charity,” begged the toper. Yvonne scarcely looked at him, but made a
slight motion of her hand toward the cottage door. With a slobbered
blessing, red-nosed, ragged Piggou lurched in, lucky in the absence
of Gaud, who would have found enough courage, at need, to have driven
him forth with a broomstick. He reached a copper flagon from its peg,
and went as if by instinct to the cider-cask that stood by the great,
carved clothes-press. Minutes passed, and Piggou came out, brighter of
eye if redder of nose than when he entered, wiping his dripping beard
on his ragged sleeve.
“It’s long since you and Piggou had a crack together, Mademoiselle
Yvonne--years it is, and years! I’m not as fine a fellow as I used to
be, though you’re a comely figure of a woman still. Excuse the freedom,
Mademoiselle!...”
She looked at the drunkard with cold dislike, and moved toward the
farther end of the bench as his liquored breath and flaming face came
near her.
II
Piggou took the movement of Yvonne toward the end of the bench as an
invitation, and sat down, as the doctor, hidden by a bend in the road,
hirpled nearer on his old white mare.
“I bear no malice,” the toper went on, “though, I take the saints to
witness, what I am I owe to you, Mademoiselle Yvonne--for being so
handsome and so proud, for giving me the back of your hand, and the
whole of your heart to Monsieur Yann Tregnier, who went away with it
and never came back.”
“He is coming back!” said Yvonne quietly, her eyes upon the most
distant turn of the Paimpol road.
Piggou chuckled drunkenly.
“So you’ve said, Mademoiselle, for twenty years, since the _Marie au
Secours_ sailed for Iceland, Captain Yann aboard her.”
She repeated: “He is coming back to-night!”
Piggou leered drunkenly.
“Come, my old gossip, my handsome Yvonne, don’t play the fool with
Daddy Piggou. You’re not so cracked as you pretend to be, d’ye
comprehend me? You know this waiting game’s a farce. He, your Yann,
won’t come back; not because he’s dead, but because he’s alive. Alive
and married to Louet Kergueven, that he had an eye on because of her
dad’s money; and they’ve as many children as peas in a pod--the eldest
as fine a lad of eighteen as ever trod in his father’s footsteps all
the ways to Pors Lanec. Didn’t I see him just now with that little
white cat, Mademoiselle Gaud....”
The rest was strangled in the drunkard’s throat as upon the whitewashed
wall behind him fell the stout shadow of Dr. Blandon, and the
serviceable horn handle of an old-fashioned hunting-crop wielded by an
arm still muscular hooked itself in Piggou’s cravat and plucked him
from his seat. He sprawled, spluttering oaths.
“Begone, rascal! and if I ever hear of your trying this again, I’ll
poison you next time I catch you in hospital,” foamed the doctor.
“Why shouldn’t one tell the truth and shame the devil!” grunted Piggou.
“Would you like me to tell Messieurs les Douaniers at the Paimpol Quay
House the truth about those fine cod you were carrying when I met you
last month on the road to Ploubazou? Ten whopping fellows, each with
a box of prime Habanas in his gullet, and every box wrapped round in
Spanish lace?... Be off with you!” And, assisted by some additional
impetus from the toe of the doctor’s riding-boot, Piggou scrambled to
his feet and clattered away.
Yvonne had not stirred while this little scene was in action. Her elbow
on her knee, her chin upon her hand, she sat and watched that distant
bend in the Paimpol road as she had watched it, to quote Madame Pilot,
“when all that hair was gold.” Now she turned toward the doctor, who
was her good friend.
“That is done with,” Monsieur Blandon pointed to the ragged figure of
the receding Piggou. “He knows what he will get if he troubles you with
his rubbish again. And how is the heart, Mademoiselle? Those drops I
left last time.... You take them?”
“I take them; but,” said Yvonne, her quiet eyes upon the road, “they
make my heart beat.”
“That’s what they are for, Mademoiselle.”
“They make my heart beat,” she said, “until night and day, day and
night, the beating seems like the sound of footsteps coming to me
along the road. Nearer and nearer--louder and louder. Then they grow
hesitating, irregular, and stop. Stop, and then go back. And as they
become fainter in the distance, I seem to grow more quiet and more
cold.”
Said the doctor, possessing himself of Yvonne’s wrist and watching her
as he counted the pulse-beats as intently as she watched the road:
“They are footsteps of one you know, Mademoiselle?”
She turned on him those startlingly blue and brilliant eyes.
“Surely.... They are his!”
The doctor had often met a tall man muffled in a great country cape of
frieze walking on the Paimpol road. They had never exchanged words,
scarcely even looks, but the brass buttons in the back of Blandon’s old
riding-coat were eyes, and he had observed how the walker turned back
before reaching that last bend from which the cottage could be plainly
seen.
“His evil conscience keeps him restless--or he loves her still, though
he bartered her love for a tavern and a scolding wife,” the Doctor
thought, noting, without seeming to do so, the changes time had made in
the bold, handsome face and giant frame of Captain Yann Tregnier, late
of the _Maria au Secours_, now landlord of the Chinese Cider Cellars at
Ploubazou. “But to set foot in Pors Lanec he will not dare. The men and
women would rise up and stone him out of the village.”
And Monsieur Blandon bade Yvonne adieu, and turned up his collar and
got upon his shambling old white horse to ride back to Paimpol.
Yvonne sat where he had left her. The early winter evening was closing
in. The wind had fallen, and the sea had gone down; only it breathed
from time to time like a sleeping monster of the diluvian age. Through
the black curtains of the sky some pale stars looked forth, and white
spectral clouds, in shapes appalling to the sense, pursued a flying
moon. The lovers had not returned, the hearth-fire was dying out.
Guessing at this, Yvonne bestirred herself to go within and feed it
with fresh branches. The fading flame wakened again; she turned toward
the door, and as she did so the step for which she had waited twenty
years crashed over the gravel, sounded on the stone plateau before the
cottage, and the figure of a man--massive, almost a giant in height and
breadth, his great proportions increased in bulk by a heavy cape of the
country frieze--filled up the doorway.
It had come--the moment for which she had waited through the years. She
did not scream and fall upon his neck; he made no movement toward her.
Only he pulled his rough cap from his head with a deference that had
awe in it, and fear, and his heavy black curls, grizzled now, fell over
the brow that was lined and rugged, and the eyes that were no longer
bright with youth and hope, but bleared with a dull, sordid life and
much strong drink, and the hopeless outlook on a life that was bare of
all joy.
“Yann! My love ... Yann! You have come back to me at last!”
The words were not uttered in a cry, but almost whispered. As the light
of love and joy kindled in her eyes she became young once more. Her
arms swept out to clasp him and found him not, for he had sunk down
upon his knees; but he clutched her apron and drew her to him, and
broke into hoarse, uncouth weeping, his head hidden against her, his
arms clasping her, her love and pity overshadowing him like an angel’s
wings.
“He weeps for joy!” she thought, whereas he wept for shame; but had she
known the truth she would still have comforted him. After a while he
grew calmer, and they went out together into a night suddenly become
beautiful and glorious with stars--or it seemed so to Yvonne--and
sat together on the bench beneath the window, cheek to cheek and arms
entwined, and she poured out her brimming heart to him. How she had
waited, she told. Patiently, hoping always, loving him always, never
despairing, sure of his return. Had he been dead she would have known
it. But in the absence of the warning that never fails to come--the
midnight wail beneath the window, the midnight knock upon the door or
window-pane, given by no hand of mortal flesh--she had remained quite
certain that he was alive. Had she not been right in guessing that the
_Marie au Secours_ had only touched at Paimpol and sailed down into the
Gulf of Gascony, or even to Bayonne, to sell her cargo of salt cod?
“Ay. ’Twas as you thought, Yvonne!” he answered.
“And you sold well?”
“Ay!” he answered again. Truly, he had sold well, more than his fish.
Honor and love, both had gone into the scales against the dowry of
the tavern-keeper’s scolding wife, a houseful of children--a sordid
existence flavored with the fumes of stale drink and stale tobacco, a
few bags of dirty five-franc pieces stowed away in a safe hiding-place,
for the Breton is a hoarder by instinct, and distrusts the Bank of
France: for these rags and fardels he had bartered Yvonne. He was dully
conscious of such thoughts as these even as he was conscious of the joy
of being near her. Coarse-fibered as he was, this, the one pure passion
of his life, revived in all its old strength at the clasp of Yvonne’s
hands and the meeting of their eyes. He began to believe that the
desire to be near her once more again had brought him to Pors Lanec.
Perhaps he was right, but the motive, he had admitted to himself, was
mean and sordid. He wished to bring about a rupture between Jean-Marie
and Gaud. The girl was penniless; Jean-Marie a love-sick young fool.
Besides, his wife would never consent to a union of their families;
she had never ceased to be jealous of the sweetheart to whom Yann had
played false. “You threw her over for my money, rogue that you are!”
she would say to him, when red wine dashed with cider had made her
quarrelsome.
The night drew on. Drifting clouds no longer obscured the faces of the
stars; the December night might, for mildness, have been May, or so it
seemed to Yann and to Yvonne. There was a fragrance in the air like
hawthorn, and the shrill chirping of a cricket rose from the glowing
hearth in the darkened room behind them.
The lovers found few words to utter, but their silence was eloquent;
the air they breathed in unison seemed the revivifying essence of
joyous life. Yann yielded to the exquisite intoxication. In the glamour
of that meeting he was young again, clean of heart and soul, looking
forward to their wedding day with the eagerness of a true lover. He
found himself replying in low, eager tones to Yvonne’s questions....
No, he would not sail for Iceland in February as a bachelor; they must
get married before the Blessing of the Boats. The official papers must
be filled and signed, the banns put up ... there would be a honeymoon
for Yann and Yvonne before the _Marie au Secours_ (poor old vessel,
long ago cast up in driftwood on the shores of Iceland) should set sail.
“Ay, indeed, my love, we have waited long enough!” he said.
Yvonne laughed, a low melodious laugh of happiness, and owned that the
wedding dress, handsomely made and trimmed with broad bands of velvet,
just as he liked best--had been ready a long time. She took him back
to her pure heart, without a word, without a question.... He had been
long in coming, but he had come at last, and she was utterly content.
He drew her into his strong embrace, and she laid her head on his great
shoulder with the sigh of a child that is weary with too much bliss.
His arm encircled her; both her hands, clasped together, rested in
his large palm. Sleep came to her, and peace; even the breath that at
first had fluttered fitfully beneath his cheek could be felt no more.
And the night wore on apace, and the glamour fell from him, little by
little, and he was again the landlord of the Chinese Cider Cellars,
with a scolding wife, and an obstinate whelp of a son, mad to marry a
penniless little draggle-tail. Ay, he could speak now, and he would! He
unwound his arm from the waist of Yvonne and withdrew the support of
his rough palm from her clasped hands, and as he did so a long faint
sigh escaped her and her head fell back against the whitewashed wall.
Ay, he could speak, and did!
“Lord knows what nonsense we have been talking, you and me....
Something bewitched me.... The fine night or the sight of the old
place. In truth, Yvonne, you know as well as I do that I’m a married
man; that cat must ha’ got out of the bag long ago. And hearing that
you never would believe I’d played fast and loose with ye made me a bit
shamefaced, hence we never have clapped eyes on one another until now,
Yvonne. Though my young cub has been hanging about here after the girl
Gaud--threatening me with going to sea if she’s denied him--and seeing
as she hasn’t a sou of dowry, I look to you to stop that foolery. For
my good woman at home.... I’ll own her a bit of a Tartar, and, to tell
ye the truth, Yvonne----”
“Father!” said Jean-Marie, stepping forward out of the darkness, the
dimly-seen, shrinking figure of Gaud behind him.
Yann rose up, threatening and formidable, his clenched fist ready to
strike. Gaud cried out in fear; but Yvonne, the silvery moonlight
filling the hollows of her quiet eyes and resting in the curves of her
white cheeks, and kissing her closed, patient lips into the semblance
of a smile, never stirred. The night wind played with a little lock
of hair escaping from the edge of her shell-fluted cap, and her bosom
neither rose nor fell.
“Pretty goings on.... Look here, you cub!” Yann was beginning, but his
son’s eyes looked past his at the placid face of the sleeper on the
bench, and the fear and awe in them were not inspired by his father.
Yann looked round then, and a hoarse cry broke from him.
“Speak to her,” whispered Jean-Marie, and Gaud tremblingly touched
Yvonne’s clasped hands. They were cold as the smiling lips and the
sealed eyes on which rested the white peace that is the kiss of Death.
The cricket chirped within the cottage, and the deep slumbrous
breathing of the sea came from beyond a curtain of chill white mist.
Yvonne’s long time of waiting had ended at last.
THE DELUSION OF MRS. DONOHOE
IN TWO PARTS
I
It was in the spring of 19-- that the Dapple Grays returned from
South Africa, covered with wounds, glory, boils, and khaki, this last
presenting many solutions of continuity. One finds the arrival of H.
M. troopship _Paradise_ at Porthampton Dockyard referred to in the
newspapers bearing the date of that occurrence as an event calculated
to awaken emotions of gratitude and enthusiasm in the bosom of every
Briton. An illuminated address was presented to the Chief by the Mayor
and Corporation of the borough, and the Dapple Grays were subsequently
entertained, the Colonel and officers to a banquet, and the rank and
file to a blowout.
“You return to us, Captain,” the Mayor is reported to have said in
a complimentary rider addressed to the commanding officer of the
_Paradise_, “with a freight of heroes.”
“A freight of devils, sir!” the Captain remarked in loud-toned
confidence to the neighbor on his left. “If the Admiralty had any
sense of humor--or any sense of fitness, by George!--the name of the
ship would have been changed before we sailed. But the _Paradise_
has seemed almost like one, sir, since we disembarked ’em, and
that’s a fact. What’s the next toast on the list, did you ask? ‘The
united healths of the two regimental V. C.’s, Captain the Hon. Gerald
Garthside and Private Dancey Juxon.’”
“What were the special acts of gallantry, do you--ah!--happen
to--ah!--remember?” asked the Captain’s left-hand neighbor (a pompous
local magnate), “for which the Cross has been--ah!--conferred?”
“Usual thing. Garthside--that’s Garthside, on the Mayor’s left hand,
trying to look modest, and succeedin’ uncommon badly--Garthside rode
from Mealiekloof to Blitzfontein with despatches for the Brigadier,
peppered by Cronje’s outposts from overlooking ground nearly the whole
distance. Juxon was cut off while out on scout with a detachment, and
got away from twenty Boers with his officer on the crupper. Young
Bogle, next-of-kin to Lord Baverstone, died before Juxon got back to
the regiment, chipped in too many places for recovery! Better off if
he’d been left behind, do you say? Probably--probably. But Juxon has
the V. C., and they’re bringin’ him in to hear his health proposed....
Fine-lookin’ young Tommy, isn’t he? Looks quiet and well-behaved, you
think? Ah, you ought to have been with us on the voyage from the Cape.
The evil genius of the lower troop-deck, and that’s facts. Ringleader
in every act of insubordination, up to all sorts of devilment, a black
sheep, sir, a black--hip, hip, hurray! For he’s a jolly----”
“And so,” said the Colonel of the Dapple Grays to his Senior Major, a
few weeks later, when the regiment had shaken down in its old barracks
at Studminster; when its feminine complement had rejoined it; when
wives once more “upon the strength” were washing the tattered remains
of shirts which had seen more service than soap-suds, and husbands were
employing eloquence in the effort to convince civilian visitors to the
canteen that, despite the solemn warning recently issued from the most
authoritative quarters, to treat the newly-convalescent enteric patient
to beer or ardent spirits is to accelerate and not to retard his return
to perfect health---- “And so it’s a settled thing, the engagement
between your little girl and Garthside? Affair not jumped up in a
hurry? Began a year before the regiment was ordered to the Front? Of
course. My wife saw the attachment growing between ’em, and helped it
on, she tells me. Every married woman’s a match-maker, you know--don’t
you know--whether she’s put her own private pot on a bit of good blood,
with temper and stayin’ power and so forth, or a dee-d confounded showy
screw. And your little girl, not having a level-headed mother of her
own alive to look after her!... Deucedly raw weather, you know, don’t
you know!”
Sir Alured broke off, anticipating rather than seeing the gray change
in Major Rufford’s face, and remembering that the handsome wife, who
had died when Emmie was a hoyden of thirteen, had signalized the close
of her career upon earth as Major Rufford’s wife and the mother of
his children by an act of desperate folly. But the Senior Major’s
wounds had been cicatrized by the great healer Time, and he looked
back quietly enough as the Colonel cleared his throat with unnecessary
violence, and twisted the great moustache that had been iron-gray and
was now snow-white.
“Lady Gassiloe has been very kind, and Emmie doesn’t forget how much
she owes her. And there’s the right stuff in Garthside; I can trust
him to make my little girl a good husband. It’s odd, when one comes to
think of it, that our other Victoria Cross man is going to be married,
and to Emmie’s foster-sister, Peggy Donohoe.”
“The deuce!” said Sir Alured. “Is that dee-d young scoundrel, Juxon,
going to settle down? Seems too good to be true. Why, the old
_Paradise_ was hell when Juxon wasn’t in the cells. Nearest approach to
a rhyme I ever made in my life, by George! But Juxon’s character apart
it’s not a bad match. The young blackguard has plenty of good looks,
and Peggy’s as pretty a girl as you may see, look high or low. And she
thinks Juxon a _proo shevally_ with his V. C.; and so do poor Bogle’s
people, and so do the public, by Jove! You should have heard him when
he reported himself.... ‘_What did you mean, you dee-d idiot_,’ I asked
him, ‘_by picking up a man who’d had the top of his head shot clean
off, and couldn’t live five minutes? D’ye call that philanthropy? In
my opinion it’s dee-d foolery!_’ ‘Beggin’ your pardon, Colonel, sir!’
says Juxon, ‘I calls it precaution. When I ’oisted Mr. Bogle up be’ind
me, I see’d ’e’d ’ad ’is gruel, an’ the last breath went out of ’im
before old ’Andsome-Is--that’s wot I calls that ’ere spavined gray
o’ mine--’ad got into ’is stride. But the bullets was ’ummin’ round
me like ’ornets, an’ pore Mr. Bogle, lyin’ as ’e wos acrost my ’ams,
drawed fire an’ furnished cover.’ Furnished cover! The cool young
beggar fortifies his rear with the next in succession to one of the
oldest peerages in the United Kingdom, gets mentioned in despatches,
and receives his V. C.! Too dee-d funny, you know, don’t you know!”
And Sir Alured mixed a brandy and soda, and chose an enormous cigar
from a case resembling a young Gladstone bag. The conversation took
place in a curious ground-glass hutch, sacred to the inner mysteries of
Official business, and labeled “Private.” And as the second in command
charged and kindled a meerschaum of incredible age and foulness, there
came a knock at the door.
“C’min!” barked the Chief over the rim of the tilted tumbler, and the
regimental Doctor looked round the door. “Oh! it’s you, Assassin!” he
said, as he wiped the froth off the great white moustache. “How many
exenterics have you kicked out of the convalescent ward this morning?”
“Three,” said the Assassin--“Denver, Moriarty, and Jarman. Garthside’s
lambs all.”
“And dee-d malingerers, in my opinion!” said Sir Alured.
“I’m with you there, sir,” responded the Assassin with a twinkle. Then
he relapsed into professional gravity, and said as he accepted a cigar
and a peg, “There are one or two bad cases of relapse, I’m sorry to
say--as the result of incautious indulgence in alcoholic beverages.”
“Of course, of course!” growled Sir Alured. “When a man with a
granulated stomach uses the organ as a receptacle for whisky, beer,
and gin, contributed in unlimited quantities by admirin’ friends, he
oughtn’t to be surprised when he finds himself drivin’ to the cemetery
on a gun carriage to the tune of the Dead March in _Saul_, with his
boots following as chief mourners. Stands to reason!”
“I don’t anticipate any serious results, except in the case of Sergeant
Donohoe,” the Assassin said, with a worried look in his usually
cheerful countenance.
“Donohoe down again. Poor devil! I’m sorry to hear it!” The Chief
tugged at the ends of the great white moustache and looked grave.
“Only yesterday,” said the Senior Major, “I thought him looking about
as fit as a man needs to be. He told me about Juxon’s engagement to his
daughter, and went off as pleased as Punch----”
“To drink their healths,” interpolated the Assassin.
“Hah! That’s about it,” grumbled the Chief. “Well, I shall go round
and look Donohoe up presently. Can’t afford to lose my Senior
Color-Sergeant, you know, don’t you know!” Sir Alured frowned savagely,
and cleared his throat with ominous vigor.
“You’ll find him pretty low down,” said the Assassin, “and I fancy
Father Haggarty will be on duty. They’d sent for him before I came
away.”
“Is it as bad as that?” said the Senior Major, and there was a moment’s
silence, broken by a clinking step on the stone flags outside and a
respectful knock on the glass door.
“A ’ospital horderly, sir,” said the passage orderly to Major Rufford,
“with Color-Sergeant Donohoe’s respectful duty, and would you mind the
trouble of steppin’ over and hearin’ somethin’, sir, wot ’e ’as to say?
It’s Ward C., and a case of perforation--and, beggin’ your pardon, sir,
there ain’t much time to lose.”
“Of course I’ll come! Say, at once!” Major Rufford lumbered up out of
his chair, emptied the office kitten out of his undress cap, took his
cane, which the office puppy had been chewing, and went.
“Donohoe’s wife was Rufford’s girl’s foster-mother, you know, don’t you
know!” said Sir Alured. “There’s not more than a month’s difference
between Peggy Donohoe and Emmie Rufford in age. When they were babies
I’ve seen ’em sleepin’ in the same cradle; and dee me if I knew
which of ’em was which, though I suppose their mothers did. Not that
Rufford’s poor wife was over and above devoted to her babies. Odd now
if the little beggars had got mixed up somehow, and Donohoe had sent
for Rufford with the object of easin’ his conscience before he gave up
the number of his mess.”
“Oh, that’s all Gilbert and Sullivan!” said the Assassin, getting up.
“Such things don’t happen in real life, Colonel, and I’m going back to
the hospital.”
“You think not? Differ with you there. Walk over with you, if you’ve
no objection.” And the Chief and the Assassin followed in the wake of
Major Rufford, who had only a moment before received point-blank and
at short range from Sergeant Donohoe’s puffy blue lips--parted for
easier passage of the slow, painful breaths that were taken with such
agony--the second overwhelming surprise of his life.