"What château?" I asked.
"Dame, the château, monsieur."
"Oh," said I, "where the Countess lives?"
"The Countess? Yes, of course. Who else?"
"Is the Countess there?"
"Oui, dame, and others not to my taste."
I asked no more questions, but the mayor did, and when he found it
might take some time to pump me, he invited me to share his omelet and
cider and afterwards to sit in the sun among his geraniums and satisfy
his curiosity concerning the life of a strolling player.
I was glad of something to eat. After I had unsaddled my horse and led
him to the mayor's stable and had paid for hay and grain, I returned
to sit in the mayor's garden and sniff longingly at his tobacco smoke
and answer his impertinent questions as good-naturedly as they were
intended.
But even the mayor of Paradise grew tired of asking questions in time;
the bees droned among the flowers, the low murmur of the sea stole in
on our ears, the river softly lapped the quay. The mayor slept.
He was fat, very fat; his short, velvet jacket hung heavy with six
rows of enormous silver buttons, his little, round hat was tilted over
his nose. A silver buckle decorated it in front; behind, two little
velvet ribbons fluttered in futile conflict with the rising
sea-breeze.
Men in embroidered knee-breeches, with bare feet thrust into
straw-filled sabots, sat sunning on the quay under the purple
fig-trees; one ragged fellow in soiled velvet bolero and embossed
leggings lay in the sun, chin on fists, wooden shoes crossed behind
him, watching the water with the eyes of a poacher.
This mild, balmy November weather, this afterglow of summer which in
my own country we call Indian summer, had started new blossoms among
the climbing tea-roses, lovely orange-tinted blossoms, and some of a
clear lemon color, and their fragrance filled the air. Nowhere do
roses blow as they blow near the sea, nowhere have I breathed such
perfume as I breathed that drowsy afternoon in Paradise, where in
every door-yard thickets of clove-scented pinks carpeted the ground
and tall spikes of snowy phlox glimmered silver-white in the
demi-light.
Where on earth could a more peaceful scene be found than in this
sea-lulled land, here in the subdued light under aged, spreading oaks,
where moss crept over the pavements and covered the little fountain as
though it had been the stony brink of a limpid forest spring?
The mayor woke up toward five o'clock and stared at me with owlish
gravity as though daring me to say that he had been asleep.
"Um--ah--ma fois oui!" he muttered, blowing his nose loudly in a
purple silk bandanna. Then he shrugged his shoulders and added:
"C'est la vie, monsieur. Que voulez-vous?"
And it was one kind of life after all--a blessed release from the
fever of that fierce farandole which we of the outer world call
"life."
The mayor scratched his ear, yawned, stretched one leg, then the
other, and glanced at me.
"Paris still holds out?" he asked, with another yawn.
"Oh yes," I replied.
"And the war--is it still going badly for us?"
"There is always hope," I answered.
"Hope," he grumbled; "oh yes, we know what hope is--we of the coast
live on it when there's no bread; but hope never yet filled my belly
for me."
"Has the war touched you here in Paradise?" I asked.
"Touched us? Ho! Say it has crushed us and I'll strike palms with
you. Why, not a keel has passed out of the port since August. Where is
the fishing-fleet? Where are the sardine sloops that ought to have
sailed from Algiers? Where are the Icelanders?"
"Well, where are they?" I suggested.
"Where? Ask the semaphore yonder. Where are our salt schooners for
the Welsh coast? I don't know. They have not sailed, that's all I
know. You do well to come with your circus and your elephant! You can
peddle diamonds in the poor-house, too, if it suits your taste."
"Have the German cruisers frightened all your craft from the sea?" I
asked, astonished.
"Yes, partly. Then there's an ugly French cruiser lying off Groix,
yonder, and her black stacks are dribbling smoke all day and all
night. We have orders to keep off and use Lorient when we want a
port."
"Do you know why the cruiser warns your fishing-boats from this
coast?" I inquired.
"No," he said, shortly.
"Do you know the name of the cruiser?"
"She's a new one, the _Fer-de-Lance_. And if I were not a patriot and
a Breton I'd say: 'May Sainte-Anne rot her where she lies; she's
brought a curse on the coast from Lorient to the Saint-Julien
Light!--and the ghosts of the Icelanders will work her evil yet.'"
The mayor's round, hairless face was red; he thumped the arm of his
chair with pudgy fists and wagged his head.
"We have not seen the end of this," he said--"oh no! There's a curse
coming on Paradise--the cruiser brought it, and it's coming. Hé! did a
Bannalec man not hear the were-wolf in Kerselec forest a week since?
Pst! Not a word, monsieur. But old Kloark, of Roscoff, heard it
too--oui dame!--and he knows the howl of the Loup-Garou! Besides, did
I not with my own eyes see a black cormorant fly inland from the sea?
And, by Sainte-Éline of Paradise! the gulls squeal when there's no
storm brewing and the lançons prick the dark with flames along the
coast till you'd swear the witches of Ker-Is were lighting
death-candles from Paradise to Pont-Aven."
"Do you believe in witches, monsieur the mayor?" I asked, gravely.
He gave me a shrewd glance. "Not at all--not even in bed and the
light out," he said, with a fat swagger. "_I_ believe in magic? Ho!
foi non! But many do. Oui dame! Many do."
"Here in Paradise?"
"Parbleu! Men of parts, too, monsieur. Now there's Terrec, who has
the evil eye--not that I believe it, but, damn him, he'd better not
try any tricks on me!
"Others stick twigs of aubépine in their pastures; the apothecary is
a man of science, yet every year he makes a bonfire of dried gorse and
drives his cattle through the smoke. It may keep off witches and
lightning--or it may not. I myself do not do such things."
"Still you believe the cruiser out at sea yonder is going to bring
you evil?"
"She has brought it. But it's all the same to me. I am mayor, and
exempt, and I have cider and tobacco and boudin for a few months
yet."
He caressed his little, selfish chin, which hung between his mottled
jowls, peered cunningly at me, and opened his mouth to say something,
but at that moment we both caught sight of a peasant running and
waving a packet of blue papers in the air. "Monsieur the mayor!
Monsieur the mayor!" he called, while still far away.
"Cré cochon de malheur!" muttered the mayor, turning pale. "He's got
a telegram!"
The man came clattering across the square in his wooden shoes.
"A telegram," repeated the mayor, wiping the sudden sweat from his
forehead. "I never get telegrams. I don't want telegrams!"
He turned to me, almost bursting with suppressed prophecy.
"It has come--the evil that the black cruiser brings us! You laughed!
Tenez, monsieur; there's your bad luck in these blue morsels of
paper!"
And he snatched the telegram from the breathless messenger, reading it
with dilating eyes.
For a long while he sat there studying the telegram, his fat
forefinger following the scrawl, a crease deepening above his
eyebrows, and all the while his lips moved in noiseless repetition of
the words he spelled with difficulty and his labored breathing grew
louder.
When at length the magistrate had mastered the contents of his
telegram, he looked up with a stupid stare.
"I want my drummer. Where's the town-crier?" he demanded, as though
dazed.
"He has gone to Lorient, m'sieu the mayor," ventured the messenger.
"To get drunk. I remember. Imbecile! Why did he go to-day? Are there
not six other days in this cursed week? Who is there to drum? Nobody.
Nobody knows how in Paradise. Seigneur, Dieu! the ignorance of this
town!"
"M'sieu the mayor," ventured the messenger, "there's Jacqueline."
"Ho! Vrai. The Lizard's young one! She can drum, they say. She stole
my drum once. Why did she steal it but to drum upon it?"
"The little witch can drum them awake in Ker-Is," muttered the
messenger.
The mayor rose, looked around the square, frowned. Then he raised his
voice in a bellow: "Jacqueline! Jacqueline! _Thou_ Jacqueline!"
A far voice answered, faintly breaking across the square from the
bridge: "She is on the rocks with her sea-rake!"
The mayor thrust the blue telegram into his pocket and waddled out of
his garden, across the square, and up the path to the cliffs.
Uninvited, I went with him.
X