A Village of Vagabonds Part 5

"Bravo, Monsieur le Cure!" I cried.

But he only smiled modestly and, extracting the empty sh.e.l.l, blew the lurking smoke free from the barrels. It was noon when we turned to half the chicken and a bottle of _vin ordinaire_ with an appet.i.te.

The northeast wind had now s.h.i.+fted to the south; the bay became like gla.s.s, and so the afternoon pa.s.sed until the blood-red sun, like some huge ribbed lantern of the j.a.panese, slowly sank into the sea. It grew dusk over the desolate marsh. Stray flights of plovers, now that the tide was again on its ebb, began to choose their resting places for the night.

"I'm going out to take a look," said the cure. Again, like some gopher of the prairie, he rose up out of his burrow.

Presently he returned, the old enthusiastic gleam in his eyes.

"The wind's changing," he announced. "It will be in the north again to-night; we shall have a full moon and better luck, I hope. Do you know," he went on excitedly, "that one night last October I killed forty-two ducks alone in this old _gabion_. _Forty-two!_ Twenty mallards and the rest Vignon--and not a shot before one o'clock in the morning.

Then they came in, right and left. I believe my faithful decoys will remember that night until their dying day. Ah, it was glorious!

Glorious!" His tanned, weather-beaten features wrinkled with delight; he had the skin of a sailor, and I wondered how often the marsh had hid him. "Ah, my friend," he said, with a sigh, as we sat down to the remainder of the chicken and _vin ordinaire_ for supper, this time including the cheese, "it is not easy for a cure to shoot. My good children of the village do not mind, but----" He hesitated, running his long, vibrant fingers through his hair.

"What then? Tell me," I ventured. "It will go no further, I promise you."

"Rome!" he whispered. "I have already received a letter, a gentle warning from the palace; but I have a good friend in Cardinal Z. He understands."

During the whole of that cold moonlight we took turns of two hours each; one sleeping while the other watched in the chair drawn up close to the firing-slit.

What a night!

The marsh seen through the firing-slit, with its overhanging eyebrow of sod, seemed not of this earth. The nine black decoys picketed before us straining at their cords, gossiping, dozing for a moment, preening their wings or rising up for a vigorous stretch, appeared by some curious optical illusion four times their natural size; now they seemed to be black dogs, again a group of sombre, misshapen gnomes.

While I watched, the cure slept soundly, his body shrouded in the blankets like some carved Gothic saint of old. The silence was intense--a silence that could be heard--broken only by the brisk ticking of the cure's watch on the narrow shelf. Occasionally a water-rat would patter over the sunken roof, become inquisitive, and peer in at me through the slit within half a foot of my nose. Once in a while I took down the fat opera-gla.s.s, focussing it upon the dim shapes that resembled ducks, but that proved to be bits of floating seaweed or a scurrying shadow as a cloud swept under the moon--all illusions, until my second watch, when, with a rush, seven mallards tumbled among our decoys. Instantly the cure awakened, sprang from his cot, and with sharp work we killed four.

"Stay where you are," he said as he laid his gun back in its rack. "I'll get into my hip-boots and get them before the water-rats steal what we've earned. They are skilled enough to get a decoy now and then. The marsh is alive with them at night."

Morning paled. The village lay half hidden behind the rifts of mist.

Then dawn and the rising sun, the water like molten gold, the black decoys churning at their pickets sending up swirls of turquoise in the gold.

Suddenly the cracked bell rang out from the distant village. At that moment two long V-shaped strings of mallards came winging toward us from the north. I saw the cure glance at them. Then he held out his hand to me.

"You take them--I cannot," he said hurriedly. "I haven't a moment to lose--it is the bell for ma.s.s. Here's the key. Lock up when you leave."

"Dine with me to-night," I insisted, one eye still on the incoming ducks. "You have no _bonne_."

His hand was on the _gabion_ door. "And if the northeast wind holds," he called back, "shall we shoot again to-night?"

"Yes, to-night!" I insisted.

"Then I'll come to dinner." And the door closed with a click.

Through the firing-slit I could see him leaping across the marsh toward the gray church with the cracked bell, and as he disappeared by the short cut I pulled the trigger of both barrels--and missed.

An hour later Suzette greeted me with eyes full of tears and anxiety.

"Ah! Mother of Pity! Monsieur is safe!" she cried. "Where has monsieur been, _mon Dieu!_"

"To ma.s.s, my child," I said gravely, filling her plump arms with the ducks. "Monsieur le Cure is coming to dinner!"

[Ill.u.s.tration: flying ducks]

[Ill.u.s.tration: a chateau]

CHAPTER THREE

THE EXQUISITE MADAME DE BReVILLE

Poor Tanrade! Just as I felt the future was all _couleur de rose_ with him it has changed to gloom unutterable.

_Ah, les femmes!_ I should never dare fall in love with a woman as exquisite as Alice de Breville. She is too beautiful, too seductive, with her olive skin, her frank smile, and her adorable head poised upon a body much too well made. She is too tender, too complex, too intelligent. She has a way of mischievously caressing you with her eyes one moment and giving an old comrade like myself a platonic little pat on the back the next, which is exasperating. As a friend I adore her, but to fall in love with her! _Ah, non, merci!_ I have had a checkered childhood and my full share of suffering; I wish some peace in my old age. At sixteen one goes to the war of love blindly, but at forty it is different. Our chagrins then plunge us into a state of dignified desolation.

Poor Tanrade! I learned of the catastrophe the other night when he solemnly entered my abandoned house by the marsh and sank his big frame in the armchair before my fire. He was no longer the genial bohemian of a Tanrade I had known. He was silent and haggard. He had not slept much for a week; neither had he worked at the score of his new opera or hunted, but he had smoked incessantly, furiously--a dangerous remedy with which to mend a broken heart.

My poor old friend! I was so certain of his happiness that night after dinner here in the House Abandoned, when he and Alice had lost themselves in the moonlight. Was it the moonlight? Or the kiss she gave him as they stood looking out over the lichen-stained wall of the courtyard to the fairy marsh beyond, still and sublime--wedded to the open sea at high tide--like a mirror of polished silver, its surface ruffled now and then by the splash of some incoming duck. He had poured out his heart to her then, and again over their liqueur and cigarettes at that fatal dinner of two at the chateau.

All this he confessed to me as he sat staring into the cheery blaze on my hearth. Under my friendly but somewhat judicial cross-examination that ensued, it was evident that not a word had escaped Alice's lips that any one but that big optimistic child of a Tanrade could have construed as her promise to be his wife. He confided her words to me reluctantly, now that he realized how little she had meant.

"Come," said I, in an effort to cheer him, "have courage! A woman's heart that is won easily is not worth fighting for. You shall see, old fellow--things will be better."

But he only shook his head, shrugged his great shoulders, and puffed doggedly at his pipe in silence. My tall clock in the corner ticked the louder, its bra.s.s pendulum glinting as it swung to and fro in the light of the slumbering fire. I threw on a fresh log, kicked it into a blaze, and poured out for him a stiff gla.s.s of applejack. I had faith in that applejack, for it had been born in the moonlit courtyard years ago. It roused him, for I saw something of his old-time self brighten within him; he even made an attempt at a careless smile--the reminiscent smile of a philosopher this time.

"What if I went to see her?" I remarked pointblank.

"You! _Mon Dieu!_" He half sprang out of the armchair in his intensity.

"Are you crazy?"

"Forgive me," I apologized. "I did not mean to hurt you. I only thought--and you are in no condition to reason--that Alice may have changed her mind, may regret having refused you. Women change their minds, you know. She might even confess this to me since there is nothing between us and we are old friends."

"No, no," he protested. "You are not to speak of me to Madame de Breville--do you understand?" he cried, his voice rising. "You are not to mention my name, promise me that."

This time it was I who shrugged my shoulders in reply. He sat gripping the arms of his chair, again his gaze reverted stolidly to the fire. The clock ticked on past midnight, peacefully aloof as if content to be well out of the controversy.

"A drop more?" I ventured, reaching for the decanter; but he stayed my arm.

"I've been a fool," he said slowly. "_Ah! Mon Dieu! Les femmes! Les femmes! Les femmes!_" he roared. "Very well," he exclaimed hotly, "it is well finished. To-morrow I must go to Paris for the new rehearsals. I have begged off for a week. Duclos is beside himself with anxiety--two telegrams to-day, the last one imperative. The new piece must open at the Folies Parisiennes the eighth."

I saw him out to the gate and there was a brave ring in his "_bonsoir, mon vieux_," as he swung off in the dusk of the starlit road.

He left the village the next day at noon by the toy train, "the little get off-the-track," as we call it. Perhaps he wished it would and end everything, including the rehearsals.