A PAGAN COBBLER.
At dusk that evening the same subject, with variations, was the
universal topic of the conversational groups. Still Auguste had not
come; half the village was out watching for him on the cliffs. The
other half was crowding the streets and the doorsteps.
Twilight is the classic time, in all French towns and villages, for the
_al fresco_ lounge. The cool breath of the dusk is fresh, then, and
restful; after the heat and sweat of the long noon the air, as it
touches brow and lip, has the charm of a caress. So the door ways and
streets were always crowded at this hour, groups moved, separated,
formed and re formed, and lingered to exchange their budget of gossip,
to call out their "_Bonne nuit_," the girls to clasp hands, looking
longingly over their shoulders at the younger fishermen and farmers;
the latter to nod, carelessly, gayly back at them; and then--as men
will--to fling an arm about a comrade's shoulder as they, in their
turn, called out into the dusk,
"_Allons, mon brave; de l'absinthe, toi?_" as the cabaret swallowed
them up.
Great and mighty were the cries and the oaths that issued from the
cabaret's open doors and windows. The Villerville fisherman loved
Bacchus only, second to Neptune; when he was not out casting his net
into the Channel he was drinking up his spoils. It was during the
sobering process only that affairs of a purely domestic nature engaged
his attention. Some of the streets were permeated with noxious odors,
with the poison of absinthe and the fumes of cheap brandy. Noisy,
reeling groups came out of the tavern doors, to shout and sing, or to
fight their way homeward. One such figure was filling a narrow alley,
swaying from right to left, with a jeering crowd at his heels.
"_Est-il assez ridicule, lui?_ with his cap over his nose, and his
knees knocking at everyone's door? _Bah! ça pue! _" the group of lads
following him went on, shouting about the poor sot, as they pelted him
with their rain of pebbles and paper bullets.
"Ah--h, he will beat her, in his turn, poor soul; she always gets it
when he's full, as full as that--"
The voice was so close to our ears that we started. The words appeared
addressed to us; they were, in a way, since they were intended for the
street, as a street, and for the benefit of the groups that filled it.
The voice was gruff yet mellow; despite its gruffness it had the ring
of a latent kindliness in its deep tones. The man who owned it was
seated on a level with our elbows, at a cobbler's bench. We stopped to
let the crowd push on beyond us. The man had only lifted his head from
his work, but involuntarily one stopped to salute the power in it.
"_Bonsoir, mesdames_"--the head gravely bowed as the great frame of the
body below the head rose from the low seat. The room within seemed to
contain nothing else save this giant figure, now that it had risen and
was moving toward us. The half-door was courteously opened.
"Will not _ces dames_ give themselves the trouble of entering? The
streets are not gay at this hour."
We went in. A dog and a woman came forth from a smaller inner room to
greet us; of the two the dog was obviously the personage next in point
of intelligence and importance to the master. The woman had a
snuffed-out air, as of one whose life had died out of her years ago.
She blinked at us meekly as she dropped a timid courtesy; at a low word
of command she turned a pitifully patient back on us all. There were
years of obedience to orders written on its submissive curves; and she
bent it once more over her kettles; both she and the kettles were on
the bare floor. It was the poorest of all the Villerville interiors we
had as yet seen; the house was also, perhaps, the oldest in the
village. It and the old church had been opposite neighbors for several
centuries. The shop and the living-room were all in one; the low window
was a counter by day and a shutter by night. Within, the walls were
bare as were the floors. Three chairs with sunken leather covers, and a
bed with a mattress also sunken--a hollow in a pine frame, was the
equipment in furniture. The poverty was brutal; it was the naked,
unabashed poverty of the middle ages, with no hint of shame or effort
of concealment. The colossus whom the low roof covered was as
unconscious of the barrenness of his surroundings as were his own
walls. This hovel was his home; he had made us welcome with the manners
of a king.
Meanwhile the dog was sniffing at our skirts. After a tour of
observation and inspection he wagged his tail, gave a short bark, and
seated himself by Charm. The giant's eyes twinkled.
"You see, mesdames, it is a dog with a mind--he knows in an instant who
are the right sort. And eloquence, also--he is one who can make
speeches with his tail. A dog's tongue is in his tail, and this one
wags his like an orator!"
Some one else, as well as the dog, possessed the oratorical gift. The
cobbler's voice was the true speaker's voice--rich, vibrating,
sonorous, with a deep note of melody in it. Pose and gestures matched
with the voice; they were flexible and picturesquely suggestive.
"If you care for oratory--" Charm smiled out upon the huge but mobile
face--"you are well placed. The village lies before you. You can always
see the play going on, and hear the speeches--of the passers-by."
The large mouth smiled back. But at Charm's first sentence the keen
Norman eyes had fixed their twinkling glitter on the girl's face. They
seemed to be reading to the very bottom of her thought and being. The
scrutiny was not relaxed as he answered.
"Yes, yes, it is very amusing. One sees a little of everything here.
_Le monde qui passe_--it makes life more diverting; it helps to kill
the time. I look out from my perch, like a bird--a very old one, and
caged"--and he shook forth a great laugh from beneath the wide leather
apron.
The woman, hearing the laugh, came out into the room.
"_E'ben--et toi_--what do you want?"
The giant stopped laughing long enough to turn tyrant. The woman, at
the first of his growl, smiled feebly, going back with unresisting
meekness to her knees, to her pots, and her kettles. The dog growled in
imitation of his master; obviously the soul of the dog was in the wrong
body.
Meanwhile the master of the dog and the woman had forgotten both now;
he was continuing, in a masterful way, to enlighten us about the
peculiarities of his native village. The talk had now reached the
subject of the church.
"Oh, yes, it is fine, very, and old; it and this old house are the
oldest of all the inhabitants of this village. The church came first,
though, it was built by the English, when they came over, thinking to
conquer us with their Hundred Years' War. Little they knew France and
Frenchmen. The church was thoroughly French, although the English did
build it; on the ground many times, but up again, only waiting the hand
of the builder and the restorer."
Again the slim-waisted shape of the old wife ventured forth into the
room.
"Yes, as he says"--in a voice that was but an echo--"the church has
been down many times."
"_Tais-toi--c'est moi qui parle_," grumbled anew her husband, giving
the withered face a terrific scowl.
"_Ohé, oui, c'est toi_," the echo bleated. The thin hands meekly folded
themselves across her apron. She stood quite still, as if awaiting more
punishment.
"It is our good curé who wishes to pull it down once more," her
terrible husband went on, not heeding her quiet presence. "Do you know
our curé? Ah, ha, he's a fine one. It's he that rules us now--he's our
king--our emperor. Ugh, he's a bad one, he is."
"Ah, yes, he's a bad one, he is," his wife echoed, from the side wall.
"Well, and who asked you to talk?" cried her husband, with a face as
black as when the curé's name had first been mentioned. The echo shrank
into the wall. "As I was telling these ladies"--he resumed here his
boot work, clamping the last between his great knees--"as I was saying,
we have not been fortunate in cures, we of our parish. There are curés
and curés, as there are fagots and fagots--and ours is a bad lot. We've
had nothing but trouble since he came to rule over us. We get poorer
day by day, and he richer. There he is now, feeding his hens and his
doves--look, over there--with the ladies of his household gathered
about him--his mother, his aunt, and his niece--a perfect harem. Oh, he
keeps them all fat and sleek, like himself! Bah!"
The grunt of disgust the cobbler gave filled the room like a
thunder-clap. He was peering over his last, across the open counter, at
a little house adjoining the church green, with a great hatred in his
face. From one of the windows of the house there was leaning forth a
group of three heads; there was the tonsured head of a priest, round,
pink-tinted, and the figures of two women, one youthful, with a long,
sad-featured face, and the other ruddy and vigorous in outline. They
were watching the priest as he scattered corn to the hens and geese in
the garden below the window.
The cobbler was still eying them fiercely, as he continued to give vent
to his disgust.
"_Méchant homme--lui_," he here whipped his thread, venomously, through
the leather he was sewing. "Figure to yourselves, mesdames, that
besides being wicked, our curé is a very shrewd man; it is not for the
pure good of the parish he works, not he."
"Not he," the echo repeated, coming forth again from the wall. This
time the whisper passed unnoticed; her master's hatred of the curé was
greater than his passion for showing his own power.
"Religion--religion is a very good way of making money, better than
most, if one knows how to work the machine. The soul, it is a fine
instrument on which to play, if one is skilful. Our curé has a grand
touch on this instrument. You should see the good man take up a
collection, it is better than a comedy."
Here the cobbler turned actor; he rose, scattering his utensils right
and left; he assumed a grand air and a mincing, softly tread, the tread
of a priest. His flexible voice imitated admirably the rounded,
unctuous, autocratic tone peculiar to the graduates of St. Sulpice.
"You should hear him, when the collection does not suit him: '_Mes
frères et mes soeurs_, I see that _le bon Dieu_ isn't in your minds and
your hearts to-day; you are not listening to his voice; the Saviour is
then speaking in vain?' Then he prays--" the cobbler folded his hands
with a great parade of reference, lifting his eyes as he rolled his
lids heavenward hypocritically--"yes, he prays--and then he passes the
plate himself! He holds it before your very nose, there is no pushing
it aside; he would hold it there till you dropped--till Doomsday. Ah,
he's a hard crust, he is! There's a tyrant for you--_la monarchie
absolue_--that's what he believes in. He must have this, he must have
that. Now it is a new altar-cloth, or a fresh Virgin of the modern
make, from Paris, with a robe of real lace; the old one was black and
faded, too black to pray to. Now it is a _huissier_, forsooth, that we
must have, we, a parish of a few hundred souls, who know our seats in
the church as well as we know our own noses. One would think a 'suisse'
would have done; but we are swells now--_avec ce gaillard-là_, only the
tiptop is good enough. So, if you grace our poor old church with your
presence you will be shown to your bench by a very splendid gentleman
in black, in knee-breeches, with silver chains, with a three-cornered
hat, who strikes with his stick three times as he seats you. Bah!
ridiculous!"
"Ridiculous!" the woman repeated, softly.
"They had the curé once, though. One day in church he announced a
subscription to be taken up for restorations, from fifty centimes
to--to anything; he will take all you give him, avaricious that he is!
He believes in the greasing of the palm, he does. Well, think you the
subscription was for restorations, _mesdames_? It was for
demolition--that's what it was for--to make the church level with the
ground. To do this would cost a little matter of twenty thousand
francs, which would pass through his hands, you understand. Well, that
staggered the parish. Our mayor--a man _pas trop fin_, was terribly
upset. He went about saying the curé claimed the church as his; he
could do as he liked with it, he said, and he proposed to make it a
fine modern one. All the village was weeping. The church was the oldest
friend of the village, except for such as I, whom these things have
turned pagan. Well, one of our good citizens reminds the mayor that the
church, under the new laws, belongs to the commune. The mayor tells
this timidly to the curé. And the curé retorts, 'Ah, _bien_, at least
one-half belongs to me.' And the good citizen answers--he has gone with
the mayor to prop him up--'Which half will you take? The cemetery,
doubtless, since your charge is over the souls of the parish.' Ah! ah!
he pricked him well then! he pricked him well!"
The low room rang with the great shout of the cobbler's laughter. The
dog barked furiously in concert. Our own laughter was drowned in the
thunder of our host's loud guffaws. The poor old wife shook herself
with a laugh so much too vigorous for her frail frame, one feared its
after-effects.
The after-effects were a surprise. After the first of her husband's
spasms of glee the old woman spoke out, but in trembling tones no
longer.
"Ah, the cemetery, it is I who forgot to go there this week."
Her husband stopped, the laugh dying on his lip as he turned to her.
"_Ah, ma bonne_, how came that? You forgot?" His own tones trembled at
the last word.
"Yes, you had the cramps again, you remember, and there was no money
left for the bouquet."
"Yes, I remember," and the great chest heaved a deep sigh.
"You have children--you have lost someone?"
"_Hélas!_ no living children, mademoiselle. No, no--one daughter we
had, but she died twenty years ago. She lies over there--where we can
see her. She would have been thirty-eight years now--the fourteenth of
this very month!"
"Yes, this very month."
Then the old woman, for the first time, left her refuge along the wall;
she crept softly, quietly near to her husband to put her withered hand
in his. His large palm closed over it. Both of the old faces turned
toward the cemetery; and in the old eyes a film gathered, as they
looked toward all that was left of the hope that was buried away from
them.
We left them thus, hand in hand, with many promises to renew the
acquaintance.
The village was no longer abroad in the streets. During our talk in the
shop the night had fallen; it had cast its shadow, as trees cast
theirs, in a long, slow slant. Lights were trembling in the dim
interiors; the shrill cries of the children were stilled; only a
muffled murmur came through the open doors and windows. The villagers
were pattering across the rough floors, talking, as their sabots
clattered heavily over the wooden surface, as they washed the dishes,
as they covered their fires, shoving back the tables and chairs. As we
walked along, through the nearer windows came the sound of steps on the
creaking old stairs, then a rustling of straw and the heavy fall of
weary bodies, as the villagers flung themselves on the old oaken beds,
that groaned as they received their burden. Presently all was still.
Only our steps resounded through the streets. The stars filled the sky;
and beneath them the waves broke along the beach. In the closely packed
little streets the heavy breathing of the sleeping village broke also
in short, quick gasps.
Only we and the night were awake.