On losing sight of the perplexed lieutenant, Peyrol discovered that his
own mind was a perfect blank. He started to get down to his tartane
after one sidelong look at the face of the house which contained quite a
different problem. Let that wait. His head feeling strangely empty, he
felt the pressing necessity of furnishing it with some thought without
loss of time. He scrambled down steep places, caught at bushes, stepped
from stone to stone, with the assurance of long practice, with
mechanical precision and without for a moment relaxing his efforts to
capture some definite scheme which he could put into his head. To his
right the cove lay full of pale light, while the rest of the
Mediterranean extended beyond it in a dark, unruffled blue. Peyrol was
making for the little basin where his tartane had been hidden for years,
like a jewel in a casket meant only for the secret rejoicing of his eye,
of no more practical use than a miser’s hoard--and as precious! Coming
upon a hollow in the ground where grew a few bushes and even a few
blades of grass, Peyrol sat down to rest. In that position his visible
world was limited to a stony slope, a few boulders, the bush against
which he leaned and the vista of a piece of empty sea-horizon. He
perceived that he detested that lieutenant much more when he didn’t see
him. There was something in the fellow. Well, at any rate he had got rid
of him for, say, eight or ten hours. An uneasiness came over the old
rover, a sense of the endangered stability of things, which was anything
but welcome. He wondered at it, and the thought “I am growing old”
intruded on him again. And yet he was aware of his sturdy body. He could
still creep stealthily like an Indian and with his trusty cudgel knock a
man over with a certain aim at the back of his head, and with force
enough to fell him like a bullock. He had done that thing no further
back than two o’clock the night before, not twelve hours ago, as easy as
easy and without an undue sense of exertion. This fact cheered him up.
But still he could not find an idea for his head. Not what one could
call a real idea. It wouldn’t come. It was no use sitting there.
He got up and after a few strides came to a stony ridge from which he
could see the two white blunt mastheads of his tartane. Her hull was
hidden from him by the formation of the shore, in which the most
prominent feature was a big flat piece of rock. That was the spot on
which not twelve hours before Peyrol, unable to rest in his bed and
coming to seek sleep in his tartane, had seen by moonlight a man
standing above his vessel and looking down at her, a characteristic
forked black shape that certainly had no business to be there. Peyrol,
by a sudden and logical deduction, had said to himself: “Landed from an
English boat.” Why, how, wherefore, he did not stay to consider. He
acted at once like a man accustomed for many years to meet emergencies
of the most unexpected kind. The dark figure, lost in a sort of
attentive amazement, heard nothing, suspected nothing. The impact of the
thick end of the cudgel came down on its head like a thunderbolt from
the blue. The sides of the little basin echoed the crash. But he could
not have heard it. The force of the blow flung the senseless body over
the edge of the flat rock and down headlong into the open hold of the
tartane, which received it with the sound of a muffled drum. Peyrol
could not have done the job better at the age of twenty. No. Not so
well. There was swiftness, mature judgment--and the sound of the muffled
drum was followed by a perfect silence, without a sigh, without a moan.
Peyrol ran round a little promontory to where the shore shelved down to
the level of the tartane’s rail and got on board. And still the silence
remained perfect in the cold moonlight and amongst the deep shadows of
the rocks. It remained perfect because Michel, who always slept under
the half-deck forward, being wakened by the thump which had made the
whole tartane tremble, had lost the power of speech. With his head just
protruding from under the half-deck, arrested on all fours and shivering
violently like a dog that had been washed with hot water, he was kept
from advancing further by his terror of this bewitched corpse that had
come on board flying through the air. He would not have touched it for
anything.
The “You there, Michel,” pronounced in an undertone, acted like a moral
tonic. This then was not the doing of the Evil One; it was no sorcery!
And even if it had been, now that Peyrol was there, Michel had lost all
fear. He ventured not a single question while he helped Peyrol to turn
over the limp body. Its face was covered with blood from the cut on the
forehead which it had got by striking the sharp edge of the keelson.
What accounted for the head not being completely smashed and for no
limbs being broken was the fact that on its way through the air the
victim of undue curiosity had come in contact with and had snapped like
a carrot one of the foremast shrouds. Raising his eyes casually, Peyrol
noticed the broken rope, and at once put his hand on the man’s breast.
“His heart beats yet,” he murmured. “Go and light the cabin lamp,
Michel.”
“You going to take that thing into the cabin?”
“Yes,” said Peyrol. “The cabin is used to that kind of thing,” and
suddenly he felt very bitter. “It has been a death-trap for better
people than this fellow, whoever he is.”
While Michel was away executing that order Peyrol’s eyes roamed all over
the shores of the basin, for he could not divest himself of the idea
that there must be more Englishmen dodging about. That one of the
corvette’s boats was still in the cove he had not the slightest doubt.
As to the motive of her coming, it was incomprehensible. Only that
senseless form lying at his feet could perhaps have told him: but Peyrol
had little hope that it would ever speak again. If his friends started
to look for their shipmate there was just a bare chance that they would
not discover the existence of the basin. Peyrol stooped and felt the
body all over. He found no weapon of any kind on it. There was only a
common clasp-knife on a lanyard round its neck.
That soul of obedience, Michel, returning from aft, was directed to
throw a couple of bucketfuls of salt water upon the bloody head with its
face upturned to the moon. The lowering of the body down into the cabin
was a matter of some little difficulty. It was heavy. They laid it full
length on a locker, and after Michel with a strange tidiness had
arranged its arms along its sides it looked incredibly rigid. The
dripping head with soaked hair was like the head of a drowned man with a
gaping pink gash on the forehead.
“Go on deck to keep a lookout,” said Peyrol. “We may have to fight yet
before the night’s out.”
After Michel left him Peyrol began by flinging off his jacket and,
without a pause, dragging his shirt off over his head. It was a very
fine shirt. The Brothers of the Coast in their hours of ease were by no
means a ragged crowd, and Peyrol the gunner had preserved a taste for
fine linen. He tore the shirt into long strips, sat down on the locker
and took the wet head on his knees. He bandaged it with some skill,
working as calmly as though he had been practising on a dummy. Then the
experienced Peyrol sought the lifeless hand and felt the pulse. The
spirit had not fled yet. The rover, stripped to the waist, his powerful
arms folded on the grizzled pelt of his bare breast, sat gazing down at
the inert face in his lap with the eyes closed peacefully under the
white band covering the forehead. He contemplated the heavy jaw combined
oddly with a certain roundness of cheek, the noticeably broad nose with
a sharp tip and a faint dent across the bridge, either natural or the
result of some old injury. A face of brown clay, roughly modelled, with
a lot of black eyelashes stuck on the closed lids and looking
artificially youthful on that physiognomy forty years old or more. And
Peyrol thought of his youth. Not his own youth; that he was never
anxious to recapture. It was of that man’s youth that he thought, of how
that face had looked twenty years ago. Suddenly he shifted his position,
and putting his lips to the ear of that inanimate head, yelled with all
the force of his lungs:
“Hullo! Hullo! Wake up, shipmate!”
It seemed enough to wake up the dead. A faint “Voilà! Voilà!” was the
answer from a distance, and presently Michel put his head into the cabin
with an anxious grin and a gleam in the round eyes.
“You called, maître?”
“Yes,” said Peyrol. “Come along and help me to shift him.”
“Overboard?” murmured Michel readily.
“No,” said Peyrol, “into that bunk. Steady! Don’t bang his head,” he
cried with unexpected tenderness. “Throw a blanket over him. Stay in the
cabin and keep his bandages wetted with salt water. I don’t think
anybody will trouble you to-night. I am going to the house.”
“The day is not very far off,” remarked Michel.
This was one reason the more why Peyrol was in a hurry to get back to
the house and steal up to his room unseen. He drew on his jacket over
his bare skin, picked up his cudgel, recommended Michel not to let that
strange bird get out of the cabin on any account. As Michel was
convinced that the man would never walk again in his life, he received
those instructions without particular emotion.
The dawn had broken some time before Peyrol, on his way up to Escampobar
happened to look round and had the luck to actually see with his own
eyes the English man-of-war’s boat pulling out of the cove. This
confirmed his surmises but did not enlighten him a bit as to the causes.
Puzzled and uneasy, he approached the house through the farmyard.
Catherine, always the first up, stood at the open kitchen door. She
moved aside and would have let him pass without remark, if Peyrol
himself had not asked in a whisper: “Anything new?” She answered him in
the same tone: “She has taken to roaming at night.” Peyrol stole
silently up to his bedroom, from which he descended an hour later as
though he had spent all the night in his bed up there.
It was this nocturnal adventure which had affected the character of
Peyrol’s forenoon talk with the lieutenant. What with one thing and
another, he found it very trying. Now that he had got rid of Réal for
several hours, the rover had to turn his attention to that other invader
of the strained, questionable, and ominous in its origins, peace of the
Escampobar Farm. As he sat on the flat rock with his eyes fixed idly on
the few drops of blood betraying his last night’s work to the high
heaven, and trying to get hold of something definite that he could think
about, Peyrol became aware of a faint thundering noise. Faint as it was,
it filled the whole basin. He soon guessed its nature, and his face lost
its perplexity. He picked up his cudgel, got on his feet briskly,
muttering to himself, “He’s anything but dead,” and hurried on board the
tartane.
On the after-deck Michel was keeping a lookout. He had carried out the
orders he had received by the well. Besides being secured by the very
obvious padlock, the cabin door was shored up by a spar which made it
stand as firm as a rock. The thundering noise seemed to issue from its
immovable substance magically. It ceased for a moment, and a sort of
distracted continuous growling could be heard. Then the thundering began
again. Michel reported:
“This is the third time he starts this game.”
“Not much strength in this,” remarked Peyrol gravely.
“That he can do it at all is a miracle,” said Michel, showing a certain
excitement. “He stands on the ladder and beats the door with his fists.
He is getting better. He began about half an hour after I got back on
board. He drummed for a bit and then fell off the ladder. I heard him. I
had my ear against the scuttle. He lay there and talked to himself for a
long time. Then he went at it again.” Peyrol approached the scuttle
while Michel added his opinion: “He will go on like that for ever. You
can’t stop him.”
“Easy there,” said Peyrol, in a deep authoritative voice. “Time you
finish that noise.”
These words brought instantly a deathlike silence. Michel ceased to
grin. He wondered at the power of these few words of a foreign language.
Peyrol himself smiled faintly. It was ages since he had uttered a
sentence of English. He waited complacently until Michel had unbarred
and unlocked the door of the cabin. After it was thrown open he boomed
out a warning: “Stand clear!” and, turning about, went down with great
deliberation, ordering Michel to go forward and keep a lookout.
Down there the man with the bandaged head was hanging on to the table
and swearing feebly without intermission. Peyrol, after listening for a
time with an air of interested recognition, as one would to a tune heard
many years ago, stopped it by a deep-voiced:
“That will do.” After a short silence he added: “You look bien malade,
hein? What you call sick,” in a tone which if not tender was certainly
not hostile. “We will remedy that.”
“Who are you?” asked the prisoner, looking frightened and throwing his
arm up quickly to guard his head against the coming blow. But Peyrol’s
uplifted hand fell only on his shoulder in a hearty slap which made him
sit down suddenly on a locker in a partly collapsed attitude and unable
to speak. But though very much dazed, he was able to watch Peyrol open a
cupboard and produce from there a small demijohn and two tin cups. He
took heart to say plaintively: “My throat’s like tinder,” and then
suspiciously: “Was it you who broke my head?”
“It was me,” admitted Peyrol, sitting down on the opposite side of the
table and leaning back to look at his prisoner comfortably.
“What the devil did you do that for?” inquired the other with a sort of
faint fierceness which left Peyrol unmoved.
“Because you put your nose where you no business. Understand? I see you
there under the moon, penché, eating my tartane with your eyes. You
never hear me, hein?”
“I believe you walked on air. Did you mean to kill me?”
“Yes, in preference to letting you go and make a story of it on board
your cursed corvette.”
“Well then, now’s your chance to finish me. I am as weak as a kitten.”
“How did you say that? Kitten? Ha, ha, ha,” laughed Peyrol. “You make a
nice petit chat.” He seized the demijohn by the neck and filled the
mugs. “There,” he went on, pushing one towards the prisoner--“it’s good
drink--that.”
Symons’ state was as though the blow had robbed him of all power of
resistance, of all faculty of surprise and generally of all the means by
which a man may assert himself, except bitter resentment. His head was
aching, it seemed to him enormous, too heavy for his neck and as if full
of hot smoke. He took a drink under Peyrol’s fixed gaze and with
uncertain movements put down the mug. He looked drowsy for a moment.
Presently a little colour deepened his bronze; he hitched himself up on
the locker and said in a strong voice:
“You played a damned dirty trick on me. Call yourself a man, walking on
air behind a fellow’s back and felling him like a bullock.”
Peyrol nodded calmly and sipped from his mug.
“If I had met you anywhere else but looking at my tartane I would have
done nothing to you. I would have permitted you to go back to your boat.
Where was your damned boat?”
“How can I tell you? I can’t tell where I am. I’ve never been here
before. How long have I been here?”
“Oh, about fourteen hours,” said Peyrol.
“My head feels as if it would fall off if I moved,” grumbled the
other.... “You are a damned bungler, that’s what you are.”
“What for--bungler?”
“For not finishing me off at once.”
He seized the mug and emptied it down his throat. Peyrol drank too,
observing him all the time. He put the mug down with extreme gentleness
and said slowly:
“How could I know it was you? I hit hard enough to crack the skull of
any other man.”
“What do you mean? What do you know about my skull? What are you driving
at? I don’t know you, you white-headed villain, going about at night
knocking people on the head from behind. Did you do for our officer,
too?”
“Oh yes! Your officer. What was he up to? What trouble did you people
come to make here, anyhow?”
“Do you think they tell a boat’s crew? Go and ask our officer. He went
up the gully and our coxswain got the jumps. He says to me: ‘You are
lightfooted, Sam,’ says he; ‘you just creep round the head of the cove
and see if our boat can be seen across from the other side.’ Well, I
couldn’t see anything. That was all right. But I thought I would climb a
little higher amongst the rocks....”
He paused drowsily.
“That was a silly thing to do,” remarked Peyrol in an encouraging voice.
“I would’ve sooner expected to see an elephant inland than a craft lying
in a pool that seemed no bigger than my hand. Could not understand how
she got there. Couldn’t help going down to find out--and the next thing
I knew I was lying on my back with my head tied up, in a bunk in this
kennel of a cabin here. Why couldn’t you have given me a hail and
engaged me properly, yardarm to yardarm? You would have got me all the
same, because all I had in the way of weapons was the clasp-knife which
you have looted off me.”
“Up on the shelf there,” said Peyrol, looking round. “No, my friend, I
wasn’t going to take the risk of seeing you spread your wings and fly.”
“You need not have been afraid for your tartane. Our boat was after no
tartane. We wouldn’t have taken your tartane for a gift. Why, we see
them by dozens every day--those tartanes.”
Peyrol filled the two mugs again. “Ah,” he said, “I dare say you see
many tartanes, but this one is not like the others. You a sailor--and
you couldn’t see that she was something extraordinary.”
“Hellfire and gunpowder!” cried the other. “How can you expect me to
have seen anything. I just noticed that her sails were bent before your
club hit me on the head.” He raised his hands to his head and groaned.
“Oh lord, I feel as though I had been drunk for a month.”
Peyrol’s prisoner did look somewhat as though he had got his head broken
in a drunken brawl. But to Peyrol his appearance was not repulsive. The
rover preserved a tender memory of his freebooter’s life with its
lawless spirit and its spacious scene of action, before the change in
the state of affairs in the Indian Ocean, the astounding rumours from
the outer world, made him reflect on its precarious character. It was
true that he had deserted the French flag when quite a youngster; but at
that time that flag was white; and now it was a flag of three colours.
He had known the practice of liberty, equality and fraternity as
understood in the haunts, open or secret, of the Brotherhood of the
Coast. So the change, if one could believe what people talked about,
could not be very great. The rover had also his own positive notions as
to what these three words were worth. Liberty--to hold your own in the
world if you could. Equality--yes! But no body of men ever accomplished
anything without a chief. All this was worth what it was worth. He
regarded fraternity somewhat differently. Of course brothers would
quarrel amongst themselves; it was during a fierce quarrel that flamed
up suddenly in a company of Brothers that he had received the most
dangerous wound of his life. But for that Peyrol nursed no grudge
against anybody. In his view the claim of the Brotherhood was a claim
for help against the outside world. And here he was sitting opposite a
Brother whose head he had broken on sufficient grounds. There he was
across the table looking dishevelled and dazed, uncomprehending and
aggrieved, and that head of his proved as hard as ages ago when the
nickname of Testa Dura had been given to him by a Brother of Italian
origin on some occasion or other, some butting match no doubt; just as
he, Peyrol himself, was known for a time on both sides of the Mozambique
Channel as Poigne-de-Fer, after an incident when in the presence of the
Brothers he played at arm’s length with the windpipe of an obstreperous
negro sorcerer with an enormous girth of chest. The villagers brought
out food with alacrity, and the sorcerer was never the same man again.
It had been a great display.
Yes, no doubt it was Testa Dura; the young neophyte of the order (where
and how picked up Peyrol never heard), strange to the camp,
simple-minded and much impressed by the swaggering cosmopolitan company
in which he found himself. He had attached himself to Peyrol in
preference to some of his own countrymen, of whom there were several in
that band, and used to run after him like a little dog and certainly had
acted a good shipmate’s part on the occasion of that wound, which had
neither killed nor cowed Peyrol but merely had given him an opportunity
to reflect at leisure on the conduct of his own life.
The first suspicion of that amazing fact had intruded on Peyrol while he
was bandaging that head by the light of the smoky lamp. Since the fellow
still lived, it was not in Peyrol to finish him off or let him lie
unattended like a dog. And then this was a sailor. His being English was
no obstacle to the development of Peyrol’s mixed feelings in which
hatred certainly had no place. Amongst the members of the Brotherhood it
was the Englishmen whom he preferred. He had also found amongst them
that particular and loyal appreciation, which a Frenchman of character
and ability will receive from Englishmen sooner than from any other
nation. Peyrol had at times been a leader, without ever trying for it
very much, for he was not ambitious. The lead used to fall to him mostly
at a time of crisis of some sort; and when he had got the lead it was on
the Englishmen that he used to depend most.
And so that youngster had turned into this English man-of-war’s man! In
the fact itself there was nothing impossible. You found Brothers of the
Coast in all sorts of ships and in all sorts of places. Peyrol had found
one once in a very ancient and hopeless cripple practising the
profession of a beggar on the steps of Manila cathedral, and had left
him the richer by two broad gold pieces to add to his secret hoard.
There was a tale of a Brother of the Coast having become a mandarin in
China, and Peyrol believed it. One never knew where and in what position
one would find a Brother of the Coast. The wonderful thing was that
this one should have come to seek him out, to put himself in the way of
his cudgel. Peyrol’s greatest concern had been all through that Sunday
morning to conceal the whole adventure from Lieutenant Réal. As against
a wearer of epaulettes, mutual protection was the first duty between
Brothers of the Coast. The unexpectedness of that claim coming to him
after twenty years invested it with an extraordinary strength. What he
would do with the fellow he didn’t know. But since that morning the
situation had changed. Peyrol had received the lieutenant’s confidence
and had got on terms with him in a special way. He fell into profound
thought.
“Sacrée tête dure,” he muttered without rousing himself. Peyrol was
annoyed a little at not having been recognized. He could not conceive
how difficult it would have been for Symons to identify this portly
deliberate person with a white head of hair as the object of his
youthful admiration, the black-ringletted French Brother in the prime of
life of whom everybody thought so much. Peyrol was roused by hearing the
other declare suddenly:
“I am an Englishman, I am. I am not going to knuckle under to anybody.
What are you going to do with me?”
“I will do what I please,” said Peyrol, who had been asking himself
exactly the same question.
“Well, then, be quick about it, whatever it is. I don’t care a damn what
you do, but--be--quick--about it.”
He tried to be emphatic; but as a matter of fact the last words came out
in a faltering tone. And old Peyrol was touched. He thought that if he
were to let him drink the mugful standing there, it would make him dead
drunk. But he took the risk. So he said only:
“Allons--drink!” The other did not wait for a second invitation but
could not control very well the movements of his arm extended towards
the mug. Peyrol raised his on high.
“Trinquons, eh?” he proposed. But in his precarious condition the
Englishman remained unforgiving.
“I’m damned if I do,” he said indignantly, but so low that Peyrol had to
turn his ear to catch the words. “You will have to explain to me first
what you meant by knocking me on the head.”
He drank, staring all the time at Peyrol in a manner which was meant to
give offence but which struck Peyrol as so childlike that he burst into
a laugh.
“Sacré imbécile, va! Did I not tell you it was because of the tartane?
If it hadn’t been for the tartane I would have hidden from you. I would
have crouched behind a bush like a--what do you call them?--lièvre.”
The other, who was feeling the effect of the drink, stared with frank
incredulity.
“You are of no account,” continued Peyrol. “Ah! if you had been an
officer I would have gone for you anywhere. Did you say your officer
went up the gully?”
Symons sighed deeply and easily. “That’s the way he went. We had heard
on board of a house thereabouts.”
“Oh, he went to the house!” said Peyrol. “Well, if he did get there he
must be very sorry for himself. There is half a company of infantry
billeted in the farm.”
This inspired fib went down easily with the English sailor. Soldiers
were stationed in many parts of the coast as any seaman of the
blockading fleet knew very well. To the many expressions which had
passed over the face of that man recovering from a long period of
unconsciousness there was added the shade of dismay.
“What the devil have they stuck soldiers on this piece of rock for?” he
asked.
“Oh, signalling post and things like that. I am not likely to tell you
everything. Why! you might escape.”
That phrase reached the soberest spot in the whole of Symons’
individuality. Things were happening, then. Mr. Bolt was a prisoner. But
the main idea evoked in his confused mind was that he would be given up
to those soldiers before very long. The prospect of captivity made his
heart sink, and he resolved to give as much trouble as he could.
“You will have to get some of these soldiers to carry me up. I won’t
walk. I won’t. Not after having had my brains nearly knocked out from
behind. I tell you straight! I won’t walk. Not a step. They will have to
carry me ashore.”
Peyrol only shook his head deprecatingly.
“Now you go and get a corporal with a file of men,” insisted Symons
obstinately. “I want to be made a proper prisoner of. Who the devil are
you? You had no right to interfere. I believe you are a civilian. A
common marinero, whatever you may call yourself. You look to me a pretty
fishy marinero at that. Where did you learn English? In prison--eh? You
ain’t going to keep me in this damned dog-hole, on board your rubbishy
tartane. Go and get that corporal, I tell you.”
He looked suddenly very tired and only murmured: “I am an Englishman, I
am.”
Peyrol’s patience was positively angelic.
“Don’t you talk about the tartane,” he said impressively, making his
words as distinct as possible. “I told you she was not like the other
tartanes. That is because she is a courier boat. Every time she goes to
sea she makes a pied-de-nez, what you call thumb to the nose, to all
your English cruisers. I do not mind telling you because you are my
prisoner. You will soon learn French now.”
“Who are you? The caretaker of this thing or what?” asked the undaunted
Symons. But Peyrol’s mysterious silence seemed to intimidate him at
last. He became dejected and began to curse in a languid tone all boat
expeditions, the coxswain of the gig and his own infernal luck.
Peyrol sat alert and attentive like a man interested in an experiment,
while after a moment Symons’ face began to look as if he had been hit
with a club again, but not as hard as before. A film came over his round
eyes and the words “fishy marinero” made their way out of his lips in a
sort of death-bed voice. Yet such was the hardness of his head that he
actually rallied enough to address Peyrol in an ingratiating tone.
“Come, grandfather!” He tried to push the mug across the table and upset
it. “Come! Let us finish what’s in that tiny bottle of yours.”
“No,” said Peyrol, drawing the demijohn to his side of the table and
putting the cork in.
“No?” repeated Symons in an unbelieving voice and looking at the
demijohn fixedly ... “you must be a tinker.”... He tried to say
something more under Peyrol’s watchful eyes, failed once or twice, and
suddenly pronounced the word “cochon” so correctly as to make old Peyrol
start. After that it was no use looking at him any more. Peyrol busied
himself in locking up the demijohn and the mugs. When he turned round
most of the prisoner’s body was extended over the table and no sound
came from it, not even a snore.
When Peyrol got outside, pulling to the door of the cuddy behind him,
Michel hastened from forward to receive the master’s orders. But Peyrol
stood so long on the after-deck meditating profoundly with his hand over
his mouth that Michel became fidgety and ventured a cheerful: “It looks
as if he were not going to die.”
“He is dead,” said Peyrol with grim jocularity. “Dead drunk. And you
very likely will not see me till to-morrow sometime.”
“But what am I to do?” asked Michel timidly.
“Nothing,” said Peyrol. “Of course you must not let him set fire to the
tartane.”
“But suppose,” insisted Michel, “he should give signs of escaping.”
“If you see him trying to escape,” said Peyrol with mock solemnity,
“then, Michel, it will be a sign for you to get out of his way as
quickly as you can. A man who would try to escape with a head like this
on him would just swallow you at one mouthful.”
He picked up his cudgel and, stepping ashore, went off without as much
as a look at his faithful henchman. Michel listened to him scrambling
amongst the stones, and his habitual amiably vacant face acquired a sort
of dignity from the utter and absolute blankness that came over it.
X
It was only after reaching the level ground in front of the farmhouse
that Peyrol took time to pause and resume his contact with the exterior
world.
While he had been closeted with his prisoner the sky had got covered
with a thin layer of cloud, in one of those swift changes of weather
that are not unusual in the Mediterranean. This grey vapour, drifting
high up, close against the disc of the sun, seemed to enlarge the space
behind its veil, add to the vastness of a shadowless world no longer
hard and brilliant but all softened in the contours of its masses and in
the faint line of the horizon, as if ready to dissolve in the immensity
of the infinite.
Familiar and indifferent to his eyes, material and shadowy, the extent
of the changeable sea had gone pale under the pale sun in a mysterious
and emotional response. Mysterious too was the great oval patch of dark
water to the west; and also a broad blue lane traced on the dull silver
of the waters in a parabolic curve described magistrally by an invisible
finger for a symbol of endless wandering. The face of the farmhouse
might have been the face of a house from which all the inhabitants had
fled suddenly. In the high part of the building the window of the
lieutenant’s room remained open, both glass and shutter. By the door of
the salle the stable fork leaning against the wall seemed to have been
forgotten by the sans-culotte. This aspect of abandonment struck Peyrol
with more force than usual. He had been thinking so hard of all these
people, that to find no one about seemed unnatural and even depressing.
He had seen many abandoned places in his life, grass huts, mud forts,
kings’ palaces--temples from which every white-robed soul had fled.
Temples, however, never looked quite empty. The gods clung to their own.
Peyrol’s eyes rested on the bench against the wall of the salle. In the
usual course of things it should have been occupied by the lieutenant,
who had the habit of sitting there with hardly a movement, for hours,
like a spider watching for the coming of a fly. This paralysing
comparison held Peyrol motionless with a twisted mouth and a frown on
his brow, before the evoked vision, coloured and precise, of the man,
more troubling than the reality had ever been.
He came to himself with a start. What sort of occupation was this, ‘cré
nom de nom, staring at a silly bench with no one on it. Was he going
wrong in his head? Or was it that he was getting really old? He had
noticed old men losing themselves like that. But he had something to do.
First of all he had to go and see what the English sloop in the Passe
was doing.
While he was making his way towards the lookout on the hill where the
inclined pine hung peering over the cliff as if an insatiable curiosity
were holding it in that precarious position, Peyrol had another view
from above of the farmyard and of the buildings and was again affected
by their deserted appearance. Not a soul, not even an animal seemed to
have been left; only on the roofs the pigeons walked with smart
elegance. Peyrol hurried on and presently saw the English ship well over
on the Porquerolles side with her yards braced up and her head to the
southward. There was a little wind in the Passe, while the dull silver
of the open had a darkling rim of rippled water far away to the east in
that quarter where, far or near, but mostly out of sight, the British
fleet kept its endless watch. Not a shadow of a spar or gleam of sail on
the horizon betrayed its presence; but Peyrol would not have been
surprised to see a crowd of ships surge up, people the horizon with
hostile life, come in running, and dot the sea with their ordered groups
all about Cape Cicié, parading their damned impudence. Then indeed that
corvette, the big factor of everyday life on that stretch of coast,
would become very small potatoes indeed; and the man in command of her
(he had been Peyrol’s personal adversary in many imaginary encounters
fought to a finish in the room upstairs)--then indeed that Englishman
would have to mind his steps. He would be ordered to come within hail of
the admiral, be sent here and there, made to run like a little dog and
as likely as not get called on board the flagship and get a dressing
down for something or other.
Peyrol thought for a moment that the impudence of this Englishman was
going to take the form of running along the peninsula and looking into
the very cove; for the corvette’s head was falling off slowly. A fear
for his tartane clutched Peyrol’s heart till he remembered that the
Englishman did not know of her existence. Of course not. His cudgel had
been absolutely effective in stopping that bit of information. The only
Englishman who knew of the existence of the tartane was that fellow
with the broken head. Peyrol actually laughed at his momentary scare.
Moreover, it was evident that the Englishman did not mean to parade in
front of the peninsula. He did not mean to be impudent. The sloop’s
yards were swung right round and she came again to the wind but now
heading to the northward back from where she came. Peyrol saw at once
that the Englishman meant to pass to windward of Cape Esterel, probably
with the intention of anchoring for the night off the long white beach
which in a regular curve closes the roadstead of Hyères on that side.
Peyrol pictured her to himself, on the clouded night, not so very dark,
since the full moon was but a day old, lying at anchor within hail of
the low shore, with her sails furled and looking profoundly asleep, but
with the watch on deck lying by the guns. He gnashed his teeth. It had
come to this at last, that the captain of the _Amelia_ could do nothing
with his ship without putting Peyrol into a rage. Oh, for forty
Brothers, or sixty, picked ones, he thought, to teach the fellow what it
might cost him taking liberties along the French coast! Ships had been
carried by surprise before, on nights when there was just light enough
to see the whites of each other’s eyes in a close tussle. And what would
be the crew of that Englishman? Something between ninety and a hundred
altogether, boys and landsmen included.... Peyrol shook his fist for a
good-bye, just when Cape Esterel shut off the English sloop from his
sight. But in his heart of hearts that seaman of cosmopolitan
associations knew very well that no forty or sixty, not any given
hundred Brothers of the Coast would have been enough to capture that
corvette making herself at home within ten miles of where he had first
opened his eyes to the world.
He shook his head dismally at the leaning pine, his only companion. The
disinherited soul of that rover ranging for so many years a lawless
ocean with the coasts of two continents for a raiding ground, had come
back to its crag, circling like a seabird in the dusk and longing for a
great sea victory for its people: that inland multitude of which Peyrol
knew nothing except the few individuals on that peninsula cut off from
the rest of the land by the dead water of a salt lagoon; and where only
a strain of manliness in a miserable cripple and an unaccountable charm
of a half-crazed woman had found response in his heart.
This scheme of false dispatches was but a detail in a plan for a great,
a destructive victory. Just a detail, but not a trifle all the same.
Nothing connected with the deception of an admiral could be called
trifling. And such an admiral too. It was, Peyrol felt vaguely, a scheme
that only a confounded landsman would invent. It behoved the sailors,
however, to make a workable thing of it. It would have to be worked
through that corvette.
And here Peyrol was brought up by the question that all his life had not
been able to settle for him--and that was whether the English were
really very stupid or very acute. That difficulty had presented itself
with every fresh case. The old rover had enough genius in him to have
arrived at a general conclusion that if they were to be deceived at all
it could not be done very well by words but rather by deeds; not by mere
wriggling, but by deep craft concealed under some sort of
straightforward action. That conviction, however, did not take him
forward in this case, which was one in which much thinking would be
necessary.
The _Amelia_ had disappeared behind Cape Esterel, and Peyrol wondered
with a certain anxiety whether this meant that the Englishman had given
up his man for good. “If he has,” said Peyrol to himself, “I am bound to
see him pass out again from beyond Cape Esterel before it gets dark.”
If, however, he did not see the ship again within the next hour or two,
then she would be anchored off the beach, to wait for the night before
making some attempt to discover what had become of her man. This could
be done only by sending out one or two boats to explore the coast, and
no doubt to enter the cove--perhaps even to land a small search party.
After coming to this conclusion Peyrol began deliberately to charge his
pipe. Had he spared a moment for a glance inland, he might have caught a
whisk of a black skirt, the gleam of a white fichu--Arlette running down
the faint track leading from Escampobar to the village in the hollow;
the same track in fact up which Citizen Scevola, while indulging in the
strange freak to visit the church, had been chased by the incensed
faithful. But Peyrol, while charging and lighting his pipe, had kept his
eyes fastened on Cape Esterel. Then, throwing his arm affectionately
over the trunk of the pine, he had settled himself to watch. Far below
him the roadstead, with its play of grey and bright gleams, looked like
a plaque of mother-of-pearl in a frame of yellow rocks and dark green
ravines set off inland by the masses of the hills displaying the tint of
the finest purple; while above his head the sun behind a cloud-veil hung
like a silver disc.
That afternoon, after waiting in vain for Lieutenant Réal to appear
outside in the usual way, Arlette, the mistress of Escampobar, had gone
unwillingly into the kitchen where Catherine sat upright in a heavy
capacious wooden arm-chair, the back of which rose above the top of her
white muslin cap. Even in her old age, even in her hours of ease,
Catherine preserved the upright carriage of the family that had held
Escampobar for so many generations. It would have been easy to believe
that like some characters famous in the world Catherine would have
wished to die standing up and with unbowed shoulders.
With her sense of hearing undecayed she detected the light footsteps in
the salle long before Arlette entered the kitchen. That woman, who had
faced alone and unaided (except for her brother’s comprehending silence)
the anguish of passion in a forbidden love, and of terrors comparable to
those of the Judgment Day, neither turned her face, quiet without
serenity, nor her eyes, fearless but without fire, in the direction of
her niece.
Arlette glanced on all sides, even at the walls, even at the mound of
ashes under the big overmantel, nursing in its heart a spark of fire,
before she sat down and leaned her elbow on the table.
“You wander about like a soul in pain,” said her aunt, sitting by the
hearth like an old queen on her throne.
“And you sit here eating your heart out.”
“Formerly,” remarked Catherine, “old women like me could always go over
their prayers, but now....”
“I believe you have not been to church for years. I remember Scevola
telling me that a long time ago. Was it because you didn’t like
people’s eyes? I have fancied sometimes that most people in the world
must have been massacred long ago.”
Catherine turned her face away. Arlette rested her head on her
half-closed hand, and her eyes, losing their steadiness, began to
tremble amongst cruel visions. She got up suddenly and caressed the
thin, half-averted, withered cheek with the tips of her fingers, and in
a low voice, with that marvellous cadence that plucked at one’s
heart-strings, she said coaxingly:
“Those were dreams, weren’t they?”
In her immobility the old woman called with all the might of her will
for the presence of Peyrol. She had never been able to shake off a
superstitious fear of that niece restored to her from the terrors of a
Judgment Day in which the world had been given over to the devils. She
was always afraid that this girl, wandering about with restless eyes and
a dim smile on her silent lips, would suddenly say something atrocious,
unfit to be heard, calling for vengeance from heaven, unless Peyrol were
by. That stranger come from “par delà les mers” was out of it
altogether, cared probably for no one in the world but had struck her
imagination by his massive aspect, his deliberation suggesting a mighty
force like the reposeful attitude of a lion. Arlette desisted from
caressing the irresponsive cheek, exclaimed petulantly, “I am awake
now!” and went out of the kitchen without having asked her aunt the
question she had meant to ask, which was whether she knew what had
become of the lieutenant.
Her heart had failed her. She let herself drop on the bench outside the
door of the salle. “What is the matter with them all?” she thought. “I
can’t make them out. What wonder is it that I have not been able to
sleep?” Even Peyrol, so different from all mankind, who from the first
moment when he stood before her had the power to soothe her aimless
unrest, even Peyrol would now sit for hours with the lieutenant on the
bench, gazing into the air and keeping him in talk about things without
sense, as if on purpose to prevent him from thinking of her. Well, he
could not do that. But the enormous change implied in the fact that
every day had a to-morrow now, and that all the people around her had
ceased to be mere phantoms for her wandering glances to glide over
without concern, made her feel the need of support from somebody, from
somewhere. She could have cried aloud for it.
She sprang up and walked along the whole front of the farm building. At
the end of the wall enclosing the orchard she called out in a modulated
undertone: “Eugène,” not because she hoped that the lieutenant was
anywhere within earshot, but for the pleasure of hearing the sound of
the name uttered for once above a whisper. She turned about and at the
end of the wall on the yard side she repeated her call, drinking in the
sound that came from her lips, “Eugène, Eugène,” with a sort of
half-exulting despair. It was in such dizzy moments that she wanted a
steadying support. But all was still. She heard no friendly murmur, not
even a sigh. Above her head under the thin grey sky a big mulberry-tree
stirred no leaf. Step by step, as if unconsciously, she began to move
down the track. At the end of fifty yards she opened the inland view,
the roofs of the village between the green tops of the platanes
overshadowing the fountain, and just beyond the flat blue-grey level of
the salt lagoon, smooth and dull like a slab of lead. But what drew her
on was the church-tower, where, in a round arch, she could see the black
speck of the bell which, escaping the requisitions of the Republican
wars, and dwelling mute above the locked-up empty church, had only
lately recovered its voice. She ran on, but when she had come near
enough to make out the figures moving about the village fountain, she
checked herself, hesitated a moment and then took the footpath leading
to the presbytery.
She pushed open the little gate with the broken latch. The humble
building of rough stones, from between which much mortar had crumbled
out, looked as though it had been sinking slowly into the ground. The
beds of the plot in front were choked with weeds, because the abbé had
no taste for gardening. When the heiress of Escampobar opened the door,
he was walking up and down the largest room which was his bedroom and
sitting-room and where he also took his meals. He was a gaunt man with a
long, as if convulsed, face. In his young days he had been tutor to the
sons of a great noble, but he did not emigrate with his employer.
Neither did he submit to the Republic. He had lived in his native land
like a hunted wild beast, and there had been many tales of his
activities, warlike and others. When the hierarchy was re-established he
found no favour in the eyes of his superiors. He had remained too much
of a royalist. He had accepted, without a word, the charge of this
miserable parish, where he had acquired influence quickly enough. His
sacerdotalism lay in him like a cold passion. Though accessible enough,
he never walked abroad without his breviary, acknowledging the solemnly
bared heads by a curt nod. He was not exactly feared, but some of the
oldest inhabitants who remembered the previous incumbent, an old man who
died in the garden after having been dragged out of bed by some patriots
anxious to take him to prison in Hyères, jerked their heads sideways in
a knowing manner when their curé was mentioned.
On seeing this apparition in an Arlesian cap and silk skirt, a white
fichu, and otherwise as completely different as any princess could be
from the rustics with whom he was in daily contact, his face expressed
the blankest astonishment. Then--for he knew enough of the gossip of his
community--his straight, thick eyebrows came together inimically. This
was no doubt the woman of whom he had heard his parishioners talk with
bated breath as having given herself and her property up to a Jacobin, a
Toulon sans-culotte who had either delivered her parents to execution or
had murdered them himself during the first three days of massacres. No
one was very sure which it was, but the rest was current knowledge. The
abbé, though persuaded that any amount of moral turpitude was possible
in a godless country, had not accepted all that tale literally. No doubt
those people were Republican and impious, and the state of affairs up
there was scandalous and horrible. He struggled with his feelings of
repulsion and managed to smooth his brow and waited. He could not
imagine what that woman with mature form and a youthful face could want
at the presbytery. Suddenly it occurred to him that perhaps she wanted
to thank him--it was a very old occurrence--for interposing between the
fury of the villagers and that man. He couldn’t call him, even in his
thoughts, her husband, for apart from all other circumstances, that
connection could not imply any kind of marriage to a priest, had even
there been a legal form observed. His visitor was apparently
disconcerted by the expression of his face, the austere aloofness of his
attitude, and only a low murmur escaped her lips. He bent his head and
was not very certain what he had heard.
“You come to seek my aid?” he asked in a doubting tone.
She nodded slightly, and the abbé went to the door she had left half
open and looked out. There was not a soul in sight between the
presbytery and the village, or between the presbytery and the church. He
went back to face her, saying:
“We are as alone as we can well be. The old woman in the kitchen is as
deaf as a post.”
Now that he had been looking at Arlette closer the abbé felt a sort of
dread. The carmine of those lips, the pellucid, unstained, unfathomable
blackness of those eyes, the pallor of her cheeks, suggested to him
something provokingly pagan, something distastefully different from the
common sinners of this earth. And now she was ready to speak. He
arrested her with a raised hand.
“Wait,” he said. “I have never seen you before. I don’t even know
properly who you are. None of you belong to my flock--for you are from
Escampobar, are you not?” Sombre under their bony arches, his eyes
fastened on her face, noticed the delicacy of features, the naïve
pertinacity of her stare. She said:
“I am the daughter.”
“The daughter!... Oh! I see.... Much evil is spoken of you.”
She said a little impatiently: “By that rabble?” and the priest remained
mute for a moment. “What do they say? In my father’s time they wouldn’t
have dared to say anything. The only thing I saw of them for years and
years was when they were yelping like curs on the heels of Scevola.”
The absence of scorn in her tone was perfectly annihilating. Gentle
sounds flowed from her lips and a disturbing charm from her strange
equanimity. The abbé frowned heavily at these fascinations, which seemed
to have in them something diabolic.
“They are simple souls, neglected, fallen back into darkness. It isn’t
their fault. But they have natural feelings of humanity which were
outraged. I saved him from their indignation. There are things that must
be left to divine justice.”
He was exasperated by the unconsciousness of that fair face.
“That man whose name you have just pronounced and which I have heard
coupled with the epithet of blood-drinker is regarded as the master of
Escampobar Farm. He has been living there for years. How is that?”
“Yes, it is a long time ago since he brought me back to the house. Years
ago. Catherine let him stay.”
“Who is Catherine?” the abbé asked harshly.
“She is my father’s sister who was left at home to wait. She had given
up all hope of seeing any of us again, when one morning Scevola came
with me to the door. Then she let him stay. He is a poor creature. What
else could Catherine have done? And what is it to us up there how the
people in the village regard him?” She dropped her eyes and seemed to
fall into deep thought, then added, “It was only later that I discovered
that he was a poor creature, even quite lately. They call him
blood-drinker, do they? What of that? All the time he was afraid of his
own shadow.”
She ceased but did not raise her eyes.
“You are no longer a child,” began the abbé in a severe voice, frowning
at her downcast eyes, and he heard a murmur: “Not very long.” He
disregarded it and continued: “I ask you, is this all that you have to
tell me about that man? I hope that at least you are no hypocrite.”
“Monsieur l’Abbé,” she said, raising her eyes fearlessly, “what more am
I to tell you about him? I can tell you things that will make your hair
stand on end, but it wouldn’t be about him.”
For all answer the abbé made a weary gesture and turned away to walk up
and down the room. His face expressed neither curiosity nor pity, but a
sort of repugnance which he made an effort to overcome. He dropped into
a deep and shabby old arm-chair, the only object of luxury in the room,
and pointed to a wooden straight-backed stool. Arlette sat down on it
and began to speak. The abbé listened, but looking far away; his big
bony hands rested on the arms of the chair. After the first words he
interrupted her: “This is your own story you are telling me?”
“Yes,” said Arlette.
“Is it necessary that I should know?”
“Yes, Monsieur l’Abbé.”
“But why?”
He bent his head a little, without, however, ceasing to look far away.
Her voice now was very low. Suddenly the abbé threw himself back.
“You want to tell me your story because you have fallen in love with a
man?”
“No, because that has brought me back to myself. Nothing else could have
done it.”
He turned his head to look at her grimly, but he said nothing and looked
away again. He listened. At the beginning he muttered once or twice,
“Yes, I have heard that,” and then kept silent, not looking at her at
all. Once he interrupted her by a question: “You were confirmed before
the convent was forcibly entered and the nuns dispersed?”
“Yes,” she said, “a year before that or more.”
“And then two of those ladies took you with them towards Toulon.”
“Yes, the other girls had their relations near by. They took me with
them thinking to communicate with my parents, but it was difficult. Then
the English came and my parents sailed over to try and get some news of
me. It was safe for my father to be in Toulon then. Perhaps you think
that he was a traitor to his country?” she asked, and waited with parted
lips. With an impassible face the abbé murmured: “He was a good
royalist,” in a tone of bitter fatalism, which seemed to absolve that
man and all the other men of whose actions and errors he had ever heard.
For a long time, Arlette continued, her father could not discover the
house where the nuns had taken refuge. He only obtained some information
on the very day before the English evacuated Toulon. Late in the day he
appeared before her and took her away. The town was full of retreating
foreign troops. Her father left her with her mother and went out again
to make preparations for sailing home that very night; but the tartane
was no longer in the place where he had left her lying. The two Madrague
men that he had for a crew had disappeared also. Thus the family was
trapped in that town full of tumult and confusion. Ships and houses were
bursting into flames. Appalling explosions of gunpowder shook the earth.
She spent that night on her knees with her face hidden in her mother’s
lap, while her father kept watch by the barricaded door with a pistol in
each hand.
In the morning the house was filled with savage yells. People were heard
rushing up the stairs, and the door was burst in. She jumped up at the
crash and flung herself down on her knees in a corner with her face to
the wall. There was a murderous uproar, she heard two shots fired, then
somebody seized her by the arm and pulled her up to her feet. It was
Scevola. He dragged her to the door. The bodies of her father and mother
were lying across the doorway. The room was full of gunpowder smoke. She
wanted to fling herself on the bodies and cling to them, but Scevola
took her under the arms and lifted her over them. He seized her hand and
made her run with him, or rather dragged her downstairs. Outside on the
pavement some dreadful men and many fierce women with knives joined
them. They ran along the streets brandishing pikes and sabres, pursuing
other groups of unarmed people, who fled round corners with loud
shrieks.
“I ran in the midst of them, Monsieur l’Abbé,” Arlette went on in a
breathless murmur. “Whenever I saw any water I wanted to throw myself
into it, but I was surrounded on all sides, I was jostled and pushed and
most of the time Scevola held my hand very tight. When they stopped at a
wine shop they would offer me some wine. My tongue stuck to the roof of
my mouth and I drank. The wine, the pavements, the arms and faces,
everything was red. I had red splashes all over me. I had to run with
them all day, and all the time I felt as if I were falling down, and
down, and down. The houses were nodding at me. The sun would go out at
times. And suddenly I heard myself yelling exactly like the others. Do
you understand, Monsieur l’Abbé? The very same words!”
The eyes of the priest in their deep orbits glided towards her and then
resumed their far-away fixity. Between his fatalism and his faith he was
not very far from the belief of Satan taking possession of rebellious
mankind, exposing the nakedness of hearts like flint and of the
homicidal souls of the Revolution.
“I have heard something of that,” he whispered stealthily.
She affirmed with quiet earnestness: “Yet at that time I resisted with
all my might.”
That night Scevola put her under the care of a woman called Perose. She
was young and pretty, and was a native of Arles, her mother’s country.
She kept an inn. That woman locked her up in her own room, which was
next to the room where the patriots kept on shouting, singing and making
speeches far into the night. Several times the woman would look in for a
moment, make a hopeless gesture at her with both arms, and vanish again.
Later, on many other nights, when all the band lay asleep on benches
and on the floor, Perose would steal into the room, fall on her knees by
the bed on which Arlette sat upright, open-eyed and raving silently to
herself, embrace her feet and cry herself to sleep. But in the morning
she would jump up briskly and say: “Come. The great affair is to keep
our life in our bodies. Come along to help in the work of justice”; and
they would join the band that was making ready for another day of
traitor-hunting. But after a time the victims, of which the streets were
full at first, had to be sought for in back yards, ferreted out of their
hiding-places, dragged up out of the cellars or down from the garrets of
the houses, which would be entered by the band with howls of death and
vengeance.
“Then, Monsieur l’Abbé,” said Arlette, “I let myself go at last. I could
resist no longer. I said to myself: ‘If it is so then it must be right.’
But most of the time I was like a person half asleep and dreaming things
that it is impossible to believe. About that time, I don’t know why, the
woman Perose hinted to me that Scevola was a poor creature. Next night,
while all the band lay fast asleep in the big room, Perose and Scevola
helped me out of the window into the street and led me to the quay
behind the arsenal. Scevola had found our tartane lying at the pontoon
and one of the Madrague men with her. The other had disappeared. Perose
fell on my neck and cried a little. She gave me a kiss and said: ‘My
time will come soon. You, Scevola, don’t you show yourself in Toulon,
because nobody believes in you any more. Adieu, Arlette. Vive la
Nation!’ and she vanished in the night. I waited on the pontoon
shivering in my torn clothes, listening to Scevola and the man throwing
dead bodies overboard out of the tartane. Splash, splash, splash. And
suddenly I felt I must run away, but they were after me in a moment,
dragged me back and threw me down into that cabin which smelt of blood.
But when I got back to the farm all feeling had left me. I did not feel
myself exist. I saw things round me here and there, but I couldn’t look
at anything for long. Something was gone out of me. I know now that it
was not my heart, but then I didn’t mind what it was. I felt light and
empty, and a little cold all the time, but I could smile at people.
Nothing could matter. Nothing could mean anything. I cared for no one. I
wanted nothing. I wasn’t alive at all, Monsieur l’Abbé. People seemed to
see me and would talk to me, and it seemed funny--till one day I felt my
heart beat.”
“Why precisely did you come to me with this tale?” asked the abbé in a
low voice.
“Because you are a priest. Have you forgotten that I have been brought
up in a convent? I have not forgotten how to pray. But I am afraid of
the world now. What must I do?”
“Repent!” thundered the abbé, getting up. He saw her candid gaze
uplifted, and lowered his voice forcibly. “You must look with fearless
sincerity into the darkness of your soul. Remember whence the only true
help can come. Those whom God has visited by a trial such as yours
cannot be held guiltless of their enormities. Withdraw from the world.
Descend within yourself and abandon the vain thoughts of what people
call happiness. Be an example to yourself of the sinfulness of our
nature and of the weakness of our humanity. You may have been
possessed. What do I know? Perhaps it was permitted in order to lead
your soul to saintliness through a life of seclusion and prayer. To that
it would be my duty to help you. Meantime you must pray to be given
strength for a complete renunciation.”
Arlette, lowering her eyes slowly, appealed to the abbé as a symbolic
figure of spiritual mystery. “What can be God’s designs on this
creature?” he asked himself.
“Monsieur le Curé,” she said quietly, “I felt the need to pray to-day
for the first time in many years. When I left home it was only to go to
your church.”
“The church stands open to the worst of sinners,” said the abbé.
“I know. But I would have had to pass before all those villagers: and
you, Abbé, know well what they are capable of.”
“Perhaps,” murmured the abbé, “it would be better not to put their
charity to the test.”
“I must pray before I go back again. I thought you would let me come in
through the sacristy.”
“It would be inhuman to refuse your request,” he said, rousing himself
and taking down a key that hung on the wall. He put on his broad-brimmed
hat and without a word led the way through the wicket-gate and along the
path which he always used himself and which was out of sight of the
village fountain. After they had entered the damp and dilapidated
sacristy he locked the door behind them and only then opened another, a
smaller one, leading into the church. When he stood aside, Arlette
became aware of the chilly odour as of freshly turned-up earth mingled
with a faint scent of incense. In the deep dusk of the nave a single
little flame glimmered before an image of the Virgin. The abbé
whispered as she passed on:
“There before the great altar abase yourself and pray for grace and
strength and mercy in this world full of crimes against God and men.”
She did not look at him. Through the thin soles of her shoes she could
feel the chill of the flagstones. The abbé left the door ajar, sat down
on a rush-bottomed chair, the only one in the sacristy, folded his arms
and let his chin fall on his breast. He seemed to be sleeping
profoundly, but at the end of half an hour he got up and, going to the
doorway, stood looking at the kneeling figure sunk low on the altar
steps. Arlette’s face was buried in her hands in a passion of piety and
prayer. The abbé waited patiently for a good many minutes more, before
he raised his voice in a grave murmur which filled the whole dark place.
“It is time for you to leave. I am going to ring for vespers.”
The view of her complete absorption before the Most High had touched
him. He stepped back into the sacristy and after a time heard the
faintest possible swish of the black silk skirt of the Escampobar
daughter in her Arlesian costume. She entered the sacristy lightly with
shining eyes, and the abbé looked at her with some emotion.
“You have prayed well, my daughter,” he said. “No forgiveness will be
refused to you, for you have suffered much. Put your trust in the grace
of God.”
She raised her head and stayed her footsteps for a moment. In the dark
little place he could see the gleam of her eyes swimming in tears.
“Yes, Monsieur l’Abbé,” she said in her clear seductive voice. “I have
prayed and I feel answered. I entreated the merciful God to keep the
heart of the man I love always true to me or else to let me die before I
set my eyes on him again.”
The abbé paled under his tan of a village priest and leaned his
shoulders against the wall without a word.