you see, led me thoughtlessly into your private territory. I beg of you
to accept my sincere apologies."
He reached back of him, took down one of the musty ledgers, and began to
turn the leaves methodically. From where I sat I saw his coarse
forefinger stop under a head-line.
"Smeeth, Berkelek," he muttered, and read on down the page. "Citizen of
_Amerique du Nord_.
"Height--medium.
"Age--forty-one.
"Hair--auburn.
"Eyes--brown.
"Chin and frontal--square.
"No scars."
"Would your excellency like to see my hunting permit and description?" I
ventured.
"Unnecessary--it is in duplicate here," he returned curtly, and his eyes
again reverted to the ledger. Then he closed the book, rose, and drawing
his chair to the stove planted his big fists on his knees.
I began to breathe normally.
"So you are a painter?" said he.
"Yes," I confessed, "but I do not make a specialty of fortresses, your
excellency, even in the most distant landscapes."
I was grateful he understood, for I saw a gleam of merriment flash in
his eyes.
"_Bon!_" he exclaimed briskly--evidently the title of "excellency"
helped. "It is not the best day, however, for you to be hunting hares.
Are you a good shot, monsieur?"
"That is an embarrassing question," I returned. "If I do not miss I
generally kill."
Pierre, who, during the interview, had been standing mute in attention,
now stepped up to him and bending with a hurried "Pardon," whispered
something in his coarse red ear.
The brigadier raised his shaggy eyebrows and nodded in assent.
"Ah! So you are a friend of Monsieur le Cure!" he exclaimed. "You would
not be Monsieur le Cure's friend if you were not a good shot.
_Sapristi!_" He paused, ran his hand over his rough jowls, and resumed
bluntly: "It is something to kill the wild duck; another to kill a man."
"Has war been suddenly declared?" I asked in astonishment.
A gutteral laugh escaped his throat, he shook his grizzled head in the
negative.
"A little war of my own," said he, "a serious business, _parbleu!_"
"Contraband?" I ventured.
The coarse mouth under the bristling moustache, four times the size of
Pierre's, closed with a snap, then opened with a growl.
"_Sacre mille tonnerres!_" he thundered, slamming his fist down on the
desk within reach of him. "They are the devil, those Belgians! It is for
them my good fellows lose their sleep." Then he stopped, and eyeing me
shrewdly added: "Monsieur, you are an outsider and a gentleman. I can
trust you. Three nights ago a strange sloop, evidently Belgian, from the
cut of her, tried to sneak in here, but our semaphore on the point held
her up and she had to run back to the open sea. Bah! Those _sacre_
Belgians have the patience of a fox!"
"She was painted like one of our fishing-smacks," interposed Pierre, now
too excited to hold his tongue, "but she did not know the channel."
"Aye, and she'll try it again," growled the brigadier, "if the night be
dark. She'll find it clear sailing in, but a hot road out."
"Tobacco?" I asked, now fully alive to the situation.
The brigadier spat.
"Of course, as full as she'll float," he answered. He leaned forward and
touched me good-humouredly on the shoulder. "I'm short of men," he said
hurriedly.
"Command me," I replied. "I'll do my best. I shall return to-night." And
I rose to take my leave, but he instantly raised his hand in protest.
"You are under arrest, monsieur," he declared quietly, with a shrug of
his shoulders.
I looked at him wide-eyed in astonishment.
"Arrest!" I gasped.
"Do not be alarmed," he replied. "It will only be temporary, I assure
you, but since you have so awkwardly stumbled among us there is no
alternative but for me to detain you until this _sacre_ affair is well
over. I cannot, at all events, let you return to the village to-night."
"But I give you my word of honour, monsieur," I declared, "I shall not
open my lips to a soul. Besides, I must dine at eight to-night with
Madame de Breville. Your excellency can well understand."
"I know you have friends, monsieur; they might be inquisitive; and
those friends have servants, and those servants have friends," was his
reply. "No, it is better that you stay. Pierre, give monsieur a carbine
and a place ten metres from your own at sundown; then report to me he is
there. Now you may go, monsieur."
Pierre touched me on the shoulder; then suddenly realizing I was under
orders and a prisoner, I straightened, saluted the brigadier, and
followed Pierre out of the fort with the best grace I could muster.
"Pierre!" I exclaimed hotly, as we stood again in the thicket. "How long
since you've held up anything here--contraband, I mean?"
For a moment he hesitated, then his voice sank to a whisper.
"They say it is all of twenty years, perhaps longer," he confessed. "But
to-night monsieur shall see. Monsieur is, of course, not exactly a
prisoner or he would now be in the third vault from the right."
"A prisoner! The devil I'm not? Didn't he tell me I was?" I exclaimed.
"_Mon Dieu!_ What will you have, monsieur?" returned Pierre excitedly,
under his breath. "It is the brigadier's orders. I was afraid monsieur
might reply to him in anger. Ah, _par exemple!_ Then monsieur would have
seen a wild bull. Oh, la! la! When the brigadier is furious----Ah,
_ca!_" And he led the way to my appointed ambush without another word.
Despite my indignation at being thus forced into the service and made a
prisoner to boot--however temporary it might be--I gradually began to
see the humour of the situation. It was very like a comic opera, I
thought, as I lay flat on the edge of the thicket and pried away a small
opening in the tangle through which I could look down upon the sweep of
beach below me and far out to sea. Thus I lay in wait for the smuggling
crew to arrive--to be blazed at and perhaps captured.
What if they outnumber us? We might all perish then, with no hope of
quarter from these men whom we were lying in wait for like snakes in the
grass. One thing, however, I was firmly resolved upon, and that was to
shoot safely over anything that lay in range except in case of
self-defence. I was never of a murderous disposition, and the thought of
another's blood on my hands sent a fresh shiver along my prostrate
spine. Then again the comic-opera side of it struck me. I began to feel
more like an extra super in a one-night stand than a real soldier. What,
after all, if the smugglers failed us?
I was pondering upon the dangerous effect upon the brigadier of so
serious a stage wait, when Pierre crawled over to me from his ambush ten
metres from my own, to leave me my ration of bread and wine. He was so
excited by this time that his voice trembled in my ear.
"Gaston, my comrade, the fifth down the line," he whispered, "has just
seen two men prowling on the marsh; they are, without doubt,
accomplices. Gaston has gone to tell the brigadier." He ran his hand
carefully along the barrel of my carbine. "Monsieur must hold high," he
explained in another whisper, "since monsieur is unaccustomed to the gun
of war. It is this little machine here that does the trick." He bent his
eyes close to the hind sight and screwed it up to its notch at one
hundred and fifty metres.
I nodded my thanks, and he left me to my bread and wine and crept
cautiously back to his ambush.
* * * * *
A black night was rapidly settling. Above me in the great unfathomable
vault of sky not a star glimmered. Under the gloom of the approaching
darkness the vast expanse of marsh to my left lay silent, desolate, and
indistinct, save for its low edge of undulating sand dunes. Only the
beach directly before me showed plainly, seemingly illumined by the
breakers, that gleamed white like the bared teeth of a fighting line of
wolves.
It was a sullen, cheerless sea, from which the air blew over me damp and
raw; the only light visible being the intermittent flash from the
distant lighthouse on Les Trois Loups, beyond the marsh.
One hour passed--two hours--during which I saw nothing alive and moving
save a hare foraging timidly on the beach for his own rations. After a
while he hopped back to his burrow in the thicket, a thicket of silence
from which I knew at any moment might break forth a murderous fire. It
grew colder and colder, I had to breathe lustily into the collar of my
jersey to keep out the chill. I began to envy the hare snug in his
burrow. Thus I held my vigil, and the night wore on.
Ah! my friend the cure! I mused. Was there ever such an indefatigable
sportsman? Lucky cure! He was not a prisoner, neither had he been
pressed into the customs patrol like a hired assassin. At that moment I
knew Monsieur le Cure was snug in his duck-blind for the night, a long
two miles from where I lay; warm, and comfortable, with every chance on
such a night to kill a dozen fat mallards before his daylight mass. What
would my friend Madame Alice de Breville, and that whole-souled fellow
Tanrade, think when I did not appear as I had promised, at madame's
chateau, to dine at eight? Cold as I was, I could not help chuckling
over the fact that it was no fault of mine.
I was a prisoner. Alice and Tanrade would dine together. It would be
then a dinner for two. I have never known a woman as discreet as Alice.
She had insisted that I dine with them. In Paris Alice might not have
insisted, but in the lost village, with so many old women with nothing
to talk about save other peoples' affairs! Lucky Tanrade!
I could see from where I lay the distant mass of trees screening her
chateau, and picture to myself my two dear friends _alone_. Their
chairs--now that my vacant one was the only witness--drawn close
together; he holding her soft, responsive little hand between the soup
and the fish, between the duck and the salad; then continuously over
their dessert and Burgundy--she whom he had held close to his big heart
that night after dinner in that once abandoned house of mine, when they
had gone out together into my courtyard and disappeared in the shadows
of the moonlight.
Dining alone! The very thing I had tried to bring about. But for the
stern brigadier we should have been that wretched number--three--to-night
at the chateau. Ah, you dear human children, are you conscious and
grateful that I am lying out like a vagabond, a prisoner, that you
may be alone?
I began to wonder, too, what the Essence of Selfishness, that spoiled
and adorable cat of mine, would think when it came her bedtime hour.
Would Suzette, in her anxiety over my absence, remember to give her the
saucer of warm milk? Yet I knew the Essence of Selfishness would take
care of herself; she would sleep with Suzette. Catch her lying out on
the bare ground like her master when she could curl herself up at the
foot of two fuzzy blankets in a tiny room next to the warm kitchen.
* * * * *
It was after midnight when Pierre crawled over to me again, and pointed
to a black patch of mussel rocks below.
"There are the two men Gaston saw," he whispered. "They are waiting to
signal the channel to their comrades."
I strained my eyes in the direction he indicated.
"I cannot see," I confessed.
"Here, take the glass," said he. "Those two humps behind the big one are
the backs of men. They have a lantern well hidden--you can see its glow
when the glass is steady."
I could see it all quite clearly now, and occasionally one of the humps
lift a head cautiously above the rock.
"She must be lying off close by," muttered Pierre, hoarse with
excitement. Again he hurriedly ran his hand over the breech of my
carbine. "The trigger pulls light," he breathed. "Courage, monsieur! We
have not long to wait now." And again he was gone.
I felt like a hired assassin weakening on the verge of a crime. The next
instant I saw the lantern hidden on the mussel rocks raised and lowered
thrice.
It was the signal!
Again all was darkness save the gleaming line of surf. My heart thumped
in my ears. Ten minutes passed; then again the lantern was raised, the
figures of the two men standing in silhouette against its steady rays.
I saw now a small sloop rear itself from the breakers, a short, squat
little craft with a ghostly sail and a flapping jib. On she came,
leaping and dropping broadside among the combers. The lantern now shone
as clearly as a beacon. A sea broke over the sloop, but she staggered up
bravely, and with a plunge was swept nearer and nearer the jagged point
of rocks awash with spume. Braced against the tiller was a man in
drenched tarpaulins; two other men were holding on to the shrouds like
grim death. On the narrow deck between them I made out a bale-like
bundle wrapped in tarpaulin and heavily roped, ready to be cast ashore.
A moment more, and the sloop would be on the rocks; yet not a sound came
from the thicket. The suspense was sickening. I had once experienced
buck-fever, but it was nothing compared to this. The short carbine began
to jump viciously under my grip.
The sloop was nearly on the rocks! At that critical moment overboard
went the bundle, the two men with the lantern rushing out and dragging
it clear of the swash.
Simultaneously, with a crackling roar, six tongues of flame spat from
the thicket and we charged out of our ambush and over the crest of the
dunes toward the smugglers' craft and its crew, firing as we ran. The
fellow next to me stumbled and fell sprawling in the sand.
In the panic that ensued I saw the sloop making a desperate effort to
put to sea. Meanwhile the two accomplices were running like rabbits for
the marsh. Close to the mysterious bundle their lantern lay smashed and
burning luridly in its oil. The brigadier sprang past me swearing like a
pirate, while his now thoroughly demoralized henchmen and myself
stumbled on, firing at random with still a good hundred yards between us
and the abandoned contraband.
At that instant I saw the sloop's sail fill and then, as if by a
miracle, she slowly turned back to the open sea. Above the general din
the brigadier's voice rang out, bellowing his orders. By the time the
sloop had cleared the breakers his language had become unprintable. He
had reached the mussel rocks and stood shaking his clenched fists at the
departing craft, while the rest of us crowded about the bundle and the
blazing lantern. Every one was talking and gesticulating at once as
they watched the sloop plunge away in the darkness.
"_Sacre mille tonnerres!_" roared the brigadier, sinking down on the
bundle. Then he turned and glared at me savagely. "Idiot!" he cried,
labouring for his breath. "_Espece d'imbecile. Ah! Nom d'un petit
bonhomme._ You were on the end. Why did you not head off those devils
with the lantern?"
I shrugged my shoulders helplessly in reply. He was in no condition to
argue with.
"And the rest of you----" He choked in his rage, unable to frame his
words. They stood helplessly about, gesticulating their apologies.
He sprang to his feet, gave the bundle a sound kick, and snarled out an
order. Pierre and another jumped forward, and together they shouldered
it between them. Then the remainder of the valiant guard fell into
single file and started back to the fort, the brigadier and myself
bringing up the rear. As we trudged on through the sand together he kept
muttering to himself. It only occurred to me then that nobody had been
hit. By this time even the accomplices were safe.
"Monsieur," I ventured, as we regained the trail leading to the fort,
"it is with the sincerest regret of my heart that I offer you my
apologies. True, I might have done better, but I did my best in my
inexperience. We have the contraband--at least that is something, eh?"
He grew calmer as the thought struck him.
"Yes," he grumbled, "there are in that bundle at least ten thousand
cigars. It is, after all, not so bad."
"Might I ask," I returned, "when your excellency intends to honour me
with my liberty?"
He stopped, and to my delight held out his hand to me.
"You are free, monsieur," he said roughly, with a touch of his good
nature. "The affair is over--but not a word of the manoeuvre you have
witnessed in the village. Our work here is for the ears of the
Government alone."
As we reached the gate of the fort I saluted him, handed my carbine to
Pierre in exchange for my shotgun, and struck home in the mist of early
dawn.
* * * * *
The morning after, I was leaning over the lichen-stained wall of my
garden caressing the white throat of the Essence of Selfishness, the
events of my night of service still in my mind, when I saw the coast
patrol coming across the marsh in double file. As they drew nearer I
recognized Pierre and his companion, who had shouldered the contraband.
The roped bundle was swung on a stout pole between them.
Presently they left the marsh and gained the road. As the double file of
uniformed men came past my wall they returned my salute. Pierre shifted
his end of the pole to the man behind him and stood at attention until
the rest had passed. Then the procession went on to inform Monsieur the
Mayor, who lived near the little square where nothing ever happened.
Pierre turned when they had left and entered my garden. What was he
going to tell me now? I wondered, with sudden apprehension. Was I to
serve another night?
"I'll be hanged if I will," I muttered.
He approached solemnly and slowly, his bayonet gleaming at his side, the
warm sunlight glinting on the buttons of his uniform. When he got near
enough for me to look into his eyes he stopped, raised his hand to his
cap in salute, and said with a smile:
"Now, monsieur, the artichokes."
[Illustration: bundle of contraband]
* * * * *
[Illustration: Marianne]
CHAPTER FIVE
MARIANNE
Monsieur le Cure slid the long chair up to my fire, bent his straight,
black body forward, and rubbing his chilled hands briskly before the
blazing logs, announced with a smile of content:
"Marianne is out of jail."
"_Sacristi!_" I exclaimed, "and in mid-winter! It must be cold enough in
that hut of hers by the marsh--poor old girl."
"And not a sou to be earned fishing," added the cure.
"Tell me about this last crime of hers," I asked.
Monsieur le Cure's face grew serious, then again the smile of content
spread to the corners of his firm mouth.
"Oh! Nothing very gruesome," he confessed, then after a moment's silence
he continued slowly: "Her children needed shoes and warm things for the
winter. Marianne stole sixty _metres_ of nets from the fishing crew at
'The Three Wolves'--she is hopeless, my friend." With a vibrant gesture
he straightened up in his chair and flashed his keen eyes to mine. "For
ten years I have tried to reform her," he declared. "Bah!"--and he
tossed the stump of his cigarette into the blaze.
"You nursed her once through the smallpox," said I, "when no one dared
go near her. The mayor told me so. I should think _that_ would have long
ago persuaded her to do something for you in return."
"We go where we are needed," he replied simply. "She will promise me
nothing. One might as well try to make a faithful parishioner of a gipsy
as to change Marianne for the better." He brought his fist down sharply
on the broad arm of his chair. "I tell you," he went on tensely,
"Marianne is a woman of no morals and no religion--a woman who allows no
one to dictate to her save a gendarme with a warrant of arrest. Hardly
a winter passes but she goes to jail. She is a confirmed thief, a bad
subject," he went on vibrantly. "She can drink as no three sailors can
drink--and yet you know as well as I do," he added, lowering his voice,
"that there is not a mother in Pont du Sable who is as good to her
children as Marianne."
"They are a brave little brood," I replied. "I have heard that the
eldest boy and girl Marianne adopted, yet they resemble their mother,
with their fair curly hair and blue eyes, as much as do the youngest
boys and the little girl."
"Marianne has had many lovers," returned the cure gravely. "There is not
one of that brood of hers that has yet been baptized." An expression of
pain crossed his face. "I have tried hard; Marianne is impossible."
"Yet you admit she has her qualities."
"Yes, good qualities," he confessed, filling a fresh cigarette paper
full of tobacco. "Good qualities," he reiterated. "She has brought up
her children to be honest and she keeps them clean. She has never
stolen from her own village--it is a point of honour with her. Ah! you
do not know Marianne as I know her."
"It seems to me you are growing enthusiastic over our worst vagabond," I
laughed.
"I am," replied the cure frankly. "I believe in her; she is afraid of
nothing. You see her as a vagabond--an outcast, and the next instant,
_Parbleu!_ she forces out of you your camaraderie--even your respect.
You shake her by the hand, that straight old hag with her clear blue
eyes, her square jaw and her hard face! She who walks with the stride of
a man, who is as supple and strong as a sailor, and who looks you
squarely in the eye and studies you calmly, at times disdainfully--even
when drunk."
* * * * *
It was late when Monsieur le Cure left me alone by my fire. I cannot say
"alone," for the Essence of Selfishness, was purring on my chest.
In this old _normand_ house of mine by the marsh, there comes a silence
at this hour which is exhilarating. Out of these winter midnights come
strange sounds, whirring flights of sea-fowl whistle over my roof, in
late for a lodging on the marsh. A heavy peasant's cart goes by,
groaning in agony under the brake. When the wind is from the sea, it is
like a bevy of witches shrilling my doom down the chimney. "Aye, aye,
'tis he," they seem to scream, "the stranger--the s-t-r-a-n-g-e-r."
One's mind is alert at this hour--one must be brave in a foreign land.
And so I sat up late, smoking a black pipe that gurgled in unison with
the purring on my chest while I thought seriously of Marianne.
I had seen her go laughing to jail two months ago, handcuffed to a
gendarme on the back seat of the last car of the toy train. It was an
occasion when every one in the lost village came charitably out to have
a look. I remembered, too, she sat there as garrulous as if she were
starting on a holiday--a few of her old cronies crowded about her. One
by one, her children gave their mother a parting hug--there were no
tears--and the gendarme sat beside her with a stolid dignity befitting
his duty to the _Republique_. Then the whistle tooted twice--a coughing
puff of steam in the crisp sunlight, a wheeze of wheels, and the toy
train rumbled slowly out of the village with its prisoner. Marianne
nodded and laughed back at the waving group.
"_Bon voyage!_" croaked a little old woman, lifting her claw. She had
borrowed five francs from the prisoner.
"_Au revoir!_" laughed back Marianne, but the words were faint, for the
last car was snaking around the bend.
Thus Marianne went to jail. Now that she is back, she takes her return
as carelessly and unblushingly as a _demi-mondaine_ does her annual
return from Dinard.
When Marianne was eighteen, they tell me, she was the prettiest girl in
Pont du Sable, that is to say, she was prettier than Emilienne Daget at
Bar la Rose, or than Berthe Pavoisier, the daughter of the miller at
Tocqueville, who is now in Paris. At eighteen, Marianne was slim and
blonde; moreover, she was as bold as a hawk, and smiled as easily as
she lied. At twenty, she was rated as a valuable member of any fishing
crew that put out from the coast, for they found her capable during a
catch, and steady in danger, always doing her share and a little more
for those who could not help themselves. She is still doing it, for in
her stone hut on the edge of the marsh that serves as shelter for her
children and her rough old self, she has been charitable and given a
winter's lodging to three old wrecks of the sea. There are no beds, but
there are bunks filled with marsh-hay; there is no furniture, but there
are a few pots and pans, and in one corner of the dirt floor, a
crackling fire of drift wood, and nearly always enough applejack for
all, and now and then hot soup. Marianne wrenches these luxuries, so to
speak, out of the sea, often alone and single-handed, working as hard as
a gull to feed her young.
The cure was right; Marianne had her good qualities--I was almost
beginning to wonder to myself as I pulled drowsily at the black pipe if
her good qualities did not outweigh her bad ones, when the Essence of
Selfishness awakened and yawned. And so it was high time to send this
spoiled child of mine to bed.
* * * * *
Marianne called her "_ma belle petite_," though her real name was
Yvonne--Yvonne Louise Tourneveau.