IV

It was curious to notice how that unquestioning allegiance and

admiration which the missing Schwartz had been used to bestow on Lil

was now bestowed by her on the new-comer who answered to the name of

Scraper, and how in answer to all her advances and endearments Scraper

remained scornful and unreceptive. One knows a hundred poems and

legends in which this form of vengeance is taken upon the cruel fair; in

which the proud lady who has scorned the humble and faithful heart lives

to be scorned in turn. Scraper, probably unconscious of his mission as

avenger, fulfilled it none the less on that account.

His master, being an Englishman, had the common English reverence for

the Sunday, and would not shoot on that day, though by his conscientious

abstention he missed, undoubtedly, the best battue the country-side

afforded. We had a brief discussion as to the morality and propriety

of the procession, and I pointed out to him that notwithstanding the

military element by which it was so strongly marked, it was purely

sacerdotal in origin and pious in intent, but he merely replied that as

a form of religious exercise for a Sunday it struck him as being jolly

rum. He added shortly afterwards that whether he looked at it or not the

coves would do it, and that he therefore felt at liberty to watch them.

Scraper displayed the profoundest interest in the business, and took

upon himself the organisation of the whole affair, barking with so much

authority, and careering about the cavalry squadron with such untiring

energy that he threw Lil’s efforts in that way into the shade, and

in the course of a mere half-hour had superseded her. Then, just as

Schwartz had been used, with every evidence of faith, to follow Lil,

regarding her as the very mainspring of the military movement, Lil

followed Scraper. Mr. Herbert Spencer has shown that, in spite of the

apparent unreasonableness of the fact, humbug and credulity are sworn

companions. The savage mystery man, who knows what a humbug he himself

is, is the first to yield allegiance and faith to the abler humbug,

who has more tricks or bolder invention than he. So, Lil’s groundless

pretensions of a week ago did not seem in the least to prevent her from

being imposed upon by the groundless pretensions of Scraper, much as one

might have thought her own career of imposture would have set her upon

her guard. She had caught that very fawning method of appeal for a kind

regard which had once distinguished Schwartz, and it was obvious that

Scraper could make no claim to which she would not be ready to give

adhesion. It is in the very nature of poetical justice that it satisfies

the emotions, and I was not displeased to see affairs take this sudden

turn, to view the hard and despiteful heart thus humbled.

It was on a Friday that Schwartz’s chase had ended so disastrously. It

was on the following Sunday that Lil laid down the honours of command at

the feet of the new-comer. It was on the Sunday following, the ninth day

clear from the date of the mischance, that the great event of the seven

years took place. My young acquaintance had two or three days free of

engagements, and he spent these in watching the preparations for the

procession. He spoke French with a fluency and purity which excited my

envy, and he spent most of his spare time among the village people, who

talked and thought and dreamed of nothing but the procession. Wherever

he went Scraper accompanied him, and wherever Scraper went Lil was to be

seen following in fascinated admiration.

For a whole week the drum had known but little rest. I never learned the

purpose of the proceeding, but every day and all day, from long before

daylight till long after dark, somebody marched about the village and

rattled unceasingly upon the drum. It could not possibly have been one

man who did it all, for the energies of no one man that ever lived could

have been equal to the task. Most of the time it was far away, and it

only made two daily promenades past the hotel, but whenever I listened

for it I could hear it, beating the same unweary rataplan. Then at

intervals all day and every day, the big gun boomed and the clarion

blared until I used to dream that I was back at Plevna or the Shipka

Pass, and could not get my “copy” to London and New York because

Monsieur Dorn had filled the Houssy Wood with Cossacks from Janenne. It

may be supposed that all this _charivari_ was but an evil thing for

a man as much in need of rest as I was, but I verily believe that the

noise and bustle of the preparations, though they robbed me now and then

of an hour of morning sleep, were almost as useful to me as the idleness

I enjoyed, and the tranquil country air into which I could drive or

wander afoot whenever the fancy for perfect quiet came upon me.

At last the great day dawned, and the great event dawned earlier than

the day. At five o’clock the noise of drum and clarion began, and the

light of torches flared on the painted fronts of houses--yellow and pink

and blue--in the quaint old village street. A little later a band came

by with shattering brass and booming drum, and for an hour or so the

whole place was in a ferment. The cavalry came clattering into the

_Place_, the hoarse voice of Monsieur Dorn barked through the orders

which had by this time grown conventional, and his squadron jingled for

the last time for seven years through the movements he had taught them

at the expense of so much time and lung power. Then a strange foreboding

sort of quiet, an unnatural tranquillity, settled upon everything and

continued until near upon the hour of ten. A long waggon drawn by four

oxen excited, by the freight it bore, a momentary curiosity, and brought

faces to doors and windows. The air was keen to-day, and we were at the

very season of mid-winter, but in the waggon which the four slow

oxen dragged through the streets of Janenne were a dozen lofty shrubs

reaching to a height of eight or nine feet at least, the which shrubs

were one mass of exotic-looking blossom. I discovered later on that

they were nothing more than a set of young pines with artificial paper

flowers attached to every twig, but the effect as they went down the

wintry street in their clothing of gold and rose and white with the

live green of the fir peeping through the wealth of bloom was quite an

astonishment in its way. These decorated shrubs were set at the church

porch, and seemed to fill the whole of that part of the street with

colour and light.

When the procession came at last there was one curious thing about it.

Such a crowd of people--for Janenne took part in it--that there was

scarcely anybody left to look at it. But then the processionists had the

pleasure of looking at each other. The band came first, in blue blouse

and clean white trousers. Then came the soldiery, a motley crew, with

Monsieur Dorn at their head, drawn sword in hand, and next to him

a personage who might have been translated clean from Astley’s--a

gentleman in long hose, with a flower on each shoe, and a hat of red

velvet shaped like a bread tray, decorated with prodigious coloured

feathers, and a slashed doublet gay with many knots of bright ribbon.

Years and years ago Janenne had a Count and a _château_. The ruins of

the _château_ still kept gray guard over the village street; but there

is not even a ruin left of the old family. But in the day when Our Lady

of Lorette stayed the local pestilence the existing Count of Janenne was

pious enough to ride in the promised procession; and for a century or so

the magnate of the village and its neighbourhood was never absent from

the demonstration of thanksgiving. In a while, however, the Counts of

Janenne took to wildish ways, and, leaving the home of their ancestors,

went away to Paris and led extravagant lives there, gambling and

drinking, and squandering their substance in other and even more foolish

fashions, and at last there ceased to be estates of Janenne to draw

upon, or even Counts of Janenne to draw. But before things came to this

pass the absentee Counts had always sent a representative to join the

procession to the shrine of Our Lady of Lorette; and it has come about

that the legend has clung in the popular fancy even unto the present

day. Somebody--anybody--gets himself up in theatrical guise, and rides

at the head of the military forces, between the first rank and the

commander-in-chief, as the representative of that extinct great house.

On this occasion it was a red-cheeked shy young man, cousin to the

chambermaid of the Hotel des Postes, a peasant proprietor who farmed,

and still farms, some ten or a dozen hectares of sour land on the road

to Montcourtois. The red-cheeked shy young man’s female cousin exchanged

a red-cheeked, shame-faced, rustic grin with him as he rode by, and the

young man, in imitation of Monsieur Dorn, made his horse caracole, but

being less versed in horsemanship than the old _gendarme_, had to hold

on ignominiously by the mane in payment for his own temerity.

Following the military came a long array of little girls in white

muslin, with sashes blue or red. Half a dozen nuns kept watch over them,

pacing sombre in white head-dresses and black gowns by the side of all

that smiling troop of glad hearts and childish faces. All the little

girls carried bannerets of bright colour, and all went bareheaded,

after the manner of the district, where no woman, short of the highest

fashion, ever permits herself to wear hat or bonnet, except when going

to mass or upon a railway journey. White childish locks, braided and

shining, red locks, brown locks, black locks, with bright faces under

all, went streaming by, and then a solemn priest or two headed a

rambling host of lads with well-scrubbed cheeks and clean collars, and

decent raiment of church-going Sunday black. Then came a flock of young

women in white muslin, very starched and stiff, with blue bows and blue

sashes. In front of these two stalwart wenches bore a flapping banner,

inscribed ‘La Jeunesse de Janenne’; and closing up the rank of Janenne’s

youth and rustic beauty came half a dozen chosen damsels, big limbed and

strong, bearing on their shoulders a huge waxen statue of Our Lady of

Lorette, and in her arms a crowned child, she herself being crowned with

glittering tinsel, and robed in a glowing and diaphanous stuff, which

only half revealed the white satin and spangles of the dress below

it. Then a number of chubby-cheeked little boys in semi-ecclesiastical

costume, improvised--no doubt under clerical supervision--by careful

hands at home. Each little boy carried a fuming censer, and it was not

difficult to see that they were well pleased with themselves and their

office. After them came the _doyen_ in full ecclesiastical costume, a

little tawdry perhaps, for the village is but poor and with the best

heart in the world can only imitate the real splendours from afar. Then

following the _doyen_ (who, by the way, marched under a canopy like the

roof of an old-fashioned four-post bedstead) came the male choir of the

church, chanting a musical service, which harmonised indifferently with

the strains of the military band in front. Then the big gun, drawn

by the two big Flemish horses. Then Jacques, Jules, André, François,

Chariot, Pierre, Joseph, Jean, and all the rest, in sabots, short

trousers, and blue blouses, marching bareheaded with reverent air, and

with them Julie, and Fifine, and Nana, and Adèle, and other feminine

relatives, all in their Sunday best, and all devout in mien. Then, at a

little distance--the most astonishing and unlooked-for tail to all this

village splendour and devoutness--Schwartz.

Schwartz himself, but Schwartz so changed, so lean, so woebegone, as

hardly to be recognisable, even to the eye of friendship. Of all his

diverse-raging hairs not one to assert itself, but all plastered close

with an oily sleekness by a slimy clinging mud, the thin ribs showing

plainly, and the hinder part of the poor wretch’s barrel a mere

hand-grasp. His very tail, which had used to look like an irregular

much-worn bottle-brush, was thin and sleek like a rat’s, and he tucked

it away as if he were ashamed of it. His feet were clotted with red

earth, and he walked as if his head were a burden to him, he hung it so

mournfully and carried it so low.

My young English acquaintance, who, like myself, had been watching the

procession, had posted himself a little farther down the road, with

Scraper near at hand. Near to him, employing all the ingratiatory

insinuating arts she knew, and so absorbed in Scraper that she forgot

even to direct the procession, was Lil. To her, fawning and whining in

such an excess of feeble joy as can be rarely known to dogs or man,

came the half-starved, half-drowned creature. I was already halfway

to Schwartz’s rescue, with immediate milk, to be followed by soap

and water, in my mind, but I stopped to see how Lil would receive

the returned companion of old days. It is scarcely probable that dogs

believe in ghosts, and yet it would have been easy to fancy that she saw

in him at first some purely supernatural apparition, she recoiled

with so obvious a surprise and terror when she first beheld him. The

wretched, propitiatory, humbly-ecstatic Schwartz advanced, but she

showed her gleaming teeth, and growled aversion. He stopped stock-still,

and whined a little, and Lil responded furiously. I took the returned

wanderer up in both hands, and carried him into the hotel scullery, and

got milk for him. He lapped it with tears running down his muddy nose;

and when I had had him washed and tucked away into an old railway rug,

beside a stove in the little room, he lay there winking and

blinking, and licked at his own tears with an expression altogether

broken-hearted. I should have liked to have known something of the

history of his subterranean wanderings, but that was only to be left to

conjecture. I bade him be of better cheer, and went outside to wait for

the return of the procession, and to smoke a cigar in the open air,

and an hour later found that Schwartz had again disappeared. This time,

however, he had merely gone home, and though for a day or two he was

quite an invalid, he was soon about the streets again, completely

rehabilitated.

And now I come to the relation of the one tragic fact which seemed to

me to make this simple history worth writing. I hope that nobody will

regard it as an invention, or will suppose that I am trading upon their

sympathies on false pretences.

On the day of the young Englishman’s departure I accompanied him to the

railway station. Lil came down in attendance upon Scraper, and barked

fiercely at the departing train which bore him away. Schwartz followed

in humble pursuit of Lil, who, so far as I could understand affairs, had

never forgiven him for intruding himself in so unpresentable a guise,

and claiming acquaintance whilst she was engaged in conversation with a

swell like Scraper. From that hour she had refused to hold the slightest

communion with him, showing her teeth and growling in the cruellest

way whenever he approached her. In spite of this, Schwartz seemed to be

persuaded that, in the absence of his rival, he still stood a chance,

and day after day he followed her with the old fawning humbleness, and

day after day she received him with the same anger and disdain.

On a certain Wednesday afternoon the air was wonderfully mild and dry.

It was early in January, but the weather was so fine that I had not even

need of an overcoat, as I sat in the sunshine smoking and reading. I had

seen Monsieur Dorn enter the opposite house, taking Lil with him, and

Schwartz had settled himself on the doorstep, as usual, to await her

exit. I called him to me, and he crossed over, but soon returned and

resumed his place, and sat there waiting still. After a considerable

time the door opened, and Monsieur Dorn and Lil emerged together.

I looked up at that moment, and saw Lil make a savage dart at her

too-persistent worshipper. Monsieur Dorn beat them apart, but Schwartz

had attempted no resistance. He was rather badly bitten, and when I

picked him up the tears were running fast down his nose, and he was

feebly licking at them, and whining to himself in a way which indicated

the extremest weakness of spirit. I sat down with him, and comforted

the poor-hearted creature, and he seemed grateful, for he licked my hand

repeatedly, but he did not cease to whine and weep.

By and by I heard, though I did not notice it at the time, the warning

whistle of the approaching train. The station is little more than a

stone’s throw from the hotel. Schwartz made a leap, licked my face,

jumped from the bench, and ambled away. I never saw him alive again,

for, on the testimony of the signalman, he ran down to the railway line,

stretched himself upon one of the rails, and, in spite of a stone the

man threw at him when the train had advanced dangerously near to him, he

held his place until the wheels passed over his body.

His remains were buried in his master’s back garden. I know that he knew

full well what he was doing when he stretched himself upon the rail, and

I know that his feeble and affectionate heart was broken before he did

it.