A Village of Vagabonds Part 34

Birds twitter in the thin hedges.

I would never have believed my wild garden, once so full of mystery--gay flowers, suns.h.i.+ne and droning bees, to be so modest in size. A few rectangles of bare, frozen ground, and a clinging vine trembling against the old wall, is all that remains, save the scraggly little fruit trees green with moss. Beyond, in a haze of chill sea mist, lie the woodlands, long undulating ribbons of gray twigs crouching under a leaden sky.

In the cavernous cider press whose doors creak open within my courtyard Pere Bordier and a boy in eartabs, are busy making cider. If you stop and listen you can hear the cider trickling into the cask and Pere Bordier encouraging the patient horse who circles round and round a great stone trough in which revolve two juggernauts of wooden wheels.

The place reeks with the ooze and drip of crushed apples. The giant screw of oak, the ma.s.sive beams, seen dimly in the gloomy light that filters through a small barred window cut through the ma.s.sive stone wall, gives the old pressoir the appearance of some feudal torture chamber. Blood ran once, and people shrieked in such places--as these.

To-morrow begins the new year and every peasant girl's cheeks are scrubbed bright and her hair neatly dressed, for to-morrow all France embraces--so the cheeks are rosy in readiness.

"_Tiens_, mademoiselle!" exclaims the butcher's boy clattering into my kitchen in his sabots.

_Eh, voila!_ My good little maid-of-all-work, Suzette, has been kissed by the butcher's boy and a moment later by Pere Bordier, who has left the cider press for a steaming bowl of _cafe au lait_; and ten minutes later by the Mere Pequin who brings the milk, and then in turn by the postman--by her master, by the boy in eartabs and by every child in the village since daylight for they have entered my courtyard in droves to wish the household of my house abandoned a happy new year, and have gone away content with their little stomachs filled and two big sous in their pockets.

And now an old fisherman enters my door. It is the Pere Varnet--he who goes out with his sheep dog to dig clams, since he is eighty-four and too old to go to sea.

"_Ah, malheur!_" he sighs wearily, lifting his cap with a trembling hand as seamed and tough as his tarpaulin. "Ah, the bad luck," he repeats in a thin, husky voice. "I would not have deranged monsieur, but _bon Dieu_, I am hungry. I have had no bread since yesterday. It is a little beast this hunger, monsieur. There are no clams--I have searched from the great bank to Tocqueville."

It is surprising how quick Suzette can heat the milk.

The old man is now seated in her kitchen before a cold duck of the cure's killing and hot coffee--real coffee with a stiff drink of applejack poured into it, and there is bread and cheese besides. Like hungry men, he eats in silence and when he has eaten he tells me his dog is dead--that woolly sheep dog of his with a cast in one fishy green eye.

"_Oui_, monsieur," confided the old man, "he is dead. He was all I had left. It is not gay, monsieur, at eighty-four to lose one's last friend--to have him poisoned."

"Who poisoned him?" I inquired hotly--"was it Bonvin the butcher? They say it was he poisoned both of Madame Vinet's cats."

"_Eh, ben!_" he returned, and I saw the tears well up into his watery blue eyes--"one should not accuse one's neighbours, but they say it was he, monsieur--they say it was in his garden that Hector found the bad stuff--there are some who have no heart, monsieur."

"Bonvin!" I cried, "so it was that pig who poisoned him, eh? and you saved his little girl the time the _Belle Marie_ foundered."

"_Oui_, monsieur--the time the _Belle Marie_ foundered. It is true I did--we did the best we could! Had it not been for the fog and the ebb tide I think we could have saved them all."

He fell to eating again, cutting into the cheese discreetly--this fine old gentleman of the sea.

It is a pity that some one has not poisoned Bonvin I thought. A short thick fellow, is Bonvin, with cheeks as red as raw chops and small eyes that glitter with cruelty. Bonvin, whose youngest child--a male, has the look and intelligence of a veal and whose mother weighs one hundred and five kilos--a fact which Bonvin is proud of since his first wife, who died, was under weight despite the fact that the Bonvins being in the business, eat meat twice daily. I have always believed the veal infant's hair is curled in suet. Its face grows purple after meals.

A rough old place is my village of vagabonds in winter, and I am glad Alice did not come. Poor Tanrade--how he would have enjoyed that northeast gale!

Two weeks later there came to my house abandoned by the marsh such joyful news that my hand trembled as I realized it--news that made my heart beat quicker from sudden surprise and delight. As I read and reread four closely written pages from Tanrade and a corroborative postscript from Alice, leaving no doubt as to the truth.

"Suzette! Suzette!" I called. "Come quick--_Eh! Suzette!_"

I heard her trim feet running to me from the garden. The next instant she opened the door of my den and stood before me, her blue eyes and pretty mouth both open in wonder at being so hurriedly summoned.

"What is the matter, monsieur?" she exclaimed panting, her fresh young cheeks all the rosier from her run.

"Monsieur Tanrade and Madame de Breville are going to be married," I announced as calmly as I could.

"_Helas!_" gasped Suzette.

"_Et voila--et voila!_" I cried, throwing the letter back on the table, while I squared my back to the blazing fire of my den and waited for the little maid's astonishment to subside.

Suzette did not speak.

"It is true, nevertheless," I added with enthusiasm, "they are to be married in Pont du Sable. We shall have a fete such as there never was.

Ah! you will have plenty of cooking to do, _mon enfant_. Run and find Monsieur le Cure--he must know at once."

Suzette did not move--without a word she buried her face in her ap.r.o.n and burst into tears:

"Oh, monsieur!" she sobbed. "Oh, monsieur! It is true--that--I--I--have--no luck!"

I looked at her in astonishment.

"_Eh, bien!_ my child," I returned--"and it is thus you take such happy news?"

"_Ah, mon Dieu!_" sobbed the little maid--"it is--true--I--have no luck."

"What is the matter Suzette--tell me?" I pleaded. Never had I seen her so brokenhearted, even on the day she smashed the mirror.

I saw her sway toward me like the child she was.

"There--there--_mais voyons!_" I exclaimed in a vain effort to stop her tears--"_mais voyons!_ Come, you must not cry like that." Little by little she ceased crying, until her sobbing gave way to brave little hiccoughs, then, at length, she opened her eyes.

"Suzette," I whispered--the thought flas.h.i.+ng through my mind, "is it possible that _you_ love Monsieur Tanrade?"

I saw her strong little body tremble: "No, monsieur," she breathed, and the tears fell afresh.

"Tell me the truth, Suzette."

"I have told monsieur the--the--truth," she stammered bravely with a fresh effort to strangle her sobs.

"You do not love Monsieur Tanrade, my child?"

"No, monsieur--I--I--was a little fool to have cried. It was stronger than I--the news. The marriage is so gay, monsieur--it is so easy for some."

"Ah--then you do love some one?"

"_Oui_, monsieur--" and her eyes looked up into mine.

"Who?"

"Gaston, monsieur--as always."

"Gaston, eh! the little soldier I lodged during the manoeuvres--the little trombonist whom the general swore he would put in jail for missing his train. _Sapristi!_ I had forgotten him--and you wish to marry him, Suzette?"