become ooze—she was sinking—she screamed—she was gone and she knew it. Then she slipped and fell on her face in a glaze of water from the incoming tide. At this instant some one shouted back, but she did not hear.
It was Marianne.
It was she who had moored the boat with the lantern and was on her way back to her hut when she heard a woman scream twice. She stopped as suddenly as if she had been shot at, straining her eyes in the direction the sound came from—she knew that there was no worse spot in the bay, a semi-floating solution of mud veined with quicksand. She knew, too, how far the incoming tide had reached, for she had just left it at her bare heels by way of a winding narrow causeway with a hard shell bottom that led to the marsh. She did not call for help, for she knew what lay before her and there was not a second to lose. The next instant, she had sprung out on the treacherous slime, running for a life in the fast-deepening glaze of water.
"Lie down!" she shouted. Then her feettouched a solid spot caked with shell and grass. Here she halted for an instant to listen—a choking groan caught her ear.
"Lie down!" she shouted again and sprang forward. She knew the knack of running on that treacherous slime.
She leapt to a patch of shell and listened again. The woman was choking not ten yards ahead of her, almost within reach of a thin point of matted grass running back of the marsh, and there she found her, and she was still breathing. With her great strength she slid her to the point of grass. It held them both. Then she lifted her bodily in her arms, swung her on her back and ran splashing knee-deep in water to solid ground.
"Sacré bon Dieu!" she sobbed as she staggered with her burden. "C'est ma belle petite!"
For weeks Yvonne lay in the hut of the worst vagabond of Pont du Sable. So did a mite of humanity with black eyes who cried and laughed when he pleased. And Marianne fished for them both, alone and single-handed, wrenchingtime and time again comforts from the sea, for she would allow no one to go near them, not even such old friends as Monsieur le Curé and myself—that old hag, with her clear blue eyes, who walks with the stride of a man, and who looks at you squarely, at times disdainfully—even when drunk.
sabots
a Normande
Strange things happen in my "Village of Vagabonds." It is not all fisher girls, Bohemian neighbours, romance, and that good friend the curé who shoots one day and confesses sinners the next. Things from the outside world come to us—happenings with sometimes a note of terror in them to make one remember their details for days.
Only the other day I had run up from the sea to Paris to replenish the larder of my house abandoned by the marsh at Pont du Sable, and was sitting behind a glass of vermouth on the terrace of the Café de la Paix when the curtain rose.
One has a desire to promenade with nodefinite purpose these soft spring days, when all Paris glitters in the warm sun. The days slip by, one into another—days to be lazy in, idle and extravagant, to promenade alone, seeking adventure, and thus win a memory, if only the amiable glance of a woman's eyes.
I was drinking in the tender air, when from my seat on the terrace I recognized in the passing throng the familiar figure of the Brazilian banker, the Baron Santos da Granja. The caress of spring had enticed the Baron early this afternoon to the Boulevard. Although he had been pointed out to me but once, there was no mistaking his conspicuous figure as he strode on through the current of humanity, for he stood head and shoulders above the average mortal, and many turned to glance at this swarthy, alert, well-preserved man of the world with his keen black eyes, thin pointed beard and moustache of iron gray. From his patent-leather boots to his glistening silk hat the Baron Santos da Granja was immaculate.
Suddenly I saw him stop, run his eyes swiftly over the crowded tables and then, though therehappened to be one just vacated within his reach, turn back with a look of decision and enter the Government's dépôt for tobacco under the Grand Hotel.
I, too, was in need of tobacco, for had not my good little maid-of-all-work, Suzette, announced to me only the day before:
"Monsieur, there are but three left of the big cigars in the thin box; and the ham of the English that monsieur purchased in Paris is no more."
"It is well, my child," I had returned resignedly, "that ham could not last forever; it was too good."
"And if Monsieur le Curé comes to dinner there is no more kümmel," the little maid had confessed, and added with a shy lifting of her truthful eyes, "monsieur does not wish I should get more of the black cigars at the grocery?"
I had winced as I recalled the last box, purchased from the only store in Pont du Sable, where they had lain long enough to absorb the pungent odour of dried herring and kerosene.
Of course it was not right that our guests should suffer thus from an empty larder and so, as I have said, I had run up from the sea to replenish it. It was, I confess, an extravagant way of doing one's marketing; but then there was Paris in the spring beckoning me, and who can resist her seductive call at such a time?
But to my story: I finished my glass of vermouth, and, following the Baron's example, entered the Government's store, where I discovered him selecting with the air of a connoisseur a dozen thin boxes of rare perfectos. He chatted pleasantly with the clerk who served him and upon going to the desk, opened a Russian-leather portfolio and laid before the cashier six crisp, new one-hundred-franc notes in payment for the lot. I have said that the Baron was immaculate, and hewas, even to his money. It was as spotless and unruffled as his linen, as neat, in fact, as were the noble perfectos of his choice, long, mild and pure, with tiny ends, and fat, comforting bodies that guaranteed a quality fit for an emperor;but then the least a bank can do, I imagine, is to provide clean money to its president.
As the Baron passed out and my own turn at the desk came to settle for my modest provision of Havanas, I recalled to my mind the current gossip of the Baron's extravagance, of the dinners he had lately given that surprised Paris—and Paris is not easily surprised. What if he had "sold more than half of his vast estate in Brazil last year"? And suppose he was no longer able or willing "to personally supervise his racing stable," that he "had grown tired of the track," etc. Nonsense! The press knows so little of the real truth. For me the Baron Santos da Granja a was simply a seasoned man of the world, with the good taste to have retired from its conspicuous notoriety; and good taste is always expensive. His bank account did not interest me.
I knew her well by sight, for she passed me often in the Bois de Boulogne when I ran up to Paris on just such errands as my present one. She had given me thus now and then glimpsesof her feverish life—gleams from the facets, since her success in Paris was as brilliant as a diamond. Occasionally I would meet her in the shaded alleys, but always in sight of her brougham, which kept pace with her whims at a safe but discreet distance.
There was a rare perfection about her lithe, graceful person, an ease and subtlety of line, an allure which was satisfying—from her trim little feet gloved in suède, to the slender nape of her neck, from which sprang, back of the loveliest of little ears, the exquisite sheen of her blonde hair.
There were mornings when she wore a faultless tailor-made of plain dark blue and carried a scarlet parasol, with its jewelled handle held in a firm little hand secreted in spotless white kid.
I noticed, too, in passing that her eyes were deep violet and exceedingly alert, her features classic in their fineness. Once I saw her smile, not at me, but at her fox terrier. It was then that I caught a glimpse of her young white teeth—pearly white in contrast to the freshness ofher pink and olive skin, so clear that it seemed to be translucent, and she blushed easily, having lived but a score of springs all told.
In the afternoon, when she drove in her brougham lined with dove-gray, the scarlet parasol was substituted by one of filmy, creamy lace, shading a gown of pale mauve or champagne colour.
I had heard that she was passionately extravagant, that she seldom, if ever, won at the races—owned a little hotel with a carved façade in the Avenue du Bois, a villa at Dinard, and three fluffy little dogs, who jingled their gold bells when they followed her.
She dined at Paillard's, sometimes at the Café de la Paix, rarely at Maxim's; skated at the Palais de Glace on the most respectable afternoons—drank plain water—rolled her own cigarettes—and possessed a small jewel box full of emeralds, which she seldom wore.
Voilà!A spoiled child for you!
There were mornings, too, when, after her tub, as early as nine, she galloped away on her cobto theBoisfor her coffee and hotbriocheat the Pré Catelan, a romantic little farm with a café and a stableful of mild-eyed cows that provide fresh milk to the weary at daylight, who are trying hard to turn over a new leaf before the next midnight. Often she came there accompanied by her groom and the three little dogs with the jingling bells, who enjoyed the warm milk and the run back of the fleet hoofs of her saddle-horse.
On this very morning—upon which opens the second act of my drama, I found her sitting at the next table to mine, chiding one of the jingling little dogs for his disobedience.
"Eh ben! tu sais!" she exclaimed suddenly, with a savage gleam in her eyes.
I turned and gazed at her in astonishment. It was the first time I had heard her voice. It was her accent that made me stare.
"Eh ben! tu sais!" she repeated, in the patois of the Normand peasant, lifting her riding crop in warning to the ball of fluff who had refused to get on his chair and was now wriggling in apology.
"Who is that lady?" I asked the old waiter Emile, who was serving me.
"Madame is an Austrian," he confided to me, bending his fat back as he poured my coffee.
"Austrian, eh! Are you certain, Emile?"
"Parbleu, monsieur" replied Emile, "one is never certain of any one in Paris. I only tell monsieur what I have heard. Ah! it is very easy to be mistaken in Paris, monsieur. Take, for instance, the lady in deep mourning, with the two little girls, over there at the table under the lilac bush."
"She is young to be a widow," I interposed, glancing discreetly in the direction he nodded.
Emile smiled faintly. "She is not a widow, monsieur," he returned, "neither is she as Spanish as she looks; she is Polish and dances at the Folies Parisiennes under the name ofLa Belle Guerittafrom Seville."
"But her children look French," I ventured.
"They are the two little girls of her concierge, monsieur." Emile's smile widened until it spread in merry wrinkles to the corners of his twinkling eyes.
"In all that lace and velvet?" I exclaimed.
"Precisely, monsieur."
"And why the deep mourning, Emile?"
"It is a pose, monsieur. One must invent novelties, eh? when one is as good-looking as that. Besides, madame's reputation has not been of the best for some time. Monsieur possibly remembers the little affair last year in the Rue des Mathurins? Very well, it was she who extracted the hundred thousand francs from the Marquis de Villiers. Madame now gives largely to charity and goes to mass."
"Blackmail, Emile?"
"Of the worst kind, and so monsieur sees how easily one can be mistaken, is it not so?Sacristi!one never knows."
"But are you certain you are not mistaken about your Austrian, Emile?" I ventured.
He shrugged his shoulders as if in apology for his opinion, and I turned again to study his Austrian. The noses of her little dogs with the jingling bells were now contentedly immersed in a bowl of milk.
A moment later I saw her lift her clearviolet eyes and catch sight of one of the milkers, who was trying to lead a balky cow through the court by a rope badly knotted over her horns. She was smiling as she sat watching the cow, who now refused to budge. The boy was losing his temper when she broke into a rippling laugh, rose, and going over to the unruly beast, unknotted the rope from her horns and, replacing it by two half hitches with the ease and skill of a sailor, handed the rope back to the boy.
"There, you little stupid!" she exclaimed, "she will lead better now.Allez!" she cried, giving the cow a sharp rap on her rump. "Allez! Hup!"
A murmur of surprise escaped Emile. "It is not the first time madame has done that trick," he remarked under his hand, as she crossed the courtyard to regain her chair.
"She is Normande," I declared, "I am certain of it by the way she said 'Eh ben!' And did you not notice her walk back to her table? Erect, with the easy, quick step of a fisher girl? The same walk of the race of fisher girls wholive in my village," I continued with enthusiastic decision. "There is no mistaking it; it is peculiar to Pont du Sable, and note, too, herpatois!"
"It is quite possible, monsieur," replied Emile, "but it does not surprise me. One sees every one in Paris. There are fewgrandes damesleft. When one has been agarçon de café, as I have, for over thirty years, one is surprised at nothing; not even——"
The tap of a gold coin on the rim of a cold saucer interrupted our talk. The summons was from my lady who had conquered the cow.
"Voilà, madame!" cried Emile, as he left me to hasten to her table, where he made the change, slipped thepourboireshe gave him into his alpaca pocket, and with a respectful, "Merci bien, madame," drew back her chair as she rose and summoned her groom, who a moment later stood ready to help her mount. The next instant I saw her hastily withdraw her small foot from the hollow of his coarse hand, and wave to a passing horse and rider. The rider, whose features were half hiddenunder the turned-down brim of a panama, wheeled his horse, reined up before her, dismounted, threw his rein to her groom and bending, kissed her on both cheeks. She laughed; murmured something in his ear; the panama nodded in reply, then, slipping his arm under her own, the two entered the courtyard. There they were greeted by Emile.
"Madame and I will breakfast here to-day, Emile," said the voice beneath the panama. "The little table in the corner and the same Pommard."
He threw his riding crop on a vacant chair and, lifting his hat, handed it to the veteran waiter.
It was the Baron Santos da Granja!
Hidden at the foot of a plateau skirting the desert marshes, two miles above my village of Pont du Sable, lies in ruins all that remains of the deserted village known as La Poche.
It is well named "The Pocket," since for years it served as a safe receptacle for itinerant beggars and fugitives from justice who found an ideal retreat among its limestone quarries,which, being long abandoned, provided holes in the steep hillside for certain vagabonds, who paid neither taxes to the government, nor heed to its law.
There is an old cattle trail that leads to La Poche, crossed now and then by overgrown paths, that wind up through a labyrinth of briers, rank ferns and matted growth to the plateau spreading back from the hillside. I use this path often as a short cut home.
One evening I had shot late on the marshes and started for home by way of La Poche. It was bright moonlight when I reached a trail new to me and approached the deserted village by way of a tangled, overgrown road.
The wind had gone down with the rising of the moon, and the intense stillness of the place was such that I could hear about me in the tangle the lifting of a trampled weed and the moving of the insects as my boots disturbed them. The silence was uncanny. Under the brilliancy of the moon all things gleamed clear in a mystic light, their shadows as black as the sunken pits of a cave.
I pushed on through the matted growth, with the collar of my leather coat buttoned up, my cap pulled down, and my hands thrust in my sleeves, hugging my gun under my arm, for the briars made tough going.
Presently, I got free of the tangle and out to a grassy stretch of road, once part of the river bed. Here and there emerged, from the matted tangle of the hillside flanking it, the ruins of La Poche. Often only a single wall or a tottering chimney remained silhouetted against the skeleton of a gabled roof; its rafters stripped of tiles, gleaming in the moonlight like the ribs and breastbone of a carcass.
If La Poche is a place to be shunned by day—at night it becomes terrible; it seems to breathe the hidden viciousness of its past, as if its ruins were the tombs of its bygone criminals.
I kept on the road, passed another carcass and drew abreast of a third, which I stepped out of the road to examine. Both its floors had long before I was born dropped into its cellar; its threshold beneath my feet was slippery with green slime; I looked up through itsribs, from which hung festoons of cobwebs and dead vines, like shreds of dried flesh hanging from a skeleton.
Still pursuing my way, I came across an old well; the bucket was drawn up and its chain wet; it was the first sign of habitation I had come across. As my hand touched the windlass, I instinctively gave it a turn; it creaked dismally and a dog barked savagely at the sound from somewhere up the hillside; then the sharp, snappy yelping of other dogs higher up followed.
I stopped, felt in my pockets and slipped two shells into my gun, heavily loaded for duck, with the feeling that if I were forced to shoot I would hold high over their heads. As I closed the breech of my gun and clicked back my hammers to be ready for any emergency, the tall figure of a man loomed up in the grassy road ahead of me, his legs in a ray of moonlight, the rest of him in shadow.
"Does this road lead out to the main road?" I called to him, not being any too sure that it did.
"Who is there?" he demanded sharplyand in perfect French; then he advanced and I saw that the heavy stick he carried with a firm grip was mounted in silver.
"A hunter, monsieur," I returned pleasantly, noticing now his dress and bearing.
It was so dark where we stood, that I could not yet distinguish his features.
"May I ask you, monsieur, whom I have the pleasure of meeting," I ventured, my mind now more at rest.
He strode toward me.
"My name is de Brissac," said he, extending his hand. "Forgive me," he added with a good-natured laugh, "if I startled you; it is hardly the place to meet a gentleman in at this hour. Have you missed your way?"
"No," I replied, "I shot late and took a short cut to reach my home." I pointed in the direction of the marshes while I searched his face which was still shrouded in gloom, in my effort to see what manner of man I had run across.
"And have you had good luck?" he inquired with a certain meaning in his voice, as if he was still in doubt regarding my trespass.
"Not worth speaking of," I returned in as calm a voice as I could muster; "the birds are mostly gone. And do you shoot also, may I ask?"
"It is an incorrigible habit with me," he confessed in a more reassured tone. "I have, however, not done so badly of late with the birds; I killed seventeen plovers this morning—a fine lot."
Here his tone changed. All his former reserve had vanished. "Come with me," said he; "I insist; I'll show you what I killed; they make a pretty string, I assure you. You shall see, too, presently, my house; it is the one with the new roof. Do you happen to have seen it?"
This came with a certain note of seriousness in his voice.
"No, but I am certain it must be a luxury in the débris," I laughed; "but," I added, "I am afraid I must postpone the pleasure until another time." I was still undecided as to my course.
Again his tone changed to one of extreme courtesy, as if he had been quick to notice my hesitation.
"I know it is late," said he, "but I must insist on your accepting my hospitality. The main road lies at the end of the plateau, and I will see you safely out to it and on your way home."
I paused before answering. Under the circumstances, I knew, I could not very well refuse, and yet I had a certain dread of accepting too easily. In France such refusals are sometimes considered as insults. "Thank you," I said at last, resolved to see the adventure out; "I accept with pleasure," adding with a laugh and speaking to his shadowy bulk, for I could not yet see his face:
"What silent mystery, what an uncanny fascination this place has about it! Even our meeting seems part of it. Don't you think so?"
"Yes, there is a peculiar charm here," he replied, in a more cautious tone as he led me into a narrow trail, "a charm that has taken hold of me, so that I bury myself here occasionally; it is a rest from Paris."
From Paris, eh? I thought—then he does not belong to the coast.
I edged nearer, determined now to catch aglimpse of his features, the light of the moon having grown stronger. As he turned, its rays illumined his face and at the same instant a curious gleam flashed into his eyes.
Again the Baron da Granja stood before me.
Da Granja! the rich Brazilian! President of one of the biggest foreign banks in Paris. Man of the world, with a string of horses famous for years on a dozen race tracks. What the devil was he doing here? Had the cares of his bank driven him to such a lonely hermitage as La Poche? It seemed incredible, and yet there was not the slightest doubt as to his identity—I had seen him too often to be mistaken. His voice, too, now came back to me.
He strode on, and for some minutes kept silent, then he stopped suddenly and in a voice in which the old doubting tones were again audible said:
"You are English?"
Here he barred the path.
"No," I answered, a little ill at ease at his sudden change of manner. "American, from New York."
"And yet, I think I have seen you in Paris," he replied, after a moment's hesitation, his eyes boring into mine, which the light of the moon now made clear to him.
"It is quite possible," I returned calmly; "I think I have seen you also, monsieur; I am often in Paris."
Again he looked at me searchingly.
"Where?" he asked.
"At the Government's store, buying cigars." I did not intend to go any further.
He smiled as if relieved. He had been either trying to place me, or his suspicions had been again aroused, I could not tell which. One thing was certain: he was convinced I had swallowed the name "de Brissac" easily.
All at once his genial manner returned. "This way, to the right," he exclaimed. "Pardon me if I lead the way; the path is winding. My ruin, as I sometimes call it, is only a little farther up, and you shall have a long whiskey and siphon when you get there. You know Pont du Sable, of course," he continued as I kept in his tracks; the talk having again turned on his love of sport.
"Somewhat. I live there."
This time the surprise was his.
"Is it possible?" he cried, laying his hand on my shoulder, his face alight.
"Yes, my house is the once-abandoned one with the wall down by the marsh."
"Ah!" he burst out, "so you aretheAmerican, the newcomer, the man I have heard so much about, the man who is always shooting; and how the devil, may I ask, did you come to settle in Pont du Sable?"
"Well, you see, every one said it was such a wretched hole that I felt there must be some good in it. I have found it charming, and with the shooting it has become an old friend. I am glad also to find that you like it well enough to (it was I who hesitated now) to visit it."
"Yes, to shoot is always a relief," he answered evasively, and then in a more determined voice added, "This way, to the right, over the rocks! Come, give me your gun! The stones are slippery."
"No, I will carry it," I replied. "I am used to carrying it," and though my voice did notbetray me, I proposed to continue to carry it. It was at least a protection against a walking stick with a silver top. My mind being still occupied with his suspicions, his inquiries, and most of all his persistence that I should visit his house, with no other object in view than a whiskey and siphon and a string of plovers. And yet, despite the gruesomeness of the surroundings, while alert as to his slightest move, I was determined to see the adventure through.
He did not insist, but turned sharply to the left, and the next instant I stood before the threshold of a low stone house with a new tiled roof. A squat, snug house, the eaves of whose steep gabled roof came down well over its two stories, like the snuffer on a candle. He stepped to the threshold, felt about the door as if in search for a latch, and rapped three times with the flat of his hand. Then he called softly:
"Léa!"
"C'est toi?" came in answer, and a small hand cautiously opened a heavy overhead shutter, back of which a shaded lamp was burning.
"Yes, it is all right, it is I," said he. "Come down! I have a surprise for you. I have captured an American."
There came the sound of tripping feet, the quick drawing of a heavy bolt, and the door opened.
My little lady of the Pré Catelan!
Not in a tea-gown from the Rue de la Paix—nothing of that kind whatever; not a ruffle, not a jewel—but clothed in the well-worn garment of a fisher girl of the coast—a coarse homespun chemise of linen, open at the throat, and a still coarser petticoat of blue, faded by the salt sea—a fisher girl's petticoat that stopped at her knees, showing her trim bare legs and the white insteps of her little feet, incased in a pair of heelless felt slippers.
For the second time I was treated to a surprise. Really, Pont du Sable was not so dead a village after all.
Emile was wrong. She was one of my village people.
My host did not notice my astonishment, but waved his hand courteously.
"Entrez, monsieur!" he cried with a laugh, and then, turning sharply, he closed the door and bolted it.
I looked about me.
We were in a rough little room, that would have won any hunter's heart; there were solid racks, heavy with guns, on the walls, a snapping wood fire, and a clean table, laid for dinner, and lastly, the chair quickly drawn to it for the waiting guest. This last they laughingly forced me into, for they both insisted I should dine with them—an invitation which I gladly accepted, for my fears were now completely allayed.
We talked of the neighbourhood, of hunting, of Paris, of the new play at the Nouveautés—I did not mention the Bois. One rarely mentions in France having seen a woman out of her own home, although I was sure she remembered me from a look which now and then came into her eyes that left but little doubt in my mind that she vaguely recalled the incident at the Pré Catelan with the cow.
It was a simple peasant dinner which followed.When it was over, he went to a corner cupboard and drew forth a flat box of long perfectos, which I recognized instantly as the same brand of rare Havanas he had so extravagantly purchased from the Government. If I had had my doubt as to the identity of my man it was at rest now.
"You will find them mild," said he with a smile, as he lifted the tinfoil cover.
"No good cigar is strong," I replied, breaking the untouched row and bending my head as my host struck a match, my mind more on the scene in the Government's shop than the quality of his tobacco. And yet with all the charm that the atmosphere of his place afforded, two things still seemed to me strange—the absence of a servant, until I realized instinctively the incident of the balky cow, and the prompt bolting of the outside door.
The first I explained to myself as being due to her peasant blood and her ability to help herself; the second to the loneliness of the place and the characters it sometimes harboured. As for my host, I had to admit, despite my mental queries, that his bearing and mannercompletely captivated me, for a more delightful conversationalist it would have been difficult to find.
Not only did he know the art of eliminating himself and amusing you with topics that pleased you, but his cleverness in avoiding the personal was amazingly skilful. His tact was especially accentuated when, with a significant look at his companion, who at once rose from her seat and, crossing the room, busied herself with choosing the liqueurs from a closet in the corner of the room, he drew me aside by the fire, and in a calm, sotto voce said with intense earnestness:
"You may think it strange, monsieur, that I invited you, that I was even insistent. You, like myself, are a man of the world and can understand. You will do me a great favour if you will not mention to any one having met either myself or my little housekeeper" (there was not a tremor in his voice), "who, as you see, is a peasant; in fact, she was born here. We are not bothered with either friends or acquaintances here, nor do we care for prowlers; youmust excuse me for at first taking you for one. You, of course, know the reputation of La Poche."
"You could not have chosen a better place to be lost in," I answered, smiling as discreetly as one should over the confession of another's love affair. "Moreover, in life I have found it the best policy to keep one's mouth shut. You have my word, monsieur—it is as if we had never met—as if La Poche did not exist."
"Thank you," said he calmly, taking the tiny liqueur glasses from her hands; "what will you have—cognac or green chartreuse?"
"Chartreuse," I answered quietly. My eye had caught the labels which I knew to be genuine from the Grenoble printer.
"Ah! you knew it—Dieu!but it is good, that old chartreuse!" exclaimed my hostess with a rippling laugh as she filled my glass, "we are lucky to find it."
Then something happened which even now sends a cold chill down my spine. Hardly had I raised my glass to my lips when there came a sharp, determined rap at the bolted door, andmy host sprang to his feet. For a moment no one spoke—I turned instinctively to look at my lady of the Pré Catelan. She was breathing with dilated eyes, her lips drawn and quivering, every muscle of her lithe body trembling. He was standing erect, his head thrown back, his whole body tense. One hand gripped the back of his chair, the other was outstretched authoritatively toward us as if to command our silence.
Again the rapping, this time violent, insistent.
"Who is there?" he demanded, after what seemed to me an interminable moment of suspense.
With this he slipped swiftly through a door leading into a narrow corridor, closed another door at the end of the passage, broke the key in the lock and returned on tiptoe as noiselessly as he left the room. Then picking up the lamp he placed it under the table, thus deadening its glow.
Now a voice rang out, "Open in the name of the Law."
No one moved.
He again gripped the back of the chair, hisface deathly white, his jaw set, his eyes with a sullen gleam in them.
I turned to look at her. Her hands were outstretched on the table, her dilated eyes staring straight at the bolt as if her whole life depended on its strength.
Again came the command to open, this time in a voice that allowed no question as to the determination of the outsider:
"Open in the name of the Law."
No one moved or answered.
A crashing thud, from a heavy beam, snapped the bolt from its screws, another blow tore loose the door. Through the opening and over the débris sprang a short, broad-shouldered man in a gray suit, while three other heavily built men entered, barring the exit.
The woman screamed and fell forward on the table, her head buried in her clenched hands. The Baron faced the one in gray.
"What do you want?" he stammered in the voice of a ghost.
"You, Pedro Maceiö," said the man in the gray suit, in a low, even tone, "for the last trickyou will pull off in some years; open up things, do you hear? All of it, and quick."
The Brazilian did not reply; he stood behind his chair, eyeing sullenly the man in gray, who now held a revolver at a level with his heart.
Then the man in gray called to one of his men, his eye still on the banker. "Break in the door at the end of the passage."