provided with a grated floor and a low ribbed ceiling; beyond this,
through another small door, was an adjoining compartment deeper than the
one in which we stood, and in the darkness I caught the outline of a
cot-bed, a carved, high-backed, leather-seated chair, and the blue glint
of guns lying in their racks. The place was warm and smelled, like the
cabin of some fishing-sloop, of sea-salt and tar.
It did not take me long to get out of my clothes. When the last of them
lay around my heels I received a rubbing down with a coarse sailor's
shirt, that sent the blood back where it belonged.
"_Allons!_ Into bed at once!" insisted the cure. "You'll find those army
blankets dry."
I felt my way in while he struck a match and lighted a candle upon a
narrow shelf strewn with empty cartridges. The candle sputtered, sunk to
a blue flame, and flared up cheerfully, while the cure poured me out a
stiff glass of brandy, and I lay warm in the blankets of the _Armee
Francaise_, and gazed about me at my strange quarters.
Back of my pillow was, tightly closed, in three sections, a narrow
firing-slit. Beside the bed the candle's glow played over the carved
back of the leather-seated chair. Above the closed slit ran a shelf, and
ranged upon it were some fifty cartridges and an old-fashioned fat
opera-glass. This, then, was Monsieur le Cure's duck-blind, or rather,
in French, his _gabion_.
The live decoys began quacking nervously. The cure, about to speak,
tip-toed over to the firing-slit and let down cautiously one of its
compartments.
"A flight of plovers passing over us," he remarked. "Yes, there they go.
If the wind will only hold you shall see--there will be ducks in," his
gray eyes beaming at the thought.
Then he drew the chair away from the firing-slit and seated himself,
facing me.
"If you knew," he began, "how much it means to me to talk to one of the
outside world--your country--America! You must tell me much about it. I
have always longed to see it, but----" He shrugged his shoulders
helplessly. "Are you warm?" he asked.
"Warm?" I laughed. "I never felt better in my life." And I thanked him
again for his kindness to a stranger in distress. "A stranger in luck,"
I added.
"I saw you at mass this morning," he returned bending over, his hands on
his knees. "But you are not a Catholic, my friend? You are always
welcome to my church, however, remember that."
"Thank you," I said. "I like your little church, and--I like you,
Monsieur le Cure."
He put forth his hand. "Brother sportsmen," he said. "It _is_ a
brotherhood, isn't it? You are a Protestant, is it not so?" And his
voice sank to a gentle tone.
"Yes, I am what they call a blue Presbyterian."
"I have heard of that," he said. "'A _blue_ Presbyterian.'" He repeated
it to himself and smiled. Suddenly he straightened and his finger went
to his lips.
"Hark!" he whispered. "Hear their wings!"
Instantly the decoys set up a strenuous quacking. Then again all was
silent.
"Too high," muttered the cure. "I do not expect much in before the late
afternoon. Do you smoke?"
"Yes, gladly," I replied, "but my cigarettes are done for, I am afraid;
they were in the pocket of my hunting coat."
"Don't move," he said, noticing my effort to rise. "I've got
cigarettes." And he fumbled in the shadow of the narrow shelf.
I had hardly lighted my own over the candle-flame, which he held for me,
when I felt a gentle rocking and heard the shells rattle as they rolled
to the end of the shelf, stop, and roll back again.
"Do not be alarmed," he laughed, "it's only the water filling the outer
jacket of my _gabion_. We shall be settled and steady in a moment, and
afloat for the night."
"The night!" I exclaimed in amazement. "But, my good friend, I have no
intention of wearing out my welcome; I had planned to get home for
luncheon."
"Impossible!" he replied. "We are now completely surrounded by water. It
is always so at high tide at this end of the bay. Come, see for
yourself. Besides, you don't know how glad I am that we can have the
chance to shoot together. I've been waiting weeks for this wind."
He blew out the candle, and again opened the firing-slit. As far as one
could see the distant sea was one vast sweep of roaring water.
"You see," he said, closing the firing-slit and striking a match--"you
_must_ stay. I have plenty of dry clothes for you in the locker, and we
shall not go hungry." He drew out a basket from beneath the cot and took
from it a roasted chicken, two litres of red wine, and some bread and
cheese, which he laid on the shelf. "A present," he remarked, "from one
of my parishioners. You know, I have no _bonne_."
"I have heard so," said I.
He laughed softly. "One hears everything in the village. Ah! But what
good children they are! They even forgive my love of shooting!" He
crossed his strong arms in the rusty black sleeves of his cassock, and
for some moments looked at me seriously. "You think it strange, no
doubt, irreverent, for a cure to shoot," he continued. "Forgive me if I
have shocked the ideas of your faith."
"Nonsense!" I returned, raising my hand in protest. "You are only human,
an honest sportsman. We understand each other perfectly."
"Thank you," he returned, with sincerity. "I was afraid you might not
understand--you are the first American I have ever met."
He began taking out an outfit of sailor's clothes from the locker--warm
things--which I proceeded to get into with satisfaction. I had just
poked my head through the rough jersey and buckled my belt when our
decoys again gave warning.
Out went the candle.
"Mallards!" whispered the cure. "Here, take this gun, quick! It is the
marquis's favourite," he added in a whisper.
He reached for another breech-loader, motioned me to the chair, let down
the three compartments of the firing-slit, and stretched himself out
full length on the cot, his keen eyes scanning the bay at a glance.
We were just in time--a dozen mallards were coming straight for our
decoys.
Bang! thundered the cure's gun.
Bang! Bang! echoed my own. Then another roar from the cure's left
barrel. When the smoke cleared three fat ducks were kicking beyond our
deceivers.
"Take him!" he cried, as a straggler--a drake--shot past us. I snapped
in a shell and missed, but the cure was surer. Down came the straggler,
a dead duck at sixty yards.
"Bravo, Monsieur le Cure!" I cried.
But he only smiled modestly and, extracting the empty shell, blew the
lurking smoke free from the barrels. It was noon when we turned to half
the chicken and a bottle of _vin ordinaire_ with an appetite.
The northeast wind had now shifted to the south; the bay became like
glass, and so the afternoon passed until the blood-red sun, like some
huge ribbed lantern of the Japanese, slowly sank into the sea. It grew
dusk over the desolate marsh. Stray flights of plovers, now that the
tide was again on its ebb, began to choose their resting places for the
night.
"I'm going out to take a look," said the cure. Again, like some gopher
of the prairie, he rose up out of his burrow.
Presently he returned, the old enthusiastic gleam in his eyes.
"The wind's changing," he announced. "It will be in the north again
to-night; we shall have a full moon and better luck, I hope. Do you
know," he went on excitedly, "that one night last October I killed
forty-two ducks alone in this old _gabion_. _Forty-two!_ Twenty mallards
and the rest Vignon--and not a shot before one o'clock in the morning.
Then they came in, right and left. I believe my faithful decoys will
remember that night until their dying day. Ah, it was glorious!
Glorious!" His tanned, weather-beaten features wrinkled with delight; he
had the skin of a sailor, and I wondered how often the marsh had hid
him. "Ah, my friend," he said, with a sigh, as we sat down to the
remainder of the chicken and _vin ordinaire_ for supper, this time
including the cheese, "it is not easy for a cure to shoot. My good
children of the village do not mind, but----" He hesitated, running his
long, vibrant fingers through his hair.
"What then? Tell me," I ventured. "It will go no further, I promise
you."
"Rome!" he whispered. "I have already received a letter, a gentle
warning from the palace; but I have a good friend in Cardinal Z. He
understands."
During the whole of that cold moonlight we took turns of two hours each;
one sleeping while the other watched in the chair drawn up close to the
firing-slit.
What a night!
The marsh seen through the firing-slit, with its overhanging eyebrow of
sod, seemed not of this earth. The nine black decoys picketed before us
straining at their cords, gossiping, dozing for a moment, preening their
wings or rising up for a vigorous stretch, appeared by some curious
optical illusion four times their natural size; now they seemed to be
black dogs, again a group of sombre, misshapen gnomes.
While I watched, the cure slept soundly, his body shrouded in the
blankets like some carved Gothic saint of old. The silence was
intense--a silence that could be heard--broken only by the brisk
ticking of the cure's watch on the narrow shelf. Occasionally a
water-rat would patter over the sunken roof, become inquisitive, and
peer in at me through the slit within half a foot of my nose. Once in a
while I took down the fat opera-glass, focussing it upon the dim shapes
that resembled ducks, but that proved to be bits of floating seaweed or
a scurrying shadow as a cloud swept under the moon--all illusions, until
my second watch, when, with a rush, seven mallards tumbled among our
decoys. Instantly the cure awakened, sprang from his cot, and with sharp
work we killed four.
"Stay where you are," he said as he laid his gun back in its rack. "I'll
get into my hip-boots and get them before the water-rats steal what
we've earned. They are skilled enough to get a decoy now and then. The
marsh is alive with them at night."
Morning paled. The village lay half hidden behind the rifts of mist.
Then dawn and the rising sun, the water like molten gold, the black
decoys churning at their pickets sending up swirls of turquoise in the
gold.
Suddenly the cracked bell rang out from the distant village. At that
moment two long V-shaped strings of mallards came winging toward us from
the north. I saw the cure glance at them. Then he held out his hand to
me.
"You take them--I cannot," he said hurriedly. "I haven't a moment to
lose--it is the bell for mass. Here's the key. Lock up when you leave."
"Dine with me to-night," I insisted, one eye still on the incoming
ducks. "You have no _bonne_."
His hand was on the _gabion_ door. "And if the northeast wind holds," he
called back, "shall we shoot again to-night?"
"Yes, to-night!" I insisted.
"Then I'll come to dinner." And the door closed with a click.
Through the firing-slit I could see him leaping across the marsh toward
the gray church with the cracked bell, and as he disappeared by the
short cut I pulled the trigger of both barrels--and missed.
An hour later Suzette greeted me with eyes full of tears and anxiety.
"Ah! Mother of Pity! Monsieur is safe!" she cried. "Where has monsieur
been, _mon Dieu!_"
"To mass, my child," I said gravely, filling her plump arms with the
ducks. "Monsieur le Cure is coming to dinner!"
[Illustration: flying ducks]
* * * * *
[Illustration: a chateau]
CHAPTER THREE
THE EXQUISITE MADAME DE BREVILLE
Poor Tanrade! Just as I felt the future was all _couleur de rose_ with
him it has changed to gloom unutterable.
_Ah, les femmes!_ I should never dare fall in love with a woman as
exquisite as Alice de Breville. She is too beautiful, too seductive,
with her olive skin, her frank smile, and her adorable head poised upon
a body much too well made. She is too tender, too complex, too
intelligent. She has a way of mischievously caressing you with her eyes
one moment and giving an old comrade like myself a platonic little pat
on the back the next, which is exasperating. As a friend I adore her,
but to fall in love with her! _Ah, non, merci!_ I have had a checkered
childhood and my full share of suffering; I wish some peace in my old
age. At sixteen one goes to the war of love blindly, but at forty it is
different. Our chagrins then plunge us into a state of dignified
desolation.
Poor Tanrade! I learned of the catastrophe the other night when he
solemnly entered my abandoned house by the marsh and sank his big frame
in the armchair before my fire. He was no longer the genial bohemian of
a Tanrade I had known. He was silent and haggard. He had not slept much
for a week; neither had he worked at the score of his new opera or
hunted, but he had smoked incessantly, furiously--a dangerous remedy
with which to mend a broken heart.
My poor old friend! I was so certain of his happiness that night after
dinner here in the House Abandoned, when he and Alice had lost
themselves in the moonlight. Was it the moonlight? Or the kiss she gave
him as they stood looking out over the lichen-stained wall of the
courtyard to the fairy marsh beyond, still and sublime--wedded to the
open sea at high tide--like a mirror of polished silver, its surface
ruffled now and then by the splash of some incoming duck. He had poured
out his heart to her then, and again over their liqueur and cigarettes
at that fatal dinner of two at the chateau.
All this he confessed to me as he sat staring into the cheery blaze on
my hearth. Under my friendly but somewhat judicial cross-examination
that ensued, it was evident that not a word had escaped Alice's lips
that any one but that big optimistic child of a Tanrade could have
construed as her promise to be his wife. He confided her words to me
reluctantly, now that he realized how little she had meant.
"Come," said I, in an effort to cheer him, "have courage! A woman's
heart that is won easily is not worth fighting for. You shall see, old
fellow--things will be better."
But he only shook his head, shrugged his great shoulders, and puffed
doggedly at his pipe in silence. My tall clock in the corner ticked the
louder, its brass pendulum glinting as it swung to and fro in the light
of the slumbering fire. I threw on a fresh log, kicked it into a blaze,
and poured out for him a stiff glass of applejack. I had faith in that
applejack, for it had been born in the moonlit courtyard years ago. It
roused him, for I saw something of his old-time self brighten within
him; he even made an attempt at a careless smile--the reminiscent smile
of a philosopher this time.
"What if I went to see her?" I remarked pointblank.
"You! _Mon Dieu!_" He half sprang out of the armchair in his intensity.
"Are you crazy?"
"Forgive me," I apologized. "I did not mean to hurt you. I only
thought--and you are in no condition to reason--that Alice may have
changed her mind, may regret having refused you. Women change their
minds, you know. She might even confess this to me since there is
nothing between us and we are old friends."
"No, no," he protested. "You are not to speak of me to Madame de
Breville--do you understand?" he cried, his voice rising. "You are not
to mention my name, promise me that."
This time it was I who shrugged my shoulders in reply. He sat gripping
the arms of his chair, again his gaze reverted stolidly to the fire. The
clock ticked on past midnight, peacefully aloof as if content to be well
out of the controversy.
"A drop more?" I ventured, reaching for the decanter; but he stayed my
arm.
"I've been a fool," he said slowly. "_Ah! Mon Dieu! Les femmes! Les
femmes! Les femmes!_" he roared. "Very well," he exclaimed hotly, "it is
well finished. To-morrow I must go to Paris for the new rehearsals. I
have begged off for a week. Duclos is beside himself with anxiety--two
telegrams to-day, the last one imperative. The new piece must open at
the Folies Parisiennes the eighth."
I saw him out to the gate and there was a brave ring in his "_bonsoir,
mon vieux_," as he swung off in the dusk of the starlit road.
He left the village the next day at noon by the toy train, "the little
get off-the-track," as we call it. Perhaps he wished it would and end
everything, including the rehearsals.
Bah! To be rehearsing lovelorn shepherds and shepherdesses in sylvan
dells. To call a halt eighteen times in the middle of the romantic duet
between the unhappy innkeeper's daughter and the prince. To marry them
all smoothly in B flat in the finale, and keep the brass down and the
strings up in the apotheosis when the heart of the man behind the baton
has been cured of all love and illusion--for did he not tell me "It is
well finished"? Poor Tanrade!
Though it is but half a fortnight since he left, it seems years since he
used to come into my courtyard, for he came and went as freely at all
hours as the salt breeze from the marsh. Often he would wake me at
daybreak, bellowing up to my window at the top of his barytone lungs
some stirring aria, ending with: "Eh, _mon vieux!_ Stop playing the
prince! Get up out of that and come out on the marsh. There are ducks
off the point. Where's Suzette? Where's the coffee? _Sacristi!_ What a
house. Half-past four and nobody awake!"
And he would stand there grinning; his big chest encased in a
fisherman's jersey, a disreputable felt hat jammed on his head, and his
feet in a pair of sabots that clattered like a farm-horse as he went
foraging in the kitchen, upsetting the empty milk-tins and making such a
bedlam that my good little maid-of-all-work, Suzette, would hurry in
terror into her clothes and out to her beloved kitchen to save the rest
from ruin.
Needless to say, nothing ever happened to anything. He could make more
noise and do less harm than any one I ever knew. Then he would sing us
both into good humour until Suzette's peasant cheeks shone like ripe
apples.
"It is not the same without Monsieur Tanrade," Suzette sighed to-day as
she brought my luncheon to my easel in a shady corner of my wild
garden--a corner all cool roses and shadow.
"Ah, no!" I confessed as I squeezed out the last of a tube of vermilion
on the edge of my palette.
"Ah, no!" she sighed softly, and wiped her eyes briskly with the back of
her dimpled red hand. "Ah, no! _Parbleu!_"
And just then the bell over my gate jingled. "Some one rings," whispered
Suzette and she ran to open the gate. It was the _valet de chambre_ from
the chateau with a note from Alice, which read:
DEAR FRIEND: It is lonely, this big house of mine. Do come
and dine with me at eight.
Hastily, A. de B.
Added to this was the beginning of a postscript crossed out.
Upon a leaf torn from my sketchbook I scribbled the answer:
GOOD DEAR CHARITABLE FRIEND: The House Abandoned is a
hollow mockery without Tanrade. I'll come gladly at eight.
And Suzette brought it out to the waiting _valet de chambre_ whom she
addressed respectfully as "monsieur," half on account of his
yellow-striped waistcoat and half because he was a Parisian.
Bravo, Alice! Here then was the opportunity I had been waiting for, and
I hugged myself over the fact. It was like the first ray of sunshine
breaking through a week of leaden sky. For a long time I paced back and
forth among the paths of the snug garden, past the roses and the
heliotrope down as far as the flaming geraniums and the hollyhocks and
the droning bees, and back again by way of some excellent salads and the
bed of artichokes, while I turned over in my mind and rehearsed to
myself all I intended to say to her.
Alice lonely! With a chateau, two automobiles, and all Paris at her
pretty feet! Ha! ha! The symptoms were excellent. The patient was doing
well. To-night would see her convalescent and happily on the road to
recovery. This once happy family of comrades should be no longer under
the strain of disunion, we should have another dinner soon and the House
Abandoned would ring with cheer as it had never rung before. Japanese
lanterns among the fruit-trees of the tangled garden, the courtyard full
of villagers, red and blue fire, skyrockets and congratulations, a
Normand dinner and a keg of good sound wine to wish a long and happy
life to both. There would be the same Tanrade again and the same Alice,
and they would be married by the cure in the little gray church with the
cracked bell, with the marquis and the marquise as notables in the front
pew. In my enthusiasm I saw it all.
* * * * *
The lane back of the House Abandoned shortens the way to the chateau by
half a kilometre. It was this lane that I entered at dusk by crawling
under the bars that divided it from the back pasture full of gnarled
apple-trees, under which half a dozen mild-eyed cows had settled
themselves for the night. They rose when they caught sight of me and
came toward me blowing deep moist breaths as a quiet challenge to the
intruder, until halted by the bars they stood in a curious group
watching me until I disappeared up the lane, a lane screened from the
successive pastures on either side by an impenetrable hedge and flanked
its entire length by tall trees, their tops meeting overhead like the
Gothic arches of a cathedral aisle. This roof of green made the lane at
this hour so dark that I had to look sharp to avoid the muddy places,
for the lane ascended like the bed of a brook until it reached the
plateau of woodlands and green fields above, commanding a sweeping view
of marsh and sea below.
Birds fluttered nervously in the hedges, frightened at my approaching
footsteps. A hare sniffing in the middle of the path flattened his long
ears and sprang into the thicket ahead. The nightingales in the forest
above began calling to one another. Two doves went skimming out of the
leaves over my head. Even a peacemaker may be mistaken for an enemy. And
now I had gained the plateau and it grew lighter--that gentle light with
which night favours the open places.
There are two crossroads at the top of the lane. The left one leads to
the hamlet of Beaufort le Petit, a sunken cluster of farms ten good
leagues from Pont du Sable; the right one swings off into the highroad
half a mile beyond, which in turn is met by the private way of the
chateau skirting the stone wall surrounding the park, which, as early
as 1608, served as the idle stronghold of the Duc de Rambutin. It has
seen much since then and has stood its ground bravely under the stress
of misfortune. The Prussians hammered off two of its towers, and an
artillery fire once mowed down some of its oldest trees and wrecked the
frescoed ceiling and walls of the salon, setting fire to the south wing,
which was never rebuilt and whose jagged and blackened walls the roses
and vines have long since lovingly hidden from view.
Alice bought this once splendid feudal estate literally for a song--the
song in the second act of Fremier's comedy, which had a long run at the
Varietes three years ago, and in which she earned an enviable success
and some beautiful bank-notes. Were the Duc de Rambutin alive I am sure
he would have presented it to her--shooting forest, stone wall, and all.
They say he had an intolerable temper, but was kind to ladies and
lap-dogs.
It was not long before I unlatched a moss-covered gate with one hinge
lost in the weeds--a little woebegone gate for intimate friends, that
croaked like a night-bird when it opened, and closed with a whine.
Beyond it lay a narrow path through a rose-garden leading to the
chateau. This rose-garden is the only cultivated patch within the
confines of the wall, for on either side of it tower great trees, their
aged trunks held fast in gnarled thickets of neglected vines. It is only
another "house abandoned," this chateau of Alice's, save that its bygone
splendour asserts itself through the scars, and my own by the marsh
never knew luxury even in its best days.
"Madame is dressing," announced that most faithful of old servitors,
Henri, who before Alice conferred a full-fledged butlership upon him in
his old age was since his youth a stage-carpenter at the Theatre
Francais.
"Will monsieur have the goodness to wait for madame in the library?"
added Henri, as he relieved me of my hat and stick, deposited them
noiselessly upon an oak table, and led me to a portiere of worn Gobelin
which he lifted for me with a bow of the Second Empire.