There was a fountain, too, dripping melodiously under the trees; I heard the breathless humming of a spinning-wheel from one of the low houses of gray stone which enclosed the square, and a young girl singing, and the drone of bees in a bed of resida.
So this was Paradise! Truly the name did not seem amiss here, under the still vault of blue above; Paradise means peace to so many of us — surcease of care and sound and the brazen trample of nations — not the quiet of palace corridors or the tremendous silence of a cathedral, but the noiselessness of pleasant sounds, moving shadows of trees, wordless quietude, simplicity.
A young girl with a face like the Madonna stole across the square in her felt shoes.
“Can you tell me where the mayor lives?” I asked, looking down at her from my horse.
She raised her white-coiffed head with an innocent smile: “Eman’ barz ar sal o leina.”
“Don’t you speak French?” I asked, appalled.
“Ho! ia; oui, monsieur, s’il faut bien. The mayor is at breakfast in his kitchen yonder.”
“Thank you, my child.”
I turned my horse across the shady square to a stone house banked up with bed on bed of scarlet geraniums. The windows were open; a fat man with very small eyes sat inside eating an omelet.
He watched me dismount without apparent curiosity, and when I had tied my horse and walked in at the open door he looked at me over the rim of a glass of cider, and slowly finished his draught without blinking. Then he said, “Bonjour.”
I told him that I wanted a license for the circus to camp for one night; that I also desired permission to pitch camp somewhere in the vicinity. He made out the license, stamped it, handed it to me, and I paid him the usual fee. 165
“I’ve heard of circuses,” he said; “they’re like those shows at country fairs, I suppose.”
“Yes — in a way. We have animals.”
“What kind?”
“Lions, tigers—”
“I’ve seen them.”
“ — a camel, an elephant—”
“Alive?”
“Certainly.”
“Ma doué!” he said, with slow emotion, “have you a live elephant?”
I admitted that fact.
Presently I said, “I hope the people of Paradise will come to the circus when we get to Lorient.”
“Eh? Not they,” said the mayor, wagging his head. “Do you think we have any money here in Paradise? And then,” he added, cunningly, “we can all see your elephant when your company arrives. Why should we pay to see him again? War does not make millionaires out of the poor.”
I looked miserably around. It was quite true that people like these had no money to spend on strolling players. But we had to live somehow, and our animals could not exist on air, even well-salted air.
“How much will it cost to have your town-crier announce the coming of the circus?” I inquired.
“That will cost ten sous if he drums and reads the announcement from here to the château.”
I gave the mayor ten copper pennies.
“What château?” I asked.
“Dame, the château, monsieur.”
“Oh,” said I, “where the Countess lives?”
“The Countess? Yes, of course. Who else?”
“Is the Countess there?”
“Oui, dame, and others not to my taste.”
I asked no more questions, but the mayor did, and when he found it might take some time to pump me, he invited me to share his omelet and cider and afterwards to sit in the sun among his geraniums and satisfy his curiosity concerning the life of a strolling player.
I was glad of something to eat. After I had unsaddled my horse and led him to the mayor’s stable and had paid for hay and grain, I returned to sit in the mayor’s garden and sniff longingly at his tobacco smoke and answer his impertinent questions as good-naturedly as they were intended.
But even the mayor of Paradise grew tired of asking questions in time; the bees droned among the flowers, the low murmur of the sea stole in on our ears, the river softly lapped the quay. The mayor slept.
He was fat, very fat; his short, velvet jacket hung heavy with six rows of enormous silver buttons, his little, round hat was tilted over his nose. A silver buckle decorated it in front; behind, two little velvet ribbons fluttered in futile conflict with the rising sea-breeze.
Men in embroidered knee-breeches, with bare feet thrust into straw-filled sabots, sat sunning on the quay under the purple fig-trees; one ragged fellow in soiled velvet bolero and embossed leggings lay in the sun, chin on fists, wooden shoes crossed behind him, watching the water with the eyes of a poacher.
This mild, balmy November weather, this afterglow of summer which in my own country we call Indian summer, had started new blossoms among the climbing tea-roses, lovely orange-tinted blossoms, and some of a clear lemon color, and their fragrance filled the air. Nowhere do roses blow as they blow near the sea, nowhere have I breathed such perfume as I breathed that drowsy afternoon in Paradise, where in every door-yard thickets of clove-scented pinks carpeted the ground and tall spikes of snowy phlox glimmered silver-white in the demi-light.
Where on earth could a more peaceful scene be found than in this sea-lulled land, here in the subdued light under aged, spreading oaks, where moss crept over the pavements and covered the little fountain as though it had been the stony brink of a limpid forest spring?
The mayor woke up toward five o’clock and stared at me with owlish gravity as though daring me to say that he had been asleep.
“Um — ah — ma fois oui!” he muttered, blowing his nose loudly in a purple silk bandanna. Then he shrugged his shoulders and added: “C’est la vie, monsieur. Que voulez-vous?”
And it was one kind of life after all — a blessed release from the fever of that fierce farandole which we of the outer world call “life.”
The mayor scratched his ear, yawned, stretched one leg, then the other, and glanced at me.
“Paris still holds out?” he asked, with another yawn.
“Oh yes,” I replied.
“And the war — is it still going badly for us?”
“There is always hope,” I answered.
“Hope,” he grumbled; “oh yes, we know what hope is — we of the coast live on it when there’s no bread; but hope never yet filled my belly for me.”
“Has the war touched you here in Paradise?” I asked.
“Touched us? Ho! Say it has crushed us and I’ll strike palms with you. Why, not a keel has passed out of the port since August. Where is the fishing-fleet? Where are the sardine sloops that ought to have sailed from Algiers? Where are the Icelanders?”
“Well, where are they?” I suggested.
“Where? Ask the semaphore yonder. Where are our salt schooners for the Welsh coast? I don’t know. They have not sailed, that’s all I know. You do well to come with your circus and your elephant! You can peddle diamonds in the poor-house, too, if it suits your taste.”
“Have the German cruisers frightened all your craft from the sea?” I asked, astonished.
“Yes, partly. Then there’s an ugly French cruiser lying off Groix, yonder, and her black stacks are dribbling smoke all day and all night. We have orders to keep off and use Lorient when we want a port.”
“Do you know why the cruiser warns your fishing-boats from this coast?” I inquired.
“No,” he said, shortly.
“Do you know the name of the cruiser?”
“She’s a new one, the Fer-de-Lance. And if I were not a patriot and a Breton I’d say: ‘May Sainte-Anne rot her where she lies; she’s brought a curse on the coast from Lorient to the Saint-Julien Light! — and the ghosts of the Icelanders will work her evil yet.’”
The mayor’s round, hairless face was red; he thumped the arm of his chair with pudgy fists and wagged his head.
“We have not seen the end of this,” he said— “oh no! There’s a curse coming on Paradise — the cruiser brought it, and it�
�s coming. Hé! did a Bannalec man not hear the were-wolf in Kerselec forest a week since? Pst! Not a word, monsieur. But old Kloark, of Roscoff, heard it too — oui dame! — and he knows the howl of the Loup-Garou! Besides, did I not with my own eyes see a black cormorant fly inland from the sea? And, by Sainte-Éline of Paradise! the gulls squeal when there’s no storm brewing and the lançons prick the dark with flames along the coast till you’d swear the witches of Ker-Is were lighting death-candles from Paradise to Pont-Aven.”
“Do you believe in witches, monsieur the mayor?” I asked, gravely. 169
He gave me a shrewd glance. “Not at all — not even in bed and the light out,” he said, with a fat swagger. “I believe in magic? Ho! foi non! But many do. Oui dame! Many do.”
“Here in Paradise?”
“Parbleu! Men of parts, too, monsieur. Now there’s Terrec, who has the evil eye — not that I believe it, but, damn him, he’d better not try any tricks on me!
“Others stick twigs of aubépine in their pastures; the apothecary is a man of science, yet every year he makes a bonfire of dried gorse and drives his cattle through the smoke. It may keep off witches and lightning — or it may not. I myself do not do such things.”
“Still you believe the cruiser out at sea yonder is going to bring you evil?”
“She has brought it. But it’s all the same to me. I am mayor, and exempt, and I have cider and tobacco and boudin for a few months yet.”
He caressed his little, selfish chin, which hung between his mottled jowls, peered cunningly at me, and opened his mouth to say something, but at that moment we both caught sight of a peasant running and waving a packet of blue papers in the air. “Monsieur the mayor! Monsieur the mayor!” he called, while still far away.
“Cré cochon de malheur!” muttered the mayor, turning pale. “He’s got a telegram!”
The man came clattering across the square in his wooden shoes.
“A telegram,” repeated the mayor, wiping the sudden sweat from his forehead. “I never get telegrams. I don’t want telegrams!”
He turned to me, almost bursting with suppressed prophecy.
“It has come — the evil that the black cruiser brings us! You laughed! Tenez, monsieur; there’s your bad luck in these blue morsels of paper!” 170
And he snatched the telegram from the breathless messenger, reading it with dilating eyes.
For a long while he sat there studying the telegram, his fat forefinger following the scrawl, a crease deepening above his eyebrows, and all the while his lips moved in noiseless repetition of the words he spelled with difficulty and his labored breathing grew louder.
When at length the magistrate had mastered the contents of his telegram, he looked up with a stupid stare.
“I want my drummer. Where’s the town-crier?” he demanded, as though dazed.
“He has gone to Lorient, m’sieu the mayor,” ventured the messenger.
“To get drunk. I remember. Imbecile! Why did he go to-day? Are there not six other days in this cursed week? Who is there to drum? Nobody. Nobody knows how in Paradise. Seigneur, Dieu! the ignorance of this town!”
“M’sieu the mayor,” ventured the messenger, “there’s Jacqueline.”
“Ho! Vrai. The Lizard’s young one! She can drum, they say. She stole my drum once. Why did she steal it but to drum upon it?”
“The little witch can drum them awake in Ker-Is,” muttered the messenger.
The mayor rose, looked around the square, frowned. Then he raised his voice in a bellow: “Jacqueline! Jacqueline! Thou Jacqueline!”
A far voice answered, faintly breaking across the square from the bridge: “She is on the rocks with her sea-rake!”
The mayor thrust the blue telegram into his pocket and waddled out of his garden, across the square, and up the path to the cliffs.
Uninvited, I went with him.
X
THE TOWN-CRIER
The bell in the unseen chapel ceased ringing as we came out on the cliffs of Paradise, where, on the horizon, the sun hung low, belted with a single ribbon of violet cloud.
Over acres of foaming shoals the crimson light flickered and spread, painting the eastern cliffs with sombre fire. The ebb-tide, red as blood, tumbled seaward across the bar, leaving every ledge a glowing cinder under the widening conflagration in the west.
The mayor carried his silver-buttoned jacket over his arm; the air had grown sultry. As we walked our gigantic shadows strode away before us across the kindling stubble, seeming to lengthen at every stride.
Below the cliffs, on a crescent of flat sand, from which sluggish, rosy rivulets crawled seaward, a man stood looking out across the water. And the mayor stopped and called down to him: “Ohé, the Lizard! What do you see on the ocean — you below?”
“I see six war-ships speeding fast in column,” replied the man, without looking up.
The mayor hastily shaded his eyes with one fat hand, muttering: “All poachers have eyes like sea-hawks. There is a smudge of smoke to the north. Holy Virgin, what eyes the rascal has!”
As for me, strain my eyes as I would, I saw nothing save the faintest stain of smoke on the horizon. 172
“Hé, Lizard! Are they German, your six war-ships?” bawled the mayor. His voice had suddenly become tremulous.
“They are French,” replied the poacher, tranquilly.
“Then Sainte-Éline keep them from the rocks!” sang out the mayor. “Ohé, Lizard, I want somebody to drum and read a proclamation. Where’s Jacqueline?”
At that instant a young girl, a mere child, appeared on the beach, dragging a sea-rake over the ground behind her. She was a lithe creature, bare-limbed and ragged, with the sea-tan on throat and knee. The blue tatters of her skirt hung heavy with brine; the creamy skin on her arms glittered with wet spray, and her hair was wet, too, clustering across her cheeks in damp elf-locks.
The mayor glanced at her with that stolid contempt which Finistère Bretons cherish toward those women who show their hair — an immodesty unpardonable in the eyes of most Bretons.
The girl caught sight of the mayor and gave him a laughing greeting which he returned with a shrug.
“If you want a town-crier,” she called up, in a deliciously fresh voice, scarcely tinged with the accent, “I’ll cry your edicts and I’ll drum for you, too!”
“Can your daughter beat the drum?” asked the mayor of the poacher, ignoring the girl’s eager face upturned.
“Yes,” said the poacher, indifferently, “and she can also beat the devil with two sticks.”
The girl threw her rake into a boat and leaped upon the rocks at the base of the cliff.
“Jacqueline! Don’t come up that way!” bawled the mayor, horrified. “Hey! Robert! Ohé! Lizard! Stop her or she’ll break her neck!”
The poacher looked up at his daughter then shrugged his shoulders and squatted down on his ragged haunches, restless eyes searching the level ocean, as sea-birds search.
Breathless, hot, and laughing, the girl pulled herself up over the edge of the cliff. I held out my hand to aid her, but she pushed it away, crying, “Thank you all the same, but here I am!”
“Spawn of the Lizard,” I heard the mayor mutter to himself, “like a snake you wriggle where honest folk fall to destruction!” But he spoke condescendingly to the bright-eyed, breathless child. “I’ll pay six sous if you’ll drum for me.”
“I’ll do it for love,” she said, saucily— “for the love of drumming, not for your beaux yeux, m’sieu le maire.”
The mayor looked at her angrily, but, probably remembering he was at her mercy, suppressed his wrath and held out the telegram. “Can you read that, my child?”
The girl, still breathing rapidly from her scramble, rested her hands on her hips and, head on one side, studied the blue sheets of the telegram over the mayor’s outstretched arm.
“Yes, I can read it. Why not? Can’t you?”
“Read? I the mayor of Paradise!” repeated the outraged magistrate.
“What do you mean, lizard of lizards! gorse cat!”
“Now if you are going to say such things I won’t drum for you,” said the child, glancing at me out of her sea-blue eyes and giving a shake to her elf-locks.
“Yes, you will!” bawled the angry mayor. “Shame on your manners, Jacqueline Garenne! Shame on your hair hanging where all the world can see it! Shame on your bare legs—”
“Not at all,” said the child, unabashed. “God made my legs, m’sieu the mayor, and my hair, too. If my coiffe does not cover my hair, neither does the small Paris hat of the Countess de Vassart cover her hair. Complain of the Countess to m’sieu the curé, then I will listen to you.”
The mayor glared at her, but she tossed her head and laughed.
“Ho fois! Everybody knows what you are,” sniffed the mayor— “and nobody cares, either,” he muttered, waddling past me, telegram in hand.
The child, quite unconcerned, fell into step beside me, saying, confidentially: “When I was little I used to cry when they talked to me like that. But I don’t now; I’ve made up my mind that they are no better than I.”
“I don’t know why anybody should abuse you,” I said, loudly enough for the mayor to hear. But that functionary waddled on, puffing, muttering, stopping every now and then in the narrow cliff-path to strike flint to tinder or to refill the tiny bowl of his pipe, which a dozen puffs always exhausted.
“Oh, they all abuse us,” said the child, serenely. “You see, you are a stranger and don’t understand; but you will if you live here.”
“Why is everybody unkind to you?” I asked, after a moment.
“Why? Oh, because I am what I am and my father is the Lizard.”
“A poacher?”
“Ah,” she said, looking up at me with delicious malice, “what is a poacher, monsieur?”
“Sometimes he’s a fine fellow gone wrong,” I said, laughing. “So I don’t believe any ill of your father, or of you, either. Will you drum for me, Jacqueline?”
“For you, monsieur? Why, yes. What am I to read for you?”
I gave her a hand-bill; at the first glance her eyes sparkled, the color deepened under her coat of amber tan; she caught her breath and read rapidly to the end. 175
Works of Robert W Chambers Page 181
