171XTHE TOWN-CRIER
The bell in the unseen chapel ceased ringing as we came out on the cliffs of Paradise, where, on the horizon, the sun hung low, belted with a single ribbon of violet cloud.
Over acres of foaming shoals the crimson light flickered and spread, painting the eastern cliffs with sombre fire. The ebb-tide, red as blood, tumbled seaward across the bar, leaving every ledge a glowing cinder under the widening conflagration in the west.
The mayor carried his silver-buttoned jacket over his arm; the air had grown sultry. As we walked our gigantic shadows strode away before us across the kindling stubble, seeming to lengthen at every stride.
Below the cliffs, on a crescent of flat sand, from which sluggish, rosy rivulets crawled seaward, a man stood looking out across the water. And the mayor stopped and called down to him: “Ohé, the Lizard! What do you see on the ocean—you below?”
“I see six war-ships speeding fast in column,” replied the man, without looking up.
The mayor hastily shaded his eyes with one fat hand, muttering: “All poachers have eyes like sea-hawks. There is a smudge of smoke to the north. Holy Virgin, what eyes the rascal has!”
As for me, strain my eyes as I would, I saw nothing save the faintest stain of smoke on the horizon.172
“Hé, Lizard! Are they German, your six war-ships?” bawled the mayor. His voice had suddenly become tremulous.
“They are French,” replied the poacher, tranquilly.
“Then Sainte-Éline keep them from the rocks!” sang out the mayor. “Ohé, Lizard, I want somebody to drum and read a proclamation. Where’s Jacqueline?”
At that instant a young girl, a mere child, appeared on the beach, dragging a sea-rake over the ground behind her. She was a lithe creature, bare-limbed and ragged, with the sea-tan on throat and knee. The blue tatters of her skirt hung heavy with brine; the creamy skin on her arms glittered with wet spray, and her hair was wet, too, clustering across her cheeks in damp elf-locks.
The mayor glanced at her with that stolid contempt which Finistère Bretons cherish toward those women who show their hair—an immodesty unpardonable in the eyes of most Bretons.
The girl caught sight of the mayor and gave him a laughing greeting which he returned with a shrug.
“If you want a town-crier,” she called up, in a deliciously fresh voice, scarcely tinged with the accent, “I’ll cry your edicts and I’ll drum for you, too!”
“Can your daughter beat the drum?” asked the mayor of the poacher, ignoring the girl’s eager face upturned.
“Yes,” said the poacher, indifferently, “and she can also beat the devil with two sticks.”
The girl threw her rake into a boat and leaped upon the rocks at the base of the cliff.
“Jacqueline! Don’t come up that way!” bawled the mayor, horrified. “Hey! Robert! Ohé! Lizard! Stop her or she’ll break her neck!”
The poacher looked up at his daughter then shrugged his shoulders and squatted down on his ragged173haunches, restless eyes searching the level ocean, as sea-birds search.
Breathless, hot, and laughing, the girl pulled herself up over the edge of the cliff. I held out my hand to aid her, but she pushed it away, crying, “Thank you all the same, but here I am!”
“Spawn of the Lizard,” I heard the mayor mutter to himself, “like a snake you wriggle where honest folk fall to destruction!” But he spoke condescendingly to the bright-eyed, breathless child. “I’ll pay six sous if you’ll drum for me.”
“I’ll do it for love,” she said, saucily—“for the love of drumming, not for your beaux yeux, m’sieu le maire.”
The mayor looked at her angrily, but, probably remembering he was at her mercy, suppressed his wrath and held out the telegram. “Can you read that, my child?”
The girl, still breathing rapidly from her scramble, rested her hands on her hips and, head on one side, studied the blue sheets of the telegram over the mayor’s outstretched arm.
“Yes, I can read it. Why not? Can’t you?”
“Read? I the mayor of Paradise!” repeated the outraged magistrate. “What do you mean, lizard of lizards! gorse cat!”
“Now if you are going to say such things I won’t drum for you,” said the child, glancing at me out of her sea-blue eyes and giving a shake to her elf-locks.
“Yes, you will!” bawled the angry mayor. “Shame on your manners, Jacqueline Garenne! Shame on your hair hanging where all the world can see it! Shame on your bare legs—”
“Not at all,” said the child, unabashed. “God made my legs, m’sieu the mayor, and my hair, too. If my coiffe does not cover my hair, neither does the small Paris hat of the Countess de Vassart cover her hair.174Complain of the Countess to m’sieu the curé, then I will listen to you.”
The mayor glared at her, but she tossed her head and laughed.
“Ho fois! Everybody knows what you are,” sniffed the mayor—“and nobody cares, either,” he muttered, waddling past me, telegram in hand.
The child, quite unconcerned, fell into step beside me, saying, confidentially: “When I was little I used to cry when they talked to me like that. But I don’t now; I’ve made up my mind that they are no better than I.”
“I don’t know why anybody should abuse you,” I said, loudly enough for the mayor to hear. But that functionary waddled on, puffing, muttering, stopping every now and then in the narrow cliff-path to strike flint to tinder or to refill the tiny bowl of his pipe, which a dozen puffs always exhausted.
“Oh, they all abuse us,” said the child, serenely. “You see, you are a stranger and don’t understand; but you will if you live here.”
“Why is everybody unkind to you?” I asked, after a moment.
“Why? Oh, because I am what I am and my father is the Lizard.”
“A poacher?”
“Ah,” she said, looking up at me with delicious malice, “what is a poacher, monsieur?”
“Sometimes he’s a fine fellow gone wrong,” I said, laughing. “So I don’t believe any ill of your father, or of you, either. Will you drum for me, Jacqueline?”
“For you, monsieur? Why, yes. What am I to read for you?”
I gave her a hand-bill; at the first glance her eyes sparkled, the color deepened under her coat of amber tan; she caught her breath and read rapidly to the end.175
“Oh, how beautiful,” she said, softly. “Am I to read this in the square?”
“I will give you a franc to read it, Jacqueline.”
“No, no—only—oh, do let me come in and see the heavenly wonders! Would you, monsieur? I—I cannot pay—but would—couldyou let me come in? I will read your notice, anyway,” she added, with a quaver in her voice.
The flushed face, the eager, upturned eyes, deep blue as the sea, the little hands clutching the show-bill, which fairly quivered between the tanned fingers—all these touched and amused me. The child was mad with excitement.
What she anticipated, Heaven only knows. Shabby and tarnished as we were, the language of our hand-bills made up in gaudiness for the dingy reality.
“Come whenever you like, Jacqueline,” I said. “Ask for me at the gate.”
“And who are you, monsieur?”
“My name is Scarlett.”
“Scarlett,” she whispered, as though naming a sacred thing.
The mayor, who had toddled some distance ahead of us, now halted in the square, looking back at us through the red evening light.
“Jacqueline, the drum is in my house. I’ll lend you a pair of sabots, too. Come, hasten little idler!”
We entered the mayor’s garden, where the flowers were glowing in the lustre of the setting sun. I sat down in a chair; Jacqueline waited, hands resting on her hips, small, shapely toes restlessly brushing the grass.
“Truly this coming wonder-show will be a peep into paradise,” she murmured. “Can all be true—really true as it is printed here in this bill—I wonder—”
Before she had time to speculate further, the mayor176reappeared with drum and drum-sticks in one hand and a pair of sabots in the other. He flung the sabots on the grass, and Jacqueline, quite docile now, slipped both bare feet into them.
“You may keep them,” said the mayor, puffing out his mottled cheeks benevolently; “decency must be maintained in Paradise, even if it beggars me.”
“Thank you,” said Jacqueline, sweetly, slinging the drum across her hip and tightening the cords. She clicked the ebony sticks, touched the tightly drawn parchment, sounding it with delicate fingers, then looked up at the mayor for further orders.
“Go, my child,” said the mayor, amiably, and Jacqueline marched through the garden out into the square by the fountain, drum-sticks clutched in one tanned fist, the scrolls of paper in the other.
In the centre of the square she stood a moment, looking around, then raised the drum-sticks; there came a click, a flash of metal, and the quiet square echoed with the startling outcrash. Back from roof and wall bounded the echoes; the stony pavement rang with the racket. Already a knot of people had gathered around her; others came swiftly to windows and doorsteps; the loungers left their stone benches by the river, the maids of Paradise flocked from the bridge. Even Robert the Lizard drew in his dripping line to listen. The drum-roll ceased.
“Attention! Men of Finistère!By order of the governor of Lorient, all men between the ages of twenty and forty, otherwise not exempt, are ordered to report at the navy-yard barracks, war-port of Lorient, on the 5th of November of the present year, to join the army of the Loire.
“Whosoever is absent at roll-call will be liable to the punishment provided for such delinquents under the laws governing the state of siege now177declared in Morbihan and Finistère.Citizens, to arms!
“The enemy is on the march! Though Metz has fallen through treachery, Paris holds firm! Let the provinces rise and hurl the invader from the soil of the mother-land!
“Bretons!France calls! Answer with your ancient battle-cry, ‘Sainte-Anne! Sainte-Anne!’ The eyes of the world are on Armorica!To arms!”
The girl’s voice ceased; a dead silence reigned in the square. The men looked at one another stupidly; a woman began to whimper.
“The curse is on Paradise!” cried a hoarse voice.
The drummer was already drawing another paper from her ragged pocket, and again in the same clear, emotionless voice, but slightly drawling her words, she read:
“To the good people of Paradise! The manager of the famous American travelling circus, lately returned from a tour of the northern provinces, with camels, elephants, lions, and a magnificent company of artists, announces a stupendous exhibition to be held in Lorient at greatly reduced prices, thus enabling the intelligent and appreciative people of Paradise to honor the Republican Circus, recently known as the Imperial Circus, with their benevolent and discerning patronage! Long live France! Long live the Republic! Long live the Circus!”
A resounding roll of the drum ended the announcements; the girl slung the drum over her shoulder, turned to the right, and passed over the stone bridge, sabots clicking. Presently from the hamlet of Alincourt over the stream came the dull roll of the drum again and the faint, clear voice:
“Attention! Men of Finistère! By order of the governor of Lorient, all men—” The wind changed and her voice died away among the trees.178
The maids of Paradise were weeping now by the fountain; the men gathered near, and their slow, hushed voices scarcely rose above the ripple of the stream where Robert the Lizard fished in silence.
It was after sunset before Jacqueline finished her rounds. She had read her proclamation in Alincourt hamlet, she had read it in Sainte-Ysole, her drum had aroused the inert loungers on the breakwater at Trinité-on-Sea. Now, with her drum on her shoulder and her sabots swinging in her left hand, she came down the cliffs beside the Chapel of Our Lady of Paradise, excited and expectant.
Of the first proclamation which she had read she apparently understood little. When she announced the great disaster at Metz in the north, and when her passionless young voice proclaimed the levée en masse—the call to arms for the men of the coast from Sainte-Ysole to Trinité Beacon—she scarcely seemed to realize what it meant, although all around her women turned away sobbing, or clung, deathly white, to sons and husbands.
But there was certainly something in the other proclamation which thrilled her and set her heart galloping as she loitered on the cliff.
I walked across to the Quimperlé road and met her, dancing along with her drum; and she promptly confided her longings and desires to me as we stood together for an instant on the high-road. The circus! Once, it appeared, she had seen—very far off—a glittering creature turning on a trapeze. It was at the fair near Bannalec, and it was so long ago that she scarcely remembered anything except that somebody had pulled her away while she stood enchanted, and the flashing light of fairyland had been forever shut from her eyes.
At times, when the maids of Paradise were sociable179at the well in the square, she had listened to stories of the splendid circus which came once to Lorient. And now it was coming again!
We stood in the middle of the high-road looking through the dust haze, she doubtless dreaming of the splendors to come, I very, very tired. The curtain of golden dust reddened in the west; the afterglow lit up the sky once more with brilliant little clouds suspended from mid-zenith. The moorland wind rose and tossed her elf-locks in her eyes and whipped her skirt till the rags fluttered above her smooth, bare knees.
Suddenly, straight out of the flaming gates of the sunset, the miracle was wrought. Celestial shapes in gold and purple rose up in the gilded dust, chariots of silver, milk-white horses plumed with fire.
Breathless, she shrank back among the weeds, one hand pressed to her throbbing throat. But the vision grew as she stared; there was heavenly music, too, and the clank of metal chains, and the smothered pounding of hoofs. Then she caught sight of something through the dust that filled her with a delicious terror, and she cried out. For there, uptowering in the haze, came trudging a great, gray creature, a fearsome, swaying thing in crimson trappings, flapping huge ears. It shuffled past, swinging a dusty trunk; the sparkling horsemen cantered by, tin armor blazing in the fading glory; the chariots dragged after, and the closed dens of beasts rolled behind in single file, followed by the band-wagon, where Heaven-inspired musicians played frantically and a white-faced clown balanced his hat on a stick and shrieked.
So the circus passed into Paradise; and I turned and followed in the wake of dust, stale odors, and clamorous discord, sick at heart of wandering over a world I had not found too kind.
And at my heels stole Jacqueline.
180XIIN CAMP
We went into camp under the landward glacis of the cliffs, in a field of clover which was to be ploughed under in a few days. We all were there except Kelly Eyre, who had gone to telegraph the governor of Lorient for permission to enter the port with the circus. Another messenger also left camp on private business for me.
It was part of my duty to ration the hay for the elephant and the thrice-accursed camel. The latter had just bitten Mr. Grigg, our clown—not severely—and Speed and Horan the “Strong Man” were hobbling the brute as I finished feeding my lions and came up to assist the others.
“Watch that darn elephant, too, Mr. Grigg,” said Byram, looking up from a plate of fried ham that Miss Crystal, our “Trapeze Lady,” had just cooked for him over our gypsy fires of driftwood.
“Look at that elephant! Look at him!” continued Byram, with a trace of animation lighting up his careworn face—“look at him now chuckin’ hay over his back. Scrape it up, Mr. Scarlett; hay’s thirty a ton in this war-starved country.”
As I started to clean up the precious hay, the elephant gave a curious grunt and swung his trunk toward me.
“There’s somethin’ paltry about that elephant,” said181Byram, in a complaining voice, rising, with plate of ham in one hand, fork in the other. “He’s gittin’ as mean as that crafty camuel. Make him move, Mr. Speed, or he’ll put his foot on the trombone.”
“Hô Djebe! Mâil!” said Speed, sharply.
The elephant obediently shuffled forward; Byram sat down again, and wearily cut himself a bit of fried ham; and presently we were all sitting around the long camp-table in the glare of two smoky petroleum torches, eating our bread and ham and potatoes and drinking Breton cider, a jug of which Mr. Horan had purchased for a few coppers.
Some among us were too tired to eat, many too tired for conversation, yet, from habit we fell into small talk concerning the circus, the animals, the prospects of better days.
The ladies of the company, whatever quarrels they indulged in among themselves, stood loyally by Byram in his anxiety and need. Miss Crystal and Miss Delany displayed edifying optimism; Mrs. Horan refrained from nagging; Mrs. Grigg, a pretty little creature, who was one of the best equestriennes I ever saw, declared that we were living too well and that a little dieting wouldn’t hurt anybody.
McCadger, our band-master, came over from the other fire to say that the men had finished grooming the horses, and would I inspect the picket-line, as Kelly Eyre was still absent.
When I returned, the ladies had retired to their blankets under their shelter-tent; poor little Grigg lay asleep at the table, his tired, ugly head resting among the unwashed tin plates; Speed sprawled in his chair, smoking a short pipe; Byram sat all hunched up, his head sunk, eyes vacantly following the movements of two men who were washing dishes in the flickering torch-light.182
He looked up at me, saying: “I guess Mr. Speed is right. Them lions o’ yourn is fed too much horse-meat. Overeatin’ is overheatin’; we’ve got to give ’em beef or they’ll be clawin’ you. Yes, sir, they’re all het up. Hear ’em growl!”
“That’s a fable, governor,” I said, smiling and dropping into a chair. “I’ve heard that theory before, but it isn’t true.”
“The trouble with your lions is that you play with them too much and they’re losing respect for you,” said Speed, drowsily.
“The trouble with my lions,” said I, “is that they were born in captivity. Give me a wild lion, caught on his native heath, and I’ll know what to expect from him when I tame him. But no man on earth can tell what a lion born in captivity will do.”
The hard cider had cheered Byram a little; he drew a cherished cigar from his vest-pocket, offered it to me, and when I considerately refused, he carefully set it alight with a splinter from the fire. Its odor was indescribable.
“Luck’s a curious phenomena, ain’t it, Mr. Scarlett?” he said.
I agreed with him.
“Luck,” continued Byram, waving his cigar toward the four quarters of the globe, “is the rich man’s slave an’ the poor man’s tyrant. It’s also a see-saw. When the devil plays in luck the cherubim git spanked—or words to that effec’—not meanin’ no profanity.”
“It’s about like that, governor,” admitted Speed, lazily.
Byram leaned back and sucked meditatively at his cigar. The new moon was just rising over the elephant’s hindquarters, and the poetry of the incident appeared to move the manager profoundly. He turned and surveyed the dim bivouac, the two silent tents, the183monstrous, shadowy bulk of the elephant, rocking monotonously against the sky. “Kind of Silurian an’ solemn, ain’t it,” he murmured, “the moon shinin’ onto the rump of that primeval pachyderm. It’s like the dark ages of the behemoth an’ the cony. I tell you, gentlemen, when them fearsome an’ gigantic mamuels was aboundin’ in the dawn of creation, the public missed the greatest show on earth—by a few million years!”
We nodded sleepily but gravely.
Byram appeared to have recovered something of his buoyancy and native optimism.
“Gentlemen,” he said, “let’s kinder saunter over to the inn and have a night-cap with Kelly Eyre.”
This unusual and expensive suggestion startled us wide awake, but we were only too glad to acquiesce in anything which tended to raise his spirits or ours. Dog tired but smiling we rose; Byram, in his shirt-sleeves and suspenders, wearing his silk hat on the back of his head, led the way, fanning his perspiring face with a red-and-yellow bandanna.
“Luck,” said Byram, waving his cigar toward the new moon, “is bound to turn one way or t’other—like my camuel. Sometimes, resemblin’ the camuel, luck will turn on you. Look out it don’t bite you. I once made up a piece about luck:
“‘Don’t buckBad luckOr you’ll get stuck—’
I disremember the rest, but it went on to say a few other words to that effec’.”
The lighted door of the inn hung ajar as we crossed the star-lit square; Byram entered and stood a moment in the doorway, stroking his chin. “Bong joor the company!” he said, lifting his battered hat.184
The few Bretons in the wine-room returned his civility; he glanced about and his eye fell on Kelly Eyre, Speed’s assistant balloonist, seated by the window with Horan.
“Well, gents,” said Byram, hopefully, “an’ what aire the prospects of smilin’ fortune when rosy-fingered dawn has came again to kiss us back to life?”
“Rotten,” said Eyre, pushing a telegram across the oak table.
Byram’s face fell; he picked up the telegram and fumbled in his coat for his spectacles with unsteady hand.
“Let me read it, governor,” said Speed, and took the blue paper from Byram’s unresisting, stubby fingers.
“O-ho!” he muttered, scanning the message; “well—well, it’s not so bad as all that—” He turned abruptly on Kelly Eyre—“What the devil are you scaring the governor for?”
“Well, he’s got to be told—I didn’t mean to worry him,” said Eyre, stammering, ashamed of his thoughtlessness.
“Now see here, governor,” said Speed, “let’s all have a drink first. Hé ma belle!”—to the big Breton girl knitting in the corner—“four little swallows of eau-de-vie, if you please! Ah, thank you, I knew you were from Bannalec, where all the girls are as clever as they are pretty! Come, governor, touch glasses! There is no circus but the circus, and Byram is it’s prophet! Drink, gentlemen!”
But his forced gayety was ominous; we scarcely tasted the liqueur. Byram wiped his brow and squared his bent shoulders. Speed, elbows on the table, sat musing and twirling his half-empty glass.
“Well, sir?” said Byram, in a low voice.
“Well, governor? Oh—er—the telegram?” asked Speed, like a man fighting for time.185
“Yes, the telegram,” said Byram, patiently.
“Well, you see they have just heard of the terrible smash-up in the north, governor. Metz has surrendered with Bazaine’s entire army. And they’re naturally frightened at Lorient.... And I rather fear that the Germans are on their way toward the coast.... And ... well ... they won’t let us pass the Lorient fortifications.”
“Won’t let us in?” cried Byram, hoarsely.
“I’m afraid not, governor.”
Byram stared at us. We had counted on Lorient to pull us through as far as the frontier.
“Now don’t take it so hard, governor,” said Kelly Eyre; “I was frightened myself, at first, but I’m ashamed of it now. We’ll pull through, anyhow.”
“Certainly,” said Speed, cheerily, “we’ll just lay up here for a few days and economize. Why can’t we try one performance here, Scarlett?”
“We can,” said I. “We’ll drum up the whole district from Pontivy to Auray and from Penmarch Point to Plouharnel! Why should the Breton peasantry not come? Don’t they walk miles to the Pardons?”
A gray pallor settled on Byram’s sunken face; with it came a certain dignity which sorrow sometimes brings even to men like him.
“Young gentlemen,” he said, “I’m obliged to you. These here reverses come to everybody, I guess. The Lord knows best; but if He’ll just lemme run my show a leetle longer, I’ll pay my debts an’ say, ‘Thy will be done, amen!’”
“We all must learn to say that, anyway,” said Speed.
“Mebbe,” muttered Byram, “but I must pay my debts.”
After a painful silence he rose, steadying himself with his hand on Eyre’s broad shoulder, and shambled186out across the square, muttering something about his elephant and his camuel.
Speed paid the insignificant bill, emptied his glass, and nodded at me.
“It’s all up,” he said, soberly.
“Let’s come back to camp and talk it over,” I said.
Together we traversed the square under the stars, and entered the field of clover. In the dim, smoky camp all lights were out except one oil-drenched torch stuck in the ground between the two tents. Byram had gone to rest, so had Kelly Eyre. But my lions were awake, moving noiselessly to and fro, eyes shining in the dusk; and the elephant, a shapeless pile of shadow against the sky, stood watching us with little, evil eyes.
Speed had some cigarettes, and he laid the pink package on the table. I lighted one when he did.
“Do you really think there’s a chance?” he asked, presently.
“I don’t know,” I said.
“Well, we can try.”
“Oh yes.”
Speed dropped his elbows on the table. “Poor old governor,” he said.
Then he began to talk of our own prospects, which were certainly obscure if not alarming; but he soon gave up speculation as futile, and grew reminiscent, recalling our first acquaintance as discharged soldiers from the African battalions, our hand-to-mouth existence as gentlemen farmers in Algiers, our bankruptcy and desperate struggle in Marseilles, first as dock-workmen, then as government horse-buyers for the cavalry, then as employés of the Hippodrome in Paris, where I finally settled down as bareback rider, lion-tamer, and instructor in the haute-école; and he accepted a salary as aid to Monsieur Gaston Tissandier, the187scientist, who was experimenting with balloons at Saint-Cloud.
He spoke, too, of our enlistment in the Imperial Police, and the hopes we had of advancement, which not only brought no response from me, but left us both brooding sullenly on our wrongs, crouched there over the rough camp-table under the stars.
“Oh, hell!” muttered Speed, “I’m going to bed.”
But he did not move. Presently he said, “How did you ever come to handle wild animals?”
“I’ve always been fond of animals; I broke colts at home; I had bear cubs and other things. Then, in Algiers, the regiment caught a couple of lions and kept them in a cage, and—well, I found I could do what I liked with them.”
“They’re afraid of your eyes, aren’t they?”
“I don’t know—perhaps it’s that; I can’t explain it—or, rather, I could partly explain it by saying that I am not afraid of them. But I never trust them.”
“You drag them all around the cage! You shove them about like sacks of meal!”
“Yes,... but I don’t trust them.”
“It seems to me,” said Speed, “that your lions are getting rather impudent these days. They’re not very much afraid of you now.”
“Nor I of them,” I said, wearily; “I’m much more anxious about you when you go sailing about in that patched balloon of yours. Are you never nervous?”
“Nervous? When?”
“When you’re up there?”
“Rubbish.”
“Suppose the patches give way?”
“I never think of that,” he said, leaning on the table with a yawn. “Oh, Lord, how tired I am!... but I shall not be able to sleep. I’m actually too tired to sleep. Have you got a pack of cards, Scarlett? or a188decent cigar, or a glass of anything, or anything to show me more amusing than that nightmare of an elephant? Oh, I’m sick of the whole business—sick! sick! The stench of the tan-bark never leaves my nostrils except when the odor of fried ham or of that devilish camel replaces it.
“I’m too old to enjoy a gypsy drama when it’s acted by myself; I’m tired of trudging through the world with my entire estate in my pocket. I want a home, Scarlett. Lord, how I envy people with homes!”
He had been indulging in this outburst with his back partly turned toward me. I did not say anything, and, after a moment, he looked at me over his shoulder to see how I took it.
“I’d like to have a home, too,” I said.
“I suppose homes are not meant for men like you and me,” he said. “Lord, how I would appreciate one, though—anything with a bit of grass in the yard and a shovelful of dirt—enough to grow some damn flower, you know.... Did you smell the posies in the square to-night?... Something of that kind,... anything, Scarlett—anything that can be called a home!... But you can’t understand.”
“Oh yes, I can,” I said.
He went on muttering, half to himself: “We’re of the same breed—pariahs; fortunately, pariahs don’t last long,... like the wild creatures who never die natural deaths,... old age is one of the curses they can safely discount,... and so can we, Scarlett, so can we.... For you’ll be mauled by a lion or kicked into glory by a horse or an ox or an ass,... and I’ll fall off a balloon,... or the camel will give me tetanus, or the elephant will get me in one way or another,... or something....”
Again he twisted around to look at me. “Funny, isn’t it?”189
“Rather funny,” I said, listlessly.
He leaned over, pulled another cigarette from the pink packet, broke a match from the card, and lighted it.
“I feel better,” he observed.
I expressed sleepy gratification.
“Oh yes, I’m much better. This isn’t a bad life, is it?”
“Oh no!” I said, sarcastically.
“No, it’s all right, and we’ve got to pull the poor old governor through and give a jolly good show here and start the whole country toward the tent door! Eh?”
“Certainly. Don’t let me detain you.”
“I’ll tell you what,” he said, “if we only had that poor little girl, Miss Claridge, we’d catch these Bretons. That’s what took the coast-folk all over Europe, so Grigg says.”
Miss Claridge had performed in a large glass tank as the “Leaping Mermaid.” It took like wildfire according to our fellow-performers. We had never seen her; she was killed by diving into her tank when the circus was at Antwerp in April.
“Can’t we get up something like that?” I suggested, hopelessly.
“Who would do it? Miss Claridge’s fish-tights are in the prop-box; who’s to wear them?”
He began to say something else, but stopped suddenly, eyes fixed. We were seated nearly opposite each other, and I turned around, following the direction of his eyes.
Jacqueline stood behind me in the smoky light of the torch—Jacqueline, bare of arm and knee, with her sea-blue eyes very wide and the witch-locks clustering around the dim oval of her face. After a moment’s absolute silence she said: “I came from Paradise. Don’t you remember?”190
“From Paradise?” said Speed, smiling; “I thought it might be from elf-land.”
And I said: “Of course I remember you, Jacqueline. And I have an idea you ought to be in bed.”
There was another silence.
“Won’t you sit down?” asked Speed.
“Thank you,” said Jacqueline, gravely.
She seated herself on a sack of sawdust, clasping her slender hands between her knees, and looked earnestly at the elephant.
“He won’t harm you,” I assured her.
“If you think I am afraid ofthat,” she said, “you are mistaken, Monsieur Scarlett.”
“I don’t think you are afraid of anything,” observed Speed, smiling; “but I know you are capable of astonishment.”
“How do you know that?” demanded the girl.
“Because I saw you with your drum on the high-road when we came past Paradise. Your eyes were similar to saucers, and your mouth was not closed, Mademoiselle Jacqueline.”
“Oh—pour ça—yes, I was astonished,” she said. Then, with a quick, upward glance: “Were you riding, in armor, on a horse?”
“No,” said Speed; “I was on that elephant’s head.”
This appeared to make a certain impression on Jacqueline. She became shyer of speech for a while, until he asked her, jestingly, why she did not join the circus.
“It is what I wish,” she said, under her breath.
“And ride white horses?”
“Will you take me?” she cried, passionately, springing to her feet.
Amazed at her earnestness, I tried to explain that such an idea was out of the question. She listened anxiously at first, then her eyes fell and she stood there in the torch-light, head hanging.191
“Don’t you know,” said Speed, kindly, “that it takes years of practice to do what circus people do? And the life is not gay, Jacqueline; it is hard for all of us. We know what hunger means; we know sickness and want and cold. Believe me, you are happier in Paradise than we are in the circus.”
“It may be,” she said, quietly.
“Of course it is,” he insisted.
“But,” she flashed out, “I would rather be unhappy in the circus than happy in Paradise!”
He protested, smiling, but she would have her way.
“I once saw a man, in spangles, turning, turning, and ever turning upon a rod. He was very far away, and that was very long ago—at the fair in Bannalec. But I have not forgotten! No, monsieur! In our net-shed I also have fixed a bar of wood, and on it I turn, turn continually. I am not ignorant of twisting. I can place my legs over my neck and cross my feet under my chin. Also I can stand on both hands, and I can throw scores of handsprings—which I do every morning upon the beach—I, Jacqueline!”
She was excited; she stretched out both bare arms as though preparing to demonstrate her ability then and there.
“I should like to see a circus,” she said. “Then I should know what to do. That I can swing higher than any girl in Paradise has been demonstrated often,” she went on, earnestly. “I can swim farther, I can dive deeper, I can run faster, with bare feet or with sabots, than anybody, man or woman, from the Beacon to Our Lady’s Chapel! At bowls the men will not allow me because I have beaten them all, monsieur, even the mayor, which he never forgave. As for the farandole, I tire last of all—and it is the biniou who cries out for mercy!”192
She laughed and pushed back her hair, standing straight up in the yellow radiance like a moor-sprite. There was something almost unearthly in her lithe young body and fearless sea-blue eyes, sparkling from the shock of curls.
“So you can dive and swim?” asked Speed, with a glance at me.
“Like the salmon in the Läita, monsieur.”
“Under water?”
“Parbleu!”
After a pause I asked her age.
“Fifteen, M’sieu Scarlett.”
“You don’t look thirteen, Jacqueline.”
“I think I should grow faster if we were not so poor,” she said, innocently.
“You mean that you don’t get enough to eat?”
“Not always, m’sieu. But that is so with everybody except the wealthy.”
“Suppose we try her,” said Speed, after a silence. “You and I can scrape up a little money for her if worst comes to worst.”
“How about her father?”
“You can see him. What is he?”
“A poacher, I understand.”
“Oh, then it’s easy enough. Give him a few francs. He’ll take the child’s salary, anyway, if this thing turns out well.”
“Jacqueline,” I said, “we can’t afford to pay you much money, you know.”
“Money?” repeated the child, vacantly. “Money!If I had my arms full—so!—I would throw it into the world—so!”—she glanced at Speed—“reserving enough for a new skirt, monsieur, of which I stand in some necessity.”
The quaint seriousness, the resolute fearlessness of this little maid of Paradise touched us both, I think,193as she stood there restlessly, balancing on her slim bare feet, finger-tips poised on her hips.
“Won’t you take me?” she asked, sweetly.
“I’ll tell you what I’ll do, Jacqueline,” said I. “Very early in the morning I’ll go down to your house and see your father. Then, if he makes no objection, I’ll get you to put on a pretty swimming-suit, all made out of silver scales, and you can show me, there in the sea, how you can dive and swim and play at mermaid. Does that please you?”
She looked earnestly at me, then at Speed.
“Is it a promise?” she asked, in a quivering voice.
“Yes, Jacqueline.”
“Then I thank you, M’sieu Scarlett,... and you, m’sieur, who ride the elephant so splendidly.... And I will be waiting for you when you come.... We live in the house below the Saint-Julien Light.... My father is pilot of the port.... Anybody will tell you.” ...
“I will not forget,” said I.
She bade us good-night very prettily, stepped back out of the circle of torch-light, and vanished—there is no other word for it.
“Gracious,” said Speed, “wasn’t that rather sudden? Or is that the child yonder? No, it’s a bush. Well, Scarlett, there’s an uncanny young one for you—no, not uncanny, but a spirit in its most delicate sense. I’ve an idea she’s going to find poor Byram’s lost luck for him.”
“Or break her neck,” I observed.
Speed was quiet for a long while.
“By-the-way,” he said, at last, “are you going to tell the Countess about that fellow Buckhurst?”
“I sent a note to her before I fed my lions,” I replied.
“Are you going to see her?”
“If she desires it.”194
“Who took the note, Scarlett?”
“Jacqueline’s father,... that Lizard fellow.”
“Well, don’t let’s stir up Buckhurst now,” said Speed. “Let’s do what we can for the governor first.”
“Of course,” said I. “And I’m going to bed. Good-night.”
“Good-night,” said Speed, thoughtfully. “I’ll join you in a moment.”
When I was ready for bed and stood at the tent door, peering out into the darkness, I saw Speed curled up on a blanket between the elephant’s forefeet, sound asleep.
195XIIJACQUELINE
The stars were still shining when I awoke in my blanket, lighted a candle, and stepped into the wooden tub of salt-water outside the tent.
I shaved by candle-light, dressed in my worn riding-breeches and jacket, then, candle in hand, began groping about among the faded bits of finery and tarnished properties until I found the silver-scaled swimming-tights once worn by the girl of whom we had heard so much.
She was very young when she leaped to her death in Antwerp—a slim slip of a creature, they said—so I thought it likely that her suit might fit Jacqueline.
The stars had begun to fade when I stepped out through the dew-soaked clover, carrying in one hand a satchel containing the swimming-suit, in the other a gun-case, in which, carefully oiled and doubly cased in flannel, reposed my only luxury—my breech-loading shot-gun.
The silence, intensified by the double thunder of the breakers on the sands, was suddenly pierced by a far cock-crow; vague gray figures passed across the square as I traversed it; a cow-bell tinkled near by, and I smelt the fresh-blown wind from the downs.
Presently, as I turned into the cliff-path, I saw a sober little Breton cow plodding patiently along ahead; beside her moved a fresh-faced maid of Paradise in196snowy collarette and white-winged head-dress, knitting as she walked, fair head bent.
As I passed her she glanced up with tear-dimmed eyes, murmuring the customary salutation: “Bonjour d’ac’h, m’sieu!” And I replied in the best patois I could command: “Bonjour d’ec’h a laran, na œled Ket! Why do you cry, mademoiselle?”
“Cry, m’sieu? They are taking the men of Paradise to the war. France must know how cruel she is to take our men from us.”
We had reached the green crest of the plateau; the girl tethered her diminutive cow, sat down on a half-imbedded stone, and continued her knitting, crying softly all the while.
I asked her to direct me to the house where Robert, the Lizard, lived; she pointed with her needles to a large stone house looming up in the gray light, built on the rocks just under the beacon. It was white with sea-slime and crusted salt, yet heavily and solidly built as a fort, and doubtless very old, judging from the traces of sculptured work over portal and windows.
I had scarcely expected to find the ragged Lizard and more ragged Jacqueline housed in such an anciently respectable structure, and I said so to the girl beside me.
“The house is bare as the bones of Sainte-Anne,” she said. “There is nothing within—not even crumbs enough for the cliff-rats, they say.”
So I went away across the foggy, soaking moorland, carrying my gun and satchel in their cases, descended the grassy cleft, entered a cattle-path, and picked my way across the wet, black rocks toward the abode of the poacher.
The Lizard was standing on his doorsill when I came up; he returned my greeting sullenly, his keen eyes of a sea-bird roving over me from head to foot. A rumpled and sulky yellow cat, evidently just awake,197sat on the doorstep beside him and yawned at intervals. The pair looked as though they had made a night of it.
“You took my letter last night?” I asked.
“Yes.”
“Was there an answer for me?”
“Yes.”
“Couldn’t you have come to the camp and told me?”
“I could, but I had other matters to concern me,” he replied. “Here’s your letter,” and he fished it out of his tattered pocket.
I was angry enough, but I did not wish to anger him at that moment. So I took the letter and read it—a formal line saying the Countess de Vassart would expect me at five that afternoon.
“You are not noted for your courtesy, are you?” I inquired, smiling.
Something resembling a grin touched his sea-scarred visage.
“Oh, I knew you’d come for your answer,” he said, coolly.
“Look here, Lizard,” I said, “I intend to be friends with you, and I mean to make you look on me as a friend. It’s to my advantage and to yours.”
“To mine?” he inquired, sneeringly, amused.
“And this is the first thing I want,” I continued; and without further preface I unfolded our plans concerning Jacqueline.
“Entendu,” he said, drawling the word, “is that all?”
“Do you consent?”
“Is that all?” he repeated, with Breton obstinacy.
“No, not all. I want you to be my messenger in time of need. I want you to be absolutely faithful to me.”
“Is that all?” he drawled again.
“Yes, that is all.”198
“And what is there in this, to my advantage, m’sieu?”
“This, for one thing,” I said, carelessly, picking up my gun-case. I slowly drew out the barrels of Damascus, then the rose-wood stock and fore-end, assembling them lovingly; for it was the finest weapon I had ever seen, and it was breaking my heart to give it away.
The poacher’s eyes began to glitter as I fitted the double bolts and locked breech and barrel with the extension rib. Then I snapped on the fore-end; and there lay the gun in my hands, a fowling-piece fit for an emperor.
“Give it?” muttered the poacher, huskily.
“Take it, my friend the Lizard,” I replied, smiling down the wrench in my heart.
There was a silence; then the poacher stepped forward, and, looking me square in the eye, flung out his hand. I struck my open palm smartly against his, in the Breton fashion; then we clasped hands.
“You mean honestly by the little one?”
“Yes,” I said; “strike palms by Sainte Thekla of Ycône!”
We struck palms heavily.
“She is a child,” he said; “there is no vice in her; yet I’ve seen them nearly finished at her age in Paris.” And he swore terribly as he said it.
We dropped hands in silence; then, “Is this gun mine?” he demanded, hoarsely.
“Yes.”
“Strike!” he cried; “take my friendship if you want it, on this condition—what I am is my own concern, not yours. Don’t interfere, m’sieu; it would be useless. I should never betray you, but I might kill you. Don’t interfere. But if you care for the good-will of a man like me, take it; and when you desire a service199from me, tell me, and I’ll not fail you, by Sainte-Éline of Paradise!”
“Strike palms,” said I, gravely; and we struck palms thrice.
He turned on his heel, kicking off his sabots on the doorsill. “Break bread with me; I ask it,” he said, gruffly, and stalked before me into the house.
The room was massive and of noble proportion, but there was scarcely anything in it—a stained table, a settle, a little pile of rags on the stone floor—no, not rags, but Jacqueline’s clothes!—and there at the end of the great chamber, built into the wall, was the ancient Breton bed with its Gothic carving and sliding panels of black oak, carved like the lattice-work in a chapel screen.
Outside dawn was breaking through a silver shoal of clouds; already its slender tentacles of light were probing the shadows behind the lattice where Jacqueline lay sleeping.
From the ashes on the hearth a spiral of smoke curled. The yellow cat walked in and sat down, contemplating the ashes.
Slowly a saffron light filled the room; Jacqueline awoke in the dim bed.
She pushed the panels aside and peered out, her sea-blue eyes heavy with slumber.
“Ma doué!” she murmured; “it is M’sieu Scarlett! Aie! Aie! Am I a countess to sleep so late? Bonjour, m’sieu! Bonjour, pa-pa!” She caught sight of the yellow cat, “Et bien le bonjour, Ange Pitou!”
She swathed herself in a blanket and sat up, looking at me sleepily.
“You came to see me swim,” she said.
“And I’ve brought you a fish’s silver skin to swim in,” I replied, pointing at the satchel.
She cast a swift glance at her father, who, with the200gun on his knees, sat as though hypnotized by the beauty of its workmanship. Her bright eyes fell on the gun; she understood in a flash.
“Then you’ll take me?”
“If you swim as well as I hope you can.”
“Turn your back!” she cried.
I wheeled about and sat down on the settle beside the poacher. There came a light thud of small, bare feet on the stone floor, then silence. The poacher looked up.
“She’s gone to the ocean,” he said; “she has the mania for baths—like you English.” And he fell to rubbing the gunstock with dirty thumb.
The saffron light in the room was turning pink when Jacqueline reappeared on the threshold in her ragged skirt and stained velvet bodice half laced, with the broken points hanging, carrying an armful of driftwood.
Without a word she went to work; the driftwood caught fire from the ashes, flaming up in exquisite colors, now rosy, now delicate green, now violet; the copper pot, swinging from the crane, began to steam, then to simmer.
“Papa!”
“De quoi!” growled the poacher.
“Were you out last night?”
“Dame, I’ve just come in.”
“Is there anything?”
The poacher gave me an oblique and evil glance, then coolly answered: “Three pheasant, two partridges, and a sea-trout in the net-shed. All are drawn.”
So swiftly she worked that the pink light had scarcely deepened to crimson when the poacher, laying the gun tenderly in the blankets of Jacqueline’s tumbled bed, came striding back to the table where a sea-trout smoked on a cracked platter, and a bowl of bread and milk stood before each place.201
We ate silently. Ange Pitou, the yellow cat, came around with tail inflated. There were fishbones enough to gratify any cat, and Ange Pitou made short work of them.
The poacher bolted his food, sombre eyes brooding or stealing across the room to the bed where his gun lay. Jacqueline, to my amazement, ate as daintily as a linnet, yet with a fresh, hearty unconsciousness that left nothing in her bowl or wooden spoon.
“Schist?” inquired the poacher, lifting his tired eyes to me. I nodded. So he brought a jug of cold, sweet cider, and we all drank long and deeply, each in turn slinging the jug over the crooked elbow.
The poacher rose, wiped his mouth with the back of his hand, and made straight for his new gun.
“You two,” he said, with a wave of his arm, “you settle it among yourselves. Jacqueline, is it true that Le Bihan saw woodcock dropping into the fen last night?”
“He says so.”
“He is not a liar—usually,” observed the poacher. He touched his beret to me, flung the fowling-piece over his shoulder, picked up a canvas bag in which I heard cartridges rattling, stepped into his sabots, and walked away. In a few moments the hysterical yelps of a dog, pleased at the prospect of a hunt, broke out from the net-shed.
Jacqueline placed the few dishes in a pan of hot water, wiped her fingers, daintily, and picked up Ange Pitou, who promptly acknowledged the courtesy by bursting into a crackling purring.
“Show me the swimming-suit,” she said, shyly.
I drew it out of the satchel and laid it across my knees.
“Oh, it has a little tail behind—like a fish!” she cried, enchanted. “I shall look like the silver grilse of Quimperlé!”202
“Do you think you can swim in those scales?” I asked.
“Swim? I—Jacqueline? Attendez un peu—you shall see!”
She laughed an excited, confident little laugh and hugged Ange Pitou, who closed his eyes in ecstasy sheathing and unsheathing his sharp claws.
“It is almost sunrise,” I said.
“It lacks many minutes to sunrise,” she replied. “Ask Ange Pitou. At sunrise he leaves me; nothing can hold him; he does not bite or scratch, he just pushes and pulls until my arms are tired. Then he goes. It is always so.”
“Why does he do that?”
“Ask him. I have often asked, but he never tells me—do you, my friend? I think he’s a moor-sprite—perhaps a devil. Do devils hate all kinds of water?”
“No, only holy water,” I replied.
“Well, then, he’s something else. Look! Look! He is beginning! See him push to get free, see him drive his furry head into my hands. The sun is coming up out of the sea! It will soon be here.”
She opened her arms; the cat sprang to the doorstep and vanished.
Jacqueline looked at the swimming-suit, then at me. “Will you go down to the beach, M’sieu Scarlett?”
But I had not traversed half the strip of rock and hard sand before something flew past—a slim, glittering shape which suddenly doubled up, straightened again, and fell headlong into the thundering surf.
The waves hurled her from crest to crest, clothing her limbs in froth; the singing foam rolled her over and over, stranding her on bubbling sands, until the swell found her again, lifted her, and tossed her seaward into the wide, white arms of the breakers.203
Back to land she drifted and scrambled up on the beach, a slender, drenched figure, glistening and flashing with every movement.
Dainty of limb as a cat in wet grass, she shook the spray from her fingers and scrubbed each palm with sand, then sprang again headlong into the surf; there was a flash, a spatter, and she vanished.
After a long, long while, far out on the water she rose, floating.
Now the red sun, pushing above the ocean’s leaden rim, flung its crimson net across the water. String after string of white-breasted sea-ducks beat to windward from the cove, whirling out to sea; the gray gulls flapped low above the shoal and settled in rows along the outer bar, tossing their sun-tipped wings; the black cormorant on the cliff craned its hideous neck, scanning the ocean with restless, brilliant eyes.
Tossed back once more upon the beach like an opalescent shell, Jacqueline, ankle-deep in foam, looked out across the flaming waters, her drenched hair dripping.
From the gorse on cliff and headland, one by one the larks shot skyward like amber rockets, trailing a shower of melody till the whole sky rained song. The crested vanneaux, passing out to sea, responded plaintively, flapping their bronze-green wings.
The girl twisted her hair and wrung it till the last salt drop had fallen. Sitting there in the sands, idle fingers cracking the pods of gilded sea-weed, she glanced up at me and laughed contentedly. Presently she rose and walked out to a high ledge, motioning me to follow. Far below, the sun-lit water shimmered in a shallow basin of silver sand.
“Look!” she cried, flinging her arms above her head, and dropped into space, falling like a star, down, down into the shallow sea. Far below I saw a streak of living light shoot through the water—on, on, closer to the204surface now, and at last she fairly sprang into the air, quivering like a gaffed salmon, then fell back to float and clear her blue eyes from her tangled hair.
She gave me a glance full of malice as she landed, knowing quite well that she had not only won, but had given me a shock with her long dive into scarce three feet of water.
Presently she climbed to the sun-warmed hillock of sand and sat down beside me to dry her hair.
A langouste, in his flaming scarlet coat of mail, passed through a glassy pool among the rocks, treading sedately on pointed claws; the lançons tunnelled the oozing beach under her pink feet, like streams of living quicksilver; the big, blue sea-crabs sidled off the reef, sheering down sideways into limpid depths. Landward the curlew walked in twos and threes, swinging their long sickle bills; the sea-swallows drove by like gray snow-squalls, melting away against the sky; a vitreous living creature, blazing with purest sapphire light, floated past under water.
Ange Pitou, coveting a warm sun-bath in the sand, came wandering along pretending not to see us; but Jacqueline dragged him into her arms for a hug, which lasted until Ange Pitou broke loose, tail hoisted but ears deaf to further flattery.
So Jacqueline chased Ange Pitou back across the sand and up the rocky path, pursuing her pet from pillar to post with flying feet that fell as noiselessly as the velvet pads of Ange Pitou.
“Come to the net-shed, if you please!” she called back to me, pointing to a crazy wooden structure built above the house.
As I entered the net-shed the child was dragging a pile of sea-nets to the middle of the floor.
“In case I fall,” she said, coolly.
“Better let me arrange them, then,” I said, glancing205up at the improvised trapeze which dangled under the roof-beams.
She thanked me, seized a long rope, and went up, hand over hand. I piled the soft nets into a mattress, but decided to stand near, not liking the arrangements.
Meanwhile Jacqueline was swinging, head downward, from her trapeze. Her cheeks flamed as she twisted and wriggled through a complicated manœuvre, which ended by landing her seated on the bar of the trapeze a trifle out of breath. With both hands resting on the ropes, she started herself swinging, faster, faster, then pretended to drop off backward, only to catch herself with her heels, substitute heels for hands, and hang. Doubling back on her own body, she glided to her perch beneath the roof, shook her damp hair back, set the trapeze flying, and curled up on the bar, resting as fearlessly and securely as a bullfinch in a tree-top.
Above her the red-and-black wasps buzzed and crawled and explored the sun-scorched beams. Spiders watched her from their silken hammocks, and the tiny cliff-mice scuttled from beam to beam. Through the open door the sunshine poured a flood of gold over the floor where the bronzed nets were spread. Mending was necessary; she mentioned it, and set herself swinging again, crossing her feet.
“You think you could drop from there into a tank of water?” I asked.
“How deep?”
“Say four feet.”
She nodded, swinging tranquilly.
“Have you any fear at all, Jacqueline?”
“No.”
“You would try whatever I asked you to try?”
“If I thought I could,” she replied, naïvely.
“But that is not it. I am to be your master. You206must have absolute confidence in me and obey orders instantly.”
“Like a soldier?”
“Exactly.”
“Bien.”
“Then hang by your hands!”
Quick as a flash she hung above me.
“You trust me, Jacqueline?”
“Yes.”
“Then drop!”
Down she flashed like a falling meteor. I caught her with that quick trick known to all acrobats, which left her standing on my knee.
“Jump!”
She sprang lightly to the heap of nets, lost her balance, stumbled, and sat down very suddenly. Then she threw back her head and laughed; peal on peal of deliciously childish laughter rang through the ancient net-shed, until, overhead, the passing gulls echoed her mirth with querulous mewing, and the sea-hawk, towering to the zenith, wheeled and squealed.