CHAPTER TWELVE
MIDWINTER FLIGHTS
One dines there much too well.
This snug Restaurant des Rois stands back from the grand boulevard in a slit of a street so that its ancient windows peer out askance at the gay life streaming by the corner.
The burgundy at "Les Rois" warms the soul, and the Chablis! Ah! where else in all Paris is there such Chablis? golden, sound and clear as topaz. Chablis, I hold, should be drank by some merry blonde whose heart is light; Burgundy by a brunette in a temper.
The small café on the ground floor is painted white, relieved by a frieze of gilded garlands and topped by a ceiling frescoed with rosy nymphs romping in a smoked turquoise sky.
Between five and seven o'clock these midwinter afternoons the café is filled with its habitués—distinguished old Frenchmen, who sip their absinthe leisurely enough to glance over the leading articles in the conservative Temps or the slightly gayer Figaro. Upstairs, by means of a spiral stairway, is a labyrinth of narrow, low-ceiled corridors leading to half a dozen stuffy little cabinets particuliers, about whose faded lambrequins and green velveted chairs there still lurks the scent of perfumes once in vogue with the gallants, beaux and belles of the Second Empire.
Alice de Bréville, Tanrade, and myself, are dining to-night in one of these intime little rooms. The third to the left down the corridor.
Sapristi! what a change in Tanrade. He is becoming a responsible person—-he has even grown neat and punctual—he who used to pound at the door of my house abandoned by the marsh at Pont du Sable, an hour late for dinner, dressed in a fisherman's sea-going overalls of brown canvas, a pair of sabots and a hat that any passing vagabond might have discarded by the roadside. I could not help noticing carefully to-night his new suit of black broadcloth, with its standing collar, buttoned up under his genial chin. His black hair is neatly combed and his broad-brimmed hat that hangs over my own on the wall, is but three days old. Thus had this bon garçon who had won the Prix de Rome been transformed—-and Alice was responsible, I knew, for the change. Who would not change anything for so exquisite and dear a friend as Alice? She, too, was in black, without a jewel—a gown which her lithe body wore with all its sveltness—a gown that matched her dark eyes and hair, accentuating the clean-cut delicacy of her features and the ivory clearness of her olive skin. She was a very merry Alice to-night, for her long engagement at the Bouffes Parisiennes was at an end. And she had been making the best of her freedom by keeping Tanrade hard at work over the score of his new ballet. They are more in love with each other than ever—so much so that they insist on my dining with them, and so these little dinners of three at "Les Rois" have become almost nightly occurrences. It is often so with those in love to be generous to an old friend—even lovers have need of company.
We were lingering over our coffee when the talk reverted to the new ballet.
"It is done, ma chérie," declared Tanrade, in reply to an imperative inquiry from Alice. "Bavière shall have the whole of the second act to-morrow."
"And the ballet in the third?" she asked sternly, lifting her brilliant eyes.
"Eh, voilà !" laughed that good fellow, as he drew forth from his pocket a thin roll of manuscript and spread it out before her, that she might see—but it was not discreet for me to continue, neither is it good form to embrace before the old garçon de café, who at that moment entered apologetically with the liqueurs—as for myself, I have long since ceased to count in such tender moments of reward, during which I am of no more consequence than a faithful poodle.
Again the garçon entered, this time with smiling assurance, for [he] brought me a telegram forwarded from my studio by my concierge. I opened the despatch: the next instant I jumped to my feet.
"Read!" I cried, poking the blue slip under Tanrade's nose, "it's from the curé."
"Howling northeast gale"—Tanrade read aloud—"Duck and geese—come midnight train, bring two hundred fours, one hundred double zeros for ten bore."
"Vive le curé!" I shouted, "the good old boy to let us know. A northeast gale at last—a howler," he says.
"He is charming—the curé," breathed Alice, her breast heaving—"Charming!" she repeated in a voice full of suppressed emotion.
Tanrade did not speak. He had let the despatch slip to the floor and sat staring at his glass.
"You'll come, of course," I said with sudden apprehension, but he only shook his head. "What! you're not going?" I exclaimed in amazement. "We'll kill fifty ducks a night—it's the gale we've been waiting for."
I saw the sullen gleam that had crept into Alice's eyes soften; she drew near him—she barely touched his arm:
"Go, mon cher!" she said simply—"if you wish."
He lifted his head with a grim smile, and I saw their eyes meet. I well knew what was passing in his mind—his promise to her to work—more than this, I knew he had not the heart to leave her during her well-earned rest.
"Ah! les hommes!" Alice exclaimed, turning to me impetuously—"you are quite crazy, you hunters."
I bowed in humble apology and again her dark eyes softened to tenderness.
"Non—forgive me, mon ami," she went on, "you are sane enough until news comes of those wretched little ducks, then, mon Dieu! there is no holding you. Everything else goes out of your head; you become as mad as children rushing to a fête. Is it not so?"
Still Tanrade was silent. Now and then he gave a shrug of his big shoulders and toyed with his half empty glass of liqueur. Sapristi! it is not easy to decide between the woman you love and a northeast gale thrashing the marsh in front of my house abandoned. He, like myself, could already picture in his mind's eye duck after duck plunge out of the night among our live decoys. My ears, like his own, were already ringing with the roar of the guns from the gabions—I could not resist a last appeal.
"Come," I insisted—"both of you—no—seriously—listen to me. There is plenty of dry wood in the garret; you shall have the chambre d'amis, dear friend, and this brute of a composer shall bunk in my room—we'll live, and shoot and be happy. Suzette will be overjoyed at your coming. Let me wire her to have breakfast ready for us?"
Alice laughed softly: "You are quite crazy, my poor friend," she said, laying her white hand on my shoulder. "You will freeze down there in that stone house of yours. Oh, la! la!" she sighed knowingly—"the leaks for the wind—the cold bedrooms, the cold stone floors—B-r-r-h-h!"
Tanrade straightened back in his chair: "No," said he, "it is impossible; Bavière can not wait. He must have his score. The rehearsals have been delayed long enough as it is—Go, mon vieux, and good luck to you!"
Again the old garçon entered, this time with the timetable I had sent him for in a hurry.
"Voilà , monsieur!" he began excitedly, his thumbnail indicating the line—"the 12.18, as monsieur sees, is an express—monsieur will not have to change at Lisieux."
"Bon!" I cried—"quick—a taxi-auto."
"Bien, monsieur—a good hunt to monsieur," and he rushed out into the narrow corridor and down the spiral stairs while I hurried into my coat and hat.
Tanrade gripped my hand:
"Shoot straight!" he counselled with a smile. Alice gave me her cheek, which I reverently kissed and murmured my apologies for my insistence in her small ear. Then I swung open the door and made for the spiral stairs. At the bottom step I stopped short. I had completely forgotten I should not return until after New Year's, and I rushed back to wish them a Bonne Année in advance, but I closed the door of the stuffy little cabinet particulier quicker than I opened it, for her arms were about the sturdy neck of a good comrade whose self-denial made me feel like the mad infant rushing to the fête.
"Bonne Année, mes enfants!" I called from the corridor, but they did not hear.
Ten minutes later I reached my studio, dumped three hundred cartridges into a worn valise and caught the 12.18 with four minutes to spare.
Enfin! it is winter in earnest!
The northeast gale gave, while it lasted, the best shooting the curé and I have ever had. Then the wind shifted to the southwest with a falling barometer, and the flights ceased. Again, for three days, the Norman coast has been thrashed by squalls of driving snow. The wild geese are honking in V-shaped lines to an inland refuge for the white sea is no longer tenable. Curlews cry hoarsely over the frozen fields. It is tough enough lying hidden in my sand pit on the open beach beyond the dunes, where I crack away at the ricketing flights of fat gray plover and beat myself to keep warm. Fuel is scarce and there is hardly a sou to be earned fishing in such cruel weather as this.
The country back of my house abandoned by the marsh is now stripped to bare actualities—all things are reduced to their proper size. Houses, barns and the skeletons of leafless trees stand out, naked facts in the landscape. The orchards are soggy in mud and the once green feathery lane back of my house abandoned, is now a rough gash of frozen pools and rotten leaves.
Birds twitter in the thin hedges.
I would never have believed my wild garden, once so full of mystery—gay flowers, sunshine 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 Père 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 Père 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 massive beams, seen dimly in the gloomy light that filters through a small barred window cut through the massive 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, voilà ! My good little maid-of-all-work, Suzette, has been kissed by the butcher's boy and a moment later by Père Bordier, who has left the cider press for a steaming bowl of café au lait; and ten minutes later by the Mère [Péquin] 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 Père 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 curé'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 Bréville are going to be married," I announced as calmly as I could.
"Hélas!" gasped Suzette.
"Et voilà —et voilà !" 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 fête such as there never was. Ah! you will have plenty of cooking to do, mon enfant. Run and find Monsieur le Curé—he must know at once."
Suzette did not move—without a word she buried her face in her apron 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 flashing 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 manœuvres—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?"
She nodded mutely in assent, then with a hopeless little sigh she added: "Hélas—it is not easy—when one has nothing one must work hard and wait—Ah, mon Dieu!"
"Sit down, my little one," I said. "I have something serious to think over." She did as I bade her, seating herself in silence before the fire. I have never regarded Suzette as a servant—she has always been to me more like a child whom I was responsible for. What would my house abandoned by the marsh have been without her cheeriness, and her devotion, I thought, and what would it be when she was gone? No other Suzette would ever be like her—and her cooking would vanish with the rest. Diable! these little marriages play the devil with us at times. And yet, if any one deserved to be happy it was Suzette. I realized too, all that her going would mean to me, and moreover that her devotion to her master was such that if I should say "stay" she would have stayed on quite as if her own father had counselled her.
As I turned toward her sitting humbly in the chair, I saw she was again struggling to keep back her tears. It was high time for me to speak.
I seated myself beside her upon the arm of the chair and took her warm little hands in mine.
"You shall marry your Gaston, Suzette," I said, "and you shall have enough to marry on even if I have to sell the big field and the cow that goes with it."
She started, trembling violently, then gave a little gasp of joy.
"Oh, monsieur! and it is true?" she cried eagerly.
"Yes, my child—there shall be two weddings in Pont du Sable! Now run and tell Monsieur le Curé."
Monsieur le Curé ran too, when he heard the news—straight to my house abandoned, by the short cut back of the village.
"Eh bien! Eh bien!" he exclaimed as he burst into my den, his keen eyes shining. "It is too good to be true—and not a word to us about it until now! Ah, les rosses! Ah, les rosses!" he repeated with a broad grin of delight as he eagerly read Tanrade's letter, telling him that the banns were published; that he was to marry them in the little gray church with the new bells and that but ten days remained before the wedding. He began pacing the floor, his hands clasped behind him—a habit he had when he was very happy.
"And Suzette?" I asked, "has she told you?"
"Yes," he returned with a nod. "She is a good child—she deserves to be happy." Then he stopped and inquired seriously—"What will you do without her?"
"One must not be selfish," I replied with a helpless shrug. "Suzette has earned it—so has Tanrade. It was his unfinished opera that was in the way: Alice was clever."
He crossed to where I stood and laid his hand on my shoulder, and though he did not open his lips I knew what was passing in his mind.
"Charity to all," he said softly at length. "It is so good to make others happy! Courage, mon petit—the price we pay for love, devotion—friendship, is always a heavy one." Suddenly his face lighted up. "Have you any idea?" he exclaimed, "how much there is to do and how little time to do it in? Let us prepare!"
And thus began the busiest week the house abandoned had ever known, beginning with the curé and I restocking the garret with dry wood while Suzette worked ferociously at house cleaning, and every detail of the wedding breakfast was planned and arranged for—no easy problem in my lost village in midwinter. If there was a good fish to be had out of the sea we knew we could rely on Marianne to get it. Even the old fisherman, Varnet, went off with fresh courage in search for clams and good Madame Vinet opened her heart and her wine cellar.
It was the curé who knew well a certain dozen of rare burgundy that had lain snug beneath the stairs of Madame Vinet's small café—a vintage the good soul had come into possession of the first year of her own marriage and which she ceded to me for the ridiculously low price of twenty sous the bottle, precisely what it had cost her in her youth.
It is over, and I am alone by my fire.
As I look back on to-day—their wedding day—it seems as if I had been living through some happy dream that has vanished only too quickly and out of which I recall dimly but half its incidents.
That was a merry procession of old friends that marched to the ruddy mayor's where there was the civil marriage and some madeira, and so on to the little gray church where Monsieur le Curé was waiting—that musty old church in which the tall candles burned and Monsieur le Curé's voice sounded so grave and clear. And we sat together, the good old general and I, and in front of us were Alice's old friend Germaine, chic and pretty in her sables, and Blondel, who had left his unfinished editorial and driven hard to be present, and beside him in the worn pew sat the Marquis and Marquise de Clamard, and the rest of the worn pews were filled with fisherfolk and Marianne sat on my left, and old Père Varnet with Suzette beyond him—and every one's eyes were upon Alice and Tanrade, for they were good to look upon. And it was over quickly, and I was glad of it, for the candle flames had begun to form halos before my eyes.
And so we went on singing through the village amid the booming of shotguns in honour of the newly wed, to the house abandoned. And all the while the new bells that Alice had so generously regiven rang lustily from the gray belfry—rang clear—rang out after us, all the way back to the house abandoned and were still ringing when we sat down to our jolly breakfast.
"Let them ring!" cried the curé. "I have two old salts of the sea taking turns at the rope," he confided in my ear. "Ring on!" he cried aloud, as we lifted our glasses to the bride—"Ring loud—that the good God may hear!"
And how lovely the room looked, for the table was a mass of roses fresh from Paris, and the walls and ceiling were green with mistletoe and holly. Moreover, the old room was warm with the hearts of friends and the cheer from blazing logs that crackled merrily up the blackened throat of my chimney. And there were kisses with this feast that came from the heart; and sound red wine that went to it. And later, the courtyard was filled with villagers come to congratulate and to drink the health of the bride and groom.
They are gone.
And the thrice-happy Suzette is dreaming of her own wedding to come, for it is long past midnight and I am alone with my wise old cat—"The Essence of Selfishness," and my good and faithful spaniel whom I call "Mr. Bear," for he looks like a young cinnamon, all save his ears. If poor de Savignac were alive he would hardly recognize the little spaniel puppy he gave me, he has grown so. He has crept into my arms, big as he is, awakening jealousy in "The Essence of Selfishness"—for she hates him—besides, we have taken her favourite chair. Poor Mr. Bear—who never troubles her——
"And you—beast whom I love—another hiss out of you, another flattening of your ears close to your skull, and you go straight to bed. There will be no Suzette to put you there soon, and there is now no Alice, nor Tanrade to spoil you. They are gone, pussy kit."
One o'clock—and the fire in embers.
I rose and Mr. Bear followed me out into the garden. The land lay still and cold under millions of stars. High above my chimney came faintly the "Honk, honk," of a flock of geese.
I closed my door, bolted the inner shutter, lighted my candle and motioned to Mr. Bear. The Essence of Selfishness was first on the creaky stairs. She paused half way up to let Mr. Bear pass, her ears again flat to her skull. Then I took them both to my room where they slept in opposite corners.
Lost village by the tawny marsh. Lost village, indeed, to-night! in which were hearts I loved, good comrades and sound red wine—Hark! the rush of wings. I must be up at dawn. It will help me forget——Sleep well, Mr. Bear!
THE END
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