A Village of Vagabonds Part 3

Far up the hillside a mile back of the churchyard, a barelegged girl driving a cow stopped to listen, her hood pushed back, her brown hands crossed upon her breast.

Lower down, skirting the velvet edge of the marsh, filmy rifts of mist broke into shreds or blended with the spirals of blue smoke mounting skyward from freshly kindled fires.

Pont du Sable was awake for the day.

It is the most unimportant of little villages, yet it is four centuries old, and of stone. It seems to have shrivelled by its great age, like its oldest inhabitants. One-half of its two score of fishermen's houses lie crouched to the rambling edge of its single street; the other half might have been dropped at random, like stones from the pocket of some hurrying giant. Some of these, including the house of the ruddy little mayor and the polite, florid grocer, lie spilled along the edge of the marsh.

As for Monsieur le Cure, he was at this very moment in the small stone church saying ma.s.s to five fishermen, two devout housewives, a little child, an old woman in a white cap, and myself. Being in my shooting-boots, I had tiptoed into a back seat behind two of the fishermen, and sat in silence watching Monsieur le Cure's gaunt figure and listening to his deep, well-modulated, resonant voice.

What I saw was a man uncommonly tall and well built, dressed in a rusty black soutane that reached in straight lines from beneath his chin to his feet, which were encased in low calf shoes with steel buckles. I noticed, too, that his face was angular and humorous; his eyes keen and merry by turns; his hair of the colourless brown one sees among fisherfolk whose lives are spent in the sun and rain. I saw, too, that he was impecunious, for the front edges of his ca.s.sock were frayed and three b.u.t.tons missing, not to be wondered at, I said to myself, as I remembered that the stone church, like the village it comforted, had always been poor.

Now and then during the ma.s.s I saw the cure glance at the small leaded window above him as if making a mental note of the swaying tree-tops without in the graveyard. Then his keen gray eyes again reverted to the page he knew by heart. The look evidently carried some significance, for the gray-haired old sea-dog in front of me c.o.c.ked his blue eye to his partner--they were both in from a rough night's fis.h.i.+ng--and muttered:

"It will be a short ma.s.s."

"_Ben sur_," whispered back the other from behind his leathery hand.

"The wind's from the northeast. It will blow a gale before sundown." And he nodded toward the swaying tree-tops.

With this, the one with the blue eyes straightened back in the wooden pew and folded his short, knotty arms in attention; the muscles of his broad shoulders showing under his thick seaman's jersey, the collar encircling his corded, stocky neck deep-seamed by a thousand winds and seas. The gestures of these two old craftsmen of the sea, who had worked so long together, were strangely similar. When they knelt I could see the straw sticking from the heels of their four wooden sabots and the rolled-up bottoms of their patched sail-cloth trousers.

As the ma.s.s ended the old woman in the white cap coughed gently, the cure closed his book, stepped from the chancel, patted the child's head in pa.s.sing, strode rapidly to the sacristy, and closed the door behind him.

I followed the handful of wors.h.i.+ppers out into the sunlight and down the hill. As I pa.s.sed the two old fishermen I heard the one with the blue eyes say to his mate with the leathery hand:

"_Allons, viens t'en!_ What if we went to the cafe after that dog's night of a sea?"

"I don't say no," returned his partner; then he winked at me and pointed to the sky.

"I know," I said. "It's what I've been waiting for."

I kept on down the crooked hill to the public square where nothing ever happens save the arrival of the toy train and the yearly fete, and deciding the two old salts were right after their "dog's night" (and it had blown a gale), wheeled to the left and followed them to the tiniest of cafes kept by stout, cheery Madame Vinet. It has a box of a kitchen through which you pa.s.s into a little square room with just s.p.a.ce enough for four tables; or you may go through the kitchen into a snug garden gay in geraniums and find a sheltered table beneath a rickety arbour.

"Ah, _mais_, it was bad enough!" grinned the one with the leathery hand as he drained his thimbleful of applejack and, Norman-like, tossed the last drop on the floor of the snug room.

"Bad enough! It was a sea, I tell you, monsieur, like none since the night the wreck of _La Belle Marie_ came ash.o.r.e," chimed in the one with the blue eye, as he placed his elbows on the clean marbletop table and made room for my chair. "_Mon Dieu!_ You should have seen the ducks south of the Wolf. Aye, 'twas a sight for an empty stomach."

The one with the leathery hand nodded his confirmation sleepily.

"_Helas!_" continued the one with the blue eye. "If monsieur could only have been with us!" As he spoke he lifted his s.h.a.ggy eyebrows in the direction of the church and laughed softly. "He's happy with his northeast wind; I knew 'twould be a short ma.s.s."

"A good catch?" I ventured, looking toward him as Madame Vinet brought my gla.s.s.

"Eight thousand mackerel, monsieur. We should have had ten thousand had not the wind s.h.i.+fted."

"_Ben sur!_" grumbled the one with the leathery hand.

At this Madame Vinet planted her fists on her ample hips. "_Helas!_ There's the Mere Coraline's girl to be married Thursday," she sighed, "and Planchette's baby to be christened Tuesday, and the wind in the northeast, _mon Dieu!_" And she went back to her spotless kitchen for a sou's worth of black coffee for a little girl who had just entered.

Big, strong, hearty Madame Vinet! She has the frankness of a man and the tenderness of a mother. There is something of her youth still left at forty-six; not her figure--that is rotund simplicity itself--but in the clearness of her brown eyes and the finely cut profile before it reaches her double chin, and the dimples in her hands, well shaped even to-day.

And so the little girl who had come in for the sou's worth of coffee received an honest measure, smoking hot out of a dipper and into the bottle she had brought. In payment Madame Vinet kissed the child, and added a lump of sugar to the bargain. From where I sat I could see the tears start in the good woman's eyes. The next moment she came back to us laughing to disguise them.

"Ah, you good soul!" I thought to myself. "Always in a good humour; always pleasant. There you go again--this time it was the wife of a poor fisherman who could not pay. How many a poor devil of a half-frozen sailor you have warmed, you whose heart is so big and whose gains are so small!"

I rose at length, bade the two old salts good morning, and with a blessing of good luck, recovered my gun from the kitchen cupboard, where I had reverently left it during ma.s.s, and went on my way to shoot. I, too, was anxious to make the most of the northeast wind.

There being no street in the lost village save the main thoroughfare, one finds only alleys flanked by rambling walls. One of these runs up to Tanrade's house; another finds its zigzag way to the back gate of the marquis, who, being a royalist, insists upon telling you so, for the keystone of his gate is emblazoned with a bas-relief of two carved eagles guarding the family crest. Still another leads unexpectedly to the silent garden of Monsieur le Cure. It is a protecting little by-way whose walls tell no tales. How many a suffering heart seeking human sympathy and advice has the strong figure in the soutane sent home with fresh courage by way of this back lane. Indeed it would be a lost village without him. He is barely over forty years old, and yet no cure was ever given a poorer parish, for Pont du Sable has been bankrupt for generations. Since a fortnight--so I am told--Monsieur le Cure has had no _bonne_. The reason is that no good Suzette can be found to replace the one whom he married to a young farmer from Bonville. The result is the good cure dines many times a week with the marquis, where he is so entertaining and so altogether delightful and welcome a guest that the marquise tells me she feels ten years younger after he has gone.

"Poor man," she confided to me the other day, "what will you have? He has no _bonne_, and he detests cooking. Yesterday he lunched at the chateau with Alice de Breville; to-morrow he will be cheering up two old maiden aunts who live a league from Bar la Rose. Is it not sad?" And she laughed merrily.

"Monsieur le Cure has no _bonne_!" _Parbleu!_ It has become a household phrase in Pont du Sable. It is so difficult to get a servant here; the girls are all fis.h.i.+ng. As for Tanrade's maid-of-all-work, like the noiseless butler of the marquis and the _femme de chambre_ of Alice de Breville, they are all from Paris; and yet I'll wager that no larder in the village is better stocked than Monsieur le Cure's, for every housewife vies with her neighbour in ready-cooked donations since the young man from Bonville was accepted.

But these good people do not forget. They remember the day when the farm of Pere Marin burned; they recall the figure in the black soutane stumbling on through flame and smoke carrying an unconscious little girl in his strong arms to safety. Four times he went back where no man dared go--and each time came out with a life.

Again, but for his indomitable grit, a half-drowned father and daughter, clinging to a capsized fis.h.i.+ng-smack in a winter sea, would not be alive--there are even fisherfolk who cannot swim. Monsieur le Cure saw this at a glance, alone he fought his way in the freezing surf out to the girl and the man. He brought them in and they lived.

But there is a short cut to the marsh if you do but know it--one that has served me before. You can easily find it, for you have but to follow your nose along the wall of Madame Vinet's cafe, creep past the modest rose-garden of the mayor, zigzag for a hundred paces or more among crumbling walls, and before you know it you are out on the marsh.

The one with the blue eye was right.

The wind _was_ from the northeast in earnest, and the tide racing in.

Half a mile outward a dozen long puntlike scows, loaded to their brims with sand, were being borne on the swirling current up the river's channel, each guided at the stern by a ragged dot of a figure straining at an oar.

As I struck out across the desolate waste of mud, bound for the point of dry marsh, the figure steering the last scow, as he pa.s.sed, waved a warning to me. With the incoming sweep of tide the sunlight faded, the bay became noisy with the cries of sea-fowl, and the lighthouse beyond the river's channel stood out against the ominous green sky like a stick of school-chalk.

I jerked my cap tighter over my ears, and lowering my head to the wind kept on. I had barely time to make the marsh. Over the black desolate waste of clay-mud the sea was spreading its hands--long, dangerous hands, with fingers that every moment shot out longer and nearer my tracks. The wind blew in howling gusts now, straight in from the open sea. Days like these the ducks have no alternative but the bay. Only a black diver can stand the strain outside. Tough old pirates these--diving to keep warm.

I kept on, foolish as it was. A flight of beca.s.sines were whirled past me, twittering in a panic as they fought their way out of sudden squalls. I turned to look back. Already my sunken tracks were obliterated under a glaze of water, but I felt I was safe, for I had gained harder ground. It was a relief to slide to the bottom of one of the labyrinth of causeways that drain the marsh, and plunge on sheltered from the wind.

Presently I heard ducks quacking ahead. I raised my head cautiously to the level of the wire-gra.s.s. A hundred rods beyond, nine black ducks were grouped near the edge of a circular pool; behind them, from where I stood, there rose from the level waste a humplike mound. I could no longer proceed along the bottom of the causeway, as it was being rapidly filled to within an inch below my boot-tops. The hump was my only salvation, so I crawled to the bank and started to stalk the nine black ducks.

It was difficult to keep on my feet on the slimy mud-bank, for the wind, true to the fishermen's prediction, was now blowing half a gale.

Besides, this portion of the marsh was strange to me, as I had only seen it at a distance from the lower end of the bay, where I generally shot. I was within range of the ducks now, and had raised my hammers--I still shoot a hammer-gun--when a human voice rang out. Then, like some weird jack-in-the-box, there popped out from the mound a straight, long-waisted body in black waving its arms.

It was the cure!

"Stay where you are," he shouted. "Treacherous ground! I'll come and help you!" Then for a second he peered intently under his hand. "Ah! It is you, monsieur--the newcomer; I might have guessed it." He laughed, leaping out and striding toward me. "Ah, you Americans! You do not mind the weather."

"_Bonjour_, Monsieur le Cure," I shouted back in astonishment, trying to steady myself across a narrow bridge of mud spanning the causeway.

"Look out!" he cried. "That mud you're on is dangerous. She's sinking!"