It was no jest of Valmond’s that he would, or could, have five hundred followers in two weeks. Lagroin and Parpon were busy, each in his own way—Lagroin, open, bluff, imperative; Parpon, silent, acute, shrewd. Two days before the feast of St. John the Baptist, the two made a special tour through the parish for certain recruits. If these could be enlisted, a great many men of this and other parishes would follow. They were, by name, Muroc the charcoalman, Duclosse the mealman, Lajeunesse the blacksmith, and Garotte the limeburner, all men of note, after their kind, with influence and individuality.
Lagroin chafed that he must play recruiting-sergeant and general also. But it gave him comfort to remember that the Great Emperor had not at times disdained to be his own recruiting-sergeant; that, after Friedland, he himself had been taken into the Old Guard by the Emperor; that Davoust had called him brother; that Ney had shared his supper and slept with him under the same blanket. Parpon would gladly have done this work alone, but he knew that Lagroin in his regimentals would be useful.
The sought-for comrades were often to be found together about the noon hour in the shop of Jose Lajeunesse. They formed the coterie of the humble, even as the Cure’s coterie represented the aristocracy of Pontiac—with Medallion as a connecting link.
Arches and poles were being put up, to be decorated against the feast-day, and piles of wood for bonfires were arranged at points on the hills round the village. Cheer and goodwill were everywhere, for a fine harvest was in view, and this feast-day always brought gladness and simple revelling. Parish interchanged with parish; but, because it was so remote, Pontiac was its own goal of pleasure, and few fared forth, though others came from Ville Bambord and elsewhere to join the fete. As Lagroin and the dwarf came to the door of the smithy, they heard the loud laugh of Lajeunesse.
“Good!” said Parpon. “Hear how he tears his throat!”
“If he has sense, I’ll make a captain of him,” remarked Lagroin consequentially.
“You shall beat him into a captain on his own anvil,” rejoined the little man.
They entered the shop. Lajeunesse was leaning on his bellows, laughing, and holding an iron in the spitting fire; Muroc was seated on the edge of the cooling tub; and Duclosse was resting on a bag of his excellent meal. Garotte was the only missing member of the quartette.
Muroc was a wag, a grim sort of fellow, black from his trade, with big rollicking eyes. At times he was not easy to please, but if he took a liking, he was for joking at once. He approved of Parpon, and never lost a chance of sharpening his humour on the dwarf’s impish whetstone of a tongue.
“Lord! Lord!” he cried, with feigned awe, getting to his feet at sight of the two. Then, to his comrades, “Children, children, off with your hats! Here is Monsieur Talleyrand, if I’m not mistaken. On to your feet, mealman, and dust your stomach. Lajeunesse, wipe your face with your leather. Duck your heads, stupids!”
With mock solemnity the three greeted Parpon and Lagroin. The old sergeant’s face flushed, and his hand dropped to his sword; but he had promised Parpon to say nothing till he got his cue, and he would keep his word. So he disposed himself in an attitude of martial attention. The dwarf bowed to the others with a face of as great gravity as the charcoalman’s, and waving his hand, said:
“Keep your seats, my children, and God be with you. You are right, smutty-face; I am Monsieur Talleyrand, Minister of the Crown.”
“The devil, you say!” cried the mealman.
“Tut, tut!” said Lajeunesse, chaffing; “haven’t you heard the news? The devil is dead!”
The dwarf’s hand went into his pocket. “My poor orphan,” said he, trotting over and thrusting some silver into the blacksmith’s pocket, “I see he hasn’t left you well off. Accept my humble gift.”
“The devil dead?” cried Muroc; “then I’ll go marry his daughter.”
Parpon climbed up on a pile of untired wheels, and with an elfish grin began singing. Instantly the three humorists became silent and listened, the blacksmith pumping his bellows mechanically the while.
“O mealman white, give me your daughter,Oh, give her to me, your sweet Suzon!O mealman dear, you can do no betterFor I have a chateau at Malmaison.Black charcoalman, you shall not have herShe shall not marry you, my Suzon—A bag of meal—and a sack of carbon!Non, non, non, non, non, non, non, non!Go look at your face, my fanfaron,For my daughter and you would be night and day,Non, non, non, non, non, non, non, non,Not for your chateau at Malmaison,Non, non, non, non, non, non, non, non,You shall not marry her, my Suzon.”
A better weapon than his waspish tongue was Parpon’s voice, for it, before all, was persuasive. A few years before, none of them had ever heard him sing. An accident discovered it to them, and afterwards he sang for them but little, and never when it was expected of him. He might be the minister of a dauphin or a fool, but he was now only the mysterious Parpon who thrilled them. All the soul cramped in the small body was showing in his eyes, as on that day when he had sung before the Louis Quinze.
A face suddenly appeared at a little door just opposite him. No one but Parpon saw it. It belonged to Madelinette, the daughter of Lajeunesse, who had a voice of merit. More than once the dwarf had stopped to hear her singing as he passed the smithy. She sang only the old chansons and the songs of the voyageurs, with a far greater sweetness and richness, however, than any in the parish; and the Cure could detect her among all others at mass. She had been taught her notes, but that had only opened up possibilities, and fretted her till she was unhappy. What she felt she could not put into her singing, for the machinery, unknown and tyrannical, was not hers. Twice before she had heard Parpon sing—at mass when the miller’s wife was buried, and he, forgetting the world, had poured forth all his beautiful voice; and on that notable night before the Louis Quinze. If he would but teach her those songs of his, give her that sound of an organ in her throat! Parpon guessed what she thought. Well, he would see what could be done, if the blacksmith joined Valmond’s standard.
He stopped singing.
“That’s as good as dear Caron, the vivandiere of the Third Corps. Blood o’ my body, I believe it’s better—almost!” said Lagroin, nodding his head patronisingly. “She dragged me from under the mare of a damned Russian that cut me down, before he got my bayonet in his liver. Caron! Caron! ah yes, brave Caron! my dear Caron!” said the old man, smiling through the alluring light that the song had made for him, as he looked behind the curtain of the years.
Parpon’s pleasant ridicule was not lost on the charcoalman and the mealman; but neither was the singing wasted; and their faces were touched with admiration, while the blacksmith, with a sigh, turned to his fire and blew the bellows softly.
“Blacksmith,” said Parpon, “you have a bird that sings.”
“I’ve no bird that sings like that, though she has pretty notes, my bird.” He sighed again. “‘Come, blacksmith,’ said the Count Lassone, when he came here a-fishing, ‘that’s a voice for a palace,’ said he. ‘Take it out of the woods and teach it,’ said he, ‘and it will have all Paris following it.’ That to me, a poor blacksmith, with only my bread and sour milk, and a hundred dollars a year or so, and a sup of brandy when I can get it.”
The charcoalman spoke up. “You’ll not forget the indulgences folks give you more than the pay for setting the dropped shoe—true gifts of God, bought with good butter and eggs at the holy auction, blacksmith. I gave you two myself. You have your blessings, Lajeunesse.”
“So; and no one to use the indulgences but you and Madelinette, giant,” said the fat mealman.
“Ay, thank the Lord, we’ve done well that way!” said the blacksmith, drawing himself up—for he loved nothing better than to be called the giant, though he was known to many as petit enfant, in irony of his size.
Lagroin was now impatient. He could not see the drift of this, and he was about to whisper to Parpon, when the little man sent him a look, commanding silence, and he fretted on dumbly.
“See, my blacksmith,” said Parpon, “your bird shall be taught to sing, and to Paris she shall go by and by.”
“Such foolery!” said Duclosse.
“What’s in your noddle, Parpon?” cried the charcoalman.
The blacksmith looked at Parpon, his face all puzzled eagerness. But another face at the door grew pale with suspense. Parpon quickly turned towards it. “See here, Madelinette,” he said, in a low voice. The girl stepped inside and came to her father. Lajeunesse’s arm ran round her shoulder. There was no corner of his heart into which she had not crept. “Out with it, Parpon!” called the blacksmith hoarsely, for the daughter’s voice had followed herself into those farthest corners of his rugged nature.
“I will teach her to sing first; then she shall go to Quebec, and afterwards to Paris, my friend,” he answered.
The girl’s eyes were dilating with a great joy. “Ah, Parpon—good Parpon!” she whispered.
“But Paris! Paris! There’s gossip for you, thick as mortar,” cried the charcoalman, and the mealman’s fingers beat a tattoo on his stomach.
Parpon waved his hand. “‘Look to the weevil in your meal, Duclosse; and you, smutty-face, leave true things to your betters. See, blacksmith,” he added, “she shall go to Quebec, and after that to Paris.”
Here he got off the wheels, and stepped out into the centre of the shop. “Our master will do that for you. I swear for him, and who can say that Parpon was ever a liar?”
The blacksmith’s hand tightened on his daughter’s shoulder. He was trembling with excitement.
“Is it true? is it true?” he asked, and the sweat stood out on his forehead.
“He sends this for Madelinette,” answered the dwarf, handing over a little bag of gold to the girl, who drew back. But Parpon went close to her, and gently forced it into her hands.
“Open it,” he said. She did so, and the blacksmith’s eyes gloated on the gold. Muroc and Duclosse drew near, and peered in also. And so they stood there for a little while, all looking and exclaiming.
Presently Lajeunesse scratched his head. “Nobody does nothing for nothing,” said he. “What horse do I shoe for this?”
“La, la!” said the charcoalman, sticking a thumb in the blacksmith’s side; “you only give him the happy hand—like that!”
Duclosse was more serious. “It is the will of God that you become a marshal or a duke,” he said wheezingly to the blacksmith. “You can’t say no; it is the will of God, and you must bear it like a man.”
The child saw further; perhaps the artistic strain in her gave her keener reasoning.
“Father,” she said, “Monsieur Valmond wants you for a soldier.”
“Wants me?” he roared in astonishment. “Who’s to shoe the horses a week days, and throw the weight o’ Sundays after mass? Who’s to handle a stick for the Cure when there’s fighting among the river-men?
“But there, la, la! many a time my wife, my good Florienne, said to me, ‘Jose—Jose Lajeunesse, with a chest like yours, you ought to be a corporal at least.’”
Parpon beckoned to Lagroin, and nodded. “Corporal! corporal!” cried Lagroin; “in a week you shall be a lieutenant and a month shall make you a captain, and maybe better than that!”
“Better than that—bagosh!” cried the charcoalman in surprise, proudly using the innocuous English oath. “Better than that—sutler, maybe?” said the mealman, smacking his lips.
“Better than that,” replied Lagroin, swelling with importance. “Ay, ay, my dears, great things are for you. I command the army, and I have free hand from my master. Ah, what joy to serve a Napoleon once again! What joy! Lord, how I remember—”
“Better than that-eh?” persisted Duclosse, perspiring, the meal on his face making a sort of paste.
“A general or a governor, my children,” said Lagroin. “First in, first served. Best men, best pickings. But every man must love his chief, and serve him with blood and bayonet; and march o’ nights if need, and limber up the guns if need, and shoe a horse if need, and draw a cork if need, and cook a potato if need; and be a hussar, or a tirailleur, or a trencher, or a general, if need. But yes, that’s it; no pride but the love of France and the cause, and—”
“And Monsieur Valmond,” said the charcoalman slyly.
“And Monsieur the Emperor!” cried Lagroin almost savagely.
He caught Parpon’s eye, and instantly his hand went to his pocket.
“Ah, he is a comrade, that! Nothing is too good for his friends, for his soldiers. See!” he added.
He took from his pocket ten gold pieces. “‘These are bagatelles,’ said His Excellency to me; ‘but tell my friends, Monsieur Muroc and Monsieur Duclosse and Monsieur Garotte, that they are buttons for the coats of my sergeants, and that my captains’ coats have ten times as many buttons. Tell them,’ said he, ‘that my friends shall share my fortunes; that France needs us; that Pontiac shall be called the nest of heroes. Tell them that I will come to them at nine o’clock tonight, and we will swear fidelity.’”
“And a damned good speech too—bagosh!” cried the mealman, his fingers hungering for the gold pieces. “We’re to be captains pretty soon—eh?” asked Muroc.
“As quick as I’ve taught you to handle a company,” answered Lagroin, with importance.
“I was a patriot in ‘37,” said Muroc. “I went against the English; I held abridge for two hours. I have my musket yet.”
“I am a patriot now,” urged Duclosse. “Why the devil not the English first, then go to France, and lick the Orleans!”
“They’re a skittish lot, the Orleans; they might take it in their heads to fight,” suggested Muroc, with a little grin.
“What the devil do you expect?” roared the blacksmith, blowing the bellows hard in his excitement, one arm still round his daughter’s shoulder. “D’you think we’re going to play leap-frog into the Tuileries? There’s blood to let, and we’re to let it!”
“Good, my leeches!” said Parpon; “you shall have blood to suck. But we’ll leave the English be. France first, then our dogs will take a snap at the flag on the citadel yonder.” He nodded in the direction of Quebec.
Lagroin then put five gold pieces each into the hands of Muroc and Duclosse, and said:
“I take you into the service of Prince Valmond Napoleon, and you do hereby swear to serve him loyally, even to the shedding of your blood, for his honour and the honour of France; and you do also vow to require a like loyalty and obedience of all men under your command. Swear.”
There was a slight pause, for the old man’s voice had the ring of a fatal earnestness. It was no farce, but a real thing.
“Swear,” he said again. “Raise your right hand.”
“Done!” said Muroc. “To the devil with the charcoal! I’ll go wash my face.”
“There’s my hand on it,” added Duclosse; “but that rascal Petrie will get my trade, and I’d rather be strung by the Orleans than that.”
“Till I’ve no more wind in my bellows!” responded Lajeunesse, raising his hand, “if he keeps faith with my Madelinette.”
“On the honour of a soldier,” said Lagroin, and he crossed himself.
“God save us all!” said Parpon. Obeying a motion of the dwarf’s hand, Lagroin drew from his pocket a flask of cognac, with four little tin cups fitting into each other. Handing one to each, he poured them brimming full. Then, filling his own, he spilled a little in the steely dust of the smithy floor. All did the same, though they knew not why.
“What’s that for?” asked the mealman.
“To show the Little Corporal, dear Corporal Violet, and my comrades of the Old Guard, that we don’t forget them,” cried Lagroin.
He drank slowly, holding his head far back, and as he brought it straight again, he swung on his heel, for two tears were racing down his cheeks.
The mealman wiped his eyes in sympathy; the charcoalman shook his head at the blacksmith, as though to say, “Poor devil!” and Parpon straightway filled their glasses again. Madelinette took the flask to the old sergeant. He looked at her kindly, and patted her shoulder. Then he raised his glass.
“Ah, the brave Caron, the dear Lucette Caron! Ah, the time she dragged me from under the Russian’s mare!” He smiled into the distance. “Who can tell? Perhaps, perhaps—again!” he added.
Then, all at once, as if conscious of the pitiful humour of his meditations, he came to his feet, straightened his shoulders, and cried:
“To her we love best!”
The charcoalman drank, and smacked his lips. “Yes, yes,” he said, looking into the cup admiringly; “like mother’s milk that. White of my eye, but I do love her!”
The mealman cocked his glance towards the open door. “Elise!” he said sentimentally, and drank. The blacksmith kissed his daughter, and his hand rested on her head as he lifted the cup, but he said never a word.
Parpon took one sip, then poured his liquor upon the ground, as though down there was what he loved best; but his eyes were turned to Dalgrothe Mountain, which he could see through the open door.
“France!” cried the old soldier stoutly, and tossed off the liquor.
That night Valmond and his three new recruits, to whom Garotte the limeburner had been added, met in the smithy and swore fealty to the great cause. Lajeunesse, by virtue of his position in the parish, and his former military experience, was made a captain, and the others sergeants of companies yet unnamed and unformed. The limeburner was a dry, thin man of no particular stature, who coughed a little between his sentences, and had a habit, when not talking, of humming to himself, as if in apology for his silence. This humming had no sort of tune or purpose, and was but a vague musical sputtering. He almost perilled the gravity of the oath they all took to Valmond by this idiosyncrasy. His occupation gave him a lean, arid look; his hair was crisp and straight, shooting out at all points, and it flew to meet his cap as if it were alive. He was a genius after a fashion, too, and at all the feasts and on national holidays he invented some new feature in the entertainments. With an eye for the grotesque, he had formed a company of jovial blades, called Kalathumpians, after the manner of the mimes of old times in his beloved Dauphiny.
“All right, all right,” he said, when Lagroin, in the half-lighted blacksmith shop, asked him to swear allegiance and service. “‘Brigadier, vous avez raison,’” he added, quoting a well-known song. Then he hummed a little and coughed. “We must have a show”—he hummed again—“we must tickle ‘em up a bit—touch ‘em where they’re silly with a fiddle and fife-raddy dee dee, ra dee, ra dee, ra dee!” Then, to Valmond: “We gave the fools who fought the Little Corporal sour apples in Dauphiny, my dear!”
He followed this extraordinary speech with a plan for making an ingenious coup for Valmond, when his Kalathumpians should parade the streets on the evening of St. John the Baptist’s Day.
With hands clasped the new recruits sang:
“When from the war we come,Allons gai!Oh, when we ride back home,If we be spared that day,Ma luronne lurette,We’ll laugh our scars away,Ma luronne lure,We’ll lift the latch and stay,Ma luronne lure.”
The huge frame of the blacksmith, his love for his daughter, his simple faith in this new creed of patriotism, his tenderness of heart, joined to his irascible disposition, spasmodic humour, and strong arm, roused in Valmond an immediate liking, as keen, after its kind, as that he had for the Cure; and the avocat. With both of these he had had long talks of late, on everything but purely personal matters. They would have thought it a gross breach of etiquette to question him on that which he avoided. His admiration of them was complete, although he sometimes laughed half sadly, half whimsically, as he thought of their simple faith in him.
At dusk on the eve of St. John the Baptist’s Day, after a long conference with Lagroin and Parpon, Valmond went through the village, and came to the smithy to talk with Lajeunesse. Those who recognised him in passing took off their bonnets rouges, some saying, “Good-night, your Highness;” some, “How are you, monseigneur?” some, “God bless your Excellency;” and a batch of bacchanalian river-men, who had been drinking, called him “General,” and insisted on embracing him, offering him cognac from their tin flasks.
The appearance among them of old Madame Degardy shifted the good-natured attack. For many a year, winter and summer, she had come and gone in the parish, all rags and tatters, wearing men’s kneeboots and cap, her grey hair hanging down in straggling curls, her lower lip thrust out fiercely, her quick eyes wandering to and fro, and her sharp tongue, like Parpon’s, clearing a path before her whichever way she turned. On her arm she carried a little basket of cakes and confitures, and these she dreamed she sold, for they were few who bought of Crazy Joan. The stout stick she carried was as compelling as her tongue, so that when the river-men surrounded her in amiable derision, it was used freely and with a heart all kindness: “For the good of their souls,” she said, “since the Cure was too mild, Mary in heaven bless him high and low!”
She was the Cure’s champion everywhere, and he in turn was tender towards the homeless body, whose history even to him was obscure, save in the few particulars that he had given to Valmond the last time they had met.
In her youth Madame Degardy was pretty and much admired. Her lover had deserted her, and in a fit of mad indignation and despair she had fled from the village, and vanished no one knew where, though it had been declared by a wandering hunter that she had been seen in the far-off hills that march into the south, and that she lived there with a barbarous mountaineer, who had himself long been an outlaw from his kind.
But this had been mere gossip, and after twenty-five years she came back to Pontiac, a half-mad creature, and took up the thread of her life alone; and Parpon and the Cure saw that she suffered nothing in the hard winters.
Valmond left the river-men to the tyranny of her tongue and stick, and came on to where the red light of the forge showed through the smithy window. As he neared the door, he heard a voice singularly sweet, and another of commoner calibre was joining in the refrain of a song:
“‘Oh, traveller, see where the red sparks rise,’(Fly away, my heart, fly away!)But dark is the mist in the traveller’s eyes.(Fly away, my heart, fly away!)‘Oh, traveller, see far down the gorge,The crimson light from my father’s forge.(Fly away, my heart, fly away!)“‘Oh, traveller, hear how the anvils ring.’(Fly away, my heart, fly away!)But the traveller heard, ah, never a thing.(Fly away, my heart, fly away!)‘Oh, traveller, loud do the bellows roar,And my father waits by the smithy door.(Fly away, my heart, fly away!)“‘Oh, traveller, see you thy true love’s grace.’(Fly away, my heart, fly away!)And now there is joy in the traveller’s face.(Fly away, my heart, fly away!)Oh, wild does he ride through the rain and mire,To greet his love by the smithy fire.(Fly away, my heart, fly away!)”
In accompaniment, some one was beating softly on the anvil, and the bellows were blowing rhythmically.
He lingered for a moment, loath to interrupt the song, and then softly opened the upper half of the door, for it was divided horizontally, and leaned over the lower part.
Beside the bellows, her sleeves rolled up, her glowing face cowled in her black hair, comely and strong, stood Elise Malboir, pushing a rod of steel into the sputtering coals. Over the anvil, with a small bar caught in a pair of tongs, hovered Madelinette Lajeunesse, beating, almost tenderly, the red-hot point of the steel. The sound of the iron hammer on the malleable metal was like muffled silver, and the sparks flew out like jocund fireflies. She was making two hooks for her kitchen wall, for she was clever at the forge, and could shoe a horse if she were let to do so. She was but half-turned to Valmond, but he caught the pure outlines of her face and neck, her extreme delicacy of expression, which had a pathetic, subtle refinement, in acute contrast to the quick, abundant health, the warm energy, the half defiant look of Elise. It was a picture of labour and life.
A dozen thoughts ran through Valmond’s mind. He was responsible, to an extent, for the happiness of these two young creatures. He had promised to make a songstress of the one, to send her to Paris; had roused in her wild, ambitious hopes of fame and fortune—dreams that, in any case, could be little like the real thing: fanciful visions of conquest and golden living, where never the breath of her hawthorn and wild violets entered; only sickly perfumes, as from an odalisque’s fan, amid the enervating splendour of voluptuous boudoirs—for she had read of these things.
Valmond had, in a vague, graceless sort of way, worked upon the quick emotions of Elise. Every little touch of courtesy had been returned to him in half-shy, half-ardent glances; in flushes, which the kiss he had given her the first day of their meeting had made the signs of an intermittent fever; in modest yet alluring waylayings; in restless nights, in half-tuneful, half-silent days; in a sweet sort of petulance. She had kept in mind everything he had said to her; the playfully emotional pressure of her hand, his eloquent talks with her uncle, the old sergeant’s rhapsodies on his greatness; and there was no place in the room where he had sat or stood, which she had not made sacred—she, the mad cap, who had lovers by the dozen. Importuned by the Cure and her mother to marry, she had threatened, if they worried her further, to wed fat Duclosse, the mealman, who had courted her in a ponderous way for at least three years. The fire that corrodes, when it does not make glorious without and within, was in her veins, and when Valmond should call she was ready to come. She could not, at first, see that if he were, in truth, a Napoleon, she was not for him. Seized of that wilful, daring spirit called Love, her sight was bounded by the little field where she strayed.
Elise’s arm paused upon the lever of the bellows, when she saw Valmond watching them from the door. He took off his hat to them, as Madelinette turned towards him, the hammer pausing in the stroke.
“Ah, monseigneur!” she said impulsively, and then paused, confused. Elise did not move, but stood looking at him, her eyes all flame, her cheeks going a little pale, and flushing again. With a quick motion she pushed her hair back, and as he stepped inside and closed the door behind him, she blew the bellows, as if to give a brighter light to the place. The fire flared up, but there were corners in deep shadow. Valmond doffed his hat again and said ceremoniously: “Mademoiselle Madelinette, Mademoiselle Elise, pray do not stop your work. Let me sit here and watch you.”
Taking from his pocket a cigarette, he came over to the forge and was about to light it with the red steel from the fire, when Elise, snatching up a tiny piece of wood, thrust it in the coals, and, drawing it out, held it towards the cigarette, saying:
“Ah, no, your Excellency—this!”
As Valmond reached to take it from her, he heard a sound, as of a hoarse breathing, and turned quickly; but his outstretched hand touched Elise’s fingers, and it involuntarily closed on them, all her impulsive temperament and warm life thrilling through him. The shock of feeling brought his eyes to hers with a sudden burning mastery. For an instant their looks fused and were lost in a passionate affiance. Then, as if pulling himself out of a dream, he released her fingers with a “Pardon—my child!”
As he did so, a cry ran through the smithy. Madelinette was standing, tense and set with terror, her eyes riveted on something that crouched beside a pile of cart-wheels a few feet away; something with shaggy head, flaring eyes, and a devilish face. The thing raised itself and sprang towards hers with a devouring cry. With desperate swiftness leaping forward, Valmond caught the half man, half beast—it seemed that—by the throat. Madelinette fell fainting against the anvil, and, dazed and trembling, Elise hurried to her.
Valmond was in the grasp of a giant, and, struggle as he might, he could not withstand the powerful arms of his assailant. They came to their knees on the ground, where they clutched and strained for a wild minute, Valmond desperately fighting to keep the huge bony fingers from his neck. Suddenly the giant’s knee touched the red-hot steel that Madelinette had dropped, and with a snarl he flung Valmond back against the anvil, his head striking the iron with a sickening thud. Then, seizing the steel, he raised it to plunge the still glowing point into Valmond’s eyes.
Centuries of doom seemed crowded into that instant of time. Valmond caught the giant’s wrist with both hands, and with a mighty effort wrenched himself aside. His heart seemed to strain and burst, and just as he felt the end was come, he heard something crash on the murderer’s skull, and the great creature fell with a gurgling sound, and lay like a parcel of loose bones across his knees. Valmond raised himself, a strange, dull wonder on him, for as the weapon smote this lifeless creature, he had seen another hurl by and strike the opposite wall. A moment afterwards the dead man was pulled away by Parpon. Trying to rise he felt blood trickling down his neck, and he turned sick and blind. As the world slipped away from him, a soft shoulder caught his head, and out of a vast distance there came to him the wailing cry: “He is dying! my love! my love!”
Peril and horror had brought to Elise’s breast the one being in the world for her, the face which was etched like a picture upon her eyes and heart.
Parpon groaned with a strange horror as he dragged the body from Valmond. For a moment he knelt gasping beside the shapeless being, his great hands spasmodically feeling the pulseless breast.
Soon afterwards in the blacksmith’s house the two girls nestled in each other’s arms, and Valmond, shaken and weak, returned to the smithy.
In the dull glare of the forge fire knelt Parpon, rocking back and forth beside the body. Hearing Valmond, he got to his feet.
“You have killed him,” he said, pointing.
“No, no, not I,” answered Valmond. “Some one threw a hammer.”
“There were two hammers.”
“It was Elise?” asked Valmond, with a shudder. “No, not Elise; it was you,” said the dwarf, with a strange insistence.
“I tell you no,” said Valmond. “It was you, Parpon.”
“By God, it is a lie!” cried the dwarf, with a groan. Then he came close to Valmond. “He was—my brother! Do you not see?” he demanded fiercely, his eyes full of misery. “Do you not see that it was you? Yes, yes, it was you.”
Stooping, Valmond caught the little man in an embrace. “It was I that killed him, Parpon. It was I, comrade. You saved my life,” he added significantly. “The girl threw, but missed,” said Parpon. “She does not know but that she struck him.”
“She must be told.”
“I will tell her that you killed him. Leave it to me—all to me, my grand seigneur.”
A half-hour afterwards the avocat, the Cure, and the Little Chemist, had heard the story as the dwarf told it, and Valmond returned to the Louis Quinze a hero. For hours the habitants gathered under his window and cheered him.
Parpon sat long in gloomy silence by his side, but, raising his voice, he began to sing softly a lament for the gross-figured body, lying alone in a shed near the deserted smithy:
“Children, the house is empty,The house behind the tall hill;Lonely and still is the empty house.There is no face in the doorway,There is no fire in the chimney.Come and gather beside the gate,Little Good Folk of the Scarlet Hills.“Where has the wild dog vanished?Where has the swift foot gone?Where is the hand that found the good fruit,That made a garret of wholesome herbs?Where is the voice that awoke the morn,The tongue that defied the terrible beasts?Come and listen beside the door,Little Good Folk of the Scarlet Hills.”
The pathos of the chant almost made his listener shrink, so immediate and searching was it. When the lament ceased, there was a long silence, broken by Valmond.
“He was your brother, Parpon—how? Tell me about it.”
The dwarf’s eyes looked into the distance.
“It was in the far-off country,” he said, “in the hills where the Little Good Folk come. My mother married an outlaw. Ah, he was cruel, and an animal! My brother Gabriel was born—he was a giant, his brain all fumbling and wild. Then I was born, so small, a head as a tub, and long arms like a gorilla. We burrowed in the hills, Gabriel and I. One day my mother, because my father struck her, went mad, left us and came to—” He broke off, pausing an instant. “Then Gabriel struck the man, and he died, and we buried him, and my brother also left me, and I was alone. By and by I travelled to Pontiac. Once Gabriel came down from the hills, and Lajeunesse burnt him with a hot iron, for cutting his bellows in the night, to make himself a bed inside them. To-day he came again to do some terrible thing to the blacksmith or the girl, and you have seen—ah, the poor Gabriel, and I killed him!”
“I killed him,” said Valmond—“I, Parpon, my friend.”
“My poor fool, my wild dog!” wailed the dwarf mournfully.
“Parpon,” asked Valmond suddenly, “where is your mother?”
“It is no matter. She has forgotten—she is safe.”
“If she should see him!” said Valmond tentatively, for a sudden thought had come to him that the mother of these misfits of God was Madame Degardy.
Parpon sprang to his-feet. “She shall not see him. Ah, you know! You have guessed?” he cried. “She is all safe with me.”
“She shall not see him. She shall not know,” repeated the dwarf, his eyes huddling back in his head with anguish.
“Does she not remember you?”
“She does not remember the living, but she would remember the dead. She shall not know,” he said again.
Then, seizing Valmond’s hand, he kissed it, and, without a word, trotted from the room—a ludicrously pathetic figure.
Now and again the moon showed through the cloudy night, and the air was soft and kind. Parpon left behind him the village street, and, after a half mile or more of travel, came to a spot where a crimson light showed beyond a little hill. He halted a moment, as if to think and listen, then crawled up the bank and looked down. Beside a still smoking lime-kiln an abandoned fire was burning down into red coals. The little hut of the lime-burner was beyond in a hollow, and behind that again was a lean-to, like a small shed or stable. Hither stole the dwarf, first pausing to listen a moment at the door of the hut.
Leaning into the darkness of the shed, he gave a soft, crooning call. Low growls of dogs came in quick reply. He stepped inside, and spoke to them:
“Good dogs! good dogs! good Musket, Coffee, Filthy, Jo-Jo—steady, steady, idiots!” for the huge brutes were nosing him, throwing themselves against: him, and whining gratefully. Feeling the wall, he took down some harness, and, in the dark, put a set on each dog—mere straps for the shoulders, halters, and traces; called to them sharply to be quiet, and, keeping hold of their collars, led them out into the night. He paused to listen again. Presently he drove the dogs across the road, and attached them to a flat vehicle, without wheels or runners, used by Garotte for the drawing of lime and stones. It was not so heavy as many machines of the kind, and at a quick word from the dwarf the dogs darted away. Unseen, a mysterious figure hurried on after them, keeping well in the shadow of the trees fringing the side of the road.
The dwarf drove the dogs down a lonely side lane to the village, and came to the shed where lay the uncomely thing he had called brother. He felt for a spot where there was a loose board, forced it and another with his strong fingers, and crawled in. Reappearing with the dead body, he bore it in his huge arms to the stoneboat: a midget carrying a giant. He covered up the face, and, returning to the shed, placed his coat against the boards to deaden the sound, and hammered them tight again with a stone, after having straightened the grass about. Returning, he found the dogs cowering with fear, for one of them had pushed the cloth off the dead man’s face with his nose, and death exercised its weird dominion over them. They crouched together, whining and tugging at the traces. With a persuasive word he started them away.
The pursuing, watchful figure followed at a distance, on up the road, on over the little hills, on into the high hills, the dogs carrying along steadily the grisly load. And once their driver halted them, and sat in the grey gloom and dust beside the dead body.
“Where do you go, dwarf?” he said.
“I go to the Ancient House,” he made answer to himself.
“What do you get?”
“I do not go to get; I go to give.”
“What do you go to give?”
“I go to leave an empty basket at the door, and the lantern that the Shopkeeper set in the hand of the pedlar.”
“Who is the pedlar, hunchback?”
“The pedlar is he that carries the pack on his back.”
“What carries he in the pack?”
“He carries what the Shopkeeper gave him—for he had no money and no choice.”
“Who is the Shopkeeper, dwarf?”
“The Shopkeeper—the Shopkeeper is the father of dwarfs and angels and children—and fools.”
“What does he sell, poor man?”
“He sells harness for men and cattle, and you give your lives for the harness.”
“What is this you carry, dwarf?”
“I carry home the harness of a soul.”
“Is it worth carrying home?”
“The eyes grow sick at sight of the old harness in the way.”
The watching figure, hearing, pitied.
It was Valmond. Excited by Parpon’s last words at the hotel, he had followed, and was keen to chase this strange journeying to the end, though suffering from the wound in his head, and shaken by the awful accident of the evening. But, as he said to himself; some things were to be seen but once in the great game, and it was worth while seeing them, even if life were the shorter for it.
On up the heights filed the strange procession until at last it came to Dalgrothe Mountain. On one of the foot-hills stood the Rock of Red Pigeons. This was the dwarf’s secret resort, where no one ever disturbed him; for the Little Good Folk of the Scarlet Hills (of whom it was rumoured, he had come) held revel there, and people did not venture rashly. The land about it, and a hut farther down the hill, belonged to Parpon; a legacy from the father of the young Seigneur.
It was all hills, gorges, rivers, and idle, murmuring pines. Of a morning, mist floated into mist as far as eye could see, blue and grey and amethyst, a glamour of tints and velvety radiance. The great hills waved into each other like a vast violet sea, and, in turn, the tiny earth-waves on each separate hill swelled into the larger harmony. At the foot of a steep precipice was the whirlpool from which Parpon, at great risk, had rescued the father of De la Riviere, and had received this lonely region as his reward. To the dwarf it was his other world, his real home; for here he lived his own life, and it was here he had brought his ungainly dead, to give it housing.
The dogs drew up the grim cargo to a plateau near the Rock of Red Pigeons, and, gathering sticks, Parpon lit a sweet-smelling fire of cedar. Then he went to the hut, and came back with a spade and a shovel. At the foot of a great pine he began to dig. As the work went on, he broke into a sort of dirge, painfully sweet. Leaning against a rock not far away, Valmond watched the tiny man with the long arms throw up the soft, good-smelling earth, enriched by centuries of dead leaves and flowers. The trees waved and bent and murmured, as though they gossiped with each other over this odd gravedigger. The light of the fire showed across the gorge, touching off the far wall of pines with burnished crimson, and huge flickering shadows looked like elusive spirits, attendant on the lonely obsequies. Now and then a bird, aroused by the flame or the snap of a burning stick, rose from its nest and flew away; and wild-fowl flitted darkly down the pass, like the souls of heroes faring to Walhalla. When an owl hooted, a wolf howled far off, or a loon cried from the water below; the solemn fantasy took on the aspect of the unreal.
Valmond watched like one in a dream, and twice or thrice he turned faint, and drew his cloak about him as if he were cold; for a sickly air, passing by, seemed to fill his lungs with poison.
At last the grave was dug, and, sprinkling its depth with leaves and soft branches of spruce, the dwarf drew the body over, and lowered it slowly, awkwardly, into the grave. Then he covered all but the huge, unlovely face, and, kneeling, peered down at it pitifully.
“Gabriel, Gabriel,” he cried, “surely thy soul is better without its harness! I killed thee, and thou didst kill, and those we love die by our own hands. But no, I lie; I did not love thee, thou wert so ugly and wild and cruel. Poor boy! Thou wast a fool, and thou wast a murderer. Thou wouldst have slain my prince, and so I slew thee—I slew thee.”
He rocked to and fro in abject sorrow, and cried again: “Hast thou no one in all the world to mourn thee, save him who killed thee? Is there no one to wish thee speed to the Ancient House? Art thou tossed away like an old shoe, and no one to say, The Shoemaker that made thee must see to it if thou wast ill-shapen, and walked crookedly, and did evil things? Ah, is there no one to mourn thee, save him that killed thee?”
He leaned back, and cried out into the high hills like a remorseful, tortured soul.
Valmond, no longer able to watch this grief in silence, stepped quickly forward. The dogs, seeing him, barked, and then were still; and the dwarf looked up as he heard footsteps.
“Another has come to mourn him, Parpon,” said Valmond.
A look of bewilderment and joy swam into Parpon’s eyes. Then he gave a laugh of singular wildness, his face twitched, tears rushed down his cheeks, and he threw himself at Valmond’s feet, and clasped his knees, crying:
“Ah-ah, my prince, great brother, thou hast come also! Ah, thou didst know the way up the long hill Thou hast come to the burial of a fool. But he had a mother—yes, yes, a mother! All fools have mothers, and they should be buried well. Come, ah, come, and speak softly the Act of Contrition, and I will cover him up.”
He went to throw in the earth, but Valmond pushed him aside gently.
“No, no,” he said, “this is for me.” And he began filling the grave.
When they left the place of burial, the fire was burning low, for they had talked long. At the foot of the hills they looked back. Day was beginning to break over Dalgrothe Mountain.