Читать книгу A Village of Vagabonds - F. Berkeley Smith - Страница 8

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The sun had just risen, and the bell of the little stone church chattered and jangled, flinging its impatient call over the sleeping village of Pont du Sable. In the clear morning air its voice could be heard to the tops of the green hills, and across the wide salt marsh that stretched its feathery fingers to the open sea.

A lone, wrinkled fisherman, rolling lazily on the mighty heave of the incoming tide, turned his head landward.

"Sapristi!" he grinned, as he slipped a slimy thumb from the meshes of a mackerel-net and crossed himself. "She has a hoarse throat, that little one."

Far up the hillside a mile back of the churchyard, a barelegged girl driving a cow stopped to listen, her hood pushed back, her brown hands crossed upon her breast.

Lower down, skirting the velvet edge of the marsh, filmy rifts of mist broke into shreds or blended with the spirals of blue smoke mounting skyward from freshly kindled fires.

Pont du Sable was awake for the day.

It is the most unimportant of little villages, yet it is four centuries old, and of stone. It seems to have shrivelled by its great age, like its oldest inhabitants. One-half of its two score of fishermen's houses lie crouched to the rambling edge of its single street; the other half might have been dropped at random, like stones from the pocket of some hurrying giant. Some of these, including the house of the ruddy little mayor and the polite, florid grocer, lie spilled along the edge of the marsh.

As for Monsieur le Curé, he was at this very moment in the small stone church saying mass to five fishermen, two devout housewives, a little child, an old woman in a white cap, and myself. Being in my shooting-boots, I had tiptoed into a back seat behind two of the fishermen, and sat in silence watching Monsieur le Curé's gaunt figure and listening to his deep, well-modulated, resonant voice.

What I saw was a man uncommonly tall and well built, dressed in a rusty black soutane that reached in straight lines from beneath his chin to his feet, which were encased in low calf shoes with steel buckles. I noticed, too, that his face was angular and humorous; his eyes keen and merry by turns; his hair of the colourless brown one sees among fisherfolk whose lives are spent in the sun and rain. I saw, too, that he was impecunious, for the front edges of his cassock were frayed and three buttons missing, not to be wondered at, I said to myself, as I remembered that the stone church, like the village it comforted, had always been poor.

Now and then during the mass I saw the curé glance at the small leaded window above him as if making a mental note of the swaying tree-tops without in the graveyard. Then his keen gray eyes again reverted to the page he knew by heart. The look evidently carried some significance, for the gray-haired old sea-dog in front of me cocked his blue eye to his partner—they were both in from a rough night's fishing—and muttered:

"It will be a short mass."

"Ben sûr," whispered back the other from behind his leathery hand. "The wind's from the northeast. It will blow a gale before sundown." And he nodded toward the swaying tree-tops.

With this, the one with the blue eyes straightened back in the wooden pew and folded his short, knotty arms in attention; the muscles of his broad shoulders showing under his thick seaman's jersey, the collar encircling his corded, stocky neck deep-seamed by a thousand winds and seas. The gestures of these two old craftsmen of the sea, who had worked so long together, were strangely similar. When they knelt I could see the straw sticking from the heels of their four wooden sabots and the rolled-up bottoms of their patched sail-cloth trousers.

As the mass ended the old woman in the white cap coughed gently, the curé closed his book, stepped from the chancel, patted the child's head in passing, strode rapidly to the sacristy, and closed the door behind him.

I followed the handful of worshippers out into the sunlight and down the hill. As I passed the two old fishermen I heard the one with the blue eyes say to his mate with the leathery hand:

"Allons, viens t'en! What if we went to the café after that dog's night of a sea?"

"I don't say no," returned his partner; then he winked at me and pointed to the sky.

"I know," I said. "It's what I've been waiting for."

I kept on down the crooked hill to the public square where nothing ever happens save the arrival of the toy train and the yearly fête, and deciding the two old salts were right after their "dog's night" (and it had blown a gale), wheeled to the left and followed them to the tiniest of cafés kept by stout, cheery Madame Vinet. It has a box of a kitchen through which you pass into a little square room with just space enough for four tables; or you may go through the kitchen into a snug garden gay in geraniums and find a sheltered table beneath a rickety arbour.

"Ah, mais, it was bad enough!" grinned the one with the leathery hand as he drained his thimbleful of applejack and, Norman-like, tossed the last drop on the floor of the snug room.

"Bad enough! It was a sea, I tell you, monsieur, like none since the night the wreck of La Belle Marie came ashore," chimed in the one with the blue eye, as he placed his elbows on the clean marbletop table and made room for my chair. "Mon Dieu! You should have seen the ducks south of the Wolf. Aye, 'twas a sight for an empty stomach."

The one with the leathery hand nodded his confirmation sleepily.

"Hélas!" continued the one with the blue eye. "If monsieur could only have been with us!" As he spoke he lifted his shaggy eyebrows in the direction of the church and laughed softly. "He's happy with his northeast wind; I knew 'twould be a short mass."

"A good catch?" I ventured, looking toward him as Madame Vinet brought my glass.

"Eight thousand mackerel, monsieur. We should have had ten thousand had not the wind shifted."

"Ben sûr!" grumbled the one with the leathery hand.

At this Madame Vinet planted her fists on her ample hips. "Hélas! There's the Mère Coraline's girl to be married Thursday," she sighed, "and Planchette's baby to be christened Tuesday, and the wind in the northeast, mon Dieu!" And she went back to her spotless kitchen for a sou's worth of black coffee for a little girl who had just entered.

Big, strong, hearty Madame Vinet! She has the frankness of a man and the tenderness of a mother. There is something of her youth still left at forty-six; not her figure—that is rotund simplicity itself—but in the clearness of her brown eyes and the finely cut profile before it reaches her double chin, and the dimples in her hands, well shaped even to-day.

And so the little girl who had come in for the sou's worth of coffee received an honest measure, smoking hot out of a dipper and into the bottle she had brought. In payment Madame Vinet kissed the child, and added a lump of sugar to the bargain. From where I sat I could see the tears start in the good woman's eyes. The next moment she came back to us laughing to disguise them.

"Ah, you good soul!" I thought to myself. "Always in a good humour; always pleasant. There you go again—this time it was the wife of a poor fisherman who could not pay. How many a poor devil of a half-frozen sailor you have warmed, you whose heart is so big and whose gains are so small!"

I rose at length, bade the two old salts good morning, and with a blessing of good luck, recovered my gun from the kitchen cupboard, where I had reverently left it during mass, and went on my way to shoot. I, too, was anxious to make the most of the northeast wind.

There being no street in the lost village save the main thoroughfare, one finds only alleys flanked by rambling walls. One of these runs up to Tanrade's house; another finds its zigzag way to the back gate of the marquis, who, being a royalist, insists upon telling you so, for the keystone of his gate is emblazoned with a bas-relief of two carved eagles guarding the family crest. Still another leads unexpectedly to the silent garden of Monsieur le Curé. It is a protecting little by-way whose walls tell no tales. How many a suffering heart seeking human sympathy and advice has the strong figure in the soutane sent home with fresh courage by way of this back lane. Indeed it would be a lost village without him. He is barely over forty years old, and yet no curé was ever given a poorer parish, for Pont du Sable has been bankrupt for generations. Since a fortnight—so I am told—Monsieur le Curé has had no bonne. The reason is that no good Suzette can be found to replace the one whom he married to a young farmer from Bonville. The result is the good curé dines many times a week with the marquis, where he is so entertaining and so altogether delightful and welcome a guest that the marquise tells me she feels ten years younger after he has gone.

"Poor man," she confided to me the other day, "what will you have? He has no bonne, and he detests cooking. Yesterday he lunched at the château with Alice de Bréville; to-morrow he will be cheering up two old maiden aunts who live a league from Bar la Rose. Is it not sad?" And she laughed merrily.

"Monsieur le Curé has no bonne!" Parbleu! It has become a household phrase in Pont du Sable. It is so difficult to get a servant here; the girls are all fishing. As for Tanrade's maid-of-all-work, like the noiseless butler of the marquis and the femme de chambre of Alice de Bréville, they are all from Paris; and yet I'll wager that no larder in the village is better stocked than Monsieur le Curé's, for every housewife vies with her neighbour in ready-cooked donations since the young man from Bonville was accepted.

But these good people do not forget. They remember the day when the farm of Père Marin burned; they recall the figure in the black soutane stumbling on through flame and smoke carrying an unconscious little girl in his strong arms to safety. Four times he went back where no man dared go—and each time came out with a life.

Again, but for his indomitable grit, a half-drowned father and daughter, clinging to a capsized fishing-smack in a winter sea, would not be alive—there are even fisherfolk who cannot swim. Monsieur le Curé saw this at a glance, alone he fought his way in the freezing surf out to the girl and the man. He brought them in and they lived.

But there is a short cut to the marsh if you do but know it—one that has served me before. You can easily find it, for you have but to follow your nose along the wall of Madame Vinet's café, creep past the modest rose-garden of the mayor, zigzag for a hundred paces or more among crumbling walls, and before you know it you are out on the marsh.

The one with the blue eye was right.

The wind was from the northeast in earnest, and the tide racing in. Half a mile outward a dozen long puntlike scows, loaded to their brims with sand, were being borne on the swirling current up the river's channel, each guided at the stern by a ragged dot of a figure straining at an oar.

As I struck out across the desolate waste of mud, bound for the point of dry marsh, the figure steering the last scow, as he passed, waved a warning to me. With the incoming sweep of tide the sunlight faded, the bay became noisy with the cries of sea-fowl, and the lighthouse beyond the river's channel stood out against the ominous green sky like a stick of school-chalk.

I jerked my cap tighter over my ears, and lowering my head to the wind kept on. I had barely time to make the marsh. Over the black desolate waste of clay-mud the sea was spreading its hands—long, dangerous hands, with fingers that every moment shot out longer and nearer my tracks. The wind blew in howling gusts now, straight in from the open sea. Days like these the ducks have no alternative but the bay. Only a black diver can stand the strain outside. Tough old pirates these—diving to keep warm.

I kept on, foolish as it was. A flight of becassines were whirled past me, twittering in a panic as they fought their way out of sudden squalls. I turned to look back. Already my sunken tracks were obliterated under a glaze of water, but I felt I was safe, for I had gained harder ground. It was a relief to slide to the bottom of one of the labyrinth of causeways that drain the marsh, and plunge on sheltered from the wind.

Presently I heard ducks quacking ahead. I raised my head cautiously to the level of the wire-grass. A hundred rods beyond, nine black ducks were grouped near the edge of a circular pool; behind them, from where I stood, there rose from the level waste a humplike mound. I could no longer proceed along the bottom of the causeway, as it was being rapidly filled to within an inch below my boot-tops. The hump was my only salvation, so I crawled to the bank and started to stalk the nine black ducks.

It was difficult to keep on my feet on the slimy mud-bank, for the wind, true to the fishermen's prediction, was now blowing half a gale. Besides, this portion of the marsh was strange to me, as I had only seen it at a distance from the lower end of the bay, where I generally shot. I was within range of the ducks now, and had raised my hammers—I still shoot a hammer-gun—when a human voice rang out. Then, like some weird jack-in-the-box, there popped out from the mound a straight, long-waisted body in black waving its arms.

It was the curé!

"Stay where you are," he shouted. "Treacherous ground! I'll come and help you!" Then for a second he peered intently under his hand. "Ah! It is you, monsieur—the newcomer; I might have guessed it." He laughed, leaping out and striding toward me. "Ah, you Americans! You do not mind the weather."

"Bonjour, Monsieur le Curé," I shouted back in astonishment, trying to steady myself across a narrow bridge of mud spanning the causeway.

"Look out!" he cried. "That mud you're on is dangerous. She's sinking!"

It was too late; my right foot barely made another step before down I went, gun, shells, and all, up to my chin in ice-cold water. The next instant he had me by the collar of my leather coat in a grip of steel, and I was hauled out, dripping and draining, on the bank.

"I'm all right," I sputtered.

"Come inside instantly," he said.

"Inside? Inside where?" I asked.

He pointed to the hump.

"You must get your wet things off and into bed at once." This came as a command.

"Bed! Where? Whose bed?" Was he an Aladdin with a magic lamp, that could summon comfort in that desolation? "Monsieur," I choked, "I owe you a thousand apologies. I came near killing one of your nine decoys. I mistook them for wild mallards."

He laughed softly. "They are not mine," he explained. "They belong to the marquis; it is his gardener who pickets them out for me. I could not afford to keep them myself. They eat outrageously, those nine deceivers. They are well placed to-day; just the right distance." And he called the three nearest us by name, for they were quacking loudly. "Be still, Fannine! There, Pierrot! If your cord and swivel does not work, my good drake, I'll fix it for you, but don't make such a fuss; you'll have noise enough to make later." And gripping me by the arm, he pushed me firmly ahead of him to a small open door in the mound. I peered into the darkness within.

"Get in," said he. "It's small, but it's warm and comfortable inside. After you, my friend," he added graciously, and we descended into a narrow ditch, its end blocked by a small, safe-like door leading into a subterranean hut, its roof being the mound, shelving out to a semicircular, overhanging eyebrow skirting the edge of the circular pool some ten yards back of the line of live decoys.

"Ah!" exclaimed Monsieur le Curé, "you should have seen the duck-blind I had three years ago. This gabion of mine is smaller, but it is in better line with the flights," he explained as he opened the door. "Look out for the steps—there are two."

I now stood shivering in the gloom of a box-like, underground anteroom, provided with a grated floor and a low ribbed ceiling; beyond this, through another small door, was an adjoining compartment deeper than the one in which we stood, and in the darkness I caught the outline of a cot-bed, a carved, high-backed, leather-seated chair, and the blue glint of guns lying in their racks. The place was warm and smelled, like the cabin of some fishing-sloop, of sea-salt and tar.

It did not take me long to get out of my clothes. When the last of them lay around my heels I received a rubbing down with a coarse sailor's shirt, that sent the blood back where it belonged.

"Allons! Into bed at once!" insisted the curé. "You'll find those army blankets dry."

I felt my way in while he struck a match and lighted a candle upon a narrow shelf strewn with empty cartridges. The candle sputtered, sunk to a blue flame, and flared up cheerfully, while the curé poured me out a stiff glass of brandy, and I lay warm in the blankets of the Armée Française, and gazed about me at my strange quarters.

Back of my pillow was, tightly closed, in three sections, a narrow firing-slit. Beside the bed the candle's glow played over the carved back of the leather-seated chair. Above the closed slit ran a shelf, and ranged upon it were some fifty cartridges and an old-fashioned fat opera-glass. This, then, was Monsieur le Curé's duck-blind, or rather, in French, his gabion.

The live decoys began quacking nervously. The curé, about to speak, tip-toed over to the firing-slit and let down cautiously one of its compartments.

"A flight of plovers passing over us," he remarked. "Yes, there they go. If the wind will only hold you shall see—there will be ducks in," his gray eyes beaming at the thought.

Then he drew the chair away from the firing-slit and seated himself, facing me.

"If you knew," he began, "how much it means to me to talk to one of the outside world—your country—America! You must tell me much about it. I have always longed to see it, but——" He shrugged his shoulders helplessly. "Are you warm?" he asked.

"Warm?" I laughed. "I never felt better in my life." And I thanked him again for his kindness to a stranger in distress. "A stranger in luck," I added.

"I saw you at mass this morning," he returned bending over, his hands on his knees. "But you are not a Catholic, my friend? You are always welcome to my church, however, remember that."

"Thank you," I said. "I like your little church, and—I like you, Monsieur le Curé."

He put forth his hand. "Brother sportsmen," he said. "It is a brotherhood, isn't it? You are a Protestant, is it not so?" And his voice sank to a gentle tone.

"Yes, I am what they call a blue Presbyterian."

"I have heard of that," he said. "'A blue Presbyterian.'" He repeated it to himself and smiled. Suddenly he straightened and his finger went to his lips.

"Hark!" he whispered. "Hear their wings!"

Instantly the decoys set up a strenuous quacking. Then again all was silent.

"Too high," muttered the curé. "I do not expect much in before the late afternoon. Do you smoke?"

"Yes, gladly," I replied, "but my cigarettes are done for, I am afraid; they were in the pocket of my hunting coat."

"Don't move," he said, noticing my effort to rise. "I've got cigarettes." And he fumbled in the shadow of the narrow shelf.

I had hardly lighted my own over the candle-flame, which he held for me, when I felt a gentle rocking and heard the shells rattle as they rolled to the end of the shelf, stop, and roll back again.

"Do not be alarmed," he laughed, "it's only the water filling the outer jacket of my gabion. We shall be settled and steady in a moment, and afloat for the night."

"The night!" I exclaimed in amazement. "But, my good friend, I have no intention of wearing out my welcome; I had planned to get home for luncheon."

"Impossible!" he replied. "We are now completely surrounded by water. It is always so at high tide at this end of the bay. Come, see for yourself. Besides, you don't know how glad I am that we can have the chance to shoot together. I've been waiting weeks for this wind."

He blew out the candle, and again opened the firing-slit. As far as one could see the distant sea was one vast sweep of roaring water.

"You see," he said, closing the firing-slit and striking a match—"you must stay. I have plenty of dry clothes for you in the locker, and we shall not go hungry." He drew out a basket from beneath the cot and took from it a roasted chicken, two litres of red wine, and some bread and cheese, which he laid on the shelf. "A present," he remarked, "from one of my parishioners. You know, I have no bonne."

"I have heard so," said I.

He laughed softly. "One hears everything in the village. Ah! But what good children they are! They even forgive my love of shooting!" He crossed his strong arms in the rusty black sleeves of his cassock, and for some moments looked at me seriously. "You think it strange, no doubt, irreverent, for a curé to shoot," he continued. "Forgive me if I have shocked the ideas of your faith."

"Nonsense!" I returned, raising my hand in protest. "You are only human, an honest sportsman. We understand each other perfectly."

"Thank you," he returned, with sincerity. "I was afraid you might not understand—you are the first American I have ever met."

He began taking out an outfit of sailor's clothes from the locker—warm things—which I proceeded to get into with satisfaction. I had just poked my head through the rough jersey and buckled my belt when our decoys again gave warning.

Out went the candle.

"Mallards!" whispered the curé. "Here, take this gun, quick! It is the marquis's favourite," he added in a whisper.

He reached for another breech-loader, motioned me to the chair, let down the three compartments of the firing-slit, and stretched himself out full length on the cot, his keen eyes scanning the bay at a glance.

We were just in time—a dozen mallards were coming straight for our decoys.

Bang! thundered the curé's gun.

Bang! Bang! echoed my own. Then another roar from the curé's left barrel. When the smoke cleared three fat ducks were kicking beyond our deceivers.

"Take him!" he cried, as a straggler—a drake—shot past us. I snapped in a shell and missed, but the curé was surer. Down came the straggler, a dead duck at sixty yards.

"Bravo, Monsieur le Curé!" I cried.

But he only smiled modestly and, extracting the empty shell, blew the lurking smoke free from the barrels. It was noon when we turned to half the chicken and a bottle of vin ordinaire with an appetite.

The northeast wind had now shifted to the south; the bay became like glass, and so the afternoon passed until the blood-red sun, like some huge ribbed lantern of the Japanese, slowly sank into the sea. It grew dusk over the desolate marsh. Stray flights of plovers, now that the tide was again on its ebb, began to choose their resting places for the night.

"I'm going out to take a look," said the curé. Again, like some gopher of the prairie, he rose up out of his burrow.

Presently he returned, the old enthusiastic gleam in his eyes.

"The wind's changing," he announced. "It will be in the north again to-night; we shall have a full moon and better luck, I hope. Do you know," he went on excitedly, "that one night last October I killed forty-two ducks alone in this old gabion. Forty-two! Twenty mallards and the rest Vignon—and not a shot before one o'clock in the morning. Then they came in, right and left. I believe my faithful decoys will remember that night until their dying day. Ah, it was glorious! Glorious!" His tanned, weather-beaten features wrinkled with delight; he had the skin of a sailor, and I wondered how often the marsh had hid him. "Ah, my friend," he said, with a sigh, as we sat down to the remainder of the chicken and vin ordinaire for supper, this time including the cheese, "it is not easy for a curé to shoot. My good children of the village do not mind, but——" He hesitated, running his long, vibrant fingers through his hair.

"What then? Tell me," I ventured. "It will go no further, I promise you."

"Rome!" he whispered. "I have already received a letter, a gentle warning from the palace; but I have a good friend in Cardinal Z. He understands."

During the whole of that cold moonlight we took turns of two hours each; one sleeping while the other watched in the chair drawn up close to the firing-slit.

What a night!

The marsh seen through the firing-slit, with its overhanging eyebrow of sod, seemed not of this earth. The nine black decoys picketed before us straining at their cords, gossiping, dozing for a moment, preening their wings or rising up for a vigorous stretch, appeared by some curious optical illusion four times their natural size; now they seemed to be black dogs, again a group of sombre, misshapen gnomes.

While I watched, the curé slept soundly, his body shrouded in the blankets like some carved Gothic saint of old. The silence was intense—a silence that could be heard—broken only by the brisk ticking of the curé's watch on the narrow shelf. Occasionally a water-rat would patter over the sunken roof, become inquisitive, and peer in at me through the slit within half a foot of my nose. Once in a while I took down the fat opera-glass, focussing it upon the dim shapes that resembled ducks, but that proved to be bits of floating seaweed or a scurrying shadow as a cloud swept under the moon—all illusions, until my second watch, when, with a rush, seven mallards tumbled among our decoys. Instantly the curé awakened, sprang from his cot, and with sharp work we killed four.

"Stay where you are," he said as he laid his gun back in its rack. "I'll get into my hip-boots and get them before the water-rats steal what we've earned. They are skilled enough to get a decoy now and then. The marsh is alive with them at night."