Читать книгу Sir Percy Hits Back - Emmuska Orczy - Страница 7

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Bibi was the first to hear the sound of footsteps coming up to the door. He gave a start, just as if he were waking from a dream.

"It's M'sieu' Colombe," Fluerette said.

At once Bibi reproved her, a thing he hardly ever did: "Citizen Colombe," he said sternly.

Fluerette shrugged her plump shoulders: "Ah well—!" she exclaimed.

"You must learn, Fluerette," Bibi insisted, still with unwonted severity. "You are old enough to learn."

She said nothing more; only kissed the top of his head, the smooth brown hair, of late so plentifully tinged with grey, and promised that she would learn. She stood by the sideboard intent on putting the silver away, with her back turned to Bibi so that he could not see the soft tone of pink that had crept into her cheeks, as soon as she perceived that two pairs of feet were treading the path outside the door.

Now there was a vigorous knock against the door, and a cheery, raucous voice called out loudly: "May one enter?"

Fluerette ran to the door and opened it.

"But certainly, certainly," she said, and then added, seemingly very astonished: "Ah! and M'sieu' Amédé, too?" From which the casual observer would perhaps infer that the pink colour in her cheeks had been due to the arrival of M'sieu' Colombe, the épicier of the Rue Haute, rather than to that of his son Amédé. It was no doubt also that worthy épicier with his round, florid face, dark, twinkling eyes, and general air of ferocious kindliness that caused the pink colour to spread from Fluerette's cheeks down to her neck and the little bit of throat that peeped out above her kerchief.

The good Colombe had already stalked into the room and with a familiar "Eh bien! Eh bien! We did contrive to come and drink Fluerette's health after all?" had slapped Bibi vigorously over the lean shoulders. But Amédé had come to a halt on the mat in which he was mechanically wiping his boots as if his very life depended on their cleanliness. Between his fingers he was twirling an immense posy of bright pink peonies, but his eyes were fixed on Fluerette, and on his broad, plain face, which shone with perspiration and good temper, there was a half-shy, wholly adoring look.

He gulped hard once or twice before he murmured, hoarse with emotion:

"Mam'zelle Fluerette!"

And Fluerette wiped her hot little hand against her apron before she whispered in shy response:

"M'sieu' Amédé!"

Not for these two the new fangled "citoyen" and "citoyenne" decreed in far-off Paris. To their unsophisticated ears the clamour of a trumpet- tongued revolution only came as an unreal and distant echo.

Amédé appeared to have finished cleaning his boots, and Fluerette was able to close the door behind him before she held out her hand for the flowers which he was too bewildered to offer.

"Are those beautiful flowers for me, M'sieu' Amédé?" she asked.

"If you will deign to accept them, Mam'zelle Fluerette?" he replied.

She was eighteen and he was just twenty. Neither of them had ever been away more than a few hours from their remote little village of Dauphiné where they were born—she in the little house with the green shutters, and he in the Rue Haute above the shop where his father, Hector Colombe, had sold tallow-candles and sugar, flour and salt, and lard and eggs to the neighbors, ever since he had been old enough to help his father in the business. And when Amédé was four, and Fluerette two, they had made mud pies together in the village street with water from the fountain, and Amédé had warded Fluerette against the many powerful enemies that sometimes threatened her and caused her to scream with terror, such as M'sieu' Duflos, the butcher's, dog, or Achille the garde-champetre with his ferocious scowl, or Ma'ame Amelie's geese.

They had sat together—not side by side, you understand, but the boys on the right side of the room and the girls on the left—in the little class-room where M. le Curé taught them their alphabet and subsequently the catechism; and also that two and two make four. They had knelt side by side in the little primitive church at Laragne, their little souls overburdened with emotion and religious fervor, when they made their first communion: Fluerette in a beautiful white dress, with a wealth of white roses on her fair hair, and a long tulle veil that descended right down to her feet; and Amédé in an exquisite cloth coat with brass buttons, a silk waistcoat, buckled shoes and a white ribbon sash on his left arm.

And when Amédé had been old enough to be entrusted with his father's errands over at Serres, a couple of leagues away, Fluerette had climbed behind him on the saddle, and with her arms round his waist, so as to keep herself steady, they had ridden together along the winding road white with dust, Ginette, the good old mare, ambling very leisurely as if she knew that her riders were in no hurry to get anywhere that day.

And now Fluerette was eighteen and Amédé twenty, and her hair was like ripe corn, and her eyes as blue as the sky on a midsummer morn, whilst her mouth was dewy and fragrant as a rose in June. No wonder that poor Amédé felt as if his feet were of lead and his neck too big for his cravat, and when presently she asked him to fill a vase with water out of the carafe so that she could place the beautiful flowers in it, is it a wonder that he spilt the water all over the floor, seeing that his clumsy hands met her dainty fingers around the neck of the carafe?

The good Hector pretended to be very angry with his son for his clumsiness.

"Voyez-moi cet imbécile!" he said in that gruff voice of his which had become a habit with him, because he had to use it all day in order to ward off the naughty village urchins who tried to steal the apples out of his shop.

"Mam'zelle Fluerette, why don't you box his ears?"

Which, of course, was a very funny proposition that caused Fleurette and Amédé to laugh immoderately first and then to whisper and to chaff whilst they mopped the water off the tiled floor. And the good Hector turned once more to Bibi, and shaking his powerful first at nothing in particular, he brought it down with a crash upon the table.

"And now those gredins, those limbs of Satan are taking him away for cannon-fodder! Ah! the devils! the pigs! the pig-devils!"

Bibi looked up inquiringly.

"Taking him away, are they?" he asked dryly. Then he added with an indifferent shrug of the shoulders: "Amédé is twenty, isn't he?"

"What's that to do with their dragging him away from me, when I want him to help in the shop?" Hector retorted with what he felt was unanswerable logic.

"What would be the good of keeping shop, my good Hector," Bibi rejoined simply, "if France was invaded by foreigners as she is already ruined by traitors?"

"Well! And isn't she ruined now by all those devils up in Paris who can think of nothing better than war or murder?" growled Hector Colombe, heedless of the quick gesture of warning which Bibi had given him.

Adèle, the girl from the village who gave old Louise a hand about the house when Bibi was at home, had just come in from the kitchen with a pile of plates and dishes which she proceeded to range upon the dresser. Hector shrugged his big shoulders. Whoever would think of taking notice of Adèle? A wench who got five souls a day for scrubbing floors! An undersized, plain-faced creature with flat feet and red elbows. Bah!

But Bibi still put up a warning finger:

"Little pitchers have long ears," he said in a whisper.

"Oh! I know, I know," Hector rejoined gruffly. "It is the fashion these days for us all to spy upon one another. A pretty pass they have brought us to," he added, "your friends in Paris."

To this Bibi made no reply. No doubt he knew that it was impossible to argue with Hector, once the worthy épicier was in one of his moods. Adèle had finished her task and glided out of the room, silent, noiseless, furtive as a little rat, which she vaguely resembled with small, keen eyes, and pointed nose and chin. In a corner of the room, by the window, still busy with those flowers which seemingly would not set primly in the vase, Fluerette and Amédé were talking under their breath.

"I'm going away, Mam'zelle Fluerette," said he.

"Going away, M'sieu' Amédé? Whither? When?"

"They want me in the army."

"What for?" she asked naïvely.

"To fight against the English."

"But you won't go, will you, M'sieu' Amédé?"

"I must, Mam'zelle Fluerette."

"Oh, but what shall I—I mean, what will M'sieu' Colombe do? You must remain here, to help him in the shop." And fight against it as she would, there was an uncomfortable little lump in her throat when she pictured how terribly lost M'sieu' Colombe would be without his son.

"Father is very angry," Amédé said rather hoarsely, because he too had an uncomfortable lump in his throat now. "But it seems there's nothing to be done. I have to go."

"When?" Fluerette murmured, so softly, so softly, that only a lover's ears could possibly have caught the whisper.

"I have to present myself tomorrow," Amédé replied, "before M'sieu' le Commissaire de Police at Serres."

"Tomorrow? And I have been so happy today!"

The cry came from an overburdened little heart, brought face to face with its first sorrow. Fluerette no longer attempted to keep back her tears, and Amédé, not quite sure whether he should cry because he was going away or dance with joy because it was his going away that was making Fluerette cry, but in time by wiping his face which was streaming with perspiration and tears.

"I wish I could at least have seen those children wedded," the worthy épicier muttered in the interval of blowing his nose with an noise like a cloudburst. "At least," he added with the good round oath which he reserved for occasions such as these, "before they take my Amédé away."

Bibi on the other hand appeared to be more philosophical.

"We must wait for better times," he said, "and anyhow Fluerette is too young to marry."