With the quickness of a cat, the Brazilian grabbed the chair and with a swinging blow tried to fell his assailant and dash past him. The man in gray dodged and pocketed his weapon. The next instant he had his prisoner by the throat and had slammed him against the wall; then came the sharp click of a pair of handcuffs. The banker tripped and fell to the floor.
It had all happened so quickly that I was dazed as I looked on. What it was all about I did not know. It seemed impossible that my host, a man whose bank was well known in Paris, was really a criminal. Were the intruders from the police? Or was it a clever ruse of four determined burglars?
I began now to gather my wits and think ofmyself, although so far not one of the intruders had taken the slightest notice of my presence.
One of the men was occupied in breaking open the door at the end of the corridor, while another stood guard over the now sobbing, hysterical woman. The fourth had remained at the open doorway.
As for the prisoner, who had now regained his feet, he had sunk into the chair he had used in defence and sat there staring at the floor, breathing in short gasps.
The man who had been ordered by his chief to break open the door at the end of the corridor, now returned and laid upon the dinner table two engraved metal plates, and a handful of new one-hundred-franc notes; some I noticed from where I sat were blank on one side. With the plates came the acrid stench of a broken bottle of acid.
"My God! Counterfeiting!" I exclaimed half aloud.
The Baron rose from his seat and stretched out his linked hands.
"She is innocent," he pleaded huskily, liftinghis eyes to the woman. I could not repress a feeling of profound pity for him.
The man in gray made no reply; instead he turned to me.
"I shall escort you, too, monsieur," he remarked coolly.
"Escort me?Me?What have I got to do with it, I'd like to know?" I cried, springing to my feet. "I wish to explain—to make clear to you—clear. I want you to understand that I stumbled here by the merest chance; that I never spoke to this man in my life until to-night, that I accepted his hospitality purely because I did not wish to offend him, although I had shot late and was in a hurry to get home."
He smiled quietly.
"Please do not worry," he returned, "we know all about you. You are the American. Your house is the old one by the marsh in Pont du Sable. I called on you this afternoon, but you were absent. I am really indebted to you if you do but know it. By following your tracks, monsieur, we stumbled on the nest we have so long been looking for. Permit me to handyou my card. My name is Guinard—Sous Chief of the Paris Police."
I breathed easier—things were clearing up.
"And may I ask, monsieur, how you knew I had gone in the direction of La Poche?" I inquired. That was still a mystery.
"You have a little maid," he replied; "and little maids can sometimes be made to talk."
He paused and then said slowly, weighing each word.
"Yes, that no doubt surprises you, but we follow every clue. You were both sportsmen; that, as you know, monsieur, is always a bond, and we had not long to wait, although it was too dark for us to be quite sure when you both passed me. It was the bolting of the door that clinched the matter for me. But for the absence of two of my men on another scent we should have disturbed you earlier. I must compliment you, monsieur, on your knowledge of chartreuse as well as your taste for good cigars; permit me to offer you another." Here he slipped his hand into his pocket and handed me a duplicate of the one I had been smoking.
"Twelve boxes, Maceiö, were there not? Not expensive, eh, when purchased with these?" and he spread out the identical bank-notes with which his prisoner had paid for them in the Government store on the boulevard.
"As for you, monsieur, it is only necessary that one of my men take your statement at your house; after that you are free.
"Come, Maceiö," and he shook the prisoner by the shoulder, "you take the midnight train with me back to Paris—you too, madame."
And so I say again, and this time you must agree with me, that strange happenings, often with a note of terror in them, occur now and then in my lost village by the sea.
cigar
soldiers
At the very beginning of the straggling fishing-village of Pont du Sable and close by the tawny marsh stands the little stone house of the mayor. The house, like Monsieur le Maire himself, is short and sturdy. Its modest façade is half hidden under a coverlet of yellow roses that have spread at random over the tiled roof as high as the chimney. In front, edging the road, is a tidy strip of garden with more roses, a wood-pile, and an ancient well whose stone roof shelters a worn windlass that groans in protest whenever its chain and bucket are disturbed.
I heard the windlass complaining this sunny morning as I passed on my way through thevillage and caught sight of the ruddy mayor in his blue blouse lowering the bucket. The chain snapped taut, the bucket gulped its fill, and Monsieur le Maire caught sight of me.
"Ah bigre!" he exclaimed as he left the bucket where it hung and came forward with both hands outstretched in welcome, a smile wrinkling his genial face, clean-shaven to the edges of his short, cropped gray side-whiskers, reaching well beneath his chin. "Come in, come in," he insisted, laying a persuasive hand on my shoulder, as he unlatched his gate.
It is almost impossible for a friend to pass the mayor's without being stopped by just such a welcome. The twinkle in his eyes and the hearty genuineness of his greeting are irresistible. The next moment you have crossed his threshold and entered a square, low-ceiled room that for over forty years has served Monsieur le Maire as living room, kitchen, and executive chamber.
He had left me for a moment, as he always does when he welcomes a friend. I could hear from the pantry cupboard beyond the shiverytinkle of glasses as they settled on a tray. He had again insisted, as he always does, upon my occupying the armchair in the small parlour adjoining, with its wax flowers and its steel engraving of Napoleon at Waterloo; but I had protested as I always do, for I prefer the kitchen.
I like its cavernous fireplace with its crane and spit, and the low ceiling upheld by great beams of rough-hewn oak, and the tall clock in the corner, and the hanging copper saucepans, kettles and ladles, kept as bright as polished gold. Here, too, is a generous Norman armoire with carved oaken doors swung on bar-hinges of shining steel, and a centre-table provided with a small bottle of violet ink, a scratchy pen and an iron seal worked by a lever—a seal that has grown dull from long service in the stamping of certain documents relative to plain justice, marriage, the official recognition of the recently departed and the newly born. Above the fireplace hangs a faded photograph of a prize bull, for you must know that Monsieur le Maire has been for half a generation a dealer in Norman cattle.
Presently he returned with the tray, placing it upon the table within reach of our chairs while I stood admiring the bull.
He stopped as he half drew the cork from a fat brown jug, and looked at me curiously, his voice sinking almost to a whisper.
"You never were a dealer in beef?" he ventured timidly.
I shook my head sadly.
"Hélas! Hélas!Never mind," said he. "One cannot be everything. There's my brother-in-law, Péquin; he does not know a yearling from a three-year-old. It is he who keeps the little store at Saint Philippe."
The cork squeaked out. He filled the thimble glasses with rare old applejack so skilfully that another drop would have flushed over their worn gilt rims. What a gracious old gentleman he is! If it be a question of clipping a rose from his tidy garden and presenting it to a lady, he does it with such a gentle courtliness that the rose smells the sweeter for it—almost a lost art nowadays.
"I saw the curé this morning," he remarked,as we settled ourselves for a chat. "He could not stop, but he waved me anau revoir, for he was in a hurry to catch his train. He had been all night in his duck-blind—I doubt if he had much luck, for the wind is from the south. There is a fellow for you who loves to shoot," chuckled the mayor.
"Some news for him of game?" I inquired.
The small eyes of the mayor twinkled knowingly. "Entre nous," he confided, "he has gone to Bonvilette to spray the sick roses of a friend with sulphate of iron—he borrowed my squirt-gun yesterday."
"And how far is it to Bonvilette?"
"Eh ben!One must go by the little train to Nivelle," explained Monsieur le Maire, "and from Nivelle to Bonvilette there lies a good twenty kilometres for a horse. Let us say he will be back in three days."
"And the mass meanwhile?" I ventured.
"Mon Dieu!What will you have? The roses of his old friend are sick. It is the duty of a curé to tend the sick. Besides——"
Here Monsieur le Maire leaned forward withinreach of my ear, and I caught in whispers something relative to a château and one of the best cellars of Bordeaux in France.
"Naturally," I replied, with a wink, and again my eyes reverted to the prize bull. It is not wise to raise one's voice in so small a village as Pont du Sable, even indoors.
"A pretty beast!" affirmed the mayor, noticing my continued interest in live stock. "And let me tell you that I took him to England in 'eighty-two.Ah, mais oui! Hélas! Hélas!What a trip!" he sighed. "Monsieur Toupinet—he that has the big farm at Saint Philippe—and I sailed together the third of October, in 1882, with forty steers. Our ship was calledThe Souvenir, and I want to tell you, my friend, it wasn't gay, that voyage.Ah, mais non!Toupinet was sea-sick—I was sea-sick—the steers were sea-sick—all except thatsacrébrute up there, and he roared all the way from Calais to London.Eh ben!And would you believe it?" At the approaching statement Monsieur le Maire's countenance assumed a look of righteous indignation. He raised his fist and broughtit down savagely on the table as he declared: "Would you believe it? We werethirty-four hourswithout eating andtwenty-nine hours, mon Dieu!without drinking!"
I looked up in pained astonishment.
"And that wasn't all," continued the mayor. "A hurricane struck us three hours out, and we rolled all night in a dog's sea. The steers were up to their bellies in water. Aye, but she did blow, andThe Souvenirhad all she could do to keep afloat. The captain was lashed to the bridge all night and most of the next day. Neither Toupinet nor myself ever expected to see land again, and there we were like calves in a pen on the floor of the cabin full of tobacco-smoke and English, and not a word of English could we speak except 'yes' and 'good morning.'" Here Monsieur le Maire stopped and choked. Finally he dried his eyes on the sleeve of his blouse, for he was wheezing with laughter, took a sip from his glass, and resumed:
"Well, the saints did not desert us.Ah, mais non!For about four o'clock in the afternoon the captain sighted Su-Tum-Tum."
"Sighted what?" I exclaimed.
"Eh ben!Su-Tum-Tum," he replied.
"Where had you drifted? To the Corean coast?"
"Mais non," he retorted, annoyed at my dullness to comprehend. "We were saved—comprenez-vous?—for there, to starboard, lay Su-Tum-Tum as plain as a sheep's nose."
"England? Impossible!" I returned.
"Mais parfaitement!" he declared, with a hopeless gesture. "Su-Tum-Tum," he reiterated slowly for my benefit.
"Never heard of it," I replied.
The next instant he was out of his chair, and fumbling in a drawer of the table extracted a warped atlas, reseated himself, and began to turn the pages.
"Eh, voilà!" he cried as his forefinger stopped under a word along the English coast. "That's Su-Tum-Tum plain enough, isn't it?"
"Ah! Southampton!" I exclaimed. "Of course—plain as day."
"Ah!" ejaculated the mayor, leaning back in his chair with a broad smile of satisfaction."You see, I was right, Su-Tum-Tum.Eh ben!Do you know," he said gently as I left him, "when you first came to Pont du Sable there were times then, my poor friend, when I could not understand a word you said in French."
Then, as if a sudden thought had struck him, he called me back as he closed the gate.
"Are those gipsies still camped outside your wall?" he inquired, suddenly assuming the dignity of his office. "Bon Dieu!They are a bad lot, those vagabonds! If I don't tell them to be off you won't have a duck or a chicken left."
"Let them stay," I pleaded, "they do no harm. Besides, I like to see the light of their camp-fire at night scurrying over my wall."
"How many are there?" inquired his excellency.
"Seven or eight, not counting the dogs chained under the wagons," I confessed reluctantly, fearing the hand of the law, for I have a fondness for gipsies. "But you need not worry about them. They won't steal from me. Their wagons are clean inside and out."
"Ah, mais!" sighed the mayor. "It's justlike you. You spoil your cat, you spoil your dog, and now you're spoiling these rascals by giving them a snug berth. Have they their papers of identity?"
"Yes," I called back, "the chief showed them to me when he asked permission to camp."
"Of course," laughed the mayor. "You'll never catch them without them—signed by officials we never can trace."
He waved me a cheeryau revoirand returned to the well of the groaning windlass while I continued on my way through the village.
Outside the squat stone houses, nets were drying in the sun. Save for the occasional rattle of a passing cart, the village was silent, for these fisher-folk go barefooted. Presently I reached the public square, where nothing ever happens, and, turning an iron handle, entered Pont du Sable's only store. A box of a place, smelling of dried herring, kerosene, and cheese; and stocked with the plain necessities—almost everything, from lard, tea, and big nails to soap, tarpaulins, and applejack. The night's catch of mackerel had been good, and the small roomwith its zinc bar was noisy with fisher-folk—wiry fishermen with legs and chests as hard as iron; slim brown fisher girls as hardy as the men, capricious, independent and saucy; a race of blonds for the most part, with the temperament of brunettes. Old women grown gray and leathery from fighting the sea, and old men too feeble to go—one of these hung himself last winter because of this.
It was here, too, I found Marianne, dripping wet, in her tarpaulins.
"What luck?" I asked her as I helped myself to a package of cigarettes from a pigeonhole and laid the payment thereof on the counter.
"Eh ben!" she laughed. "We can't complain. If the good God would send us such fishing every night we should eat well enough."
She strode through the group to the counter to thrust out an empty bottle.
"Eight sous of the best," she demanded briskly of the mild-eyed grocer. "My man's as wet as a rat—he needs some fire in him and he'll feel as fit as a marquis."
A good catch is a tonic to Pont du Sable.Instantly a spirit of good humour and camaraderie spreads through the village—even old scores are forgotten. A good haul of mackerel means a let-up in the daily struggle for existence, which in winter becomes terrible. The sea knows not charity. It massacres when it can and adds you to the line of dead things along its edge where you are only remembered by the ebb and flow of the tide. On blue calm mornings, being part of the jetsam, you may glisten in the sun beside a water-logged spar; at night you become a nonentity, of no more consequence along the wavering line of drift than a rotten gull. But if, like Marianne, you have fought skilfully, you may again enter Pont du Sable with a quicker eye, a harder body, and a deeper knowledge of the southwest gale.
Within the last week Pont du Sable has undergone a transformation. The dead village is alive with soldiers, for it is the time of the manœuvres. Houses, barns and cow-sheds are filled by night with the red-trousered infantry of the FrenchRépublique. By day, the window panes shiverunder the distant flash and roar of artillery. The air vibrates with the rip and rattle of musketry—savage volleys, filling the heavens with shrill, vicious waves of whistling bullets that kill at a miraculous distance. It is well that all this murderous fire occurs beyond the desert of dunes skirting the open sea, for they say the result upon the iron targets on the marsh is something frightful. The general in command is in a good humour over the record.
Despatch-bearers gallop at all hours of the day and night through Pont du Sable's single street. The band plays daily in the public square. Sunburned soldiers lug sacks of provisions and bundles of straw out to five hundred more men bivouacked on the dunes. Whole regiments return to the little fishing-village at twilight singing gay songs, followed by the fisher girls.
Ah! Mesdames—voilà du bon fromage!Celui qui l'a fait il est de son village!Voilà du bon fromage au lait!Il est du pays de celui qui l'a fait.
Ah! Mesdames—voilà du bon fromage!Celui qui l'a fait il est de son village!Voilà du bon fromage au lait!Il est du pays de celui qui l'a fait.
Three young officers are stopping at Monsieur le Curé's, who has returned from the sickroses of his friend; and Tanrade has a colonel and two lieutenants beneath his roof. As for myself and the house abandoned by the marsh, we are very much occupied with a blustering old general, his aide-de-camp, and two common soldiers; but I tremble lest the general should discover the latter two, for you see, they knocked at my door for a lodging before the general arrived, and I could not refuse them. Both of them put together would hardly make a full-sized warrior, and both play the slide-trombone in the band. Naturally their artistic temperament revolted at the idea of sleeping in the only available place left in the village—a cow-shed with cows. They explained this to me with so many polite gestures, mingled with an occasional salute at their assured gratefulness should I acquiesce, that I turned them over for safe keeping to Suzette, who has given them her room and sleeps in the garret. Suzette is overjoyed. Dream of dreams! For Suzette to have one real live soldier in the house—but to have two! Both of these red-eared, red-trousered dispensers of harmony are perfect in deportment, andas quiet as mice. They slip out of my back gate at daylight, bound for the seat of war and slip in again at sundown like obedient children, talk in kitchen whispers to Suzette over hot cakes and cider, and go punctually to bed at nine—the very hour when the roaring old general and his aide-de-camp are toasting their gold spurs before my fire.
The general is tall and broad-shouldered, and as agile as a boy. There is a certain hard, compact firmness about him as if he had been cast in bronze. His alert eyes are either flashing in authority or beaming in gentleness. The same play between dominant roughness and tenderness is true, too, of his voice and manner.
"Madame," he said, last night, after dinner, as he bent and graciously kissed Alice de Bréville's hand, "forgive an old savage who pays you homage and the assurance of his profound respect." The next moment my courtyard without rocked with his reprimand to a bungling lieutenant.
To-night the general isin anuproar of good humour after a storm, for did not some vagabonds steal the danger-posts intended to warn the public of the location of the firing-line, so that new ones had to be sent for? When the news of the theft reached him his rage was something to behold. I could almost hear the little slide-trombonists shake as far back as Suzette's kitchen. Fortunately, the cyclone was of short duration—to-night he is pleased over the good work of his men during the days of mock warfare and at the riddled, twisted targets, all of which is child's play to this veteran who has weathered so many real battles.
To-night he has dined well, and his big hand is stroking the Essence of Selfishness who purrs against his medalled chest under a caress as gentle as a woman's. He sings his favourite airs from "Faust" and "Aïda" with gusto, and roars over the gallant stories of his aide-de-camp, who, being from the south ofLa belle France, is never at a loss for a tale—tales that make the general's medals twinkle merrily in the firelight. It is my first joyful experience as host to themilitary, but I cannot help being nervous over Suzette and the trombonists.
"Bah! Thosesacrémusicians!" exclaimed the general to-night as he puffed at his cigarette. "If there's a laggard in my camp, you may be sure it is one of those little devils with a horn or a whistle.Mon Dieu!Once during the manœuvres outside of Périgord I found three of them who refused to sleep on the ground—stole off and begged a lodging in a château,parbleu!"
"Ah—indeed?" I stammered meekly.
"Yes, they did," he bellowed, "but I cured them." I saw the muscles in his neck flush crimson, and tried to change the subject, but in vain.
"If they do that in time of peace, they'll do the same in war," he thundered.
"Naturally," I murmured, my heart in my throat. The aide-de-camp grunted his approval while the general ran his hand over the gray bristles on his scarred head.
"Favours!" roared the general. "Favours, eh? When my men sleep on the ground in roughweather, I sleep with them. What sort of discipline do you suppose I'd have if I did not share their hardships time and time again? Winter campaigns, forced marches—twenty-four hours of it sometimes in mountain snow. Bah! That is nothing! They need that training to go through worse, and yet those good fellows of mine, heavily loaded, never complain. I've seen it so hot, too, that it would melt a man's boots. It is always one of those imbeciles, then, with nothing heavier to carry than a clarinet, who slips off to a comfortable farm."
"Bien entendu, mon général!" agreed his aide-de-camp tersely as he leaned forward and kindled a fresh cigarette over the candle-shade.
Happily I noticed at that moment that the cigarette-box needed replenishing. It was an excuse at least to leave the room. A moment later I had tiptoed to the closed kitchen door and stood listening. Suzette was laughing. The trombonists were evidently very much at ease. They, too, were laughing. Little pleasantriesfiltered through the crack in the heavy door that made me hold my breath. Then I heard the gurgle of cider poured into a glass, followed swiftly by what I took to be unmistakably a kiss.
It was all as plain now as Su-Tum-Tum. I dared not break in upon them. Had I opened the door, the general might have recognized their voices. Meanwhile, silly nothings were demoralizing the heart of my good Suzette. She would fall desperately in love with either one or the other of thosesacrévirtuosos. Then another thought struck me! One of them might be Suzette's sweetheart, hailing from her own village, the manœuvres at Pont du Sable a lucky meeting for them. A few sentences that I now hurriedly caught convinced me of my own denseness in not having my suspicions aroused when they singled out my domain and begged my hospitality.
The situation was becoming critical. By the light of the crack I scribbled the following:
"Get those two imbeciles of yours hidden in the hay-loft, quick. The general wants to seethe kitchen," and slipped it under the door, coughing gently in warning.
There was an abrupt silence—the sound of Suzette's slippered feet—and the scrap of paper disappeared. Then heavy, excited breathing within.
I dashed upstairs and was down again with the cigarettes before the general had remarked my tardiness to his aide. At midnight I lighted their candles and saw them safely up to bed. Then I went to my room fronting the marsh and breathed easier.
"Her sweetheart from her own village," I said to myself as I blew out my candle. "The other"—I sighed drowsily—"was evidently his cousin. The mayor was right. I have a bad habit of spoiling people and pets."
Then again my mind reverted to the general. What if he discovered them? My only consolation now was that to-day had seen the end of the manœuvres, and the soldiers would depart by a daylight train in the morning. I recalled, too, the awkward little speech of thanks for my hospitality the trombonists had made tome at an opportune moment before dinner. Finally I fell into a troubled sleep.
Suzette brought me my coffee at seven.
"Luckily the general did not discover them!" I exclaimed when Suzette had closed the double door of my bedroom.
"Mon Dieu!What danger we have run!" whispered the little maid. "I could not sleep, monsieur, thinking of it."
"You got them safely to the haymow?" I inquired anxiously.
"Oh!Mais oui, monsieur. But then they slept over the cider-press back of the big casks. Monsieur advised the hay-loft, but they said the roof leaked. And had it rained, monsieur—"
"See here," I interrupted, eyeing her trim self from head to foot savagely. "You've known that little devil with the red ears before."
I saw Suzette pale.
"Confess!" I exclaimed hoarsely, with a military gesture of impatience. "He comes from your village. Is it not so, my child?"
Suzette was silent, her plump hands twisting nervously at her apron pocket.
"I am right, am I not? I might have guessed as much when they came."
"Oh, monsieur!" Suzette faltered, the tears welling up from the depths of her clear trustful eyes.
"Is it not so?" I insisted.
"Oh! Oh!Mon Dieu, oui," she confessed half audibly. "He—he is the son of our neighbor, Monsieur Jacot."
"At Saint Philippe?"
"At Saint Philippe, monsieur. We were children together, Gaston and I. I—I—was glad to see him again, monsieur," sobbed the little maid. "He is very nice, Gaston."
"When are you to be married?" I ventured after a moment's pause.
"Ben—eh ben!In two years, monsieur—after Gaston finishes his military service. He—has a good trade, monsieur."
"Soloist?" I asked grimly.
"No, monsieur—tailor for ladies. We shall live in Paris," she added, and for an instanther eyes sparkled; then again their gaze reverted to the now sadly twisted apron pocket, for I was silent.
"No more Suzette then!" I said to myself. No more merry, willing little maid-of-all-work! No more hot mussels steaming in a savory sauce! Her purée of peas, her tomato farcies, the stuffed artichokes, and her coffee the like of which never before existed, would vanish with the rest. But true love cannot be argued. There was nothing to do but to hold out my hand in forgiveness. As I did so the general rang for his coffee.
"Mon Dieu!" gasped Suzette. "He rings." And flew down to her kitchen.
An hour later the general was sauntering leisurely up the road through the village over his morning cigar. The daylight train, followed rapidly by four extra sections, had cleared Pont du Sable of all but two of the red-trousered infantry—my trombonists! They had arrived an hour and twenty minutes late, winded and demoralized. They sat together outside the locked station unable to speak, pale and panic-stricken.
The first object that caught the general's eye as he slowly turned into the square by the little station was their four red-trousered legs—then he caught the glint of their two brass trombones. The next instant heads appeared at the windows. It was as if a bomb had suddenly exploded in the square.
The two trombonists were now on their feet, shaking from head to foot while they saluted their general, whose ever-approaching stride struck fresh agony to their hearts. He was roaring:
"Canailles! Imbéciles!A month of prison!" and "Sacré bon Dieu's!" were all jumbled together. "Overslept! Overslept, did you?" he bellowed. "In a château, I'll wager.Parbleu!Where then? Out with it!"
"Pardon, mon général!" chattered Gaston. "It was in the stone house of the American gentleman by the marsh."
We lunched together in my garden at noon. He had grown calm again under the spell of the Burgundy, but Suzette, I feared, would be ill.
"Come, be merciful," I pleaded.
"He is the fiancé of my good Suzette; besides, you must not forget that you were all my guests."
The general shrugged his shoulders helplessly. "They were lucky to have gotten off with a month!" he snapped. "You saw that those little devils were handcuffed?" he asked of his aide.
"Yes, my general, the gendarme attended to them."
"You were my guests," I insisted. "Hold me responsible if you wish."
"Holdyouresponsible!" he exclaimed. "But you are a foreigner—it would be a little awkward."
"It is my good Suzette," I continued, "that I am thinking of."
He leaned back in his chair, and for a moment again ran his hands thoughtfully over the bristles of his scarred head. He had a daughter of his own.
"The coffee," I said gently to my unhappy Suzette as she passed.
"Oui! Oui, monsieur," she sighed, then suddenly mustering up her courage, she gasped:
"Oh, mon général!Is it true, then, that Gaston must go to jail?Ah! Mon Dieu!"
"Eh bien, my girl! It will not kill him,Sapristi!He will be a better soldier for it."
"Be merciful," I pleaded.
"Eh bien! Eh bien!" he retorted. "Eh bien!" And cleared his throat.
"Forgive them," I insisted. "They overslept. I don't want Suzette to marry a jail-bird."
Again he scratched his head and frowned. Suzette was in tears.
"Um! Difficult!" he grumbled. "Order for arrest once given—" Then he shot a glance at me. I caught a twinkle in his eye.
"Eh bien!" he roared. "There—I forgive them! Ah, thosesacrémusicians!"
Suzette stood there trembling, unable even to thank him, the colour coming and going in her peasant cheeks.
"Are they free, general?" I asked.
"Yes," he retorted, "both of them."
"Bravo!" I exclaimed.
"Understand that I have done it for the little girl—andyou. Is that plain?"
"Perfectly," I replied. "As plain as Su-Tum-Tum!" I added under my breath as I filled his empty glass in gratefulness to the brim.
"Halt!" shouted the general as the happiest of Suzettes turned toward her kitchen.
"Eh—um!" he mumbled awkwardly in a voice that had suddenly grown thick. Then he sprang to his feet and raised his glass.
"A health to the bride!" he cried.
The general
a formal garden
The bay of Pont du Sable, which the incoming tide had so swiftly filled at daylight, now lay a naked waste of oozing black mud. The birds had gone with the receding sea, and I was back from shooting, loafing over my pipe and coffee in a still corner among the roses of my wild garden, hidden behind the old wall, when that Customhouse soldier-gardener of mine, Pierre, appeared with the following message:
"Monsieur de Savignac presents his salutations the most distinguished and begs that monsieur will give him the pleasure of calling on himà proposof the little spaniel."
What an unexpected and welcome surprise! For weeks I had hunted in vain for a thoroughbred. I had never hoped to be given one from the kennels of Monsieur de Savignac's château.
"Enchanted, Pierre!" I cried—"Present my compliments to Monsieur de Savignac. Tell him how sincerely grateful I am, and say that he may expect me to-morrow before noon."
I could easily imagine what a beauty my spaniel would be, clean-limbed and alert like the ones in the coloured lithographs. "No wonder," I thought, as Pierre left me, "that every peasant for miles around spoke of this good Monsieur de Savignac's generosity. Here he was giving me a dog. To me, his American neighbour, whom he had never met!"
As I walked over to the château with Pierre the next morning, I recalled to my mind the career of this extraordinary man, whose only vice was his great generosity.
When Monsieur de Savignac was twenty-one he inherited a million francs, acquired a high hat with a straight brim, a standing collar, well open at the throat (in fashion then under Napoleon III.), a flowing cravat—a plush waistcoat with crystal buttons, a plum-coloured broadclothcoat and trousers of a pale lemon shade, striped with black, gathered tight at the ankles, their bottoms flouncing over a pair of patent-leather boots with high heels.
He was tall, strong and good-natured, this lucky Jacques de Savignac, with a weakness for the fair sex which was appalling, and a charm of manner as irresistible as his generosity. A clumsy fencer, but a good comrade—a fellow who could turn a pretty compliment, danced better than most of the young dandies at court, drove his satin-skinned pair of bays through the Bois with an easy smile, and hunted hares when the shooting opened with the dogged tenacity of a veteran poacher.
When he was twenty-one, the Paris that Grévin drew was in the splendour of an extravagant life that she was never to see again, and never has. One couldamuseone's self then—ah!Dame, oui!
There is no emperor now to keep Paris gay.
What suppers at Véfour's! What a brilliant life there was in those days under the arcades of the dear old Palais Royal, the gay world going dailyto this mondaine cloister to see and be seen—to dine and wine—to make conquests of the heart and dance daylight quadrilles.
Paris was ordered to be dailyen fêteand the host at the Tuileries saw to it that the gaiety did not flag. It was one way at least from keeping the populace from cutting one another's throats, which they did later with amazing ferocity.
There were in those good old days under Louis Napoleon plenty of places to gamble and spend the inherited gold. Ah! it was Rabelaisian enough! What an age to have been the recipient of a million at twenty-one! It was like being a king with no responsibilities. No wonder de Savignac left the university—he had no longer any need of it. He dined now at the Maison Dorée and was seen nightly at the "Bal Mabille" or the "Closerie des Lilas," focussing his gold-rimmed monocle on the flying feet and lacefrou-frousof "Diane la Sournoise," or roaring with laughter as he chucked gold louis into the satined lap of some "Francine" or "Cora" amid the blare of the band, and theflash of jewels strung upon fair arms and fairer necks of woman who went nightly to the "Bal Mabille" in smart turnouts and the costliest gowns money could buy—and after the last mad quadrille was ended, on he went to supper at Bignon's where more gaiety reigned until blue dawn, and where the women were still laughing and merry and danced as easily on the table as on the floor.
What a time, I say, to have inherited a million! And how many good friends he had! Painters and musicians, actors and wits (and thereweresome in those days)—no king ever gathered around him a jollier band.
It was from one of these henchmen of his that de Savignac purchased his château (long since emptied of its furniture)—from a young nobleman pressed hard for his debts, like most young noblemen are—and so the great château close to my Village of Vagabonds, and known for miles around, became de Savignac's.
What house parties he gave then!—men and women of talent flocked under his hospitable roof—indeed there was no lack of talent—some of it from the Opéra—some of it from the Conservatoire, and they brought their voices and their fiddles with them and played and sang for him for days, in exchange for his feudal hospitality—more than that, the painter Paul Deschamps covered the ceiling of his music room with chubby cupids playing golden trumpets and violins—one adorable little fellow in the cove above the grand piano struggling with a 'cello twice as high as himself, and Carin painted the history of love in eight panels upon the walls of the old ballroom, whose frescoes were shabby enough, so I am told, when de Savignac purchased them.
There were times also when the château was full to overflowing with guests, so that the late comers were often quartered in a low two-story manor close by, that nestled under great trees—a cosey, dear old place covered with ivy and climbing yellow roses, with narrow alleys leading to it flanked by tall poplars, and a formal garden behind it in the niches of whose surrounding wall were statues of Psyche and Venus, their smooth marble shoulders stained by rainand the drip and ooze of growing things. One of them even now, still lifts its encrusted head to the weather.
During the shooting season there were weeks when he and his guests shot daily from the crack of dawn until dark, the game-keepers following with their carts that by night were loaded with hares, partridges, woodcock and quail—then such a good dinner, sparkling with repartee and good wine, and laughter and dancing after it, until the young hours in the morning. One was more solid in those days than now—tired as their dogs after the day's hunt, they dined and danced themselves young again for the morrow.
And what do you think they did after the Commune? They made him mayor. Yes, indeed, to honour him—Mayor of Hirondelette, the little village close to his estate, and de Savignac had to be formal and dignified for the first time in his life—this good Bohemian—at the village fêtes, at the important meetings of the Municipal Council, composed of a dealer in cattle, the blacksmith and the notary. Again,in time of marriage, accident or death, and annually at the school exercises, when he presented prizes to the children spic and span for the occasion, with voices awed to whispers, and new shoes. And he loved them all—all those dirty little brats that had been scrubbed clean, and their ruddy cheeks polished like red apples, to meet "Monsieur le Maire."
He was nearing middle life now, but he was not conscious of it, being still a bachelor. There was not as yet, a streak of gray in his well-kept beard, and the good humour sparkled in his merry eyes as of old. The only change that had occurred concerned the million. It was no longer the brilliant solid million of his youth. It was sadly torn off in places—there were also several large holes in it—indeed, if the truth be told, it was little more than a remnant of its once splendid entirety. It had been eaten by moths—certain shrewd old wasps, too, had nested in it for years—not a sou of it had vanished in speculation or bad investment. Monsieur de Savignac (this part of it the curé told me) was as ignorant as a child concerningbusiness affairs and stubbornly avoided them. He had placed his fortune intact in the Bank of France, and had drawn out what he needed for his friends. In the first year of his inheritance he glanced at the balance statement sent him by the bank, with a feeling of peaceful delight. As the years of his generosity rolled on, he avoided reading it at all—"like most optimists," remarked the curé, "he did not wish to know the truth." At forty-six he married the niece of an impoverished old wasp, a gentleman still in excellent health, owing to de Savignac's generosity. It was his good wife now, who read the balance statement.
For a while after his marriage, gaiety again reigned at the château, but upon a more economical basis; then gradually they grew to entertain less and less; indeed there were few left of the moths and old wasps to give to—they had flown to cluster around another million.
Most of this Pierre, who was leading me through the leafy lane that led to de Savignac's home, knew or could have known, for it wascommon talk in the country around, but his mind to-day was not on de Savignac's past, but on the dog which we both were so anxious to see.
"Monsieur has never met Monsieur de Savignac?" ventured Pierre as we turned our steps out of the brilliant sunlight, and into a wooded path skirting the extensive forest of the estate.
"Not yet, Pierre."
"He is a fine old gentleman," declared Pierre, discreetly lowering his voice. "Poor man!"
"Whypoor, Pierre?" I laughed, "with an estate like this—nonsense!"
"Ah! Monsieur does not know?"—Pierre's voice sunk to a whisper—"the château is mortgaged, monsieur. There is not a tree or a field left Monsieur de Savignac can call his own. Do you know, monsieur, he has no longer even the right to shoot over the ground? Monsieur sees that low roof beyond with the single chimney smoking—just to the left of the château towers?"
I nodded.
"That is where Monsieur de Savignac now lives. It is called the garçonnière."
"But the château, Pierre?"
"It is rented to a Peruvian gentleman, monsieur, who takes in boarders."
"Pierre!" I exclaimed, "we go no farther. I knew nothing of this. I am not going to accept a dog from a gentleman in Monsieur de Savignac's unfortunate circumstances. It is not right. No, no. Go and present my deep regrets to Monsieur de Savignac and tell him—tell him what you please. Say that my rich uncle has just sent me a pair of pointers—that I sincerely appreciate his generous offer, that—"
Pierre's small black eyes opened as wide as possible. He shrugged his shoulders twice and began twisting thoughtfully the waxed ends of his moustache to a finer point.
"Pardon, monsieur," he resumed after an awkward pause, "but—but monsieur, by not going, will grieve Monsieur de Savignac—He will be so happy to give monsieur the dog—so happy, monsieur. If Monsieur de Savignaccould not give something to somebody he would die. Ah, he gives everything away, that good Monsieur de Savignac!" exclaimed Pierre. "I was once groom in his stables—oui, monsieur, and he married us when he was Mayor of Hirondelette, and he paid our rent—oui, monsieur, and the doctor and...."
"We'll proceed, Pierre," said I. "A man of de Savignac's kind in the world is so rare that one should do nothing to thwart him."
We walked on for some distance along the edge of a swamp carpeted with strong ferns. Presently we came to a cool, narrow alley flanked and roofed by giant poplars. At the end of this alley a wicket gate barred the entrance to the courtyard of the garçonnière.
As we drew nearer I saw that its ancient two-story façade was completely covered by the climbing mass of ivy and yellow roses, the only openings being the Louis XIV. windows, and the front door, flush with the gravelled court, bordered by a thick hedge of box.
"Monsieur the American gentleman for the dog," announced Pierre to the boy servant in ablue apron who appeared to open the wicket gate.
A moment later the door of the garçonnière opened, and a tall, heavily built man with silver white hair and beard came forth to greet me.
I noticed that the exertion of greeting me made him short of breath, and that he held his free hand for a second pressed against his heart as he ushered me across his threshold and into a cool, old-fashioned sitting room, the walls covered with steel engravings, the furniture upholstered in green rep.
"Have the goodness to be seated, monsieur," he insisted, waving me to an armchair, while he regained his own, back of an old-fashioned desk.
"Ah! The—little—dog," he began, slowly regaining his breath. "You are all the time shooting, and I heard you wanted one. It is so difficult to get a really—good—dog—in this country.François!" he exclaimed, "You may bring in the little dog—and, François!" he added, as the boy servant turned to go—"bring glasses and a bottle of Musigny—you will find it on the shelf back of the Medoc." Then he turned to me: "There are still two bottles left," and he laughed heartily.
"Bien, monsieur," answered the boy, and departed with a key big enough to have opened a jail.
The moment had arrived for me to draw forth a louis, which I laid on his desk in accordance with an old Norman custom, still in vogue when you accept as a gift a dog from an estate.
"Let your domestics have good cheer and wine to-night," said I.
"Thank you," he returned with sudden formality. "I shall put it aside for them," and he dropped the gold piece into a small drawer of his desk.
I did not know until Pierre, who was waiting outside in the court, told me afterwards, that his entire staff of servants was composed of the boy with the blue apron and the cook—an old woman—the last of his faithful servitors, who now appeared with a tray of trembling glasses, followed by the boy, the dusty cobwebbed bottle of rare Musigny and—my dog!
Not a whole dog. But a flub-dub little spaniel puppy—very blond—with ridiculously long ears, a double-barrelled nose, a roly-poly stomach and four heavy unsteady legs that got in his way as he tried to navigate in a straight line to make my acquaintance.
"Voilà!" cried de Savignac. "Here he is. He'll make an indefatigable hunter, like his mother—wait until he is two years old—He'll stand to his day's work beside the best in France——"
"And what race is he? may I ask, Monsieur de Savignac."
"Gorgon—Gorgon of Poitou," he returned with enthusiasm. "They are getting as rare now as this," he declared, nodding to the cobwebbed bottle, as he rose, drew the cork, and filled my glass.
While we sipped and chatted, his talk grew merry with chuckles and laughter, for he spoke of the friends of his youth, who played for him and sang to him—the thing which he loved most of all, he told me. "Once," he confessed to me, "I slipped away and travelled toHungary. Ah! how those good gipsies played for me there! I was drunk with their music for two weeks. It is stronger than wine, that music of the gipsies," he said knowingly.
Again our talk drifted to hunting, of the good old times when hares and partridges were plentiful, and so he ran on, warmed by the rare Musigny, reminiscing upon the old days and his old friends who were serious sportsmen, he declared, and knew the habits of the game they were after, for they seldom returned with an empty game-bag.
"And you are just as keen about shooting as ever?" I ventured.
"I shoot no more," he exclaimed with a shrug. "One must be a philosopher when one is past sixty—when one has no longer the solid legs to tramp with, nor the youth and the digestion tolive. Ah! Besides, the life has changed—Paris was gay enough in my day. Ilivedthen, but at sixty—I stopped—with my memories. No! no! beyond sixty it is quite impossible. One must be philosophic, eh?"
Before I could reply, Madame de Savignacentered the room. I felt the charm of her personality, as I looked into her eyes, and as she welcomed me I forgot that her faded silk gown was once in fashion before I was born, or that madame was short and no longer graceful. As the talk went on, I began to study her more at my ease, when some one rapped at the outer door of the vestibule. She started nervously, then, rising, whispered to François, who had come to open it, then a moment later rose again and, going out into the hall, closed the door behind her.
"Thursday then," I heard a man's gruff voice reply brusquely.
I saw de Savignac straighten in his chair, and lean to one side as if trying to catch a word of the muffled conversation in the vestibule. The next instant he had recovered his genial manner to me, but I saw that again he laboured for some moments painfully for his breath.
The door of the vestibule closed with a vicious snap. Then I heard the crunch of sabots on the gravelled court, and the next instant caught a glimpse of the stout, brutalfigure of the peasant Le Gros, the big dealer in cattle, as he passed the narrow window of the vestibule.
It washe, then, with his insolent, bestial face purple with good living, who had slammed the door. I half started indignantly from my chair—then I remembered it was no affair of mine.
Presently madame returned—flushed, and, with a forced smile, in which there was more pain than pleasure, poured for me another glass of Musigny. I saw instantly that something unpleasant had passed—something unusually unpleasant—perhaps tragic, and I discreetly rose to take my leave.
Without a word of explanation as to what had happened, Madame de Savignac kissed my dog good-bye on the top of his silky head, while de Savignac stroked him tenderly. He was perfectly willing to come with me, and cocked his head on one side.
We were all in the courtyard now.
"Au revoir," they waved to me.
"Au revoir," I called back.
"Au revoir," came back to me faintly, as Pierre and the doggie and I entered the green lane and started for home.
"Monsieur sees that I was right, is it not true?" ventured Pierre, as we gained the open fields. "Monsieur de Savignac would have been grieved had not monsieur accepted the little dog."
"Yes," I replied absently, feeling more like a marauder for having accepted all they had out of their hearts thrust upon me.
Then I stopped—lifted the roly-poly little spaniel, and taking him in my arms whispered under his silky ear: "We shall go back often, you and I"—and I think he understood.
A few days later I dropped into Madame Vinet's snug little café in Pont du Sable. It was early in the morning and the small room of the café, with barely space enough for its four tables still smelt of fresh soap suds and hot water. At one of the tables sat the peasant in his black blouse, sipping his coffee and applejack.
Le Gros lifted his sullen face as I entered, shifted his elbows, gripped the clean marble slab of his table with both his red hands, and with a shrewd glint from his small, cruel eyes, looked up and grunted.
"Ah!—bonjour, monsieur."
"Bonjour, Monsieur Le Gros," I replied. "We seem to be the only ones here. Where's the patronne?"
"Upstairs, making her bed—another dry day," he muttered, half to himself, half to me.
"She will stay dry for some days," I returned. "The wind is well set from the northeast."
"Sacristi!a dirty time," he growled. "My steers are as dry as an empty cask."
"I'd like a little rain myself," said I, reaching for a chair—"I have a young dog to train—a spaniel Monsieur de Savignac has been good enough to give me. He is too young to learn to follow a scent on dry ground."
Le Gros raised his bull-like head with a jerk.
"De Savignac gave you adog, did he? and he has a dog to give away, has he?"
The words came out of his coarse throat with a snarl.
I dropped the chair and faced him.
(He is the only man in Pont du Sable that I positively dislike.)
"Yes," I declared, "he gave me a dog. May I ask you what business it is of yours?"
A flash of sullen rage illumined for a moment the face of the cattle dealer. Then he muttered something in his peasant accent and sat glowering into his empty coffee cup as I turned and left the room, my mind reverting to Madame de Savignac's door which his coarse hand had closed with a vicious snap.
We took the short cut across the fields often now—my yellow puppy and I. Indeed I grew to see these good friends of mine almost daily, and as frequently as I could persuade them, they came to my house abandoned by the marsh.
The Peruvian gentleman's boarding house had been a failure, and I learned from the curé that the de Savignacs were hard pressed to pay their creditors.
It was Le Gros who held the mortgage, I further gleaned.
And yet those two dear people kept a brave heart. They were still giving what they had, and she kept him in ignorance as best she could, softening the helplessness of it all, with her gentleness and her courage.
In his vague realization that the end was near, there were days when he forced himself into a gay mood and would come chuckling down the lane to open the gate for me, followed by Mirza, the tawny old mother of my puppy, who kept her faithful brown eyes on his every movement. Often it was she who sprang nimbly ahead and unlatched the gate for me with her paw and muzzle, an old trick he had taught her, and he would laugh when she did it, and tell me there were no dogs nowadays like her.
Thus now and then he forced himself to forget the swarm of little miseries closing down upon him—forgot even his aches and pains, due largely to the dampness of the vine-smothered garçonnière whose old-fashioned interior smelt of cellar damp, for there was hardly a roomin it whose wall paper had escaped the mould.
It was not until March that the long-gathering storm broke—as quick as a crackling lizard of lightning strikes. Le Gros had foreclosed the mortgage.
The Château of Hirondelette was up for sale.
When de Savignac came out to open the gate for me late that evening his face was as white as the palings in the moonlight.
"Come in," said he, forcing a faint laugh—-he stopped for a moment as he closed and locked the gate—labouring painfully for his breath. Then he slipped his arm under my own. "Come along," he whispered, struggling for his voice. "I have found another bottle of Musigny."
A funeral, like a wedding or an accident, is quickly over. The sale of de Savignac's château consumed three days of agony.
As I passed the "garçonnière" by the lane beyond the courtyard on my way to the last day's sale, I looked over the hedge and saw that the shutters were closed—farther on, a doctor'sgig was standing by the gate. From a bent old peasant woman in sabots and a white cap, who passed, I learned which of the two was ill. It was as I had feared—his wife. And so I continued on my way to the sale.
As I passed through the gates of the château, the rasping voice of the lean-jawed auctioneer reached my ears as he harangued in the drizzling rain before the steps of the château the group of peasants gathered before him—widows in rusty crêpe veils, shrewd old Norman farmers in blue blouses looking for bargains, their carts wheeled up on the mud-smeared lawn. And a few second-hand dealers from afar, in black derbys, lifting a dirty finger to close a bid for mahogany.
Close to this sordid crowd on the mud-smeared lawn sat Le Gros, his heavy body sunk in a carved and gilded arm-chair that had once graced the boudoir of Madame de Savignac. As I passed him, I saw that his face was purple with drink. He sat there the picture of insolent ignorance, this pig of a peasant.
At times the auctioneer rallied the undecidedwith coarse jokes, and the crowd roared, for they are not burdened with delicacy, these Norman farmers.
"Allons! Allons!my good ladies!" croaked the auctioneer. "Forty sous for the lot. A bed quilt for a princess and a magnificent water filter de luxe that will keep your children well out of the doctor's hands.Allons!forty sous, forty-one—two?"
A merchant in hogs raised his red, puffy hand, then turned away with a leer as the shrill voice of a fisher woman cried, "Forty-five."
"Sold!" yelped the auctioneer—"sold to madame the widow Dupuis of Hirondelette," who was now elbowing her broad way through the crowd to her bargain which she struggled out with, red and perspiring, to the mud-smeared lawn, where her eldest daughter shrewdly examined the bedquilt for holes.
I turned away when it was all over and followed the crowd out through the gates. Le Gros was climbing into his cart. He was drunk and swearing over the poor result of the sale. De Savignac was still in his debt—and I continued on my way home, feeling as if I had attended an execution.
Half an hour later the sharp bark of my yellow puppy greeted me from beyond my wall. As I entered my courtyard, he came to me wriggling with joy. Suddenly I stopped, for my ear caught the sound of a tail gently patting the straw in the cavernous old stable beyond my spaniel's kennel. I looked in and saw a pair of eyes gleaming like opals in the gloom. Then the tawny body of Mirza, the mother, rose from the straw and came slowly and apologetically toward me with her head lowered.
"Suzette!" I called, "how did she get here?"
"The boy of Monsieur de Savignac brought her an hour ago, monsieur," answered the little maid. "There is a note for monsieur. I have left it on the table."
I went in, lighted the fire, and read the following: