On the 3d of November Byram's American Circus, travelling slowly
overland toward the Spanish frontier, drew up for an hour's rest at
Quimperlé. I, however, as usual, prepared to ride forward to select a
proper place for our night encampment, and to procure the necessary
license.
The dusty procession halted in the town square, which was crowded, and
as I turned in my saddle I saw Byram stand up on the red-and-gold
band-wagon and toss an armful of circulars and bills into the throng.
The white bits of paper fluttered wide and disappeared in the sea of
white Breton head-dresses; there was a rhythmic clatter of wooden
shoes, an undulation of snowy coiffes, then a low murmur as the people
slowly read the circulars aloud, their musical monotone accompanying
the strident nasal voice of Byram, who stood on the tarnished
band-wagon shouting his crowd around him.
"Mossoors et madams! Ecooty see voo play! J'ai l'honnoor de vous
presenter le ploo magnifique cirque--" And the invariable réclame
continued to the stereotyped finis; the clown bobbed up behind Byram
and made his usual grimaces, and the band played "The Cork Leg."
The Bretons looked on in solemn astonishment: my comrade, Speed,
languidly stood up on the elephant and informed the people that our
circus was travelling to Lorient to fill a pressing engagement, and if
we disappointed the good people of Lorient a riot would doubtless
result, therefore it was not possible to give any performance before
we reached Lorient--and the admission was only ten sous.
Our clown then picked up the tatters of his threadbare comic speech.
Speed, munching a stale sandwich, came strolling over to where I stood
sponging out my horse's mouth with cool water.
"We'll ride into Paradise in full regalia, I suppose," he observed,
munching away reflectively; "it's the cheapest réclame."
I dashed a bucket of water over my horse's legs. "You'd better look
out for your elephant; those drunken Bretons are irritating him," I
said. "Mahouts are born, not made."
Speed turned; the elephant was squealing and thrusting out a
prehensile trunk among the people. There would be trouble if any fool
gave him tobacco.
"Hi!" cried Speed, "tobah! Let the mem-log alone! Ai! he's snatched
a coiffe! Drop it, Djebe! C'hast buhan! Don't be afraid, mesdames; the
elephant is not ugly! Chomit oll en ho trankilite!"
The elephant appeared to understand the mixture of Hindu, French, and
Breton--or perhaps it was the sight of the steel ankus that Speed
flourished in his quality of mahout. The crowd pressed forward again,
reassured by the "Chomit oll en ho trankilite!"
Speed swallowed the last crumb of his sandwich, wiped his hands on his
handkerchief, and shoved them into his shabby pockets; the ankus
dangled from his wrist.
We were in seedy circumstances; an endless chain of bad luck had
followed us from Chartres--bad weather, torrents of rain, flooded
roads, damaging delays on railways already overcrowded with troops
and war material, and, above all, we encountered everywhere that
ominous apathy which burdened the whole land, even those provinces
most remote from the seat of war. The blockade of Paris had paralyzed
France.
The fortune that Byram had made in the previous year was already gone;
we no longer travelled by rail; we no longer slept at inns; we could
barely pay for the food for our animals.
As for the employés, the list had been cut down below the margin of
safety, yet for a month no salaries had been paid.
As I stood there in the public square of Quimperlé, passing the
cooling sponge over my horse's nose, old Byram came out of the hotel
on the corner, edged his way through the stolid crowd that surrounded
us gaunt mountebanks, and shuffled up to me.
"I guess we ain't goin' to push through to-night, Scarlett," he
observed, wiping his sweating forehead on the sleeve of his linen
duster.
"No, governor, it's too far," I said.
"We'll be all right, anyway," added Speed; "there's a change in the
moon and this warm weather ought to hold, governor."
"I dunno," said Byram, with an abstracted glance at the crowd around
the elephant.
"Cheer up, governor," I said, "we ought at least to pay expenses to
the Spanish frontier. Once out of France we'll find your luck again
for you."
"Mebbe," he said, almost wearily.
I glanced at Speed. This was the closest approach to a whine that we
had heard from Byram. But the man had changed within a few days; his
thin hair, brushed across his large, alert ears, was dusty and
unkempt; hollows had formed under his shrewd eyes; his black
broadcloth suit was as soiled as his linen, his boots shabby, his
silk hat suitable only for the stage property of our clown.
"Don't ride too far," said Byram, as I set foot to stirrup, "them
band-wagon teams is most done up, an' that there camuel gits meaner
every minute."
I wheeled my horse out into the road to Paradise, cursing the
"camuel," the bane of our wearied caravan.
"Got enough cash for the license?" asked Byram, uneasily.
"Plenty, governor; don't worry. Speed, don't let him mope. We'll be
in Lorient this time to-morrow," I called back, with a swagger of
assumed cheerfulness.
Speed stepped swiftly across the square and laid his hand on my
stirrup.
"What are you going to do if you see Buckhurst?"
"Nothing."
"Or the Countess?"
"I don't know."
"I suppose you will go out of your way to find her if she's in
Paradise?"
"Yes."
"And tell her the truth about Buckhurst?"
"I expect to."
After a moment's silence he said: "Don't do anything until I see you
to-night, will you?"
"All right," I replied, and set my horse at a gallop over the old
stone bridge.
The highway to the sea which winds down through acres of yellow gorse
and waving broom to the cliffs of Paradise is a breezy road, swept by
the sweet winds that blow across Brittany from the Côte d'Or to the
Pyrenees.
It is a land of sea-winds; and when in the still noontide of midsummer
the winds are at play far out at sea, their traces remain in the
furrowed wheat, in the incline of solitary trees, in the breezy trend
of the cliff-clover and the blackthorn and the league-wide sweep of
the moorlands.
And through this land whose inland perfume always savored the unseen
sea I rode down to Paradise.
It was not until I had galloped through the golden forest of Kerselec
that I came in sight of the ocean, although among the sunbeams and the
dropping showers of yellow beech-leaves I fancied I could hear the
sound of the surf.
And now I rode slowly, in full sight of the sea where it lay, an
immense gray band across the world, touching a looming horizon, and in
throat and nostril the salt stung sweetly, and the whole world seemed
younger for the breath of the sea.
From the purple mystery of the horizon to the landward cliffs the
ocean appeared motionless; it was only when I had advanced almost to
the cliffs that I saw the movement of waves--that I perceived the
contrast between inland inertia and the restless repose of the sea,
stirring ceaselessly since creation.
The same little sparkling river I had crossed in Quimperlé I now saw
again, spreading out a wide, flat current which broke into waves where
it tumbled seaward across the bar; I heard the white-winged gulls
mewing, the thunderous monotone of the surf, and a bell in some unseen
chapel ringing sweetly.
I passed a stone house, another; then the white road curved under the
trees and I rode straight into the heart of Paradise, my horse's hoofs
awaking echoes in the silent, stone-paved square.
Never had I so suddenly entered a place so peaceful, so quiet in the
afternoon sun--yet the silence was not absolute, it was thrilling with
exquisite sound, lost echoes of the river running along its quay of
stone, half-heard harmonies of the ocean where white surf seethed over
the sands beyond the headland.
There was a fountain, too, dripping melodiously under the trees; I
heard the breathless humming of a spinning-wheel from one of the low
houses of gray stone which enclosed the square, and a young girl
singing, and the drone of bees in a bed of resida.
So this was Paradise! Truly the name did not seem amiss here, under
the still vault of blue above; Paradise means peace to so many of
us--surcease of care and sound and the brazen trample of nations--not
the quiet of palace corridors or the tremendous silence of a
cathedral, but the noiselessness of pleasant sounds, moving shadows of
trees, wordless quietude, simplicity.
A young girl with a face like the Madonna stole across the square in
her felt shoes.
"Can you tell me where the mayor lives?" I asked, looking down at her
from my horse.
She raised her white-coiffed head with an innocent smile: "Eman' barz
ar sal o leina."
"Don't you speak French?" I asked, appalled.
"Ho! ia; oui, monsieur, s'il faut bien. The mayor is at breakfast in
his kitchen yonder."
"Thank you, my child."
I turned my horse across the shady square to a stone house banked up
with bed on bed of scarlet geraniums. The windows were open; a fat man
with very small eyes sat inside eating an omelet.
He watched me dismount without apparent curiosity, and when I had tied
my horse and walked in at the open door he looked at me over the rim
of a glass of cider, and slowly finished his draught without blinking.
Then he said, "Bonjour."
I told him that I wanted a license for the circus to camp for one
night; that I also desired permission to pitch camp somewhere in the
vicinity. He made out the license, stamped it, handed it to me, and I
paid him the usual fee.
"I've heard of circuses," he said; "they're like those shows at
country fairs, I suppose."
"Yes--in a way. We have animals."
"What kind?"
"Lions, tigers--"
"I've seen them."
"--a camel, an elephant--"
"Alive?"
"Certainly."
"Ma doué!" he said, with slow emotion, "have you a live elephant?"