Works of Robert W Chambers

by Robert W. Chambers

  Byram came in to rehearse the opening processional and to rebuke his dearest foe, the unspeakable “camuel,” bestridden by Mrs. Horan as Fatima, Queen of the Desert. Speed followed, squatted on the head of the elephant, ankus on thigh, shouting, “Hôut! Mäil! Djebé Noain! Mäil the hezar! Mäil!” he thundered, triumphantly, saluting Byram with lifted ankus as the elephant ambled past in a cloud of dust.

  “Clear the ring!” cried Byram.

  Miss Delany, who was outlining Jacqueline with juggler’s knives, began to pull her stock of cutlery from the soft pine backing; elephant, camel, horses trampled out; Miss Crystal caught a dangling rope and slid earthward, and I turned and walked towards the outer door with Byram.

  As I looked back for an instant I saw Jacqueline, in her glittering diving-skin, calmly step out of her discarded skirt and walk towards the sunken tank in the middle of the ring, which three workmen were uncovering.

  She was to rehearse her perilous leap for the first time to-day, and I told Speed frankly that I was too nervous to be present, and so left him staring across the dusky tent at the slim child in spangles.

  I had an appointment to meet Robert the Lizard at noon, and I was rather curious to find out how much his promises were worth when the novelty of his new gun had grown stale. So I started towards the cliffs, nibbling a crust of bread for luncheon, though the incident of the morning had left me small appetite for food.

  The poacher was sunning himself on his doorsill when I came into view over the black basalt rocks. To my surprise, he touched his cap as I approached, and rose civilly, replying to my greeting with a brief, “Salute, m’sieu!”

  “You are prompt to the minute,” I said, pleasantly.

  “You also,” he observed. “We are quits, m’sieu — so far.”

  I told him of the progress that Jacqueline was making; he listened in silence, and whether or not he was interested I could not determine.

  There was a pause; I looked out across the sun-lit ocean, taking time to arrange the order of the few questions which I had to ask.

  “Come to the point, m’sieu,” he said, dryly. “We have struck palms.”

  Spite of my training, spite of the caution which experience brings to the most unsuspicious of us, I had a curious confidence in this tattered rascal’s loyalty to a promise. And apparently without reason, too, for there was something wrong with his eyes — or else with the way he used them. They were wonderful, vivid blue eyes, well set and well shaped, but he never looked at anybody directly except in moments of excitement or fury. At such moments his eyes appeared to be lighted up from behind.

  “Lizard,” I said, “you are a poacher.”

  His placid visage turned stormy.

  “None of that, m’sieu,” he retorted; “remember the bargain! Concern yourself with your own affairs!”

  “Wait,” I said. “I’m not trying to reform you. For my purposes it is a poacher I want — else I might have gone to another.”

  “That sounds more reasonable,” he admitted, guardedly.

  “I want to ask this,” I continued: “are you a poacher from necessity, or from that pure love of the chase which is born in even worse men than you and I?”

  “I poach because I love it. There are no poachers from necessity; there is always the sea, which furnishes work for all who care to steer a sloop, or draw a seine, or wield a sea-rake. I am a pilot.”

  “But the war?”

  “At least the war could not keep me from the sardine grounds.”

  “So you poach from choice?”

  “Yes. It is in me. I am sorry, but what shall I do? It’s in me.”

  “And you can’t resist?”

  He laughed grimly. “Go and call in the hounds from the stag’s throat!”

  Presently I said:

  “You have been in jail?”

  “Yes,” he replied, indifferently.

  “For poaching?”

  “Eur e’harvik rous,” he said in Breton, and I could not make out whether he meant that he had been in jail for the sake of a woman or of a “little red doe.” The Breton language bristles with double meanings, symbols, and allegories. The word for doe in Breton is karvez; or for a doe which never had a fawn, it is heiez; for a fawn the word is karvik.

  I mentioned these facts to him, but he only looked dangerous and remained silent.

  “Lizard,” I said, “give me your confidence as I give you mine. I will tell you now that I was once in the police—”

  He started.

  “And that I expect to enter that corps again. And I want your aid.”

  “My aid? For the police?” His laugh was simply horrible. “I? The Lizard? Continue, m’sieu.”

  “I will tell you why. Yesterday, on a visit to Point Paradise, I saw a man lying belly down in the bracken; but I didn’t let him know I saw him. I have served in the police; I think I recognize that man. He is known in Belleville as Tric-Trac. He came here, I believe, to see a man called Buckhurst. Can you find this Tric-Trac for me? Do you, perhaps, know him?”

  “Yes,” said the Lizard, “I knew him in prison.”

  “You have seen him here?”

  “Yes, but I will not betray him.”

  “Why?”

  “Because he is a poor, hunted devil of a poacher like me!” cried the Lizard, angrily. “He must live; there’s enough land in Finistère for us both.”

  “How long has he been here in Paradise?”

  “For two months.”

  “And he told you he lived by poaching?”

  “Yes.”

  “He lies.”

  The Lizard looked at me intently.

  “He has played you; he is a thief, and he has come here to rob. He is a filou — a town rat. Can he bend a hedge-snare? Can he line a string of dead-falls? Can he even snare enough game to keep himself from starving? He a woodsman? He a poacher of the bracken? You are simple, my friend.”

  The veins in the poacher’s neck began to swell and a dull color flooded his face.

  “Prove that he has played me,” he said.

  “Prove it yourself.”

  “How?”

  “By watching him. He came here to meet a man named Buckhurst.”

  “I have seen that man Buckhurst, too. What is he doing here?” asked the Lizard.

  “That is what I want you to find out and help me to find out!” I said. “Voilà! Now you know what I want of you.” 237

  The sombre visage of the poacher twitched.

  “I take it,” said I, “that you would not make a comrade of a petty pickpocket.”

  The poacher uttered an oath and shook his fist at me. “Bon sang!” he snarled, “I am an honest man if I am a poacher!”

  “That’s the reason I trusted you,” said I, good-humoredly. “Take your fists down, my friend, and think out a plan which will permit me to observe this Monsieur Tric-Trac at my leisure, without I myself being observed.”

  “That is easy,” he said. “I take him food to-day.”

  “Then I was right,” said I, laughing. “He is a Belleville rat, who cannot feed himself where there are no pockets to pick. Does he know a languste from a linnet? Not he, my friend!”

  The Lizard sat still, head bent, knees drawn up, apparently buried in thought. There is no injury one can do a Breton of his class like the injury of deceiving and mocking.

  If Tric-Trac, a man of the city, had come here to profit by the ignorance of a Breton — and perhaps laugh at his stupidity!

  But I let the ferment work in the dark blood of the Lizard, leaving him to his own sombre logic, undisturbed.

  Presently the Lizard raised his head and fixed his bright, intelligent eyes on me.

  “M’sieu,” he said, in a curiously gentle voice, “we men of Paradise are called out for the army. I must go, or go to jail. How can I remain here and help you trap these filous?”

  “I have telegraphed to General Chanzy,” I said, frankly. “If he accepts — or if General Aurelles de Palladine is favor
able — I shall make you exempt under authority from Tours. I mean to keep you in my service, anyway,” I added.

  “You mean that — that I need not go to Lorient — to this war?”

  “I hope so, my friend.”

  He looked at me, astonished. “If you can do that, m’sieu, you can do anything.”

  “In the meanwhile,” I said, dryly, “I want another look at Tric-Trac.”

  “I could show you Tric-Trac in an hour — but to go to him direct would excite his suspicion. Besides, there are two gendarmes in Paradise to conduct the conscripts to Lorient; there are also several gardes-champêtre. But I can get you there, in the open moorland, too, under everybody’s noses! Shall I?” he said, with an eager ferocity that startled me.

  “You are not to injure him, no matter what he does or says,” I said, sharply. “I want to watch him, not to frighten him away. I want to see what he and Buckhurst are doing. Do you understand?”

  “Yes.”

  “Then strike palms!”

  We struck vigorously.

  “Now I am ready to start,” I said, pleasantly.

  “And now I am ready to tell you something,” he said, with the fierce light burning behind his blue eyes. “If you were already in the police I would not help you — no, not even to trap this filou who has mocked me! If you again enter the police I will desert you!”

  He licked his dry lips.

  “Do you know what a blood-feud is?”

  “Yes,” I said.

  “Then understand that a man in a high place has wronged me — and that he is of the police — the Imperial Military police!”

  “Who?” 239

  “You will know when I pass my fagot-knife into his throat,” he snarled— “not before.”

  The Lizard picked up his fishing-rod, slung a canvas bag over his stained velveteen jacket, gathered together a few coils of hair-wire, a pot of twig-lime, and other odds and ends, which he tucked into his broad-flapped coat-pocket. “Allons,” he said, briefly, and we started.

  The canvas bag on his back bulged, perhaps with provisions, although the steel point of a murderous salmon-gaff protruded from the mouth of the sack and curved over his shoulder.

  The village square in Paradise was nearly deserted. The children had raced away to follow the newly arrived gendarmes as closely as they dared, and the women were in-doors hanging about their men, whom the government summoned to Lorient.

  There were, however, a few people in the square, and these the Lizard was very careful to greet. Thus we passed the mayor, waddling across the bridge, puffing with official importance over the arrival of the gendarmes. He bowed to me; the Lizard saluted him with, “Times are hard on the fat!” to which the mayor replied morosely, and bade him go to the devil.

  “Au revoir, donc,” retorted the Lizard, unabashed. The mayor bawled after him a threat of arrest unless he reported next day in the square.

  At that the poacher halted. “Don’t you wish you might get me!” he said, tauntingly, probably presuming on my conditional promise.

  “Do you refuse to report?” demanded the mayor, also halting.

  “Et ta sœur!” replied the poacher; “is she reporting at the caserne?”

  The mayor replied angrily, and a typical Breton quarrel began, which ended in the mayor biting his thumb-nail at the Lizard and wishing him “St. Hubert’s luck” — an insult tantamount to a curse.

  Now St. Hubert was a mighty hunter, and his luck was proverbially marvellous. But as everything goes by contrary in Brittany, to wish a Breton hunter good luck was the very worst thing you could do him. Bad luck was certain to follow — if not that very day, certainly, inexorably, some day.

  With wrath in his eyes the Lizard exhausted his profanity, stretching out his arm after the retreating mayor, who waddled away, gesticulating, without turning his head.

  “Come back! Toad! Sourd! V-Snake! Bat of the gorse!” shouted the Lizard. “Do you think I’m afraid of your spells, fat owl of Faöuet? Evil-eyed eel! The luck of Ker-Ys to you and yours! Ho fois! Do you think I am frightened — I, Robert the Lizard? Your wife is a camel and your daughter a cow!” The mayor was unmarried, but it didn’t matter. And, moreover, as that official was now out of ear-shot, the Lizard turned anxiously to me.

  “Don’t tell me you are superstitious enough to care what the mayor said,” I laughed.

  “Dame, m’sieu, we shall have no luck to-day. To-morrow it doesn’t matter — but if we go to-day, bad luck must come to us.”

  “To-day? Nonsense!”

  “If not, then another day.”

  “Rubbish! Come on.”

  “Do you think we could take precautions?” he asked, furtively.

  “Take all you like,” I said; “rack your brains for an antidote to neutralize the bad luck, only come on, you great gaby!”

  I knew many of the Finistère legends; out of the corner of my eye I watched this stalwart rascal, cowed by gross superstition, peeping about for some favorable sign to counteract the luck of St. Hubert.

  First he looked up at the crows, and counted them as they passed overhead cawing ominously — one — two — three — four — five! Five is danger! But wait, more were coming: one — two — three — four — five — six — seven — ! A loss! Well, that was not as bad as some things. But hark! More crows coming: one — two — three! Death!

  “Jesû!” he faltered, ducking his head instinctively. “I’ll look elsewhere for signs.”

  The signs were all wrong that morning; first we met an ancient crone with a great pack of fagots on her bent back, and I was sure he could have strangled her cheerfully, because there are few worse omens for a hunter of game or of men. Then he examined the first mushroom he found, but under the pink-and-pearl cap we saw no insects crawling. The veil, too, was rent, showing the poisonous, fluted gills; and the toadstool blackened when he cut it with the blade of his fagot-knife.

  He tried once more, however, and searched through the gorse until he found a heavy lizard, green as an emerald. He teased it till it snapped at the silver franc in my hand; its teeth should have vanished, but when he held out his finger the creature bit into it till the blood spurted.

  Still I refused to turn back. What should he do? Then into his mind crept a Pouldu superstition. It was a charm against evil, including lightning, black-rot, rheumatism, and “douleurs” of other varieties.

  The charm was simple. We needed only to build a little fire of gorse, and walk through the smoke once or twice. So we built the fire and walked through the smoke, the Lizard coughing and cursing until I feared he might overdo it by smothering us both. Then stamping out the last spark — for he was a woodsman always — we tramped on in better humor with destiny.

  “You think that turned the curse backward, m’sieu?” he asked.

  “There is not the faintest doubt of that,” I said.

  Far away towards Sainte-Ysole we saw the blue woods which were our goal. However, we had no intention of going there as the bee flies, partly because Tric-Trac might see us, partly because the Lizard wished any prowling passer-by to observe that he was occupied with his illegitimate profession. For my part, I very much preferred a brush with a garde-champêtre or a summons to explain why no shots were found in the Lizard’s pheasants, rather than have anybody ask us why we were walking so fast towards Sainte-Ysole woods.

  Therefore we promptly selected a hedge for operations, choosing a high, thick one, which separated two fields of wheat stubble.

  Kneeling under the hedge, he broke a hole in it just large enough for a partridge to worry through. Then he bent his twig, fastened the hair-wire into a running noose, adjusted it, and stood up. This manœuvre he repeated at various hedges or in thickets where he “lined” his trail with peeled twigs on every bush.

  Once he paused to reset a hare-trap with a turnip, picked up in a neighboring field; once he limed a young sapling and fixed a bit of a mirror in the branches, but not a bird alighted, although the blackthorns were full of
fluttering wings. And all the while we had been twisting and doubling and edging nearer and nearer to the Sainte-Ysole woods, until we were already within their cool shadow, and I heard the tinkle of a stream among leafy depths.

  Now we had no fear; we were hidden from the eyes of the dry, staring plain, and the Lizard laughed to himself as he fastened a grasshopper to his hook and flung it into the broad, dark water of the pool at his feet.

  Slowly he fished up stream, but, although he seemed to be intent on his sport, there was something in the bend of his head that suggested he might be listening for other sounds than the complex melodies of mossy waterfalls.

  His poacher’s eyes began to glisten and shimmer in the forest dusk like the eyes of wild things that hunt at night. As he noiselessly turned, his nostrils spread with a tremor, as a good dog’s nose quivers at the point.

  Presently he beckoned me, stepped into the moss, and crawled without a sound straight through the holly thicket.

  “Watch here,” he whispered. “Count a hundred when I disappear, then creep on your stomach to the edge of that bank. In the bed of the stream, close under you, you will see and hear your friend Tric-Trac.”

  Before I had counted fifty I heard the Lizard cry out, “Bonjour, Tric-Trac!” but I counted on, obeying the Lizard’s orders as I should wish mine to be obeyed. I heard a startled exclamation in reply to the Lizard’s greeting, then a purely Parisian string of profanity, which terminated as I counted one hundred and crept forward to the mossy edge of the bank, under the yellow beech leaves.

  Below me stood the Lizard, intently watching a figure crouched on hands and knees before a small, iron-bound box.

  The person addressed as Tric-Trac promptly tried to hide the box by sitting down on it. He was a young man, with wide ears and unhealthy spots on his face. His hair, which was oily and thick, he wore neatly plastered into two pointed love-locks. This not only adorned and distinguished him, but it lent a casual and detached air to his ears, which stood at right angles to the plane of his face. I knew that engaging countenance. It was the same old Tric-Trac.