A Village of Vagabonds Part 26

Le Bour sprang past him and confronted us.

"_Eh ben_, my fine gentlemen," he snarled, "you'll not get away so easily. I demand, in the name of the law, your hunting permits. Come, _allons_! All of you!"

At the same instant he tore open his blouse and displayed, to our dismay, an oval bra.s.s plaque bearing his name and the number 1247.

"There!" cried the old man, white and trembling with rage. "There's my full commission as guard."

My companion with the gloves next to me fidgeted nervously and coughed.

I saw the Vicomte turn a little pale. Tanrade shrugged his shoulders.

Monsieur le Cure's face wore an expression of dignified gravity. Not once, however, had Le Bour's eyes met his own. It was evident that he reverently excluded the cure from the affair.

The Vicomte looked uncomfortable enough. The truth was, he was not known to be at the hunt. The Vicomtesse was shrewd when it came to the question of his whereabouts. A _proces-verbal_ meant publicity; naturally the Vicomtesse would know. It might even reach the adorable ears of Mademoiselle Rosalie, of the _corps de ballet_, who imagined the Vicomte safe with his family. The Baron was fuming, but he did not speak.

"Your permits!" reiterated Le Bour, flouris.h.i.+ng his license.

There was an awkward silence; not a few in the party had left their permits at home.

"_Pouf!_" exclaimed the Baron. "Enough of this! _En route_, my friends!"

"_Eh, bien!_" growled the farmer. "You refuse to produce your permits on demand of a guard. It shall be stated," he threatened, "in the _proces-verbal_." Then Le Bour turned on his muddy heel and launched a parting volley at the Baron denouncing his chateau and everything connected with him.

"Do not forget the time you stole the ducks of my uncle," cried the Baron, shaking a clenched fist at the old man, "or the morning--" But his words were lost on Le Bour, who had disappeared in the hedge.

By eleven-thirty we had killed some two dozen birds and three hares; and as we were now stricken with "the appet.i.te of the wolf," we turned back to the chateau for breakfast.

Here a sponge and a rub-down sent us in gay spirits down to the billiard-room, where a bottle of port was in waiting--a rare bottle for particular occasions. It was "the last of a dozen," explained the Baron as we touched gla.s.ses, sent to the chateau by Napoleon in payment for a night's lodging during one of his campaigns. "The very time, in fact,"

he added, "when the little towers lost their tops."

Under the spell of the Emperor's port the Vicomte regained his nerves, and even the unpleasant incident of the morning was half forgotten while the piano in the historic salon rang merrily under Tanrade's touch until we filed in to luncheon.

It was as every French shooting-luncheon is intended to be--a pleasant little fete full of good cheer and understanding; the good soup, the decanters of Burgundy, the clean red-and-white checkered napkins and cloth, the heavy family silver, the noiseless old servants--and what an appet.i.te we had! What a _souffle_ of potatoes, and such chicken smothered in cream! And always the "good kind wine," until the famous cheese that Tanrade had waked up Pont du Sable in procuring was pa.s.sed quickly and went out to the pantry, never to return. Ah, yes! And the warm champagne without which no French breakfast is complete.

Over the coffee and liqueurs, the talk ran naturally to gallantry.

"Ah, _les femmes_! The memories," as the Baron had said.

"You should have seen Babette Deslys five years ago," remarked one of our jolly company when the Baron had left the room in search of some milder cigars.

I saw the Vicomte raise his eyebrows in subtle warning to the speaker, who, like myself, knew the Baron but slightly. If he was treading upon delicate ground he was unconscious of it, this _bon vivant_ of a Parisian; for he continued rapidly in his enthusiasm, despite a second hopeless attempt of the Vicomte to check him.

"You should have seen Babette in the burlesque as Phryne at the Varietes--_une merveille, mon cher!_" he exclaimed, addressing the sous-lieutenant on his right, and he blew a kiss to the ceiling. "The complexion of a rosebud and amusing! Ah--la! la!"

"I hear her debts ran close to a million," returned the lieutenant.

"She was feather-brained," continued the _bon vivant_, with a blase shrug. "She was a good little quail with more heart than head! Poor Babette!"

"Take care!" cautioned the Vicomte pointblank, as the Baron re-entered with the box of milder Havanas.

And thus the talk ran on among these men of the world who knew Paris as well as their pockets; and so many Babettes and Francines and other careless little celebrities whose beauty and extravagance had turned peace and tranquillity into ruin and chaos.

At last the jolly breakfast came to an end. We rose, recovered our guns from the billiard-table, and with fresh courage went forth again into the fields to shoot until sunset. During the afternoon we again saw Le Bour, but he kept at a safe distance watching our movements with muttered oaths and a vengeful eye, while we added some twenty-odd partridges to the morning's score.

Toward the end of the afternoon, a week later, at Pont du Sable, Tanrade and the cure sat smoking under my sketching-umbrella on the marsh. The cure is far from a bad painter. His unfinished sketch of the distant strip of sea and dunes lay at my feet as I worked on my own canvas while the sunset lasted.

Tanrade was busy between puffs of his pipe in transposing various pa.s.sages in his latest score. Now and then he would hesitate, finger the carefully thought out bar on his knee, and again his stub of a pencil would fly on through a maze of hieroglyphics that were to the cure and myself wholly unintelligible.

Suddenly the cure looked up, his keen gaze rivetted upon two dots of figures on bicycles speeding rapidly toward us along the path skirting the marsh.

"h.e.l.lo!" exclaimed the cure, and he gave a low whistle. "The gendarmes!"

There was no mistaking their ident.i.ty; their gold stripes and white duck trousers appeared distinctly against the tawny marsh.

The next moment they dismounted, left their wheels on the path, and came slowly across the desert of wire-gra.s.s toward us.

"_Diable!_" muttered Tanrade, under his breath, and instantly our minds reverted to Le Bour.

The two officials of the law were before us.

"We regret to disturb you, messieurs," began the taller of the two pleasantly as he extracted a note-book from a leather case next to his revolver. "But"--and he shrugged his military shoulders--"it is for the little affair at Hirondelette."

"Which one of us is elected?" asked Tanrade grimly.

"Ah! _Bon Dieu!_" returned the tall one; half apologetically. "A _proces-verbal_ unfortunately for you, Monsieur Tanrade. Read the charge," he said to the short one, who had now unfolded a paper, cleared his throat, and began to read in a monotonous tone.

"Monsieur Gaston Emile Le Bour, agriculturist at Hirondelette, charges Monsieur Charles Louis Ernest Tanrade, born in Paris, soldier of the Thirteenth Infantry, musician, composer, with flagrant trespa.s.s in his buckwheat on hectare number seven, armed with the gun of percussion on the thirtieth of September at ten-forty-five in the morning."

"I was _not_ in his _sacre_ buckwheat!" declared Tanrade, and he described the entire incident of the morning.

"Take monsieur's denial in detail," commanded the tall one.

His companion produced a small bottle of ink and began to write slowly with a scratchy pen, while we stood in silence.

"Kindly add your signature, monsieur," said the tall one, when the bottle was again recorked.

Tanrade signed.

The gendarmes gravely saluted and were about to withdraw when Tanrade asked if he was "the only unfortunate on the list."

"Ah, _non_!" confessed the tall one. "There is a similar charge against Monsieur le Vicomte--we have just called upon him. Also against Monsieur le Baron."

"And what did they say?"

"_Eh bien_, monsieur, a general denial, just as monsieur has made."

"The affair is ridiculous," exclaimed Tanrade hotly.