A Village of Vagabonds Part 28

"It is the bell of Ste. Marie," returned the cure.

Even Tanrade was silent now, for his reverence had made the sign of the cross. As his fingers moved I saw a peculiar look come into his eyes--a look of mingled disappointment and resignation.

Again Alice spoke: "Your cracked bell at Pont du Sable has not long to ring, my friend," she said very tenderly.

"One must be content, my child, with what one has," replied the cure.

Alice leaned towards him and whispered something in his ear, Germaine smiling the while.

I saw his reverence give a little start of surprise.

"No, no," he protested half aloud. "Not that; it is too much to ask of you with all your rehearsals at the Bouffes Parisiennes coming."

"_Parbleu!_" exclaimed Alice, "it will not be so very difficult--I shall accomplish it, you shall see what a concert we shall give--we shall make a lot of money; every one will be there. It has the voice of a frog, your bell. _Dieu!_ What a fuss it makes over its crack. You shall have a new one--two new ones, _mon ami_, even if we have to make bigger the belfry of your little gray church to hang them."

The cure grew quite red. I saw for an instant his eyes fill with tears, then with a benign smile, he laid his hand firmly over Alice's and lifting the tips of her fingers, kissed them twice in gratefulness.

He was very happy. He was happy all the way back in Germaine's yellow car to Pont du Sable. Happy when he thrust his heavy key in the rusty lock of the small door that let him into his silent garden, cool under the stars, and sweet with the scent of roses.

A long winter has pa.s.sed since that memorable luncheon at The Three Wolves. Our little pavilion over the emerald pool will never see us reunited, I fear. A cloud has fallen over my good friend the cure, a cloud so unbelievable, and yet so dense, if it be true, and so filled with ominous mutterings of thunder and lightning, crime, defalcation, banishment, and the like, that I go about my work dazed at the rumoured situation.

They tell me the cure still says ma.s.s, and when it is over, regains the presbytery by way of the back lane skirting the marsh. I am also told that he rarely even ventures into his garden, but spends most of his days and half of his nights alone in his den with the door locked, and strict orders to his faithful old servant Marie, who adores him, that he will see no one who calls.

For days I have not laid eyes on him--he who kept his napkin tied in a sailor's knot in my cupboard and came to breakfast, luncheon, or dinner when he pleased, waking up my house abandoned by the marsh with his good humour, joking with Suzette, my little maid-of-all-work, until her fair cheeks grew the rosier, and rousing me out of the blues with his quick wit and his hearty laugh.

It seems impossible to me that he is guilty of what he is accused of, yet the facts seem undeniable.

Only the good go wrong, is it not so? The bad have become so commonplace, they do not attract our attention.

Now the ways of the cure were always just. I have never known him to do a mean thing in his life, far less a dishonest one. I have known him to give the last few sous he possessed to a hungry fisherwoman who needed bread for herself and her brood of children and content himself with what was left among the few remaining vegetables in his garden. There are days, too, when he is forced to live frugally upon a peasant soup and a pear for dinner, and there have been occasions to my knowledge, when the soup had to be omitted and his menu reduced to a novel, a cigarette and the pear.

It is a serious matter, the separation of the state from the church in France, since it has left the priest with the munificent salary of four hundred francs a year, out of which he must pay his rent and give to the poor.

Once we dined n.o.bly together upon two fat sparrows, and again we had a blackbird for dinner. He had killed it that morning from his window, while shaving, for I saw the lather dried on the stock of his duck gun.

Monsieur le Cure is ingenious when it comes to hard times.

Again, there are days when he is in luck, when some generous paris.h.i.+oner has had the forethought to restock his larder. Upon such bountiful occasions he insists on Tanrade and myself dining with him at the presbytery as long as these luxuries last, refusing to dine with either of us until there is no more left of his own to give.

The last time I saw him, I had noticed a marked change in his reverence.

He was moody and unshaven, and his saucerlike hat was as dusty and spotted as his frayed soutane. Only now and then he gave out flashes of his old geniality and even they seemed forced. I was amazed at the change in him, and yet, when I consider all I have heard since, I do not wonder much at his appearance.

Tanrade tells me (and he evidently believes it) that some fifteen hundred francs, raised by Alice's concert and paid over to the cure to purchase the bells for his little gray church at Pont du Sable, have disappeared and that his reverence refuses to give any account.

Despite his hearty Bohemian spirit, Tanrade, like most musicians, is a dreamer and as ready as a child to believe anything and anybody. Being a master of the pianoforte and a composer of rare talent, he can hardly be called sane. And yet, though I have seen him enthusiastic, misled, moved to tears over nothing, indignant over an imaginary insult, or ready to forgive any one who could be fool enough to be his enemy, I have never known him so thoroughly upset or so positive in his convictions as when the other morning, as I sat loafing before my fire, he entered my den.

"It is incredible, _mon vieux_, incredible!" he gasped, throwing himself disconsolately into my arm-chair. "I have just been to the presbytery.

Not only does he refuse to give an account of the money, but he declines to offer any explanation beyond the one that he "spent it." Moreover, he sits hunched up before his stove in his little room off the kitchen, chewing the end of a cigarette. Why, he didn't even ask me to have a drink--the cure, _mon ami_--our cure--_Mon Dieu_, what a mess! Ah, _mon Dieu!_"

He sank his chin in his hands and gazed at me with a look of utter despair.

I regarded him keenly, then I went to the decanter and poured out for him a stiff gla.s.s of applejack.

"Drink that," said I, "and get normal."

With an impetuous gesture he waved it away.

"No, not now!" he exclaimed, "wait until I tell you all--nothing until I tell you."

"Go on, then," I returned, "I want to hear all about this wretched business. Go slow and tell it to me from top to bottom. I am not as convinced of the cure's guilt as you are, old boy. There may be nothing in it more than a pack of village lies; and if there is a vestige of the truth, we may, by putting our heads together, help matters."

He started to speak, but I held up my hand.

"One thing before you proceed," I declared with conviction. "I can no more believe the cure is dishonest than Alice or yourself. It is ridiculous to presume so for a moment. I have known the cure too well.

He is a prince. He has a heart as big as all outdoors. Look at the good he's done in this village! There is not a vagabond in it but will tell you he is as right as rain. Ask the people he helps what they think of him, they'll tell you 'he's just the cure for Pont du Sable.' _Voila!_ That's what they'll tell you, and they mean it. All the gossip in the world can't hurt him. Here," I cried, forcing the gla.s.s into his hand, "get that down you, you maker of ballets, and proceed with the horrible details, but proceed gently, merrily, with the right sort of beat in your heart, for the cure is as much a friend of yours as he is of mine."

Tanrade shrugged his broad shoulders, and for some moments sipped his gla.s.s. At length, he set it down on the broad table at his elbow, and said slowly: "You know how good Alice is, how much she will do for any one she is fond of--for a friend, I mean, like the cure. Very well, it is not an easy thing to give a concert in Paris that earns fifteen hundred francs for a cure whom, it is safe to say, no one in the audience, save Germaine, Alice and myself had ever heard of. It was a veritable _tour de force_ to organize. You were not there. I'm glad you were not. It was a dull old concert that would not have amused you much--La.s.sive fell ill at the last moment, Delmar was in a bad humour, and the quartet had played the night before at a ball at the elysee and were barely awake. Yet in spite of it the theatre was packed; a chic audience, too. Frambord came out with half a column in the _Critique des Arts_ with a pretty compliment to Alice's executive energy, and added 'that it was one of the rare soirees of the season.' He must have been drunk when he wrote it. I played badly--I never can play when they gabble. It was as garrulous as a fish market in front. _Enfin!_ It was over and we telegraphed his reverence the result; from a money standpoint it was a '_succes fou_.'"

Tanrade leaned back and for a few seconds gazed at the ceiling of my den.

"Where every penny has gone," he resumed, with a strained smile, "_Dieu sait!_ There is no bell, not even the sound of one, _et voila!_"

He turned abruptly and reached for his gla.s.s, forgetting he had drained it. A fly was buzzing on its back in the last drop. And then we both smiled grimly, for we were thinking of Monsieur le Cure.

I rang the bell of the presbytery early the next morning, by inserting my jackknife, to spare my fingers, in a loop at the end of a crooked wire which dangles over the rambling wall of the cure's garden. The door itself is of thick oak, and framed by stones overgrown with lichens--a solid old playground for nervous lizards when the sun s.h.i.+nes, and a favourite sticking place for snails when it rains. I had to tug hard on the crooked wire before I heard a faint jingle issuing in response from the cure's cavernous kitchen, whose hooded chimney and stone-paved floor I love to paint.

Now came the klop-klop of a pair of sabots--then the creak of a heavy key as it turned over twice in the rusty lock, and his faithful Marie cautiously opened the garden door. I do not know how old Marie is, there is so little left of this good soul to guess by. Her small shrunken body is bent from age and hard work. Her hands are heavy--the fingers gnarled and out of proportion to her gaunt thin wrists. She has the wrinkled, leathery face of some kindly gnome. She opened her eyes in a sort of mute appeal as I inquired if Monsieur le Cure was at home.

"Ah! My poor monsieur, his reverence will see no one"--she faltered--"_Ah! Mais_"--she sighed, knowing that I knew the change in her master and the gossip thereof.

"My good Marie," I said, persuasively patting her bony shoulder, "tell his reverence that I _must_ see him. Old friends as we are--"

"_Bon Dieu, oui!_" she exclaimed after another sigh. "Such old friends as you and he--I will go and see," said she, and turned bravely back down the path that led to his door while I waited among the roses.

A few moments later Marie beckoned to me from the kitchen window.

"He will see you," she whispered, as I crossed the stone floor of the kitchen. "He is in the little room," and she pointed to a narrow door close by the big chimney, a door provided with old-fas.h.i.+oned little gla.s.s panes upon which are glued transparent chromos of wild ducks.

I knocked gently.

"_Entrez!_" came a tired voice from within.

I turned the k.n.o.b and entered his den--a dingy little box of a room, sunk a step below the level of the kitchen, with a smoke-grimed ceiling and corners littered with dusty books and pamphlets.

He was sitting with his back to me, humped up in a worn arm-chair, before his small stove, just as Tanrade had found him. As I edged around his table--past a rack holding his guns, half-hidden under two dilapidated game bags and a bicycle tyre long out of service, he turned his hollow eyes to mine, with a look I shall long remember, and feebly grasped my outstretched hand.

"Come," said I, "you're going to get a grip on yourself, _mon ami_.