A Village of Vagabonds Part 32

Pressed by his creditors he had forged his uncle's name. The only way out of the affair was to borrow from Julie to hush up the matter. It did not occur to him at the time how she would feel about the girl; neither did he realize that he had grown to be an arrogant young sn.o.b who now treated Julie, who had saved his life, and pampered him, more like a servant than a foster-mother.

The night young Garron arrived was at the moment of the highest tides.

The four supped together that night in the hut--the father silent and sullen throughout the meal and Julie insanely jealous of the girl. Later old Garron went off across the marsh in the moonlight to look after his snares.

When the three were alone Julie turned to the boy. For some moments she regarded him shrewdly. She saw he was no longer the wild young savage she had brought up; there was a certain nervous, blase feebleness about his movements as he sat uneasily in his chair, his hands thrust in the pockets of his hunting coat, his chin sunk on his chest. She noticed too, the unnatural redness of his lips and the haggard pallor about his thin, sunken cheeks.

"_Eh ben, mon pet.i.t_--" she began at length. "It is a poor place to get fat in, your Paris! They don't feed you any too well--_hein?_--Those grand restaurants you talk so much about. Pouf!"

"_Penses-tu?_" added the girl, since Garron did not reply. Instead he lighted a fresh cigarette, took two long puffs from it, and threw it on the floor.

The girl, angered at his silence and lack of courage, gave him a vicious glance.

"_Helas!_" sighed Julie, "you were quicker with your tongue when you were a baby."

"_Ah zut!_" exclaimed the girl in disgust. "He has something to tell you--" she blurted out to Julie.

"_Eh ben!_ What?" demanded Julie firmly.

"I need some money," muttered the boy doggedly. "I _need it!!_" he cried suddenly, gaining courage in a sort of nervous hysteria.

Julie stared at him in amazement, the girl watching her like a lynx.

"_Bon Dieu!_" shouted Julie. "And it is because of _that_ you sit there like a sick cat! Listen to me, my little one. Eat the good grease like the rest of us and be content if you keep out of jail."

The boy sank lower in his chair.

"It will be jail for me," he said, "unless you help me. Give me five hundred francs. I tell you I am in a bad fix. _Sacre bon Dieu!_--you _shall_ give it to me!" he cried, half springing from his chair.

"Shut up, thou," whispered the girl--"not so fast!"

"Do you think it rains money here?" returned Julie, closing her red fists upon the table, "that all you have to do is to ask for it? _Ah, mais non, alors!_"

The boy slunk back in his chair staring at the tallow dip disconsolately. The girl gritted her small teeth--somehow, she felt abler than he to get it out of Julie in the end.

"You stole it, _hein?_" cried Julie, "like your father. Name of a dog!

it is the same old trick that, and it brings no good. _Allons!_" she resumed after a short pause. "_Depeche toi!_ Get out for your ducks--I'm going to bed."

"Give me four hundred," pleaded the boy.

"Not a sou!" cried Julie, bringing her fist down on the greasy table, and she shot a jealous glance at the girl.

Without a word, young Garron rose dejectedly, got into his goatskin coat, picked up his gun and, turning, beckoned to the girl.

"Go on!" she cried; "I'll come later."

"He is an infant," said she to Julie, when young Garron had closed the door behind him. "He has no courage. You know the fix we are in--the Commissaire of Police in Paris already has word of it."

Julie did not reply; she still sat with her clenched fists outstretched on the table.

"He has forged his uncle's check," snapped the girl.

Julie did not reply.

"_Ah, c'est comme ca!_" sneered the girl with a cool laugh--"and when he is in jail," she cried aloud, "_Eh, bien--quoi?_"

"He will not have _you_, then," returned Julie faintly.

"Ah----" she exclaimed. She slipped her tense little body into her thick automobile coat and with a contemptuous toss of her chin pa.s.sed out into the night, leaving the door open.

"Jacques!" she called shrilly--"Jacques!--_Attends._"

"_Bon!_" came his voice faintly in reply from afar on the marsh.

After some moments Julie got slowly to her feet, crossed the dirt floor of the hut and closing the door dropped the bar through the staples.

Then for the s.p.a.ce of some minutes she stood by the table struggling with a jealous rage that made her strong knees tremble. She who had saved his life, who had loved him from babyhood--she told herself--and what had he done for her in return? The great Paris that she knew nothing of had stolen him; Paris had given him _her_--that little viper with her red mouth; Paris had ruined him--had turned him into a thief like his father. Silently she cursed his uncle. Then her rage reverted again to the girl. She thought too, of her own life with Garron--of all its miserly hards.h.i.+ps. "They have given me nothing--" she sobbed aloud--"nothing."

"Five hundred francs would save him!" she told herself. She caught her breath, then little by little again the motherly warmth stole up into her breast deadening for the moment the pain of her jealousy. She straightened to her full height, squaring her broad shoulders like a man and stepped across to the wall.

"It is as much mine as it is his," she said between her teeth.

She ran her arm into the hole in the wall, lifted the heavy plank and drew out a knitted sock tied with a stout string. From the toe she drew out Garron's fortune.

"He shall have it--the _gosse_--" she said, "and the rest--is as much mine as it is his."

She thrust the package in her breast.

Half an hour later Julie stood, scarcely breathing, her ear to the locked door of his _gabion_.

"A pretty lot you came from," she overheard the girl say, "that old cat would sooner see you go to jail." The rest of her words were half lost in the rush and suck of the tide slipping out from the _gabion's_ outer jacket of boards. The heavy chain clinked taut with the pull of the outgoing tide, then relaxed in the back rush of water.

"Bah!" she heard him reply, "they are pigs, those peasants. I was a fool to have gone to them for help."

"You had better have gone to the old man," taunted the girl, "as I told you at first."

"He is made of the same miserly grizzle as she," he retorted hotly.

Again the outrush of the tide drowned their words.

Julie clenched her red fists and drew a long breath. A sudden frenzy seized her. Before she realized what she was doing, she had crawled in the mud on her hands and knees to the heavy picket. Here she waited until the backward rush again slackened the chain, then she half drew the iron pin that held the last link. Half drew it! Had the girl been alone, she told herself, she would have given her to the ebb tide.

Julie rose to her feet and turned back across the marsh, unconscious that the last link was nearly free and that the jerk and pull of the outgoing tide was little by little freeing the pin from the link.

She kept on her way, towards a hidden wood road that led down to the marsh at the far end of Pont du Sable and beyond.

She was done with the locality forever. Garron's money was still in her breast.

At the first glimmer of dawn the next morning, the short, solitary figure of a man prowled the beach. He was hatless and insane with rage.

In one hand he gripped an empty sock. He would halt now and then and wave his long, ape-like arms--cursing the deep strip of sea water that prevented him from crossing to the hard desert of sand beyond--far out upon which lay an upturned _gabion_. Within this locked and stranded box lay two dead bodies. Crabs fought their way eagerly through the cracks of the water-sprung door, and over it, breasting the salt breeze, slowly circled a cormorant--curious and amazed at so strange a thing at low tide.