At dawn--a white, cold dawn that turned the frost to silver--a covered
two-wheeled cart jolted and rumbled into the public square of the
village of Evremont-sur-Seine. Taillandy sat upright on the driver’s
seat, with the cold light on his gaunt face and a warmer light glowing
in his eyes. Behind him, on the straw, lay Diane, sleeping like a child,
with a child’s smile at her lips.
“To the right here,” said Taillandy softly, when they had crossed the
square. “To the right, and then directly to the left. The shop next to
the church.”
The driver, obeying directions, drew up in front of a small two-story
plaster house, the ground floor of which was devoted to a shop. In the
windows were crucifixes, artificial wreaths, embroidered altar-cloths,
and little gilded and painted images of saints. It was the last place
one would have expected a pagan to visit.
But Taillandy, with no hesitation, rapped gently on the door, casting a
benevolent glance, meanwhile, on the emblems of Roman Catholicism.
“It is well,” he said to himself, “that there should be such people in
the world. Does it matter, after all, what kindles the flame so long as
it burns brightly?”
An elderly woman came to open the door--a woman with a face like one of
her graven saints.
“Madame Nicolas,” said Taillandy bowing, “you are awake early. May I
come in to warm myself?”
“Certainly,” she said. “Be good enough to enter. I am just now lighting
the fire in the stove.”
He insisted on helping her with the coals. Then he said: “Madame
Nicolas, you do not, of course, remember me. It is eighteen years since
I used to come to this shop. I remember you, because you are the sort of
woman one does not forget. I am called Ferdinand Taillandy.”
“I remember you now, Monsieur Ferdinand,” she answered. “You were an
interesting boy.”
“I take no credit for that,” he disclaimed. “All boys are interesting.
It is only men and women that are occasionally dull.”
He hesitated an instant. Then he said: “Madame Nicolas, are your two
daughters well?”
“Véronique is very well,” she answered him quietly. “She is in the
kitchen. Diane”--she faltered a little--“Diane has left us. She--she is
working in Paris. We miss her a great deal.”
“Ah,” said Taillandy--“exactly.”
Madame Nicolas searched his eyes anxiously with hers.
“Madame Nicolas,” he continued abruptly after a silence--“Madame
Nicolas, do you own a calf?”
“But no, Monsieur Ferdinand!” she exclaimed, surprised.
“That is a pity,” he mused. “I regret that you do not own a calf.”
“What should I do with a calf?”
“Kill it, of course,” he replied brightly--“kill it! In honor of your
daughter who is returned to you.”
Madame Nicolas half-rose from her chair; then she fell back weakly,
trembling.
“Diane,” she breathed, “you have news of my Diane?”
“I have more than news, Madame Nicolas, I have Diane herself. She is
asleep out there in the covered cart.”
“God is merciful,” said Madame Nicolas. “He has, in his own good time,
answered my prayers.”
“So be it,” murmured the pagan. “Be very kind to Diane, for she has
suffered much.”
“Let me go to her,” said Madame Nicolas. “My arms ache to hold her.”
They went out into the chill morning. But Madame Nicolas did not know
that it was cold. Taillandy raised the canvas flap at the back of the
cart. Diane still slept on the straw, her head pillowed on her arm. As
they watched her she stirred and sat upright, the smile still at her
lips, for she had been happy in her sleep.
“Diane!” cried Madame Nicolas. “My blessed baby Diane--my blessed
child!”
Taillandy turned away, pretending to shade his eyes from the sun.
“These Christians,” he muttered, “are over-demonstrative.” And he
brushed a tear impatiently from his nose. When he had hardened himself
sufficiently to look around without betraying his lamentable weakness,
he saw that he was forgotten. Diane was gathered close to Madame
Nicolas’s breast, and Madame Nicolas was crooning over her softly, as
if, indeed, she were a child.
The poet and pagan shrugged his shoulders with a feeble imitation of his
old bravado.
“I fear, Ferdinand,” he said to himself--“I fear that you have lost a
disciple. Your creed does not seem to be popular. However, you have done
to-day what I suppose they would call a ‘Christian deed.’ _Ainsi soit._”
He climbed once more up into the driver’s seat.
“Where now, _m’sieu’_?” asked the driver stolidly.
“Where?” repeated the pagan. “Anywhere! Get me away from these
Christians. They are weakening to a man’s resolution. They sap his
manliness. They appeal insidiously to the maudlin, sentimental side of
his nature. Bah! That sun is very glaring, driver. Do you see how it
makes my eyes water? Turn around and face the south, and flog your horse
a little. What was it that King Agrippa said in their Bible? Ah, I have
it now: ‘Almost thou persuadest me to be a Christian.’ Flog your horse,
driver--flog your horse! I must get out of here. It is dangerous, I tell
you--dangerous. Flog your horse, driver, and drive me to the south--to
the south where the nereids are laughing and leaping and calling to one
another across the waves of the far-resounding sea. Farewell,
Diane--adieu. I go back alone to the gods.”
Obediently the driver plied his whip, the horse broke into a heavy,
swaying trot, the cart bounced and rattled over the cobblestones, and
Ferdinand Taillandy, pagan and poet, became once more a wanderer on the
face of the earth.