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A VILLAGE OF VAGABONDS
By F. BERKELEY SMITH
Author of "The Lady of Big Shanty."
A. L. BURT COMPANY
PUBLISHERS NEW YORK
ALL RIGHTS RESERVED, INCLUDING THAT OF TRANSLATION
INTO FOREIGN LANGUAGES, INCLUDING THE SCANDINAVIAN
COPYRIGHT, 1910, BY DOUBLEDAY, PAGE & COMPANY
PUBLISHED MAY, 1910
COPYRIGHT, 1909, 1910, BY SMITH PUBLISHING HOUSE
* * * * *
CONTENTS
CHAPTER PAGE
I. The House by the Marsh 3
II. Monsieur le Cure 35
III. The Exquisite Madame de Breville 63
IV. The Smugglers 91
V. Marianne 120
VI. The Baron's Perfectos 151
VII. The Horrors of War 186
VIII. The Million of Monsieur de Savignac 213
IX. The Man with the Gun 245
X. The Bells of Pont du Sable 274
XI. The Miser--Garron 308
XII. Midwinter Flights 339
* * * * *
A VILLAGE OF VAGABONDS
[Illustration: house by the marsh]
A Village of Vagabonds
CHAPTER ONE
THE HOUSE BY THE MARSH
It was in fat Madame Fontaine's little cafe at Bar la Rose, that Norman
village by the sea, that I announced my decision. It being market-day
the cafe was noisy with peasants, and the crooked street without jammed
with carts. Monsieur Torin, the butcher, opposite me, leaned back
heavily from his glass of applejack and roared.
Monsieur Pompanet, the blacksmith, at my elbow, put down his cup of
black coffee delicately in its clean saucer and opened his honest gray
eyes wide in amazement. Simultaneously Monsieur Jaclin, the mayor, in
his freshly ironed blouse, who for want of room was squeezed next to
Torin, choked out a wheezy "_Bon Dieu!_" and blew his nose in derision.
"Pont du Sable--_Bon Dieu!_" exclaimed all three. "Pont du Sable--_Bon
Dieu!_"
"_Cristi!_" thundered Torin. "You say you are going to _live_ in Pont du
Sable? _Helas!_ It is not possible, my friend, you are in earnest!"
"That lost hole of a village of _sacre_ vagabonds," echoed Pompanet.
"Why, the mud when the tide is out smells like the devil. It is
unhealthy."
"Pere Bordier and I went there for ducks twenty years ago," added the
mayor. "We were glad enough to get away before dark. B-r-r! It was
lonely enough, that marsh, and that dirty little fishing-village no
longer than your arm. Bah! It's a hole, just as Pompanet says."
Torin leaned across the table and laid a heavy hand humanely on my
shoulder.
"Take my advice," said he, "don't give up that snug farm of yours here
for a lost hole like Pont du Sable."
"But the sea-shooting is open there three hundred and sixty-five days in
the year," I protested, with enthusiasm. "I'm tired of tramping my legs
off here for a few partridges a season. Besides, what I've been looking
for I've found--a fine old abandoned house with a splendid old courtyard
and a wild garden. I had the good luck to climb over a wall and discover
it."
"I know the place you mean," interrupted the mayor. "It was a
post-tavern in the old days before the railroad ran there."
"And later belonged to the estate of the Marquis de Lys," I added
proudly. "Now it belongs to me."
"What! You've bought it!" exclaimed Torin, half closing his veal-like
eyes.
"Yes," I confessed, "signed, sealed, and paid for."
"And what the devil do you intend to do with that old stone pile now
that you've got it?" sneered Jaclin. "Ah! You artists are queer
fellows!"
"Live in it, messieurs," I returned as happily as I could, as I dropped
six sous for my glass into Madame Fontaine's open palm, and took my
leave, for under the torrent of their protest I was beginning to feel I
had been a fool to be carried away by my love of a gun and the
picturesque.
The marsh at Pont du Sable was an old friend of mine. So were the desert
beach beyond the dunes, and the lost fishing-village--"no longer than
your arm." I had tramped in wind and rain and the good sunlight over
that great desert of pasty black clay at low tide. I had lain at high
tide in a sand-pit at the edge of the open sea beyond the dunes, waiting
for chance shots at curlew and snipe. I had known the bay at the first
glimmer of dawn with a flight of silver plovers wheeling for a rush over
my decoys. Dawn--the lazy, sparkling noon and the golden hours before
the crisp, still twilight warned me it was high time to start back to
Bar la Rose fourteen kilometres distant. All these had become enchanting
memories.
Thus going to Pont du Sable for a day's shooting became a weekly
delight, then a biweekly fascination, then an incorrigible triweekly
habit. There was no alternative left me now but to live there. The
charm of that wild bay and its lost village had gotten under my skin.
And thus it happened that I deserted my farm and friends at Bar la Rose,
and with my goods and chattels boarded the toy train one spring morning,
bound for my abandoned house, away from sufficient-unto-itself Bar la
Rose and its pigheaded inhabitants, the butcher, the blacksmith, and the
mayor.
* * * * *
It is such a funny little train that runs to my new-found Paradise,
rocking and puffing and grumbling along on its narrow-gauge track with
its cars labelled like grown-up ones, first, second, and third class;
and no two painted the same colour; and its noisy, squat engine like the
real ones in the toy-stores, that wind up with a key and go rushing off
frantically in tangents. No wonder the train to my lost village is
called "_Le petit deraillard_"--"The little get-off-the-track." And so I
say, it might all have come packed in excelsior in a neat box, complete,
with instructions, for the sum of four francs sixty-five centimes, had
it not been otherwise destined to run twice daily, rain or shine, to
Pont du Sable, and beyond.
Poor little train! It is never on time, but it does its best. It is at
least far more prompt than its passengers, for most of them come running
after it out of breath.
"Hurry up, mademoiselle!" cries the engineer to a rosy-cheeked girl in
sabots, rushing with a market-basket under one arm and a live goose
under the other. "Eh, my little lady, you should have gotten out of bed
earlier!" laughs the conductor as he pulls her aboard.
"Toot! Toot!" And off goes the little get-off-the-track again, rocking
and rumbling along past desert stretches of sand dunes screening the
blue sea; past modern villas, isolated horrors in brick, pink, and baby
blue, carefully planted away from the trees. Then suddenly the desert is
left behind! Past the greenest of fields now, dotted with sleek, grazing
cattle; past groves of pine; past snug Norman farms with low-thatched
roofs half-smothered in yellow roses. Again the dunes, as the toy train
swings nearer the sea. They are no longer desert wastes of sand and
wire-grass, but covered now with a riot of growing things, running in
one rich congested sweep of orchards, pastures, feathery woodlands and
matted hedges down to the very edge of the blue sea.
A sudden turn, and the toy train creeps out of a grove of pines to the
open bay. It is high tide. A flight of plover, startled by the engine,
go wheeling away in a silver streak to a spit of sand running out from
the marsh. A puff of smoke from the sand-spit, and the band leaves two
of its members to a gentleman in new leather leggings; then, whistling
over the calamity that has befallen them, they wheel again and strike
for the open sea and safety.
Far across the expanse of rippling turquoise water stands a white
lighthouse that at dusk is set with a yellow diamond. Snug at the lower
end of the bay, a long mile from where the plovers rise, lies the lost
village. Now the toy train is crawling through its crooked single
street, the engine-bell ringing furiously that stray dogs and children,
and a panicky flock of sheep may have time to get out of the way. The
sheep are in charge of a rough little dog with a cast in one eye and a
slim, barelegged girl who apologizes a dozen times to monsieur the
engineer between her cries to her flock.
"They are not very well brought up, my little one--those sacred mutton
of yours," remarks the engineer as he comes to a dead stop, jumps out of
his cab, and helps straighten out the tangle.
"Ah, monsieur!" sighs the girl in despair. "What will you have? It is
the little black one that is always to blame!"
The busy dog crowds them steadily into line. He seems to be everywhere
at once, darting from right to left, now rounding up a stubborn ewe and
her first-born, now cornering the black one.
"Toot! Toot!" And the little get-off-the-track goes rumbling on through
the village, past the homes of the fishermen--a straggling line of low
stone houses with quaint gabled roofs, and still quainter chimneys, and
old doorways giving glimpses of dark interiors and dirt floors. Past the
modest houses of the mayor, the baker, the butcher and Monsieur le
Cure; then through the small public square, in which nothing ever
happens, and up to a box of a station.
"Pont du Sable!" cries the conductor, with as much importance as if he
had announced Paris.
I have arrived.
* * * * *
There was no doubt about my new-found home being abandoned! The low
stone wall that tempered the wind from courtyard and garden was green
with lichens. The wide stone gateway, with its oaken doors barred within
by massive cross-hooks that could have withstood a siege; the courtyard,
flanked by the house and its rambling appendages that contained within
their cavernous interiors the cider-press and cellars; the stable with
its long stone manger, and next it the carved wooden bunk for the groom
of two centuries ago; the stone pig-sty; the tile-roofed sheds--all had
about them the charm of dignified decay.
But the "chateau" itself!
Generations of spiders had veiled every nook and corner within, and the
nooks and corners were many. These cobwebs hung in ghostly festoons from
the low-beamed ceiling of the living room, opening out upon the wild
garden. They continued up the narrow stone stairway leading to the
old-fashioned stone-paved bedrooms; they had been spun in a labyrinth
all over the generous, spooky, old stone-paved attic, whose single eye
of a window looked out over the quaint gables and undulating tiled roofs
of adjoining attics, whose dark interiors were still pungent with the
tons of apples they had once sheltered. Beyond my rambling roofs were
rich orchards and noble trees and two cool winding lanes running up to
the green country beyond.
Ten days of strenuous settling passed, at the end of which my abandoned
house was resuscitated, as it were. Without Suzette, my little
maid-of-all-work, it would have been impossible. I may say we attacked
this seemingly superhuman task together--and Suzette is so human. She
has that frantic courage of youth, and a smile that is irresistible.
"To-morrow monsieur shall see," she said. "My kitchen is clean--that is
something, eh? And the beds are up, and the armoires, and nearly all of
monsieur's old studio furniture in place. _Eh, ben!_ To-morrow night
shall see most of the sketches hung and the rugs beaten--that is again
something, eh? Then there will be only the brass and the andirons and
the guns to clean."
Ten days of strenuous attack, sometimes in the rain, and when I hammer
my fingers in the rain I swear horribly; the average French saw, too,
would have placed Job in a sanitarium. Suzette's cheery smile is a
delight, and how her sturdy, dimpled arms can scrub, and dust, and cook,
and clean. When she is working at full steam she invariably sings; but
when her souffle does not souffle she bursts into tears--this good
little peasant maid-of-all-work!
And so the abandoned house by the marsh was settled. Now there is charm,
and crackling fires o' nights within, and sunny breakfasts in the garden
without--a garden that grew to be gay with flowers, and is still in any
wind, thanks to my friend the lichen-stained wall over which clamber
vines and all manner of growing things; and sometimes my kitten with her
snow-white breast, whose innocent green eyes narrow to slits as she
watches for hours two little birds that are trying to bring up a small
family in the vines. I have told her plainly if she even touches them I
will boil her in oil. "Do you hear, Miquette?" and she turns away and
licks her pink paw as if she had not heard--you essence of selfishness
that I love!
Shall I tell you who is coming to dine to-night, Green-eyes? Our
neighbours! Madame Alice de Breville who spoils you, and the Marquis de
Clamard who does not like pussy-cats, but is too well-bred to tell you
so, and the marquise who flatters you, and Blondel! Don't struggle--you
cannot get away, I've got you tight. You are not going to have your way
all the time. Look at me! Claws in and your ears up! There! And Tanrade,
that big, whole-souled musician, with his snug old house and his two big
dogs, either one of which would make mince-meat of you should you have
the misfortune to mistake his garden for your own. Madame de
Breville--do you hear?--who has but to half close her eyes to make
Tanrade forget his name. He loves her madly, you see, pussy-kit!
Ah, yes! The lost village! In which the hours are never dull. Lost
village! With these Parisian neighbours, whose day of discovery
antedated mine by several years. Lost village! In which there are jolly
fishermen and fishergirls as pretty as some gipsies--slim and fearless,
a genial old mayor, an optimistic blacksmith, and a butcher who is a
seigneur; gentle old women in white caps, blue-eyed children, kind dogs,
fresh air, and _life_!
There is a mysterious fascination about that half-hour before the first
glimmer of dawn. The leaves, this September morning, are shivering in
the dusk of my garden; the house is as silent as my sleeping cat save
for the resonant tick-tock, tick-tock, of the tall Norman clock in the
kitchen, to which I tiptoe down and breakfast by candle-light.
You should see the Essence of Selfishness then as she purrs around a
simmering saucepan of milk destined for my coffee, and inspects the
toast and jam, and sniffs at my breech-loader, well greased with
neatsfoot-oil, and now the ghostly light in the courtyard tells me to
hurry out on the bay.
Low tide. Far out on the desert of black clay a colony of gulls have
spent the night. Their quarrelsome jargon reaches me as I cautiously
raise my head over the dunes, for often a band of plover is feeding at
dawn out on the mud, close enough for a shot. Nothing in view save the
gulls, those gossiping concierges of the bay, who rise like a squall of
snow as I make a clean breast of my presence, and start across the
soggy, slippery mud toward the marsh running out to the open sea. A
curlew, motionless on his long legs, calls cheerfully from the point of
sand: "Curli--Curli!" Strong, cheerful old bird. The rifts of white mist
are lifting from the bay, thinned into rose vapour now, as the sun
creeps above the green hillsides.
Swish! Three silver plovers flash back of me--a clean miss. If we never
missed we should never love a gun. It is time now to stalk the bottoms
of the narrow, winding causeways that drain the bay. Their beds at low
tide are full of dead mussels, dormant clams, and awkward sputtering
crabs; the old ones sidling away from you with threatening claws wide
open for combat; the young ones standing their ground bravely, in
ignorance.
Swish again! But this time I manage to kill them both--two fat golden
plovers. The Essence of Selfishness shall have her fill at noon, and the
pupils of her green eyes will contract in ecstasy as she crunches and
gnaws.
Now all the bay is alive. Moreover, the sea is sweeping in, filling the
bay like a bath-tub, obliterating the causeways under millions of
dancing ripples of turquoise. Soon my decoys are out, and I am sunk in a
sand-pit at the edge of the sea. The wind holds strong from the
northeast, and I am kept busy until my gun-barrels are too hot to be
pleasant. All these things happen between dawn and a late breakfast in
my garden.
Suzette sang all day. It is always so with Suzette upon the days when
the abandoned house is giving a dinner. The truth is, Suzette loves to
cook; her pride and her happiness increase as the hour appointed for my
guests to arrive approaches. With Suzette it is a delightful event.
The cracked jingle-bell over my stone gateway had jingled incessantly
since early morning, summoning this good little Norman maid-of-all-work
to slip her trim feet into her sabots and rush across the court to open
the small door piercing my wall beside the big gates. Twice for beggars,
once for the grocer's boy, three times for the baker--who had, after
all, forgotten the _brioche_; again for the baker's boy, who invariably
forgets if he thinks there is another chance in his forgetting, of
paying a forgotten compliment to Suzette. I heard his mother scolding
him yesterday. His bread, which he kneads and bakes himself before dawn,
is losing its lightness. There is little harmony between rising yeast
and a failing heart. Again the bell jingles; this time it is the Mere
Marianne, with a basket of quivering, iridescent mackerel just in from
the night's fishing.
Mere Marianne, who once was a village belle, is now thirty-three years
of age, strong as a man, fair-haired, hatless, bronzed by the sun,
salt-tanned, blue-eyed, a good mother to seven fair-haired, blue-eyed
children; yet a hard, amiable drinker in her leisure hours after a good
catch.
"_Bonjour_, my all beautiful!" she greets Suzette as the door opens.
"_Bonjour_, madame!" returns Suzette, her cheeks flushed from her
kitchen fire.
The word "madame" seems out of place, for Mere Marianne wears her man's
short tarpaulin coat cinched about her waist with a thin tarred rope.
Her sinewy legs, bare to the knees, are tightly incased in a pair of
sea-soaked trousers.
"So monsieur is having his friends to dinner," she rattles on
garrulously, swinging her basket to the ground and kneeling before it.
"I heard it as I came up the road from Blancheville's girl, who had it
from the Mere Taurville. _Eh ben!_ What do you think of these?" she adds
in the same breath, as she turns up two handsful of live mackerel. "Six
sous apiece to you, my pretty one. You see I came to you first; I'm
giving them to you as cheap as if you were my own daughter."
"Come, be quick," returns Suzette. "I have my lobster to boil and my
roast to get ready; four sous if you like, but not a sou more."
"Four sous! _Bon Dieu!_ I would rather eat them myself. They only lack
speech to tell you themselves how fresh they are. Look at them!"
"Four sous," insists Suzette. "Do you think monsieur is rich enough to
buy the _republique_."
"_Allez!_ Then, take them at four sous." And Mere Marianne laughs, slips
the money into her trousers pocket, and goes off to another bargain in
the village, where, if she gets two sous for her mackerel she will be
lucky.
At six Suzette lifts the Burgundy tenderly from its resting-place in a
closet beneath the winding stone stairs--a stone closet, low, sinister,
and dark, that suggests the solitary dungeons of feudal times. Three
cobwebbed bottles of Burgundy are now carefully ranged before the
crackling blaze in the living room. At six-thirty Suzette lays the
generous dark-oak table in lace and silver, thin glasses, red-shaded
candles, and roses--plenty of roses from the garden. Her kitchen by this
time is no longer open to visitors. It has become a sacred place,
teeming with responsibility--a laboratory of resplendent shining copper
sauce-pans, pots and casseroles, in which good things steam and stew and
bubble under lids of burnished gold, which, when lifted, give one a
rousing appetite.
* * * * *
I knew Tanrade's ring--vigorous and hearty, like himself. You would
never guess this sturdy, broad-shouldered man has created delicious
music--fairy ballets, pantomimes, and operettas. All Paris has applauded
him for years, and his country has rewarded him with a narrow red
ribbon. Rough-bearded, bronzed like a sailor, his brown eyes gleam with
kindness and intelligence. The more I know this modest great man the
more I like him, and I have known him in all kinds of wind and weather,
for Tanrade is an indefatigable hunter. He and I have spent nights
together in his duck-blind--a submerged hut, a murderous deceit sunk far
out on the marsh--cold nights; soft moonlight nights--the marsh a mystic
fairy-land; black nights---mean nights of thrashing rain. Nights that
paled to dawn with no luck to bring back to Suzette's larder. Sunny
mornings after lucky nights, when Tanrade and I would thaw out over our
coffee in the garden among the roses.
Tanrade had arrived early, a habit with this genial gourmand when the
abandoned house is giving a dinner, for he likes to supervise the final
touches. He was looking critically over the three cobwebbed bottles of
his favourite Burgundy now warming before my fire, and having tenderly
lifted the last bottle in the row to a place which he considered a safer
temperature, he straightened and squared his broad shoulders to the
blaze.
"I'll send you half a dozen more bottles to-morrow," he said.
"No, you won't, my old one," I protested, but he raised his hand and
smiled.
"The better the wine the merrier shall be the giver. Eighteen bottles
left! _Eh bien!_ It was a lucky day when that monastery was forced to
disband," he chuckled, alluding to the recent separation of the church
from the state. "_Vive la Republique!_" He crossed the room to the
sideboard and, having assured himself the Camembert was of the right
age, went singing into Suzette's kitchen to glance at the salad.
"Bravo, my little one, for your romaine!" I heard him exclaim.
Then a moment's silence ensued, while he tasted the dressing.
"_Sacristi!_ My child, do you think we are rabbits. _Helas!_ Not a bit
of astragon in your seasoning! A thousand thunders! A salad is not a
salad without astragon. Come, be quick, the lantern! I know where the
bed is in the garden."
"Ah, monsieur Tanrade! To think I should have forgotten it!" sighed the
little maid. "If monsieur will only let me hold the lantern for him!"
"There, there! Never mind! See, you are forgiven. Attend to your
lobster. Quick, your soup is boiling over!" And he went out into the
garden in search of the seasoning.
Suzette adores him--who does not in the lost village? He had rewarded
her with a two-franc piece and forgiven her with a kiss.
I had hardly time to open the big gates without and light the candles
within under their red shades glowing over the mass of roses still wet
from the garden, before I heard the devilish wail of a siren beyond the
wall; then a sudden flash of white light from two search-lights
illumined the courtyard, and with a wrenching growl Madame Alice de
Breville's automobile whined up to my door. The next instant the tip of
a little patent-leather slipper, followed by the trimmest of silken
ankles framed in a frou-frou of creamy lace, felt for the steel step of
the limousine. At the same moment a small white-gloved hand was
outstretched to mine for support.
"_Bonsoir_, dear friend," she greeted me in her delicious voice. "You
see how punctual I am. _L'heure militaire_--like you Americans." And
she laughed outright, disclosing two exquisite rows of pearls, her soft,
dark eyes half closing mischievously as she entered my door--eyes as
black as her hair, which she wore in a bandeau. The tonneau growled to
its improvised garage under the wood-shed.
She was standing now in the hall at the foot of the narrow stone stairs,
and as I slipped the long opera-cloak of dove-gray from her shoulders as
white as ivory, she glided out of it, and into the living room--a room
which serves as gun room, dining room and salon.
"Stand where you are," I said, as madame approached the fire. "What a
portrait!"
She stopped, the dancing light from the flames playing over her lithe,
exquisite figure, moulded in a gown of scintillating scales of black
jet. Then, seeing I had finished my mental note of line and composition,
she half turned her pretty head and caught sight of the ruby, cobwebbed
row of old Burgundy.
"Ah! Tanrade's Burgundy!" she exclaimed with a little cry of delight.
"How did you guess?"
"Guess! One does not have to guess when one sees as good Burgundy as
that. You see I know it." She stretched forth her firm white arms to the
blaze.
"Where is he, that good-for-nothing fellow?" she asked.
"In the garden after some astragon for the salad."
She tripped to the half-open door leading to the tangled maze of paths.
"Tanrade! Tanrade! _Bonsoir, ami!_" she called.
"_Bonsoir_, Madame Punctual," echoed his great voice from the end of the
garden, and again he broke forth in song as he came hurrying back to the
house with his lantern and his bunch of seasoning. Following at his
heels trotted the Essence of Selfishness.
"Oh, you beauty!" cried Alice. She nodded mischievously to Tanrade, who
rushed to the piano, and before the Essence of Selfishness had time to
elude her she was picked up bodily, held by her fore paws and forced to
dance upon her hind legs, her sleek head turned aside in hate, her
velvety ears flattened to her skull.
"Dance! Dance!" laughed Alice. "One--two, one--two! _Voila!_" The next
instant Miquette was caught up and hugged to a soft neck encircled with
jewels. "There, go! Do what you like, Mademoiselle Independent!"
And as Miquette regained her liberty upon her four paws, the Marquis and
Marquise de Clamard announced their arrival by tapping on the window, so
that for the moment the cozy room was deserted save by Miquette, who
profited during the interval by stealing a whole sardine from the
hors-d'oeuvres.
Another good fellow is the marquis--tall, with the air of a diplomat,
the simplicity of a child, and the manners of a prince. Another good
friend, too, is the marquise. They had come on foot, these near-by
neighbours, with their lantern. Was there ever such a marquise? This
once famous actress, who interpreted the comedies of Moliere. Was there
ever a more charming grandmother? Ah! You do not look it even now with
your gray hair, for you are ever young and witty and gracious. She
clapped her hands as she peered across the dinner-table to the row
before the chimney.
"My Burgundy, I see!" she exclaimed, to my surprise; Tanrade was gazing
intently at a sketch. "Oh, you shall see," added the marquise seriously.
"You are not the only one, my friend, the gods have blessed. Did you not
send me a dozen bottles this morning, Monsieur Tanrade? Come, confess!"
He turned and shrugged his shoulders.
"Impossible! I cannot remember. I am so absent-minded, madame," and he
bent and kissed her hand.
"Where's Blondel?" cried Clamard, as he extracted a thin cigarette-case
from his waistcoat.
"He'll be here presently," I explained.
"It's a long drive for him," added the marquise, a ring of sympathy in
her voice. "Poor boy, he is working so hard now that he is editor of _La
Revue Normande_. Ah, those wretched politics!"
"He doesn't mind it," broke in Tanrade, "he has a skin like a
bear--driving night and day all over the country as he does. What
energy, _mon Dieu_!"
"Oh!" cried Madame de Breville, "Blondel shall sing for us 'L'Histoire
de Madame X.' You shall cry with laughter."
"And 'Le Brigadier de Tours,'" added Tanrade.
The sound of hoofs and the rattle of a dog-cart beyond the wall sent us
hurrying to the courtyard.
"_Eh, voila!_" shouted Tanrade. "There he is, that good Blondel!"
"Suzette!" I cried as I passed the kitchen. "The vermouth!"
"_Bien_, monsieur."
"Eh, Blondel, there is nothing to eat, you late vagabond!"
A black mare steaming from her hot pace of twelve miles, drawing a
red-wheeled dog-cart, entered the courtyard.
"A thousand pardons," came a voice out of a bearskin coat, "my editorial
had to go to press early, or I should have been here half an hour ago."
Then such a greeting and a general rush to unharness the tired mare, the
marquis tugging at one trace and I at the other, while Tanrade backed
the cart under the shed next to the cider-press, Alice de Breville and
the marquise holding the mare's head. All this, despite the pleadings of
Blondel, who has a horror of giving trouble--the only man servant to the
abandoned house being Pierre, who was occupied at that hour in
patrolling the coast in the employ of the French Republique, looking out
for possible smugglers, and in whose spare hours served me as gardener.
And so the mare was led into the stable with its stone manger, where
every one helped with halter, blanket, a warm bed, and a good supper;
Alice de Breville holding the lantern while the marquise bound on the
mare's blanket with a girdle of straw.
"Monsieur, dinner is served," announced Suzette gently as she entered
the stable.
"Vive Suzette!" shouted the company. "_Allons manger, mes enfants!_"
They found their places at the table by themselves. In the abandoned
house there is neither host nor formality, but in their stead
comradeship, understanding, and good cheer.
Blondel is delightful. You can always count on him for the current
events with the soup, the latest scandal with the roast, and a song of
his own making with the cheese. What more can one ask? It all rolls from
him as easily as the ink from his clever pen; it is as natural with him
as his smile or the merriment in his eyes.
During the entire dinner the Essence of Selfishness was busy visiting
from one friendly lap to another, frequently crossing the table to do
so, and as she refuses to dine from a saucer, though it be of the finest
porcelain of Rouen, she was fed piecemeal. It was easily seen Tanrade
was envious of this charity from one shapely little hand.
What a contrast are these dinners in the lost village to some I have
known elsewhere! What refreshing vivacity! How genuine and merry they
are from the arrival of the first guest to the going of the last! When
at last the coffee and liqueurs were reached and six thin spirals of
blue smoke were curling lazily up among the rafters of the low ceiling,
the small upright piano talked under Tanrade's vibrant touch. He sang
heartily whatever came into his head; now a quaint peasant song, again
the latest success of the cafe concert.
Alice de Breville, stretched out in the long chair before the fire, was
listening intently.
And so with song and story the hands of the tall clock slipped by the
hours. It was midnight before we knew it. Again Tanrade played--this
time it was the second act of his new operetta. When he had finished he
took his seat beside the woman in the long chair.
"Bravo!" she murmured in his ear. Then she listened as he talked to her
earnestly.
"Good!" I overheard her say to him with conviction, her eyes gleaming.
"And you are satisfied at last with the second act?"
"Yes, after a month's struggle with it."
"Ah, I am so glad--so glad!" she sighed, and pressed his hand.
"I must go to Paris next week for the rehearsals."
"For long?" she asked.
He shrugged his shoulders helplessly. "For weeks, perhaps. Come," he
said, "let us go out to the wall--the moon is up. The marsh is so
beautiful in the moonlight."
She rose, slipped on the dove-gray cloak he brought her, and together
they disappeared in the courtyard. The marquise raised her eyes to mine
and smiled.
"_Bonne promenade_, dear children," she called after them, but they did
not hear.
An hour later Alice de Breville was speeding back to her chateau;
Blondel and his mare were also clattering homeward, for he had still an
article to finish before daylight. I had just bid the marquis and the
marquise good night when Tanrade, who was about to follow, suddenly
turned and called me aside in the shadow of the gateway. What he said to
me made my heart leap. His eyes were shining with a strange light; his
hands, gripping me by both shoulders, trembled.
"It is true," he repeated. "Don't tell me I am dreaming, old friend.
Yes, it is true. Alice--yes, it is Alice. Come, a glass of wine! I feel
faint--and happy!"
We went back to the dying fire, and I believe he heard all my
congratulations, though I am not sure. He seemed in a dream.
When he had gone Suzette lighted my candle.
"Suzette," I said, "your dinner was a success."
"Ah, but I am content, monsieur. _Mon Dieu_, but I do love to cook!"
"Come, Miquette! It's past your bedtime, you adorable egoist."
"_Bonsoir_, Suzette."
"_Bonsoir_, monsieur."
Village of Vagabonds! In which the hours are never dull! Lost village by
the Normand sea! In which lies a paradise of good-fellowship, romance,
love, and sound red wine!
[Illustration: train]
* * * * *
[Illustration: the little stone church]
CHAPTER TWO
MONSIEUR LE CURE
The sun had just risen, and the bell of the little stone church
chattered and jangled, flinging its impatient call over the sleeping
village of Pont du Sable. In the clear morning air its voice could be
heard to the tops of the green hills, and across the wide salt marsh
that stretched its feathery fingers to the open sea.
A lone, wrinkled fisherman, rolling lazily on the mighty heave of the
incoming tide, turned his head landward.
"_Sapristi!_" he grinned, as he slipped a slimy thumb from the meshes of
a mackerel-net and crossed himself. "She has a hoarse throat, that
little one."
Far up the hillside a mile back of the churchyard, a barelegged girl
driving a cow stopped to listen, her hood pushed back, her brown hands
crossed upon her breast.
Lower down, skirting the velvet edge of the marsh, filmy rifts of mist
broke into shreds or blended with the spirals of blue smoke mounting
skyward from freshly kindled fires.
Pont du Sable was awake for the day.
It is the most unimportant of little villages, yet it is four centuries
old, and of stone. It seems to have shrivelled by its great age, like
its oldest inhabitants. One-half of its two score of fishermen's houses
lie crouched to the rambling edge of its single street; the other half
might have been dropped at random, like stones from the pocket of some
hurrying giant. Some of these, including the house of the ruddy little
mayor and the polite, florid grocer, lie spilled along the edge of the
marsh.
As for Monsieur le Cure, he was at this very moment in the small stone
church saying mass to five fishermen, two devout housewives, a little
child, an old woman in a white cap, and myself. Being in my
shooting-boots, I had tiptoed into a back seat behind two of the
fishermen, and sat in silence watching Monsieur le Cure's gaunt figure
and listening to his deep, well-modulated, resonant voice.
What I saw was a man uncommonly tall and well built, dressed in a rusty
black soutane that reached in straight lines from beneath his chin to
his feet, which were encased in low calf shoes with steel buckles. I
noticed, too, that his face was angular and humorous; his eyes keen and
merry by turns; his hair of the colourless brown one sees among
fisherfolk whose lives are spent in the sun and rain. I saw, too, that
he was impecunious, for the front edges of his cassock were frayed and
three buttons missing, not to be wondered at, I said to myself, as I
remembered that the stone church, like the village it comforted, had
always been poor.
Now and then during the mass I saw the cure glance at the small leaded
window above him as if making a mental note of the swaying tree-tops
without in the graveyard. Then his keen gray eyes again reverted to the
page he knew by heart. The look evidently carried some significance,
for the gray-haired old sea-dog in front of me cocked his blue eye to
his partner--they were both in from a rough night's fishing--and
muttered:
"It will be a short mass."
"_Ben sur_," whispered back the other from behind his leathery hand.
"The wind's from the northeast. It will blow a gale before sundown." And
he nodded toward the swaying tree-tops.
With this, the one with the blue eyes straightened back in the wooden
pew and folded his short, knotty arms in attention; the muscles of his
broad shoulders showing under his thick seaman's jersey, the collar
encircling his corded, stocky neck deep-seamed by a thousand winds and
seas. The gestures of these two old craftsmen of the sea, who had worked
so long together, were strangely similar. When they knelt I could see
the straw sticking from the heels of their four wooden sabots and the
rolled-up bottoms of their patched sail-cloth trousers.
As the mass ended the old woman in the white cap coughed gently, the
cure closed his book, stepped from the chancel, patted the child's head
in passing, strode rapidly to the sacristy, and closed the door behind
him.
I followed the handful of worshippers out into the sunlight and down the
hill. As I passed the two old fishermen I heard the one with the blue
eyes say to his mate with the leathery hand:
"_Allons, viens t'en!_ What if we went to the cafe after that dog's
night of a sea?"
"I don't say no," returned his partner; then he winked at me and pointed
to the sky.
"I know," I said. "It's what I've been waiting for."
I kept on down the crooked hill to the public square where nothing ever
happens save the arrival of the toy train and the yearly fete, and
deciding the two old salts were right after their "dog's night" (and it
had blown a gale), wheeled to the left and followed them to the tiniest
of cafes kept by stout, cheery Madame Vinet. It has a box of a kitchen
through which you pass into a little square room with just space enough
for four tables; or you may go through the kitchen into a snug garden
gay in geraniums and find a sheltered table beneath a rickety arbour.
"Ah, _mais_, it was bad enough!" grinned the one with the leathery hand
as he drained his thimbleful of applejack and, Norman-like, tossed the
last drop on the floor of the snug room.
"Bad enough! It was a sea, I tell you, monsieur, like none since the
night the wreck of _La Belle Marie_ came ashore," chimed in the one with
the blue eye, as he placed his elbows on the clean marbletop table and
made room for my chair. "_Mon Dieu!_ You should have seen the ducks
south of the Wolf. Aye, 'twas a sight for an empty stomach."
The one with the leathery hand nodded his confirmation sleepily.
"_Helas!_" continued the one with the blue eye. "If monsieur could only
have been with us!" As he spoke he lifted his shaggy eyebrows in the
direction of the church and laughed softly. "He's happy with his
northeast wind; I knew 'twould be a short mass."
"A good catch?" I ventured, looking toward him as Madame Vinet brought
my glass.
"Eight thousand mackerel, monsieur. We should have had ten thousand had
not the wind shifted."
"_Ben sur!_" grumbled the one with the leathery hand.
At this Madame Vinet planted her fists on her ample hips. "_Helas!_
There's the Mere Coraline's girl to be married Thursday," she sighed,
"and Planchette's baby to be christened Tuesday, and the wind in the
northeast, _mon Dieu!_" And she went back to her spotless kitchen for a
sou's worth of black coffee for a little girl who had just entered.
Big, strong, hearty Madame Vinet! She has the frankness of a man and the
tenderness of a mother. There is something of her youth still left at
forty-six; not her figure--that is rotund simplicity itself--but in the
clearness of her brown eyes and the finely cut profile before it reaches
her double chin, and the dimples in her hands, well shaped even to-day.
And so the little girl who had come in for the sou's worth of coffee
received an honest measure, smoking hot out of a dipper and into the
bottle she had brought. In payment Madame Vinet kissed the child, and
added a lump of sugar to the bargain. From where I sat I could see the
tears start in the good woman's eyes. The next moment she came back to
us laughing to disguise them.
"Ah, you good soul!" I thought to myself. "Always in a good humour;
always pleasant. There you go again--this time it was the wife of a poor
fisherman who could not pay. How many a poor devil of a half-frozen
sailor you have warmed, you whose heart is so big and whose gains are so
small!"
I rose at length, bade the two old salts good morning, and with a
blessing of good luck, recovered my gun from the kitchen cupboard, where
I had reverently left it during mass, and went on my way to shoot. I,
too, was anxious to make the most of the northeast wind.
* * * * *
There being no street in the lost village save the main thoroughfare,
one finds only alleys flanked by rambling walls. One of these runs up to
Tanrade's house; another finds its zigzag way to the back gate of the
marquis, who, being a royalist, insists upon telling you so, for the
keystone of his gate is emblazoned with a bas-relief of two carved
eagles guarding the family crest. Still another leads unexpectedly to
the silent garden of Monsieur le Cure. It is a protecting little by-way
whose walls tell no tales. How many a suffering heart seeking human
sympathy and advice has the strong figure in the soutane sent home with
fresh courage by way of this back lane. Indeed it would be a lost
village without him. He is barely over forty years old, and yet no cure
was ever given a poorer parish, for Pont du Sable has been bankrupt for
generations. Since a fortnight--so I am told--Monsieur le Cure has had
no _bonne_. The reason is that no good Suzette can be found to replace
the one whom he married to a young farmer from Bonville. The result is
the good cure dines many times a week with the marquis, where he is so
entertaining and so altogether delightful and welcome a guest that the
marquise tells me she feels ten years younger after he has gone.
"Poor man," she confided to me the other day, "what will you have? He
has no _bonne_, and he detests cooking. Yesterday he lunched at the
chateau with Alice de Breville; to-morrow he will be cheering up two old
maiden aunts who live a league from Bar la Rose. Is it not sad?" And she
laughed merrily.
"Monsieur le Cure has no _bonne_!" _Parbleu!_ It has become a household
phrase in Pont du Sable. It is so difficult to get a servant here; the
girls are all fishing. As for Tanrade's maid-of-all-work, like the
noiseless butler of the marquis and the _femme de chambre_ of Alice de
Breville, they are all from Paris; and yet I'll wager that no larder in
the village is better stocked than Monsieur le Cure's, for every
housewife vies with her neighbour in ready-cooked donations since the
young man from Bonville was accepted.
But these good people do not forget. They remember the day when the farm
of Pere Marin burned; they recall the figure in the black soutane
stumbling on through flame and smoke carrying an unconscious little girl
in his strong arms to safety. Four times he went back where no man
dared go--and each time came out with a life.
Again, but for his indomitable grit, a half-drowned father and daughter,
clinging to a capsized fishing-smack in a winter sea, would not be
alive--there are even fisherfolk who cannot swim. Monsieur le Cure saw
this at a glance, alone he fought his way in the freezing surf out to
the girl and the man. He brought them in and they lived.
* * * * *
But there is a short cut to the marsh if you do but know it--one that
has served me before. You can easily find it, for you have but to follow
your nose along the wall of Madame Vinet's cafe, creep past the modest
rose-garden of the mayor, zigzag for a hundred paces or more among
crumbling walls, and before you know it you are out on the marsh.
* * * * *
The one with the blue eye was right.
The wind _was_ from the northeast in earnest, and the tide racing in.
Half a mile outward a dozen long puntlike scows, loaded to their brims
with sand, were being borne on the swirling current up the river's
channel, each guided at the stern by a ragged dot of a figure straining
at an oar.
As I struck out across the desolate waste of mud, bound for the point of
dry marsh, the figure steering the last scow, as he passed, waved a
warning to me. With the incoming sweep of tide the sunlight faded, the
bay became noisy with the cries of sea-fowl, and the lighthouse beyond
the river's channel stood out against the ominous green sky like a stick
of school-chalk.
I jerked my cap tighter over my ears, and lowering my head to the wind
kept on. I had barely time to make the marsh. Over the black desolate
waste of clay-mud the sea was spreading its hands--long, dangerous
hands, with fingers that every moment shot out longer and nearer my
tracks. The wind blew in howling gusts now, straight in from the open
sea. Days like these the ducks have no alternative but the bay. Only a
black diver can stand the strain outside. Tough old pirates
these--diving to keep warm.
I kept on, foolish as it was. A flight of becassines were whirled past
me, twittering in a panic as they fought their way out of sudden
squalls. I turned to look back. Already my sunken tracks were
obliterated under a glaze of water, but I felt I was safe, for I had
gained harder ground. It was a relief to slide to the bottom of one of
the labyrinth of causeways that drain the marsh, and plunge on sheltered
from the wind.
Presently I heard ducks quacking ahead. I raised my head cautiously to
the level of the wire-grass. A hundred rods beyond, nine black ducks
were grouped near the edge of a circular pool; behind them, from where I
stood, there rose from the level waste a humplike mound. I could no
longer proceed along the bottom of the causeway, as it was being rapidly
filled to within an inch below my boot-tops. The hump was my only
salvation, so I crawled to the bank and started to stalk the nine black
ducks.
It was difficult to keep on my feet on the slimy mud-bank, for the wind,
true to the fishermen's prediction, was now blowing half a gale.
Besides, this portion of the marsh was strange to me, as I had only
seen it at a distance from the lower end of the bay, where I generally
shot. I was within range of the ducks now, and had raised my hammers--I
still shoot a hammer-gun--when a human voice rang out. Then, like some
weird jack-in-the-box, there popped out from the mound a straight,
long-waisted body in black waving its arms.
It was the cure!
"Stay where you are," he shouted. "Treacherous ground! I'll come and
help you!" Then for a second he peered intently under his hand. "Ah! It
is you, monsieur--the newcomer; I might have guessed it." He laughed,
leaping out and striding toward me. "Ah, you Americans! You do not mind
the weather."
"_Bonjour_, Monsieur le Cure," I shouted back in astonishment, trying to
steady myself across a narrow bridge of mud spanning the causeway.
"Look out!" he cried. "That mud you're on is dangerous. She's sinking!"
It was too late; my right foot barely made another step before down I
went, gun, shells, and all, up to my chin in ice-cold water. The next
instant he had me by the collar of my leather coat in a grip of steel,
and I was hauled out, dripping and draining, on the bank.
"I'm all right," I sputtered.
"Come inside _instantly_," he said.
"Inside? Inside where?" I asked.
He pointed to the hump.
"You must get your wet things off and into bed at once." This came as a
command.
"Bed! Where? Whose bed?" Was he an Aladdin with a magic lamp, that could
summon comfort in that desolation? "Monsieur," I choked, "I owe you a
thousand apologies. I came near killing one of your nine decoys. I
mistook them for wild mallards."
He laughed softly. "They are not mine," he explained. "They belong to
the marquis; it is his gardener who pickets them out for me. I could not
afford to keep them myself. They eat outrageously, those nine deceivers.
They are well placed to-day; just the right distance." And he called the
three nearest us by name, for they were quacking loudly. "Be still,
Fannine! There, Pierrot! If your cord and swivel does not work, my good
drake, I'll fix it for you, but don't make such a fuss; you'll have
noise enough to make later." And gripping me by the arm, he pushed me
firmly ahead of him to a small open door in the mound. I peered into the
darkness within.
"Get in," said he. "It's small, but it's warm and comfortable inside.
After you, my friend," he added graciously, and we descended into a
narrow ditch, its end blocked by a small, safe-like door leading into a
subterranean hut, its roof being the mound, shelving out to a
semicircular, overhanging eyebrow skirting the edge of the circular pool
some ten yards back of the line of live decoys.
"Ah!" exclaimed Monsieur le Cure, "you should have seen the duck-blind I
had three years ago. This _gabion_ of mine is smaller, but it is in
better line with the flights," he explained as he opened the door. "Look
out for the steps--there are two."