“Nul ne connût jamais son âge!
Son nom? Ma foi, pas davantage!
Sa famille? Il n’en avait pas!
On l’avait trouvé sur la plage...
Pauvre P’tit Gas!”
Her extraordinary voice gave a strange pathos to the simple little song, and sent a shiver between Basil’s shoulders. Preston and Neville had fallen back and stood motionless, shoulder to shoulder, listening intently to verse after verse of the quaint complainte:
“Lorsque la mer était mauvaise
Il chantait, le cour plus à l’aise,
Gité, malgré vents et frimas,
Dans un abri de la falaise...
Pauvre P’tit Gas!”
Down went the accompaniment a full octave; distant bells seemed to mingle with the score. One could discern the sobbing at the sea now, the pulsing of the tide, rising, rising, till with a swelling rush it submerged the reefs.
“Or un soir la vague en furie....”
Marguerite had long since forgotten where she was. She was singing as she had so often done on the cliffs of Plenhöel, and her Pauvre P’tit Gas was as real to her as he had seemed then:
“Malgré les brisants et l’orage
Il attint la côte à la nage
Puis il mourut ... tant était las!...
Pauvre P’tit Gas!”
Slower and slower came the words:
“Il fut pleuré dans les ténèbres....
Pauvre P’tit Gas!
Pauvre P’tit Gas!”
At the last wailing chords she seemed to awaken, rose, and faced swiftly round, in evident surprise to see them all there, but utterly unconscious of the prodigious effect created. A little smile played hide-and-seek beneath “Antinoüs’s” mustache; he had heard her sing that before; but the rest had not, and the spell seemed unbroken for a full minute before the applause began. The girl, startled and embarrassed, looked around in a long glance of astonishment, and met Basil’s eyes fixed upon hers in a manner she had never seen before; but when the others surrounded her with enthusiastic expressions of delight he remained where he had stood during her singing, and did not speak.