While I watched, the curé slept soundly, his body shrouded in the blankets like some carved Gothic saint of old. The silence was intense—a silence that could be heard—broken onlyby the brisk ticking of the curé's watch on the narrow shelf. Occasionally a water-rat would patter over the sunken roof, become inquisitive, and peer in at me through the slit within half a foot of my nose. Once in a while I took down the fat opera-glass, focussing it upon the dim shapes that resembled ducks, but that proved to be bits of floating seaweed or a scurrying shadow as a cloud swept under the moon—all illusions, until my second watch, when, with a rush, seven mallards tumbled among our decoys. Instantly the curé awakened, sprang from his cot, and with sharp work we killed four.
"Stay where you are," he said as he laid his gun back in its rack. "I'll get into my hip-boots and get them before the water-rats steal what we've earned. They are skilled enough to get a decoy now and then. The marsh is alive with them at night."
Morning paled. The village lay half hidden behind the rifts of mist. Then dawn and the rising sun, the water like molten gold, the black decoys churning at their pickets sending up swirls of turquoise in the gold.
Suddenly the cracked bell rang out from the distant village. At that moment two long V-shaped strings of mallards came winging toward us from the north. I saw the curé glance at them. Then he held out his hand to me.
"You take them—I cannot," he said hurriedly. "I haven't a moment to lose—it is the bell for mass. Here's the key. Lock up when you leave."
"Dine with me to-night," I insisted, one eye still on the incoming ducks. "You have nobonne."
His hand was on thegabiondoor. "And if the northeast wind holds," he called back, "shall we shoot again to-night?"
"Yes, to-night!" I insisted.
"Then I'll come to dinner." And the door closed with a click.
Through the firing-slit I could see him leaping across the marsh toward the gray church with the cracked bell, and as he disappeared by the short cut I pulled the trigger of both barrels—and missed.
An hour later Suzette greeted me with eyes full of tears and anxiety.
"Ah! Mother of Pity! Monsieur is safe!" she cried. "Where has monsieur been,mon Dieu!"
"To mass, my child," I said gravely, filling her plump arms with the ducks. "Monsieur le Curé is coming to dinner!"
flying ducks
a château
Poor Tanrade! Just as I felt the future was allcouleur de rosewith him it has changed to gloom unutterable.
Ah, les femmes!I should never dare fall in love with a woman as exquisite as Alice de Bréville. She is too beautiful, too seductive, with her olive skin, her frank smile, and her adorable head poised upon a body much too well made. She is too tender, too complex, too intelligent. She has a way of mischievously caressing you with her eyes one moment and giving an old comrade like myself a platonic little pat on the back the next, which is exasperating. As a friend I adore her, but to fall in love with her!Ah, non, merci!I have hada checkered childhood and my full share of suffering; I wish some peace in my old age. At sixteen one goes to the war of love blindly, but at forty it is different. Our chagrins then plunge us into a state of dignified desolation.
Poor Tanrade! I learned of the catastrophe the other night when he solemnly entered my abandoned house by the marsh and sank his big frame in the armchair before my fire. He was no longer the genial bohemian of a Tanrade I had known. He was silent and haggard. He had not slept much for a week; neither had he worked at the score of his new opera or hunted, but he had smoked incessantly, furiously—a dangerous remedy with which to mend a broken heart.
My poor old friend! I was so certain of his happiness that night after dinner here in the House Abandoned, when he and Alice had lost themselves in the moonlight. Was it the moonlight? Or the kiss she gave him as they stood looking out over the lichen-stained wall of the courtyard to the fairy marsh beyond, still and sublime—wedded to the open sea at hightide—like a mirror of polished silver, its surface ruffled now and then by the splash of some incoming duck. He had poured out his heart to her then, and again over their liqueur and cigarettes at that fatal dinner of two at the château.
All this he confessed to me as he sat staring into the cheery blaze on my hearth. Under my friendly but somewhat judicial cross-examination that ensued, it was evident that not a word had escaped Alice's lips that any one but that big optimistic child of a Tanrade could have construed as her promise to be his wife. He confided her words to me reluctantly, now that he realized how little she had meant.
"Come," said I, in an effort to cheer him, "have courage! A woman's heart that is won easily is not worth fighting for. You shall see, old fellow—things will be better."
But he only shook his head, shrugged his great shoulders, and puffed doggedly at his pipe in silence. My tall clock in the corner ticked the louder, its brass pendulum glinting as it swung to and fro in the light of the slumbering fire. Ithrew on a fresh log, kicked it into a blaze, and poured out for him a stiff glass of applejack. I had faith in that applejack, for it had been born in the moonlit courtyard years ago. It roused him, for I saw something of his old-time self brighten within him; he even made an attempt at a careless smile—the reminiscent smile of a philosopher this time.
"What if I went to see her?" I remarked pointblank.
"You!Mon Dieu!" He half sprang out of the armchair in his intensity. "Are you crazy?"
"Forgive me," I apologized. "I did not mean to hurt you. I only thought—and you are in no condition to reason—that Alice may have changed her mind, may regret having refused you. Women change their minds, you know. She might even confess this to me since there is nothing between us and we are old friends."
"No, no," he protested. "You are not to speak of me to Madame de Bréville—do you understand?" he cried, his voice rising. "You are not to mention my name, promise me that."
This time it was I who shrugged my shoulders in reply. He sat gripping the arms of his chair, again his gaze reverted stolidly to the fire. The clock ticked on past midnight, peacefully aloof as if content to be well out of the controversy.
"A drop more?" I ventured, reaching for the decanter; but he stayed my arm.
"I've been a fool," he said slowly. "Ah! Mon Dieu! Les femmes! Les femmes! Les femmes!" he roared. "Very well," he exclaimed hotly, "it is well finished. To-morrow I must go to Paris for the new rehearsals. I have begged off for a week. Duclos is beside himself with anxiety—two telegrams to-day, the last one imperative. The new piece must open at the Folies Parisiennes the eighth."
I saw him out to the gate and there was a brave ring in his "bonsoir, mon vieux," as he swung off in the dusk of the starlit road.
He left the village the next day at noon by the toy train, "the little get off-the-track," as we call it. Perhaps he wished it would and end everything, including the rehearsals.
Bah! To be rehearsing lovelorn shepherdsand shepherdesses in sylvan dells. To call a halt eighteen times in the middle of the romantic duet between the unhappy innkeeper's daughter and the prince. To marry them all smoothly in B flat in the finale, and keep the brass down and the strings up in the apotheosis when the heart of the man behind the baton has been cured of all love and illusion—for did he not tell me "It is well finished"? Poor Tanrade!
Though it is but half a fortnight since he left, it seems years since he used to come into my courtyard, for he came and went as freely at all hours as the salt breeze from the marsh. Often he would wake me at daybreak, bellowing up to my window at the top of his barytone lungs some stirring aria, ending with: "Eh,mon vieux!Stop playing the prince! Get up out of that and come out on the marsh. There are ducks off the point. Where's Suzette? Where's the coffee?Sacristi!What a house. Half-past four and nobody awake!"
And he would stand there grinning; his big chest encased in a fisherman's jersey, a disreputable felt hat jammed on his head, and his feet in a pair of sabots that clattered like a farm-horse as he went foraging in the kitchen, upsetting the empty milk-tins and making such a bedlam that my good little maid-of-all-work, Suzette, would hurry in terror into her clothes and out to her beloved kitchen to save the rest from ruin.
Needless to say, nothing ever happened to anything. He could make more noise and do less harm than any one I ever knew. Then he would sing us both into good humour until Suzette's peasant cheeks shone like ripe apples.
"It is not the same without Monsieur Tanrade," Suzette sighed to-day as she brought my luncheon to my easel in a shady corner of my wild garden—a corner all cool roses and shadow.
"Ah, no!" I confessed as I squeezed out the last of a tube of vermilion on the edge of my palette.
"Ah, no!" she sighed softly, and wiped her eyes briskly with the back of her dimpled red hand. "Ah, no!Parbleu!"
And just then the bell over my gate jingled. "Some one rings," whispered Suzette and she ran to open the gate. It was thevalet de chambrefrom the château with a note from Alice, which read:
Dear Friend: It is lonely, this big house of mine. Do come and dine with me at eight.Hastily,A. de B.
Dear Friend: It is lonely, this big house of mine. Do come and dine with me at eight.
Hastily,A. de B.
Added to this was the beginning of a postscript crossed out.
Upon a leaf torn from my sketchbook I scribbled the answer:
Good Dear Charitable Friend: The House Abandoned is a hollow mockery without Tanrade. I'll come gladly at eight.
Good Dear Charitable Friend: The House Abandoned is a hollow mockery without Tanrade. I'll come gladly at eight.
And Suzette brought it out to the waitingvalet de chambrewhom she addressed respectfully as "monsieur," half on account of his yellow-striped waistcoat and half because he was a Parisian.
Bravo, Alice! Here then was the opportunity I had been waiting for, and I hugged myself over the fact. It was like the first ray of sunshine breaking through a week of leaden sky. For a long time I paced back and forth among the paths of the snug garden, past the roses and the heliotrope down as far as the flaming geraniums and the hollyhocks and the droning bees, and back again by way of some excellent salads and the bed of artichokes, while I turned over in my mind and rehearsed to myself all I intended to say to her.
Alice lonely! With a château, two automobiles, and all Paris at her pretty feet! Ha! ha! The symptoms were excellent. The patient was doing well. To-night would see her convalescent and happily on the road to recovery. This once happy family of comrades should be no longer under the strain of disunion, we should have another dinner soon and the House Abandoned would ring with cheer as it had never rung before. Japanese lanterns among the fruit-trees of the tangled garden, the courtyard full of villagers, red andblue fire, skyrockets and congratulations, a Normand dinner and a keg of good sound wine to wish a long and happy life to both. There would be the same Tanrade again and the same Alice, and they would be married by the curé in the little gray church with the cracked bell, with the marquis and the marquise as notables in the front pew. In my enthusiasm I saw it all.
The lane back of the House Abandoned shortens the way to the château by half a kilometre. It was this lane that I entered at dusk by crawling under the bars that divided it from the back pasture full of gnarled apple-trees, under which half a dozen mild-eyed cows had settled themselves for the night. They rose when they caught sight of me and came toward me blowing deep moist breaths as a quiet challenge to the intruder, until halted by the bars they stood in a curious group watching me until I disappeared up the lane, a lane screened from the successive pastures on either side by an impenetrable hedge and flanked its entire length by tall trees, their tops meeting overheadlike the Gothic arches of a cathedral aisle. This roof of green made the lane at this hour so dark that I had to look sharp to avoid the muddy places, for the lane ascended like the bed of a brook until it reached the plateau of woodlands and green fields above, commanding a sweeping view of marsh and sea below.
Birds fluttered nervously in the hedges, frightened at my approaching footsteps. A hare sniffing in the middle of the path flattened his long ears and sprang into the thicket ahead. The nightingales in the forest above began calling to one another. Two doves went skimming out of the leaves over my head. Even a peacemaker may be mistaken for an enemy. And now I had gained the plateau and it grew lighter—that gentle light with which night favours the open places.
There are two crossroads at the top of the lane. The left one leads to the hamlet of Beaufort le Petit, a sunken cluster of farms ten good leagues from Pont du Sable; the right one swings off into the highroad half a mile beyond, which in turn is met by the private way of thechâteau skirting the stone wall surrounding the park, which, as early as 1608, served as the idle stronghold of the Duc de Rambutin. It has seen much since then and has stood its ground bravely under the stress of misfortune. The Prussians hammered off two of its towers, and an artillery fire once mowed down some of its oldest trees and wrecked the frescoed ceiling and walls of the salon, setting fire to the south wing, which was never rebuilt and whose jagged and blackened walls the roses and vines have long since lovingly hidden from view.
Alice bought this once splendid feudal estate literally for a song—the song in the second act of Fremier's comedy, which had a long run at the Variétés three years ago, and in which she earned an enviable success and some beautiful bank-notes. Were the Duc de Rambutin alive I am sure he would have presented it to her—shooting forest, stone wall, and all. They say he had an intolerable temper, but was kind to ladies and lap-dogs.
It was not long before I unlatched a moss-covered gate with one hinge lost in the weeds—a little woebegone gate for intimate friends, that croaked like a night-bird when it opened, and closed with a whine. Beyond it lay a narrow path through a rose-garden leading to the château. This rose-garden is the only cultivated patch within the confines of the wall, for on either side of it tower great trees, their aged trunks held fast in gnarled thickets of neglected vines. It is only another "house abandoned," this château of Alice's, save that its bygone splendour asserts itself through the scars, and my own by the marsh never knew luxury even in its best days.
"Madame is dressing," announced that most faithful of old servitors, Henri, who before Alice conferred a full-fledged butlership upon him in his old age was since his youth a stage-carpenter at the Théâtre Français.
"Will monsieur have the goodness to wait for madame in the library?" added Henri, as he relieved me of my hat and stick, deposited them noiselessly upon an oak table, and led me to a portière of worn Gobelin which he lifted for me with a bow of the Second Empire.
What a rich old room it is, this silent library of the choleric duke, with its walls panelled in worm-eaten oak reflecting the firelight and its rows of volumes too close to the grave to be handled. Here and there above the high wainscoting are ancestral portraits, some of them as black as a favourite pipe. Above the great stone chimney-piece is a full-length figure of the duke in a hunting costume of green velvet. The candelabra that Henri had just lighted on the long centre-table, littered with silver souvenirs and the latest Parisian comedies, now illumined the duke's smile, which he must have held with bad grace during the sittings. The rest of him was lost in the shadow above the chimney-piece of sculptured cherubs, whose missing noses have been badly restored in cement by the gardener.
I had settled myself in a chintz-covered chair and was idly turning the pages of one of the latest of the Parisian comedies when I heard the swish of a gown and the patter of two small slippered feet hurrying across the hall. I rose to regard my hostess with a feeling of tendercuriosity mingled with resentment over her treatment of my old friend, when the portière was lifted and Alice came toward me with both white arms outstretched in welcome. She was so pale in her dinner gown of black tulle that all the blood seemed to have taken refuge in her lips—so pale that the single camellia thrust in her corsage was less waxen in its whiteness than her neck.
I caught her hands and she stood close to me, smiling bravely, the tips of her fingers trembling in my own.
"You are ill!" I exclaimed, now thoroughly alarmed. "You must go straight to bed."
"No, no," she replied, with an effort. "Only tired, very tired."
"You should not have let me come," I protested.
She smiled and smoothed back a wave of her glossy black hair and I saw the old mischievous gleam flash in her dark eyes.
"Come," she whispered, leading me to the door of the dining room. "It is a secret," she confided, with a forced little laugh. "Look!" And she pinched my arm.
I glanced within—the table with its lace and silver under the glow of the red candle-shades was laid for two.
"It was nice of you," I said.
"We shall dine alone, you and I," she murmured. "I am so tired of company."
I was on the point of impulsively mentioning poor Tanrade's absence, but the subtle look in her eyes checked me. During dinner we should have our serious little talk, I said to myself as we returned to the library table.
"It's so amusing, that little comedy of Flandrean's," laughed Alice, picking up the volume I had been scanning. "The second act is a jewel with its delicious situation in which François Villers, the husband, and Thérèse, his wife, divorce in order to carry out between them a secret love-affair—a series of mysterious rendezvous that terminate in an amusing elopement.Très chic, Flandrean's comedy. It should have asuccès fouat the Palais Royal."
"Madame is served," gravely announced Henri.
Not once during dinner was Alice serious.Over the soup—an excellent bisque ofécrevisses—she bubbled over with the latest Parisian gossip, the new play at the Odéon, the fashion in hats. With the fish she prattled on over the limitations of the new directoire gowns and the scandal involving a certain tenor and a duchess. Tanrade's defence, which I had so carefully thought out and rehearsed in my garden, seemed doomed to remain unheard, for her cleverness in evading the subject, her sudden change to the merriest of moods, and her quick wit left me helpless. Neither did I make any better progress during the pheasant and the salad, and as she sipped but twice the Pommard and scarcely moistened her lips with the champagne my case seemed hopeless. Henri finally left us alone over our coffee and cigarettes. I had become desperate.
"Alice," I said bluntly, "we are old friends. I have some things to say to you of—of the utmost importance. You will listen, my friend, will you not, until I am quite through, for I shall not mention it again?"
She leaned forward with a little start andgazed at me suddenly, with dilated eyes—eyes that were the next minute lowered in painful submission, the corners of her mouth contracting nervously.
"Mon Dieu!" she murmured, looking up. "Mon Dieu!But you are cruel!"
"No," I replied calmly. "It is you who are cruel."
"No, no, you shall not!" she exclaimed, raising both ringless hands in protest, her breath coming quick. "I—I know what you are going to say. No, my dear friend—I beg of you—we are good comrades. Is it not so? Let us remain so."
"Listen," I implored.
"Ah, you men with your idea of marriage!" she continued. "The wedding, the aunts, the cousins, who come staring at you for a day and giving you advice for years. A solemn apartment near the Etoile—madame with her afternoons—monsieur with his club, his maîtresse, his gambling and his debts—the children with their English governess. A villa by the sea, tennis, infants and sand-forts. The annualstupidvoyage en Suisse. The inane slavery of it all.Youwho are a bohemian, you wholive—with all your freedom—all my freedom!Non, merci!I have seen all that! Bah! You are as crazy as Tanrade."
"Alice," I cried, "you think——"
"Precisely, my friend."
She rose swiftly, crossed the room, and before I knew it slipped back of my chair, put both arms about my neck, kissed me, and burst into tears.
"There, there,mon pauvre petit," she whispered. "Forgive me—I was angry—we are not so stupid as all that—eh? We are not like the stupidbourgeoisie."
"But it is not I——" I stammered.
She caught her breath in surprise, straightened, and slowly retraced her steps to her vacant chair.
"Ah! So it is that?" she said slowly, drawing her chair close to my own. Then she seated herself, rested her chin in her hands, and regarded me for some moments intently.
"So you have come for—for him?" sheresumed, her breast heaving. "I am right, am I not?"
"He loves you," I declared. "Do you think I am blind as to your love for him? You who came to greet me to-night out of your suffering?"
For some moments she was silent, her fingers pressed over her eyes.
"Do you love him?" I insisted.
"No, no," she moaned. "It is impossible."
"Do you know," I continued, "that he has not slept or hunted or smoked for a week before he was forced to go to Paris? Can you realize what he suffers now during days of exhausting rehearsals? He came to me a wreck," I said. "You have been cruel and you have——"
Again she had become deathly pale. Then at length she rose slowly, lifted her head proudly, and led the way back to the library fire.
"You must go," she said. "It is late."
When the little boy of the fisherman, Jean Tranchard, was not to be found playing with the other barelegged tots in the mud of the village alleys, or wandering alone on the marsh, oftendangerously near the sweep of the incoming tide, one could be quite sure he was safe with Tanrade. Frequently, too, when the maker of ballets was locked in his domain and his servant had strict orders to admit no one—neither Monsieur le Curé nor the mayor, nor so intimate a comrade as myself—during such hours as these the little boy was generally beside the composer, his chubby toes scarcely reaching to the rungs of the chair beside Tanrade's working desk.
Though the little boy was barely seven he was a sturdy little chap with fair curly hair, blue eyes, and the quick gestures of his father. He had a way of throwing out his chest when he was pleased, and gesticulating with open arms and closed fists when excited, which is peculiar to the race of fishermen. The only time when he was perfectly still was when Tanrade worked in silence. He would then often sit beside him for hours waiting until the composer dropped his pen, swung round in his chair to the keyboard at his elbow, and while the piano rang with melody the little boy's eyesdanced. He forgot during such moments of ecstasy that his father was either out at sea with his nets or back in the village good-naturedly drunk, or that his mother, whom he vaguely remembered, was dead.
Tanrade was a so much better father to him than his own that the rest of his wretched little existence did not count. When the father was fishing, the little boy cared for himself. He knew how to heat the pot and make the soup when there was any to make. He knew where to dig for clams and sputtering crabs. It was the bread that bothered him most—it cost two sous. It was Tanrade who discovered and softened these hard details.
The house in which the fisherman and the little boy live is tucked away in an angle of the walled lane leading out to the marsh. This stone house of Tranchard's takes up as little room as possible, since its front dare not encroach upon the lane and its back is hunched up apologetically against the angle of the wall. The house has but two compartments—the loft above stored with old nets and broken oars, and the living roombeneath, whose dirt floor dampens the feet of an oak cupboard, a greasy table, a chair with a broken leg, and a mahogany bed. Over the soot-blackened chimney-piece is a painted figure of the Virgin, and a frigate in a bottle.
Monsieur le Curé had been watching all night beside the mahogany bed. Now and then he slipped his hand in the breast of his soutane of rusty black, drew out a steel watch, felt under a patchwork-quilt for a small feverish wrist, counted its feeble pulse, and filling a pewter spoon with a mixture of aconite, awakened the little boy who gazed at him with hollow eyes sunken above cheeks of dull crimson.
In the corner, his back propped against the cupboard, his bare feet tucked under him, dozed Tranchard. There was not much else he could do, for he was soaked to the skin and half drunk. Occasionally he shifted his feet, awakened, and dimly remembered the little boy was worse; that this news had been hailed to him by the skipper of the mackerel smack,La Belle Élise, and that he had hauled in his empty nets and come home.
As the gray light of dawn crept into the room, the little boy again grew restless. He opened the hollow eyes and saw dimly the black figure of the curé.
"Tanné," he whimpered. "Where is he, Tanné?"
"Monsieur Tanrade will come," returned the curé, "if you go to sleep like a brave little man."
"Tanné," repeated the child and closed his eyes obediently.
A cock crowed in a distant yard, awakening a sleek cat who emerged from beneath the bed, yawned, stretched her claws, and walked out of the narrow doorway into the misty lane.
The curé rose stiffly, went over to the figure in the corner and shook it. Tranchard started up out of a sound sleep.
"Tell madame when she arrives that I have gone for Doctor Thévenet. I shall return before night."
"I won't forget," grumbled Tranchard.
"I have left instructions for madame beside the candle. See that you keep the kettle boiling for the poultices."
The fisherman nodded. "Eh ben!How is it with the kid?" he inquired. "He does not take after his mother.Parbleu!She was as strong as a horse, my woman."
Monsieur le Curé did not reply. He had taken down his flat black hat from a peg and was carefully adjusting his square black cravat edged with white beneath his chin, when Alice de Bréville entered the doorway.
"How is his temperature?" she asked eagerly, unpinning a filmy green veil and throwing aside a gray automobile coat.
Monsieur le Curé graciously uncovered his head. "There has been no change since you left at midnight," he said gravely. "The fever is still high, the pulse weaker. I am going for Doctor Thévenet after mass. There is a train at eight."
Tranchard was now on his knees fanning a pile of fagots into a blaze, the acrid smoke drifting back into the low-ceiled room.
"I will attend to it," said Alice, turning to the fisherman. "Tell my chauffeur to wait at the church for Monsieur le Curé. The auto is at the end of the lane."
For some minutes after the clatter of Tranchard's sabots had died away in the lane, Alice de Bréville and Monsieur le Curé stood in earnest conversation beside the table.
"It may save the child's life," pleaded the priest. There was a ring of insistence in his voice, a gleam in his eyes that made the woman beside him tremble.
"You do not understand," she exclaimed, her breast heaving. "You do not realize what you ask of me. I cannot."
"You must," he insisted. "He might not understand it coming from me. You and he are old friends. Youmust, I tell you. Were he only here the child would be happy, the fever would be broken. It must be broken and quickly. Thévenet will tell you that when he comes."
Alice raised her hands to her temples.
"Will you?" he pleaded.
"Yes," she replied half audibly.
Monsieur le Curé gave a sigh of relief.
"God be with you!" said he.
He watched her as she wrote in haste thefollowing telegram in pencil upon the back of a crumpled envelope:
Monsieur Tanrade, Théâtre des Folies Parisiennes, Paris.Tranchard's child very ill. Come at once.A. de Bréville.
Monsieur Tanrade, Théâtre des Folies Parisiennes, Paris.
Tranchard's child very ill. Come at once.
A. de Bréville.
This she handed to the priest in silence. Monsieur le Curé tucked it safely in the breast of his cassock. "God be with you!" he repeated and turned out into the lane. He ran, for the cracked bell for mass had ceased ringing.
The woman stood still by the table as if in a dream, then she staggered to the door, closed it, and throwing herself on her knees by the bedside of the sleeping boy, buried her face in her hands.
The child stirred, awakened by her sobbing.
"Tanné," he cried feebly.
"He will come," she said.
Outside in the mist-soaked lane three toothless fisherwomen gossiped in whispers.
Almost any day that you pass through the village you will see a chubby little rascal who greets you with a cheery "Bonjour" and runs away, dragging a tin horse with a broken tail. Should you chance to glance over my wall you will discover the tattered remnants of two Japanese lanterns hanging among the fruit-trees. They are all that remain of a fête save the memory of two friends to whom the whole world now seemscouleur de rose.
"Hi, there! wake up! Where's Suzette? Where's the coffee! Daylight and not a soul up!Mon Dieu, what a house! Hurry up,Mon vieux!Alice is waiting!"
three toothless fisherwomen
smuggler ship
Some centuries ago the windows of my house abandoned on the marsh looked out upon a bay gay with the ships of Spanish pirates, for in those days Pont du Sable served them as a secret refuge for repairs. Hauled up to the tawny marsh were strange craft with sails of apple-green, rose, vermilion and sinister black; there were high sterns pierced by carved cabin-windows—some of them iron-barred, to imprison ladies of high or low degree and unfortunate gentlemen who fought bravely to defend them. From oaken gunwales glistened slim cannon, their throats swabbed clean after some wholesale murder on the open seas. Yes, it must have been a lively enough bay some centuries ago!
To-day Pont du Sable goes to bed without even turning the key in the lock. This is because of a vast army of simple men whose word, in France, is law.
To begin with, there are the President of the République and the Ministers of War and Agriculture, and Monsieur the Chief of Police—a kind little man in Paris whom it is better to agree with—and the préfet and the sous-préfet—all the way down the line of authority to the red-faced, blusteringchef de gareat Pont du Sable—and Pierre.
On off-duty days Pierre is my gardener at eleven sous an hour. On these occasions he wears voluminous working trousers of faded green corduroy gathered at the ankles; a gray flannel shirt and a scarlet cravat. On other days his short, wiry body is encased in a carefully brushed uniform of dark blue with a double row of gold buttons gleaming down his solid chest. When on active duty in the Customs Coast Patrol of the République Française at Pont du Sable, he carries a neatly folded cape with a hood, a bayonet, a heavy calibred six-shooter and a trusty field-glass, useful in locating suspicious-looking objects on marsh or sea.
On this particular morning Pierre was late! I had been leaning over the lichen-stained wall of my wild garden waiting to catch sight of him as he left the ragged end of the straggling village. Had I mistaken the day? Impossible! It was Thursday and I knew he was free. Finally I caught sight of him hurrying toward me down the road—not in his working clothes of faded green corduroy, but in the full majesty of his law-enforcing uniform. What had happened? I wondered. Had his stern brigadier refused to give him leave?
"Bonjour, Pierre!" I called to him as he came within hailing distance.
He touched the vizor of his cap in military salute, and a moment later entered my garden.
"A thousand pardons, monsieur," he apologized excitedly, labouring to catch his breath.
"My artichokes have been waiting for you," I laughed; "they are nearly strangled with weeds. I expected you yesterday." He followed methrough a lane of yellow roses leading to the artichoke bed. "What has kept you, Pierre?"
He stopped, looked me squarely in the eyes, placed his finger in the middle of his spiked moustache, and raised his eyebrows mysteriously.
"Monsieur must not ask me," he replied. "I have been on duty for forty-eight hours; there was not even time to change my uniform."
"A little matter for headquarters?" I ventured indiscreetly, with a nod in the direction of Paris.
Pierre shrugged his shoulders and smiled. "Monsieur must ask the semaphore; my lips are sealed."
Had he been the chief of the Secret Service just in possession of the whereabouts of an international criminal, he could not have been more uncommunicative.
"And monsieur's artichokes?" he asked, abruptly changing the subject.
Further inquiry I knew was useless—even dangerous. Indeed I swallowed my curiosity whole, for I was aware that this simple gardener of mine, in his official capacity, could put me in irons, drag me before my friend the ruddy littlemayor, and cast me in jail at Bar la Rose, had I given him cause. Then indeed, as Pompanet said, I would be "Asacrévagabond from Pont du Sable."
Was it not only the other day a well-dressed stranger hanging about my lost village had been called for by two gendarmes, owing to Pierre's watchful eye? And did not the farmer Milon pay dearly enough for the applejack he distilled one dark night? I recalled, too, a certain morning when, a stranger on the marsh, I had lighted Pierre's cigarette with an honest wax-match from England. He recognized the brand instantly.
"They are the best in the world," I had remarked bravely.
"Yes," he had replied, "but dear, monsieur. The fine is a franc apiece in France."
We had reached the artichokes.
"Mon Dieu!" exclaimed Pierre, glancing at the riot of weeds as he stripped off his coat and, unbuckling his belt with the bayonet, the six-shooter and the field-glass, hung them in the shade upon a convenient limb of a pear tree. Hemeasured the area of the unruly patch with a military stride, stood thinking for a moment, and then, as if a happy thought had struck him, returned to me with a gesture of enthusiasm.
"If monsieur will permit me to offer a suggestion—that is, if monsieur approves—I should like to make a fresh planting. Ah! I will explain what I mean to monsieur, so monsieur may see clearly my ideas.Voilà!" he exclaimed. "It is to have the new artichokes planted in three circles—in three circles, monsieur," he went on excitedly, "crossed with the star of the compass," he continued, as the idea rapidly developed in his peasant brain. "Then in the centre of the star to plant monsieur's initials in blue and red flowers.Voilà!It will be something for monsieur's friends to admire, eh?"
He stood waiting tensely for my reply, for I shivered inwardly at the thought of the prospective chromo.
"Excellent, my good Pierre," I returned, not wishing to hurt his feelings. "Excellent for the gardens of the Tuileries, but my garden is such a simple one."
"Pardon, monsieur," he said, with a touch of mingled disappointment and embarrassment, "they shall be replanted, of course, just as monsieur wishes." And Pierre went to digging weeds with a will while I went back to my own work.
At noon Pierre knocked gently at my study door.
"I must breakfast, monsieur," he apologized, "and get a little sleep. I have promised my brigadier to get back at three."
"And to-morrow?" I asked.
Again the shoulders shrugged under the uniform.
"Ah, monsieur!" he exclaimed helplessly. "Malheureusement, to-morrow I am not free; nor the day after.Parbleu!I cannot tell monsieurwhenI shall be free."
"I understand, Pierre," said I.
Before sundown the next afternoon I was after a hare through a maze of thicket running back of the dunes fronting the open sea. I kept on through a labyrinth of narrow trails—crossing and recrossing each other—the private by-ways of sleek old hares in time of trouble, for the dunes were honeycombed with their burrows. Now and then I came across a tent-shaped thatched hut lined with a bed of straw, serving as snug shelters for the coast patrol in tough weather.
I had just turned into a tangle of scrub-brush, and could hear the breakers pound and hiss as they swept up upon the hard smooth beach beyond the dunes, when a low whistle brought me to a leisurely halt, and I saw Pierre spring up from a thicket a rod ahead of me—a Government carbine nestled in the hollow of his arm.
I could scarcely believe it was the genial and ever-willing Pierre of my garden. He was the hard-disciplined soldier now, under orders. I was thankful he had not sent a bullet through me for not halting more promptly than I did.
"What are you doing here?" he demanded, coming briskly toward me along a trail no wider than his feet.
Instantly my free hand went to my hunting-cap in salute.
"After—a—hare!" I stammered innocently.
"Not so loud," he whispered. "Mon Dieu!If the brigadier should hear you! Come with me," he commanded, laying his hand firmly upon my arm. "There are six of us hidden between here and the fortress. It is well that you stumbled upon me first. They must know who you are. It is not safe for you to be hunting to-day."
I had not followed him more than a dozen rods before one of his companions was at my side. "The American," said Pierre in explanation, and we passed on down through a riot of stunted growth that choked the sides of a hollow.
Beyond this rose the top of a low circular fort overgrown with wire-grass—the riot of tangle ceasing as we reached the bottom of the hollow and stood in an open patch before an ancient iron gate piercing the rear of the fort.
Pierre lifted the latch and we passed through a wall some sixteen feet thick and into a stone-paved courtyard with a broad flight of steps at its farther end sweeping to the top of the circular defence. Flanking the sunken courtyard itself were a dozen low vaultlike compartments, someof them sealed by heavy doors. At one of these, containing a narrow window, Pierre knocked. The door opened and I stood in the presence of the Brigadier Bompard.
"The American gentleman," announced Pierre, relieving me of my gun.
The brigadier bowed, looked me over sharply, and bade me enter.
"At your service, monsieur," he said coldly, waving his big freckled hand toward a chair drawn up to a fat little stove blushing under a forced draft.
"At yours, monsieur," I returned, bowed, and took my seat.
Then there ensued a dead silence, Pierre standing rigid behind my chair, the brigadier reseated back of a desk littered with official papers.
For some moments he sat writing, his savage gray eyes scanning the page, the ends of his ferocious moustache twitching nervously as his pen scratched on. Back of his heavy shoulders ran a shelf supporting a row of musty ledgers, and above a stout chest in one corner was a rack of gleaming carbines.
The silence became embarrassing. Still the pen scratched on. Was he writing my death-warrant, I wondered nervously, or only a milder order for my arrest? It was a relief when he finally sifted a spoonful of fine blue sand over the document, poured the remaining grains back into their receptacle, puffed out his coarse red jowls, emitted a grunt of approval, and raised his keen eyes to mine.
"A thousand pardons, monsieur," I began, "for being where I assure you I would not have been had I known exactly where I was."
"So monsieur is fond of the chase of the hare?" he asked, with a grim smile.
"So fond, Monsieur le Brigadier," I replied, "that my enthusiasm has, as you see, led me thoughtlessly into your private territory. I beg of you to accept my sincere apologies."
He reached back of him, took down one of the musty ledgers, and began to turn the leaves methodically. From where I sat I saw his coarse forefinger stop under a head-line.
"Smeeth, Berkelek," he muttered, and readon down the page. "Citizen ofAmérique du Nord.
"Height—medium.
"Age—forty-one.
"Hair—auburn.
"Eyes—brown.
"Chin and frontal—square.
"No scars."
"Would your excellency like to see my hunting permit and description?" I ventured.
"Unnecessary—it is in duplicate here," he returned curtly, and his eyes again reverted to the ledger. Then he closed the book, rose, and drawing his chair to the stove planted his big fists on his knees.
I began to breathe normally.
"So you are a painter?" said he.
"Yes," I confessed, "but I do not make a specialty of fortresses, your excellency, even in the most distant landscapes."
I was grateful he understood, for I saw a gleam of merriment flash in his eyes.
"Bon!" he exclaimed briskly—evidently the title of "excellency" helped. "It is not the bestday, however, for you to be hunting hares. Are you a good shot, monsieur?"
"That is an embarrassing question," I returned. "If I do not miss I generally kill."
Pierre, who, during the interview, had been standing mute in attention, now stepped up to him and bending with a hurried "Pardon," whispered something in his coarse red ear.
The brigadier raised his shaggy eyebrows and nodded in assent.
"Ah! So you are a friend of Monsieur le Curé!" he exclaimed. "You would not be Monsieur le Curé's friend if you were not a good shot.Sapristi!" He paused, ran his hand over his rough jowls, and resumed bluntly: "It is something to kill the wild duck; another to kill a man."
"Has war been suddenly declared?" I asked in astonishment.
A gutteral laugh escaped his throat, he shook his grizzled head in the negative.
"A little war of my own," said he, "a serious business,parbleu!"
"Contraband?" I ventured.
The coarse mouth under the bristling moustache, four times the size of Pierre's, closed with a snap, then opened with a growl.
"Sacré mille tonnerres!" he thundered, slamming his fist down on the desk within reach of him. "They are the devil, those Belgians! It is for them my good fellows lose their sleep." Then he stopped, and eyeing me shrewdly added: "Monsieur, you are an outsider and a gentleman. I can trust you. Three nights ago a strange sloop, evidently Belgian, from the cut of her, tried to sneak in here, but our semaphore on the point held her up and she had to run back to the open sea. Bah! ThosesacréBelgians have the patience of a fox!"
"She was painted like one of our fishing-smacks," interposed Pierre, now too excited to hold his tongue, "but she did not know the channel."
"Aye, and she'll try it again," growled the brigadier, "if the night be dark. She'll find it clear sailing in, but a hot road out."
"Tobacco?" I asked, now fully alive to the situation.
The brigadier spat.
"Of course, as full as she'll float," he answered. He leaned forward and touched me good-humouredly on the shoulder. "I'm short of men," he said hurriedly.
"Command me," I replied. "I'll do my best. I shall return to-night." And I rose to take my leave, but he instantly raised his hand in protest. "You are under arrest, monsieur," he declared quietly, with a shrug of his shoulders.
I looked at him wide-eyed in astonishment.
"Arrest!" I gasped.
"Do not be alarmed," he replied. "It will only be temporary, I assure you, but since you have so awkwardly stumbled among us there is no alternative but for me to detain you until thissacréaffair is well over. I cannot, at all events, let you return to the village to-night."
"But I give you my word of honour, monsieur," I declared, "I shall not open my lips to a soul. Besides, I must dine at eight to-night with Madame de Bréville. Your excellency can well understand."
"I know you have friends, monsieur; theymight be inquisitive; and those friends have servants, and those servants have friends," was his reply. "No, it is better that you stay. Pierre, give monsieur a carbine and a place ten metres from your own at sundown; then report to me he is there. Now you may go, monsieur."
Pierre touched me on the shoulder; then suddenly realizing I was under orders and a prisoner, I straightened, saluted the brigadier, and followed Pierre out of the fort with the best grace I could muster.
"Pierre!" I exclaimed hotly, as we stood again in the thicket. "How long since you've held up anything here—contraband, I mean?"
For a moment he hesitated, then his voice sank to a whisper.
"They say it is all of twenty years, perhaps longer," he confessed. "But to-night monsieur shall see. Monsieur is, of course, not exactly a prisoner or he would now be in the third vault from the right."
"A prisoner! The devil I'm not? Didn't he tell me I was?" I exclaimed.
"Mon Dieu!What will you have, monsieur?" returned Pierre excitedly, under his breath. "It is the brigadier's orders. I was afraid monsieur might reply to him in anger. Ah,par exemple!Then monsieur would have seen a wild bull. Oh, la! la! When the brigadier is furious——Ah,ça!" And he led the way to my appointed ambush without another word.
Despite my indignation at being thus forced into the service and made a prisoner to boot—however temporary it might be—I gradually began to see the humour of the situation. It was very like a comic opera, I thought, as I lay flat on the edge of the thicket and pried away a small opening in the tangle through which I could look down upon the sweep of beach below me and far out to sea. Thus I lay in wait for the smuggling crew to arrive—to be blazed at and perhaps captured.
What if they outnumber us? We might all perish then, with no hope of quarter from these men whom we were lying in wait for like snakes in the grass. One thing, however, I was firmly resolved upon, and that was to shoot safely overanything that lay in range except in case of self-defence. I was never of a murderous disposition, and the thought of another's blood on my hands sent a fresh shiver along my prostrate spine. Then again the comic-opera side of it struck me. I began to feel more like an extra super in a one-night stand than a real soldier. What, after all, if the smugglers failed us?
I was pondering upon the dangerous effect upon the brigadier of so serious a stage wait, when Pierre crawled over to me from his ambush ten metres from my own, to leave me my ration of bread and wine. He was so excited by this time that his voice trembled in my ear.
"Gaston, my comrade, the fifth down the line," he whispered, "has just seen two men prowling on the marsh; they are, without doubt, accomplices. Gaston has gone to tell the brigadier." He ran his hand carefully along the barrel of my carbine. "Monsieur must hold high," he explained in another whisper, "since monsieur is unaccustomed to the gun of war. It is this little machine here that does the trick." He bent his eyes close to the hind sight andscrewed it up to its notch at one hundred and fifty metres.
I nodded my thanks, and he left me to my bread and wine and crept cautiously back to his ambush.
A black night was rapidly settling. Above me in the great unfathomable vault of sky not a star glimmered. Under the gloom of the approaching darkness the vast expanse of marsh to my left lay silent, desolate, and indistinct, save for its low edge of undulating sand dunes. Only the beach directly before me showed plainly, seemingly illumined by the breakers, that gleamed white like the bared teeth of a fighting line of wolves.
It was a sullen, cheerless sea, from which the air blew over me damp and raw; the only light visible being the intermittent flash from the distant lighthouse on Les Trois Loups, beyond the marsh.
One hour passed—two hours—during which I saw nothing alive and moving save a hare foraging timidly on the beach for his own rations.After a while he hopped back to his burrow in the thicket, a thicket of silence from which I knew at any moment might break forth a murderous fire. It grew colder and colder, I had to breathe lustily into the collar of my jersey to keep out the chill. I began to envy the hare snug in his burrow. Thus I held my vigil, and the night wore on.
Ah! my friend the curé! I mused. Was there ever such an indefatigable sportsman? Lucky curé! He was not a prisoner, neither had he been pressed into the customs patrol like a hired assassin. At that moment I knew Monsieur le Curé was snug in his duck-blind for the night, a long two miles from where I lay; warm, and comfortable, with every chance on such a night to kill a dozen fat mallards before his daylight mass. What would my friend Madame Alice de Bréville, and that whole-souled fellow Tanrade, think when I did not appear as I had promised, at madame's château, to dine at eight? Cold as I was, I could not help chuckling over the fact that it was no fault of mine.
I was a prisoner. Alice and Tanrade woulddine together. It would be then a dinner for two. I have never known a woman as discreet as Alice. She had insisted that I dine with them. In Paris Alice might not have insisted, but in the lost village, with so many old women with nothing to talk about save other peoples' affairs! Lucky Tanrade!
I could see from where I lay the distant mass of trees screening her château, and picture to myself my two dear friendsalone. Their chairs—now that my vacant one was the only witness—drawn close together; he holding her soft, responsive little hand between the soup and the fish, between the duck and the salad; then continuously over their dessert and Burgundy—she whom he had held close to his big heart that night after dinner in that once abandoned house of mine, when they had gone out together into my courtyard and disappeared in the shadows of the moonlight.
Dining alone! The very thing I had tried to bring about. But for the stern brigadier we should have been that wretched number—three—to-night at the château. Ah, you dearhuman children, are you conscious and grateful that I am lying out like a vagabond, a prisoner, that you may be alone?
I began to wonder, too, what the Essence of Selfishness, that spoiled and adorable cat of mine, would think when it came her bedtime hour. Would Suzette, in her anxiety over my absence, remember to give her the saucer of warm milk? Yet I knew the Essence of Selfishness would take care of herself; she would sleep with Suzette. Catch her lying out on the bare ground like her master when she could curl herself up at the foot of two fuzzy blankets in a tiny room next to the warm kitchen.
It was after midnight when Pierre crawled over to me again, and pointed to a black patch of mussel rocks below.
"There are the two men Gaston saw," he whispered. "They are waiting to signal the channel to their comrades."
I strained my eyes in the direction he indicated.
"I cannot see," I confessed.
"Here, take the glass," said he. "Those two humps behind the big one are the backs of men. They have a lantern well hidden—you can see its glow when the glass is steady."
I could see it all quite clearly now, and occasionally one of the humps lift a head cautiously above the rock.
"She must be lying off close by," muttered Pierre, hoarse with excitement. Again he hurriedly ran his hand over the breech of my carbine. "The trigger pulls light," he breathed. "Courage, monsieur! We have not long to wait now." And again he was gone.
I felt like a hired assassin weakening on the verge of a crime. The next instant I saw the lantern hidden on the mussel rocks raised and lowered thrice.
It was the signal!
Again all was darkness save the gleaming line of surf. My heart thumped in my ears. Ten minutes passed; then again the lantern was raised, the figures of the two men standing in silhouette against its steady rays.
I saw now a small sloop rear itself from thebreakers, a short, squat little craft with a ghostly sail and a flapping jib. On she came, leaping and dropping broadside among the combers. The lantern now shone as clearly as a beacon. A sea broke over the sloop, but she staggered up bravely, and with a plunge was swept nearer and nearer the jagged point of rocks awash with spume. Braced against the tiller was a man in drenched tarpaulins; two other men were holding on to the shrouds like grim death. On the narrow deck between them I made out a bale-like bundle wrapped in tarpaulin and heavily roped, ready to be cast ashore.
A moment more, and the sloop would be on the rocks; yet not a sound came from the thicket. The suspense was sickening. I had once experienced buck-fever, but it was nothing compared to this. The short carbine began to jump viciously under my grip.
The sloop was nearly on the rocks! At that critical moment overboard went the bundle, the two men with the lantern rushing out and dragging it clear of the swash.
Simultaneously, with a crackling roar, sixtongues of flame spat from the thicket and we charged out of our ambush and over the crest of the dunes toward the smugglers' craft and its crew, firing as we ran. The fellow next to me stumbled and fell sprawling in the sand.
In the panic that ensued I saw the sloop making a desperate effort to put to sea. Meanwhile the two accomplices were running like rabbits for the marsh. Close to the mysterious bundle their lantern lay smashed and burning luridly in its oil. The brigadier sprang past me swearing like a pirate, while his now thoroughly demoralized henchmen and myself stumbled on, firing at random with still a good hundred yards between us and the abandoned contraband.
At that instant I saw the sloop's sail fill and then, as if by a miracle, she slowly turned back to the open sea. Above the general din the brigadier's voice rang out, bellowing his orders. By the time the sloop had cleared the breakers his language had become unprintable. He had reached the mussel rocks and stood shaking his clenched fists at the departing craft, while the rest of us crowded about the bundle and theblazing lantern. Every one was talking and gesticulating at once as they watched the sloop plunge away in the darkness.
"Sacré mille tonnerres!" roared the brigadier, sinking down on the bundle. Then he turned and glared at me savagely. "Idiot!" he cried, labouring for his breath. "Espèce d'imbécile. Ah! Nom d'un petit bonhomme.You were on the end. Why did you not head off those devils with the lantern?"
I shrugged my shoulders helplessly in reply. He was in no condition to argue with.
"And the rest of you——" He choked in his rage, unable to frame his words. They stood helplessly about, gesticulating their apologies.
He sprang to his feet, gave the bundle a sound kick, and snarled out an order. Pierre and another jumped forward, and together they shouldered it between them. Then the remainder of the valiant guard fell into single file and started back to the fort, the brigadier and myself bringing up the rear. As we trudged on through the sand together he kept muttering to himself. It only occurred to me then that nobody hadbeen hit. By this time even the accomplices were safe.
"Monsieur," I ventured, as we regained the trail leading to the fort, "it is with the sincerest regret of my heart that I offer you my apologies. True, I might have done better, but I did my best in my inexperience. We have the contraband—at least that is something, eh?"
He grew calmer as the thought struck him.
"Yes," he grumbled, "there are in that bundle at least ten thousand cigars. It is, after all, not so bad."
"Might I ask," I returned, "when your excellency intends to honour me with my liberty?"
He stopped, and to my delight held out his hand to me.
"You are free, monsieur," he said roughly, with a touch of his good nature. "The affair is over—but not a word of the manœuvre you have witnessed in the village. Our work here is for the ears of the Government alone."
As we reached the gate of the fort I saluted him, handed my carbine to Pierre in exchangefor my shotgun, and struck home in the mist of early dawn.
The morning after, I was leaning over the lichen-stained wall of my garden caressing the white throat of the Essence of Selfishness, the events of my night of service still in my mind, when I saw the coast patrol coming across the marsh in double file. As they drew nearer I recognized Pierre and his companion, who had shouldered the contraband. The roped bundle was swung on a stout pole between them.
Presently they left the marsh and gained the road. As the double file of uniformed men came past my wall they returned my salute. Pierre shifted his end of the pole to the man behind him and stood at attention until the rest had passed. Then the procession went on to inform Monsieur the Mayor, who lived near the little square where nothing ever happened.
Pierre turned when they had left and entered my garden. What was he going to tell me now? I wondered, with sudden apprehension. Was I to serve another night?
"I'll be hanged if I will," I muttered.
He approached solemnly and slowly, his bayonet gleaming at his side, the warm sunlight glinting on the buttons of his uniform. When he got near enough for me to look into his eyes he stopped, raised his hand to his cap in salute, and said with a smile:
"Now, monsieur, the artichokes."