The Purple Emperor watched me in silence. I cast again, spinning out
six feet more of waterproof silk, and, as the line hissed through the
air far across the pool, I saw my three flies fall on the water like
drifting thistledown. The Purple Emperor sneered.
"You see," he said, "I am right. There is not a trout in Brittany that
will rise to a tailed fly."
"They do in America," I replied.
"Zut! for America!" observed the Purple Emperor.
"And trout take a tailed fly in England," I insisted sharply.
"Now do I care what things or people do in England?" demanded the
Purple Emperor.
"You don't care for anything except yourself and your wriggling
caterpillars," I said, more annoyed than I had yet been.
The Purple Emperor sniffed. His broad, hairless, sunburnt features bore
that obstinate expression which always irritated me. Perhaps the manner
in which he wore his hat intensified the irritation, for the flapping
brim rested on both ears, and the two little velvet ribbons which
hung from the silver buckle in front wiggled and fluttered with every
trivial breeze. His cunning eyes and sharp-pointed nose were out of all
keeping with his fat red face. When he met my eye, he chuckled.
"I know more about insects than any man in Morbihan--or Finistère
either, for that matter," he said.
"The Red Admiral knows as much as you do," I retorted.
"He doesn't," replied the Purple Emperor angrily.
"And his collection of butterflies is twice as large as yours," I
added, moving down the stream to a spot directly opposite him.
"It is, is it?" sneered the Purple Emperor. "Well, let me tell you,
Monsieur Darrel, in all his collection he hasn't a specimen, a single
specimen, of that magnificent butterfly, Apatura Iris, commonly known
as the 'Purple Emperor.'"
"Everybody in Brittany knows that," I said, casting across the
sparkling water; "but just because you happen to be the only man who
ever captured a 'Purple Emperor' in Morbihan, it doesn't follow that
you are an authority on sea-trout flies. Why do you say that a Breton
sea-trout won't touch a tailed fly?"
"It's so," he replied.
"Why? There are plenty of May-flies about the stream."
"Let 'em fly!" snarled the Purple Emperor, "you won't see a trout touch
'em."
My arm was aching, but I grasped my split bamboo more firmly, and,
half turning, waded out into the stream and began to whip the ripples
at the head of the pool. A great green dragon-fly came drifting by on
the summer breeze and hung a moment above the pool, glittering like an
emerald.
"There's a chance! Where is your butterfly net?" I called across the
stream.
"What for? That dragon-fly? I've got dozens--Anax Junius, Drury,
characteristic, anal angle of posterior wings, in male, round; thorax
marked with----"
"That will do," I said fiercely. "Can't I point out an insect in
the air without this burst of erudition? Can you tell me, in simple
everyday French, what this little fly is--this one, flitting over the
eel grass here beside me? See, it has fallen on the water."
"Huh!" sneered the Purple Emperor, "that's a Linnobia annulus."
"What's that?" I demanded.
Before he could answer there came a heavy splash in the pool, and the
fly disappeared.
"He! he! he!" tittered the Purple Emperor. "Didn't I tell you the fish
knew their business? That was a sea-trout. I hope you don't get him."
He gathered up his butterfly net, collecting box, chloroform bottle,
and cyanide jar. Then he rose, swung the box over his shoulder, stuffed
the poison bottles into the pockets of his silver-buttoned velvet
coat, and lighted his pipe. This latter operation was a demoralizing
spectacle, for the Purple Emperor, like all Breton peasants, smoked one
of those microscopical Breton pipes which requires ten minutes to find,
ten minutes to fill, ten minutes to light, and ten seconds to finish.
With true Breton stolidity he went through this solemn rite, blew three
puffs of smoke into the air, scratched his pointed nose reflectively,
and waddled away, calling back an ironical "Au revoir, and bad luck to
all Yankees!"
I watched him out of sight, thinking sadly of the young girl whose life
he made a hell upon earth--Lys Trevec, his niece. She never admitted
it, but we all knew what the black-and-blue marks meant on her soft,
round arm, and it made me sick to see the look of fear come into her
eyes when the Purple Emperor waddled into the café of the Groix Inn.
It was commonly said that he half-starved her. This she denied. Marie
Joseph and 'Fine Lelocard had seen him strike her the day after the
Pardon of the Birds because she had liberated three bullfinches which
he had limed the day before. I asked Lys if this were true, and she
refused to speak to me for the rest of the week. There was nothing to
do about it. If the Purple Emperor had not been avaricious, I should
never have seen Lys at all, but he could not resist the thirty francs
a week which I offered him; and Lys posed for me all day long, happy
as a linnet in a pink thorn hedge. Nevertheless, the Purple Emperor
hated me, and constantly threatened to send Lys back to her dreary
flax-spinning. He was suspicious, too, and when he had gulped down
the single glass of cider which proves fatal to the sobriety of most
Bretons, he would pound the long, discoloured oaken table and roar
curses on me, on Yves Terrec, and on the Red Admiral. We were the
three objects in the world which he most hated: me, because I was a
foreigner, and didn't care a rap for him and his butterflies; and the
Red Admiral, because he was a rival entomologist.
He had other reasons for hating Terrec.
The Red Admiral, a little wizened wretch, with a badly adjusted
glass eye and a passion for brandy, took his name from a butterfly
which predominated in his collection. This butterfly, commonly known
to amateurs as the "Red Admiral," and to entomologists as Vanessa
Atalanta, had been the occasion of scandal among the entomologists of
France and Brittany. For the Red Admiral had taken one of these common
insects, dyed it a brilliant yellow by the aid of chemicals, and palmed
it off on a credulous collector as a South African species, absolutely
unique. The fifty francs which he gained by this rascality were,
however, absorbed in a suit for damages brought by the outraged amateur
a month later; and when he had sat in the Quimperlé jail for a month,
he reappeared in the little village of St. Gildas soured, thirsty, and
burning for revenge. Of course we named him the Red Admiral, and he
accepted the name with suppressed fury.
The Purple Emperor, on the other hand, had gained his imperial title
legitimately, for it was an undisputed fact that the only specimen of
that beautiful butterfly, Apatura Iris, or the Purple Emperor, as it
is called by amateurs--the only specimen that had ever been taken in
Finistère or in Morbihan--was captured and brought home alive by Joseph
Marie Gloanec, ever afterward to be known as the Purple Emperor.
When the capture of this rare butterfly became known the Red Admiral
nearly went crazy. Every day for a week he trotted over to the Groix
Inn, where the Purple Emperor lived with his niece, and brought his
microscope to bear on the rare newly captured butterfly, in hopes of
detecting a fraud. But this specimen was genuine, and he leered through
his microscope in vain.
"No chemicals there, Admiral," grinned the Purple Emperor; and the Red
Admiral chattered with rage.
To the scientific world of Brittany and France the capture of an
Apatura Iris in Morbihan was of great importance. The Museum of Quimper
offered to purchase the butterfly, but the Purple Emperor, though a
hoarder of gold, was a monomaniac on butterflies, and he jeered at the
Curator of the Museum. From all parts of Brittany and France letters
of inquiry and congratulation poured in upon him. The French Academy
of Sciences awarded him a prize, and the Paris Entomological Society
made him an honorary member. Being a Breton peasant, and a more than
commonly pig-headed one at that, these honours did not disturb his
equanimity; but when the little hamlet of St. Gildas elected him mayor,
and, as is the custom in Brittany under such circumstances, he left his
thatched house to take up an official life in the little Groix Inn, his
head became completely turned. To be mayor in a village of nearly one
hundred and fifty people! It was an empire! So he became unbearable,
drinking himself viciously drunk every night of his life, maltreating
his niece, Lys Trevec, like the barbarous old wretch that he was, and
driving the Red Admiral nearly frantic with his eternal harping on the
capture of Apatura Iris. Of course he refused to tell where he had
caught the butterfly. The Red Admiral stalked his footsteps, but in vain.
"He! he! he!" nagged the Purple Emperor, cuddling his chin over a glass
of cider; "I saw you sneaking about the St. Gildas spinny yesterday
morning. So you think you can find another Apatura Iris by running
after me? It won't do, Admiral, it won't do, d'ye see?"
The Red Admiral turned yellow with mortification and envy, but the next
day he actually took to his bed, for the Purple Emperor had brought
home not a butterfly but a live chrysalis, which, if successfully
hatched, would become a perfect specimen of the invaluable Apatura
Iris. This was the last straw. The Red Admiral shut himself up in
his little stone cottage, and for weeks now he had been invisible to
everybody except 'Fine Lelocard who carried him a loaf of bread and a
mullet or langouste every morning.
The withdrawal of the Red Admiral from the society of St. Gildas
excited first the derision and finally the suspicion of the Purple
Emperor. What deviltry could he be hatching? Was he experimenting with
chemicals again, or was he engaged in some deeper plot, the object
of which was to discredit the Purple Emperor? Roux, the postman,
who carried the mail on foot once a day from Bannalec, a distance of
fifteen miles each way, had brought several suspicious letters, bearing
English stamps, to the Red Admiral, and the next day the Admiral had
been observed at his window grinning up into the sky and rubbing his
hands together. A night or two after this apparition the postman left
two packages at the Groix Inn for a moment while he ran across the way
to drink a glass of cider with me. The Purple Emperor, who was roaming
about the café, snooping into everything that did not concern him, came
upon the packages and examined the postmarks and addresses. One of the
packages was square and heavy, and felt like a book. The other was also
square, but very light, and felt like a pasteboard box. They were both
addressed to the Red Admiral, and they bore English stamps.
When Roux, the postman, came back, the Purple Emperor tried to pump
him, but the poor little postman knew nothing about the contents of the
packages, and after he had taken them around the corner to the cottage
of the Red Admiral the Purple Emperor ordered a glass of cider, and
deliberately fuddled himself until Lys came in and tearfully supported
him to his room. Here he became so abusive and brutal that Lys called
to me, and I went and settled the trouble without wasting any words.
This also the Purple Emperor remembered, and waited his chance to get
even with me.
That had happened a week ago, and until to-day he had not deigned to
speak to me.
Lys had posed for me all the week, and to-day being Saturday, and I
lazy, we had decided to take a little relaxation, she to visit and
gossip with her little black-eyed friend Yvette in the neighbouring
hamlet of St. Julien, and I to try the appetites of the Breton trout
with the contents of my American fly book.
I had thrashed the stream very conscientiously for three hours, but not
a trout had risen to my cast, and I was piqued. I had begun to believe
that there were no trout in the St. Gildas stream, and would probably
have given up had I not seen the sea trout snap the little fly which
the Purple Emperor had named so scientifically. That set me thinking.
Probably the Purple Emperor was right, for he certainly was an expert
in everything that crawled and wriggled in Brittany. So I matched,
from my American fly book, the fly that the sea trout had snapped up,
and withdrawing the cast of three, knotted a new leader to the silk
and slipped a fly on the loop. It was a queer fly. It was one of those
unnameable experiments which fascinate anglers in sporting stores and
which generally prove utterly useless. Moreover, it was a tailed fly,
but of course I easily remedied that with a stroke of my penknife.
Then I was all ready, and I stepped out into the hurrying rapids and
cast straight as an arrow to the spot where the sea trout had risen.
Lightly as a plume the fly settled on the bosom of the pool; then came
a startling splash, a gleam of silver, and the line tightened from the
vibrating rod-tip to the shrieking reel. Almost instantly I checked the
fish, and as he floundered for a moment, making the water boil along
his glittering sides, I sprang to the bank again, for I saw that the
fish was a heavy one and I should probably be in for a long run down
the stream. The five-ounce rod swept in a splendid circle, quivering
under the strain. "Oh, for a gaff-hook!" I cried aloud, for I was now
firmly convinced that I had a salmon to deal with, and no sea trout at
all.
Then as I stood, bringing every ounce to bear on the sulking fish, a
lithe, slender girl came hurriedly along the opposite bank calling out
to me by name.
"Why, Lys!" I said, glancing up for a second, "I thought you were at
St. Julien with Yvette."
"Yvette has gone to Bannalec. I went home and found an awful fight
going on at the Groix Inn, and I was so frightened that I came to tell
you."
The fish dashed off at that moment, carrying all the line my reel held,
and I was compelled to follow him at a jump. Lys, active and graceful
as a young deer, in spite of her Pont-Aven sabots, followed along the
opposite bank until the fish settled in a deep pool, shook the line
savagely once or twice, and then relapsed into the sulks.
"Fight at the Groix Inn?" I called across the water. "What fight?"
"Not exactly fight," quavered Lys, "but the Red Admiral has come out
of his house at last, and he and my uncle are drinking together and
disputing about butterflies. I never saw my uncle so angry, and the Red
Admiral is sneering and grinning. Oh, it is almost wicked to see such
a face!"
"But Lys," I said, scarcely able to repress a smile, "your uncle and
the Red Admiral are always quarrelling and drinking."
"I know--oh, dear me!--but this is different, Monsieur Darrel. The Red
Admiral has grown old and fierce since he shut himself up three weeks
ago, and--oh, dear! I never saw such a look in my uncle's eyes before.
He seemed insane with fury. His eyes--I can't speak of it--and then
Terrec came in."
"Oh," I said more gravely, "that was unfortunate. What did the Red
Admiral say to his son?"
Lys sat down on a rock among the ferns, and gave me a mutinous glance
from her blue eyes.
Yves Terrec, loafer, poacher, and son of Louis Jean Terrec, otherwise
the Red Admiral, had been kicked out by his father, and had also been
forbidden the village by the Purple Emperor, in his majestic capacity
of mayor. Twice the young ruffian had returned: once to rifle the
bedroom of the Purple Emperor--an unsuccessful enterprise--and another
time to rob his own father. He succeeded in the latter attempt, but was
never caught, although he was frequently seen roving about the forests
and moors with his gun. He openly menaced the Purple Emperor; vowed
that he would marry Lys in spite of all the gendarmes in Quimperlé;
and these same gendarmes he led many a long chase through brier-filled
swamps and over miles of yellow gorse.
What he did to the Purple Emperor--what he intended to do--disquieted
me but little; but I worried over his threat concerning Lys. During
the last three months this had bothered me a great deal; for when Lys
came to St. Gildas from the convent the first thing she captured was my
heart. For a long time I had refused to believe that any tie of blood
linked this dainty blue-eyed creature with the Purple Emperor. Although
she dressed in the velvet-laced bodice and blue petticoat of Finistère,
and wore the bewitching white coiffe of St. Gildas, it seemed like a
pretty masquerade. To me she was as sweet and as gently bred as many a
maiden of the noble Faubourg who danced with her cousins at a Louis XV
fête champêtre. So when Lys said that Yves Terrec had returned openly
to St. Gildas, I felt that I had better be there also.
"What did Terrec say, Lys?" I asked, watching the line vibrating above
the placid pool.
The wild rose colour crept into her cheeks. "Oh," she answered, with a
little toss of her chin, "you know what he always says."
"That he will carry you away?"
"Yes."
"In spite of the Purple Emperor, the Red Admiral, and the gendarmes?"
"Yes."
"And what do you say, Lys?"
"I? Oh, nothing."
"Then let me say it for you."
Lys looked at her delicate pointed sabots, the sabots from Pont-Aven,
made to order. They fitted her little foot. They were her only luxury.
"Will you let me answer for you, Lys?" I asked.
"You, Monsieur Darrel?"
"Yes. Will you let me give him his answer?"
"Mon Dieu, why should you concern yourself, Monsieur Darrel?"
The fish lay very quiet, but the rod in my hand trembled.
"Because I love you, Lys."
The wild rose colour in her cheeks deepened; she gave a gentle gasp,
then hid her curly head in her hands.
"I love you, Lys."
"Do you know what you say?" she stammered.
"Yes, I love you."
She raised her sweet face and looked at me across the pool.
"I love you," she said, while the tears stood like stars in her eyes.
"Shall I come over the brook to you?"