his life were spent near the little Breton village of Plougastel. They
were years of which each was, in every respect, like that which went
before, and, in every respect, like that which followed after: years,
that is to say, devoid of incident, beyond the annual pardon, when the
peasants came from far and near to the quaint little church, to offer
their prayers at the cemetery Calvary, and display their holiday
costumes, and make love, and exchange gossip on the turf round about.
It is a land of wide and wind-swept hillsides, this, imbued with the
strange melancholy of a wild and merciless sea, and wherein there are no
barriers of convention or artificiality between earth and sky, man and
his Maker; but Jean-Marie loved it for its very bleakness. From the
doorway of his mother's cottage, standing, primly white, in the midst of
great rocks and strawberry fields, with its thatched roof drawn down,
like a hood, about its ears, as if in protection against the western
gales, he could look out across the broad harbor of Brest to the Goulet,
the gateway to that great Atlantic whose mighty voice came to his ears
in stormy weather, muttering against the barrier of the shore. And this
voice of the sea spoke to Jean-Marie of many things, but, most of all,
of the navies of France, of the mighty battleships which went out from
Brest to unimagined lands, far distant, China, America, and the southern
islands, whence comrades, older than himself, brought back curious
treasures, coral, and shells, and coins, and even parrots, to surprise
the good people of Plougastel. He looked at them enviously, as they
gathered about the door of Père Yvetot's wine-shop, when they were home
on leave, and spun sailor yarns for his delighted ears. How wonderful
they were, these men who had seen the world,--Toulon, and Marseille, and
Tonkin,--how wonderful, with their wide, flapping trousers, and their
jaunty caps, with a white strap and a red pompon, and their throats and
breasts, showing ruddy bronze at the necks of their shirts!
At such times Jean-Marie would join timidly in the talk, and, perhaps,
speak of the time when he, too, should be marin français, and see the
world. And the big Breton sailors would laugh good-naturedly, and slap
him on the shoulder, and say: "Tiens! And how then shall the cruisers
find their way into Brest harbor, when the little phare is gone?" For it
was a famous joke in Plougastel to pretend that Jean-Marie, with his
flaming red hair, was a lighthouse, which could be seen through the
Goulet, far, far out at sea.
But Jean-Marie only smiled quietly in reply, for he knew that his day
would come. At night, the west wind, sweeping in from the Atlantic, and
rattling his little casement, seemed to be calling him, and it was a
fancy of his to answer its summons in a whisper, turning his face
toward the window.
"All in good time, my friend. All in good time!"
Again, when he was working in the strawberry fields, he would strain his
eyes to catch the outline of some big green battleship, anchored off
Brest, or, during one of his rare visits to the town, lean upon the
railing of the pont tournant, to watch the sailors and marines moving
about the barracks and magazines on the quais of the porte militaire.
All in good time, my friends; all in good time!
Only, there were two to whom one did not speak of these things,--the
Little Mother, and Rosalie Vivieu. Already the sea had taken three from
Madame Jumière--Baptiste, her husband, and Philippe and Yves, the older
boys, who went out together, with the fishing fleet, seven years before,
in the staunch little smack La Belle Fortune. She had been cheerful,
even merry, during the long weeks of waiting for the fleet's return,
and, when it came in one evening, with news of La Belle Fortune cut down
in the fog by a North Cape German Lloyd, and all hands lost, she had
taken the news as only a Breton woman can. Jean-Marie was but twelve at
the time, but there is an intuition, beyond all reckoning in years, in
the heart of a fisher's son, and never should he forget how the Little
Mother had caught him to her heart that night, at the doorway of their
cottage, crying, "Holy Saviour! Holy Saviour!" with her patient blue
eyes upturned to the cold, grey sky of Finistère! As for Rosalie,
Jean-Marie could not remember when they two had not been sweethearts,
since the day when, as a round-eyed boy of six, he had watched Madame
Vivieu crowding morsels of blessed bread into her baby mouth at the
pardon of Plougastel, since all the world knows that in such manner only
can backwardness of speech be cured. Rosalie was sixteen now, as round,
and pink, and sweet as one of her own late peaches, and she had promised
to marry Jean-Marie some day. For the time being, he was allowed to kiss
her only on the great occasion of the pardon, but that was once more
each year than any other gars in Plougastel could do, so Jean-Marie was
content. No, evidently, to these two there must be no mention of his
dreamings of the wide and wonderful sea, of the summons of the
impatient western wind, of those long reveries upon the pont tournant.
So Jean-Marie hugged his visions to his heart for another year, working
in the strawberry fields, gazing out with longing eyes toward the
warships in the harbor, and whispering, when the fingers of the wind
tapped upon his little casement: "All in good time, my friend. All in
good time!"
And his day came at last, as he had known it would. But with what a
difference! For there were many for the navy that spring. Plougastel had
nine, and Daoulas fifteen ready, and Hanvec seven, and Crozon
twenty-one, and from Landerneau, and Châteaulin, and Lambezellec, and le
Folgoet came fifty more, and from Brest itself, a hundred; and all of
these, with few exceptions, were great, broad-shouldered lads, strong of
arm and deep of chest, and so the few who were slender and fragile, like
Jean-Marie, were assigned to the infantry, and sent, as is the custom,
far from Finistère, because, says the code, change of scene prevents
homesickness, and what the code says must, of course, be true.
When Madame Jumière heard this she smiled as she was seldom known to
smile. The Holy Virgin, then, had listened to her prayers. The gars was
to be a piou-piou instead of a col bleu, after all! The great sea should
not rob her again, as it had robbed her in the time. It was very well,
oh, grace au saint Sauveur, it was very well! And, all that night, the
Little Mother prayed, and watched a tiny taper, flickering before her
porcelain image of Notre Dame de la Recouvrance, while Jean-Marie tossed
and turned upon his little garret bed, and made no reply, even in a
whisper, to the west wind, rattling his casement with insistent fingers.
But it was all far worse than he had pictured it to himself, even in
those first few hours of disappointment and despair. The last Sunday
afternoon which he and Rosalie passed, hand in hand, seated by the
Calvary in Plougastel cemetery, striving dumbly to realize that they
should see each other no more for three long years; the following
morning, chill and bleak for that time of year, when he and the Little
Mother, standing on the platform of the station at Brest, could barely
see each others' faces, for the sea-fog and their own hot tears; the
shouts and laughter and noisy farewells of the classe, crowding out of
the windows of their third-class carriages; and, finally, the
interminable journey to Paris,--all of these were to Jean-Marie like the
successive stages of a feverish, uneasy dream. He knew none of the noisy
Breton peasant lads about him, but sat by himself in the centre of the
compartment, too far from either window to catch more than fleeting
glimpses of the fog-wrapped landscape through which the train crept at
thirty kilometres the hour. At long intervals, they stopped in great
stations, of which little Jean-Marie remembered to have heard,--Morlaix,
St. Brieuc, Rennes, and Laval, where the recruits bought cakes and
bottles of cheap wine, and joked with white-capped peasant women on the
platforms; and twice during the long night he was roused from a fitful,
troubled sleep to a consciousness of raucous voices crying "Le Mans!"
and "Chartres!" and gasped in sudden terror--before he could remember
where he was--at the faces of his slumbering companions, ghastly and
distorted in the wretched light of the compartment lamp. So, as the
dawn was breaking over Paris, they came into the gare Montparnasse, and,
too drowsy to realize what was demanded of them, were herded together by
the drill sergeants in charge, and marched away across the city to the
barracks of La Pépinière.
The weeks that followed were to Jean-Marie hideous beyond any means of
expression. From the first he had been assigned to the drum-corps, and
spent hours daily, under command of a corporal expert in the art,
laboriously learning double rolls and ruffles in the fosse of the
fortifications. For they are not in the way of enduring martyrdom, the
Parisians, and even while they cry "Vive l'armée!" with their hats off,
and their eyes blazing, the drummers and buglers are sent out of
hearing, to practice the music that later, when the regiments parade,
will stir the patriotism of the throng.
But this part of his new life was no hardship to Jean-Marie, or Little
Tapin, as his comrades soon learned to call him, because he was the
smallest drummer in the corps. On the contrary, it was something to be
in the open air, even though that air was tainted with sluggish smoke
from the factory chimneys of Levallois-Perret, instead of being swept
and refreshed by the west wind from beyond the Goulet. And he was very
earnest, very anxious to please, was Little Tapin. First of all the new
drummers, he learned the intricacies of the roll, and so diligently did
he improve the hours of practice that he was first, as well, to be
regularly assigned to a place in the regimental band. No, this was no
hardship. What cramped and crushed his kindly little heart, what clouded
his queer, quizzical eyes, was nothing less than Paris, beautiful,
careless Paris, that laughed, and danced, and sang about him, and had
never a thought for Little Tapin, with his funny, freckled face, and his
ill-fitting uniform of red and blue, and his coarse boots, and his
ineradicable Breton stare.
In Plougastel he had been wont to greet and to be greeted, to hear
cheery words from those who passed him on the wide, white roads. He was
part of it all, one who was called by his honest name, instead of by a
ridiculous sobriquet, and who had his share in all that went forward,
from the strawberry harvest to the procession of the pardon. And if all
this was but neighborly interest, at least there were two to whom
Jean-Marie meant more, and who meant more to him.
But Paris,--Paris, with her throngs of strange faces hurrying past, her
brilliantly lighted boulevards, her crowded cafés, her swirl of traffic
along avenues that one crossed only at peril of one's life,--he was lost
amid her clamor and confusion as utterly as a bubble in a whirlpool! The
bitterest hours of his new life were those of his leave, in which, with
a band of his fellows, he went out of the great green gates of the
caserne to seek amusement. Amusement! They soon lost Little Tapin, the
others, for he was one who did not drink, and who walked straight on
when they turned to speak to passing grisettes, who clung to each
others' arms, and looked back, laughing at the sallies of the
piou-pious. He was not bon camarade. He seemed to disapprove. So,
presently, while he was staring into a shop window, they would slip down
a side street, or into a tiny café, and Little Tapin would find himself
alone in the great city which he dreaded.
He came to spending long hours of his leave in the galleries of the
Louvre, hastening past row upon row of nude statues with startled eyes,
or making his way wearily from picture to picture of the old Dutch
masters, striving, striving to understand. Then, footsore and heartsick,
he would creep out upon the pont du Carrousel, and stand for half an
afternoon, with his elbows on the railing. Behind him, the human tide
swung back and forward from bank to bank, the big omnibuses making the
bridge throb and sway under his feet. It was good, that, like the rise
and fall of his little boat on the swells of the bras de Landerneau,
when he rowed up with a comrade to fish at the mouth of the Elorn. And
there was always the Seine, whirling, brown and angry, under the arches
of the pont Royal beyond, on its way to the sea, where were the great,
green battleships. Little Tapin strained his eyes in an attempt to
follow the river's long sweep to the left, toward the distant towers of
the Trocadéro, and then pictured to himself how it would go on and on,
out into the good, green country, past hillsides crowded with vineyards,
and broad, flat meadows, where the poplars stood, aligned like soldiers,
against the sky, until it broadened toward its end, running swifter and
more joyously, for now the wind had met it and was crying, "Come! Come!
The Sea! The Sea!" as it was used to cry, rattling the casement of his
little room at Plougastel. Then two great tears ran slowly down his
freckled cheeks, and dropped, unnoted, into the flying river, wherein so
many fall. Ah, what a baby he was, to be sure, Little Tapin!
So three months went by, and then one morning the news ran through La
Pépinière that the regiment was going to move. There is no telling how
such tidings get abroad, for the pawns are not supposed to know what
part in the game they are to play. A loose-tongued lieutenant, perhaps,
and a sharp-eared ordonnance, or a word between two commandants
overheard by the sentry in his box at the gates of the caserne. Whatever
the source of information, certain it was that, six hours after the
colonel of the 107th of the line had received his orders, his newest
recruit could have told you as much of them as was known to General de
Galliffet himself, in his office on the boulevard St. Germain.
A more than usually friendly comrade confided the news to Little Tapin,
exulting. The regiment was to move--in three days, name of God!
Epatant--what? And, what was more, they were to go to the south, to
Grenoble, whence one saw the Alpes Maritimes, with snow upon them--snow
upon them, did Tapin comprehend?--and always! No matter whether it was a
Tuesday, or a Friday,--yes, or even a Sunday! There was _always_ snow!
No, Little Tapin could hardly comprehend. He pondered dully upon this
new development of his fate all that afternoon, and then, suddenly,
while he was beating the staccato roll of the retraite in the court of
the caserne that night, he understood! Why, it was to go further away,
this,--further away from Plougastel, and the Little Mother, and Rosalie,
to be stationed in God knew what great town, crueller, more crowded than
even Paris herself!
All that night Little Tapin lay staring at the ceiling of the big
dortoir, while the comrades breathed heavily around him. And, little by
little, the spirit of rebellion roused and stirred in his simple Breton
heart. For he hated it all,--this army, this dreary, rigid routine, this
contemptuous comment of trim, sneering young lieutenants, with waxed
mustaches, and baggy red riding breeches, and immaculately varnished
boots. He hated his own uniform, which another tapin had worn before
him, and which, in consequence, had never even had the charm of
freshness. He hated the bugles, and the drums,--yes, and, more than all,
the tricolor, the flag of the great, cruel Republic which had cooped him
up in these desolate barracks of La Pépinière, instead of sending him
with other Bretons out to the arms of the blue sea! And, when gray
morning crept through the windows of the dortoir, there lay upon the
pallet of Little Tapin a deserter, in spirit, at least, from the 107th
of the line!
That day, for the third time since joining the regiment, Little Tapin
was detailed as drummer to the guard at the Palais du Louvre. He knew
what _that_ meant,--a long, insufferably tiresome day, with nothing to
do save to idle about a doorway of the palace, opposite the place du
Palais Royal, watching the throng of shoppers scurrying to and fro, and
passing in and out of the big magasins du Louvre. It was only as sunset
approached that the drummer of the guard detail had any duty to perform.
Then he marched, all alone, with his drum slung on his hip, across the
place du Carrousel, and down the wide central promenade of the Tuileries
gardens, to the circular basin at their western end, where, on pleasant
afternoons, the little Parisians--and some, too, of larger
growth--manoeuvred their miniature yachts, to the extreme vexation of
the sluggish gold-fish. There, standing motionless, like a sketch by
Edouard Detaille, he watched the sun creep lower, lower, behind the arc
de l'Etoile, until it went out of sight, and then, turning, he marched
back, drumming sturdily, to warn all who lingered in the gardens that
the gates were about to close.
But they were not good for Little Tapin, those hours of idleness at the
portals of the palace. It is the second busiest and most densely
thronged spot in Paris, this: first the place de l'Opéra, and then the
place du Palais Royal. And to Little Tapin's eyes, as he glanced up and
down the rue de Rivoli, the great city seemed more careless, more cruel
than ever, and bit by bit the rebellious impulse born in the dortoir
grew stronger, more irresistible. His Breton mind was slow to action,
but, once set in a direction, it was obstinacy itself. He took no heed
of consequences. If he realized at any stage of his meditation what the
outcome of desertion must inevitably be, it was only to put the thought
resolutely from him. Capture, court-martial, imprisonment, they were
only names to him. What was real was that he should see Plougastel
again, sit hand in hand with Rosalie, and refind his comrades, the wide,
sunlit harbor, and the impatient western wind, for which his heart was
aching. What was false and unbearable was longer service in an army that
he loathed.
He arranged the details of escape in his mind, as he sat apart from his
comrades of the guard, fingering the drum-cords. An hour's leave upon
the morrow--certainly the tambour-major would grant him so much, if he
said it was to bid his sister good-by; then, a change from his detested
uniform to a cheap civile in the shop of some second-hand dealer in the
Gobelins quarter; and, finally, a quick dash to the gare Montparnasse,
when he should have learned the hour of his train, and so, away to
Finistère. It sounded extremely simple, as all such plans do, when the
wish is father to the thought, and in his calculations he went no
further than Plougastel. After that, one would see. So the long
afternoon stole past.
At seven o'clock the lieutenant of the guard touched Little Tapin upon
the shoulder, and, more by instinct than actual perception, he sprang to
his feet and saluted.
"Voyons, mon petit," said the officer, not unkindly. "It is time thou
wast off. Thou knowest thy duty--eh? There is no need of instructions?"
"Oh, ça me connait, mon lieutenant," answered Little Tapin quaintly,
and, presently, he was striding away to his post, under the arc de
Triomphe, past the statues, and the flowerbeds, and the dancing
fountains, across the rue des Tuileries, and so into the wide, central
promenade of the gardens beyond.
The old woman who sold cakes, and reglisse, and balloons to the
children, was putting up the shutters of her little booth as he passed,
and two others were piling wooden chairs in ungainly pyramids under the
trees, though the gardens were still full of people, hurrying north and
south on the transverse paths leading to the rue de Rivoli or to the
quai and the pont de Solférino. But, curiously enough, the open space
around the western basin was almost deserted as Little Tapin took his
position, facing the great grille.
The mid-August afternoon had been oppressively warm, and now a thin haze
had risen from the wet wood pavement of the place de la Concorde, and
hovered low, pink in the light of the setting sun. Directly before
Little Tapin the obelisk raised its warning finger, and beyond, the
Champs Elysées, thickly dotted with carriages, and half veiled by great
splotches of ruddy-yellow dust, swept away in a long, upward curve
toward the distant arc de l'Etoile.
But of all this Little Tapin saw nothing. He stood very still, with his
back to the basin, where the fat goldfish went to and fro like lazy
sentinels, on the watch for a possible belated little boy, with a pocket
full of crumbs. He was still deep in his dream of Plougastel, so deep
that he could almost smell the salt breeze rollicking in from the
Goulet, and hear the chapel bell sending the Angelus out over the
strawberry fields and the rock-dotted hillside.
After a minute, something--a teamster's shout, or the snap of a
cocher's whip--roused him, and he glanced around with the same
half-sensation of terror with which he had wakened in the night to hear
the guards shouting "Le Mans!" and "Chartres!" Then the reality came
back to him with a rush, and he grumbled to himself. Oh, it was all very
well, the wonderful French army, all very well if one could have been a
marshal or a general, or even a soldier of the line in time of war.
There was a chance for glory, bon sang! But to be a drummer--a drummer
one metre seventy in height, with flaming red hair and a freckled
face--a drummer who was called Little Tapin; and to have, for one's most
important duty, to drum the loungers out of a public garden! No,
evidently he would desert.
"But why?" said a grave voice beside him.
Little Tapin was greatly startled. He had not thought he was saying the
words aloud. And his fear increased when, on turning to see who had
spoken, he found himself looking into the eyes of one who was evidently
an officer, though his uniform was unfamiliar. He was plain-shaven and
very short, almost as short, indeed, as Little Tapin himself, but about
him there was a something of dignity and command which could not fail of
its effect. He wore a great black hat like a gendarme's, but without
trimming, and a blue coat with a white plastron, the tails lined with
scarlet, and the sleeves ending in red and white cuffs. White breeches,
and knee-boots carefully polished, completed the uniform, and from over
his right shoulder a broad band of crimson silk was drawn tightly across
his breast. A short sword hung straight at his hip, and on his left
breast were three orders on red ribbons,--a great star, with an eagle in
the centre, backed by a sunburst studded with brilliants; another eagle,
this one of white enamel, pendant from a jeweled crown, and a smaller
star of enameled white and green, similar to the large one.
Little Tapin had barely mastered these details when the other spoke
again.
"Why art thou thinking to desert?" he said.
"Monsieur is an officer?" faltered the drummer,--"a general, perhaps.
Pardon, but I do not know the uniform."
"A corporal, simply--a soldier of France, like thyself. Be not afraid,
my little one. All thou sayest shall be held in confidence. Tell me thy
difficulties."
His voice was very kind, the kindest Little Tapin had heard in three
long months, and suddenly the barrier of his Breton reserve gave and
broke. The nervous strain had been too great. He must have sympathy and
advice--yes, even though it meant confiding in a stranger and the
possible discovery and failure of his dearly cherished plans.
"A soldier of France!" he exclaimed, impulsively. "Ah, monsieur, there
you have all my difficulty. What a thing it is to be a soldier of
France! And not even that, but a drummer, a drummer who is called Little
Tapin because he is the smallest and weakest in the corps. To be taken
from home, from the country he loves, from Brittany, and made to serve
among men who despise him, who laugh at him, who avoid him in the hours
of leave, because he is not bon camarade. To wear a uniform that has
been already worn. To sleep in a dormitory where there are bêtes
funestes. To have no friends. To know that he is not to see Plougastel,
and the sweetheart, and the Little Mother for three years. Never to
fight, but, at best, to drum voyous out of a garden! That, monsieur, is
what it is to be a soldier of France!"
There were tears in Little Tapin's eyes now, but he was more angry than
sad. The silence of months was broken, and the hoarded resentment and
despair of his long martyrdom, once given rein, were not to be checked a
second time. He threw back his narrow shoulders defiantly, and said a
hideous thing:--
"Conspuez l'armée française!"
There was an instant's pause, and then the other leaned forward, and
with one white-gloved hand touched Little Tapin on the eyes.
* * * * *