Barbarians Part 23

"That would be perhaps more--_comme il faut_, monsieur."

"Ploo!" he repeated with emphasis. "Ploo jamais! Je vous jure----"

"_Merci_; it is not perhaps necessary to swear quite so solemnly, monsieur."

She raised her eyes from the pan, moving her small, sun-tanned hand through the heaps of green peas, filling her palm with them and idly letting them run through her slim fingers.

"L'amour," he said with an effort--"how funny it is--isn't it, mademoiselle?"

"I know nothing about it," she replied with decision, and rose with her pan of peas.

"Are you going, mademoiselle?"

"Yes."

"Have I offended you?"

"No."

He trailed after her down the garden path between rows of blue larkspurs and hollyhocks--just at her dainty heels, because the brick walk was too narrow for both of them.

"Ploo," he repeated appealingly.

Over her shoulder she said with disdain:

"It is not a topic for conversation among the young, monsieur--what you call _l'amour_." And she entered the kitchen, where he had not the effrontery to follow her.

That evening, toward sunset, returning from the corral, he heard, high in the blue sky above him, her bell-music drifting; and involuntarily uncovering, he stood with bared head looking upward while the celestial melody lasted.

And that evening, too, being the fete of Alincourt, a tiny neighbouring village across the river, the bell-mistress went up into the tower after dinner and played for an hour for the little neighbour hamlet across the river Lesse.

All the people who remained in Sainte Lesse and in Alincourt brought out their chairs and their knitting in the calm, fragrant evening air and remained silent, sadly enraptured while the unseen player at her keyboard aloft in the belfry above set her carillon music adrift under the summer stars--golden harmonies that seemed born in the heavens from which they floated; clear, exquisitely sweet miracles of melody filling the world of darkness with magic messages of hope.

Those widowed or childless among her listeners for miles around in the darkness wept quiet tears, less bitter and less hopeless for the divine promise of the sky music which filled the night as subtly as the scent of flowers saturates the dusk.

Burley, listening down by the corral, leaned against a post, one powerful hand across his eyes, his cap clasped in the other, and in his heart the birth of things ineffable.

For an hour the carillon played. Then old Bayard struck ten times. And Burley thought of the trenches and wondered whether the mellow thunder of the great bell was audible out there that night.

CHAPTER XVI

DJACK

There came a day when he did not see Maryette as he left for the corral in the morning.

Her father, very stiff with rheumatism, sat in the sun outside the arched entrance to the inn.

"No," he said, "she is going to be gone all day today. She has set and wound the drum in the belfry so that the carillon shall play every hour while she is absent."

"Where has she gone?" inquired Burley.

"To play the carillon at Nivelle."

"Nivelle!" he exclaimed sharply.

"_Oui, monsieur._ The Mayor has asked for her. She is to play for an hour to entertain the wounded." He rested his withered cheek on his hand and looked out through the window at the sunshine with aged and tragic eyes.

"It is very little to do for our wounded," he added aloud to himself.

Burley had sent twenty mules to Nivelle the night before, and had heard some disquieting rumours concerning that town.

Now he walked out past the dusky, arched pa.s.sageway into the sunny street and continued northward under the trees to the barracks of the Gendarmerie.

"_Bon jour l'ami Gargantua!_" exclaimed the fat, jovial brigadier who had just emerged with boots shining, pipe-clay very apparent, and all rosy from a fresh shave.

"Bong joor, mon vieux copain!" replied Burley, preoccupied with some papers he was sorting. "Be good enough to look over my papers."

The brigadier took them and examined them.

"Are they _en regle_?" demanded Burley.

"_Parfaitement, mon ami._"

"Will they take me as far as Nivelle?"

"Certainly. But your mules went forward last night with the Remount----"

"I know. I wish to inspect them again before the veterinary sees them.

Telephone to the corral for a saddle mule."

The brigadier went inside to telephone and Burley started for the corral at the same time.

His cream-coloured, wall-eyed mule was saddled and waiting when he arrived; he stuffed his papers into the breast of his tunic and climbed into the saddle.

"Allongs!" he exclaimed. "Hoop!"

Half way to Nivelle, on an overgrown, bushy, circuitous path which was the only road open between Nivelle and Sainte Lesse, he overtook Maryette, driving her donkey and ancient market cart.

"Carillonnette!" he called out joyously. "Maryette! C'est je!"

The girl, astonished, turned her head, and he spurred forward on his wall-eyed mount, evincing cordial symptoms of pleasure in the encounter.

"Wee, wee!" he cried. "Je voolay veneer avec voo!" And ere the girl could protest, he had dismounted, turning the wall-eyed one's nose southward, and had delivered a resounding whack upon the rump of that temperamental animal.