Tartarin Of Tarascon Part 7

But it had more than its fill, and galloped off; howling. He did not budge, for he expected to see the female mate appear, as the story-books always lay it down she should.

Unhappily, no female came. After two or three hours' waiting the Tarasconian grew tired. The ground was damp, the night was getting cool, and the sea-breeze p.r.i.c.ked sharply.

"I have a good mind to take a nap till daylight," he said to himself.

To avoid catching rheumatism, he had recourse to his patent tent. But here's where Old Nick interfered! This tent was of so very ingenious a construction that he could not manage to open it. In vain did he toil over it and perspire an hour through--the confounded apparatus would not come unfolded. There are some umbrellas which amuse themselves under torrential rains with just such tricks upon you. Fairly tired out with the struggle, the victim dashed down the machine and lay upon it, swearing like the regular Southron he was. "Tar, tar, rar, tar! tar, rar, tar!"

"What on earth's that?" wondered Tartarin, suddenly aroused.

It was the bugles of the Cha.s.seurs d'Afrique sounding the turn-out in the Mustapha barracks. The stupefied lion-slayer rubbed his eyes, for he had believed himself out in the boundless wilderness; and do you know where he really was?--in a field of artichokes, between a cabbage-garden and a patch of beets. His Sahara grew kitchen vegetables.

Close to him, on the pretty verdant slope of Upper Mustapha, the snowy villas glowed in the rosy rising sun: anybody would believe himself in the neighbourhood of Ma.r.s.eilles, amongst its bastides and bastidons.

The commonplace and kitchen-gardenish aspect of this sleep-steeped country much astonished the poor man, and put him in bad humour.

"These folk are crazy," he reasoned, "to plant artichokes in the prowling-ground of lions; for, in short, I have not been dreaming. Lions have come here, and there's the proof."

What he called the proof was blood-spots left behind the beast in its flight. Bending over this ruddy trail with his eye on the lookout and his revolver in his fist, the valiant Tarasconian went from artichoke to artichoke up to a little field of oats. In the trampled gra.s.s was a pool of blood, and in the midst of the pool, lying on its flank, with a large wound in the head, was a--guess what?

"A lion, of course!"

Not a bit of it! An a.s.s!--one of those little donkeys so common in Algeria, where they are called bourriquots.

VI. Arrival of the Female--A Terrible Combat--"Game Fellows Meet Here!"

LOOKING on his hapless victim, Tartarin's first impulse was one of vexation. There is such a wide gap between a lion and poor Jack! His second feeling was one of pity. The poor bourriquot was so pretty and looked so kindly. The hide on his still warm sides heaved and fell like waves. Tartarin knelt down, and strove with the end of his Algerian sash to stanch the blood; and all you can imagine in the way of touchingness was offered by the picture of this great man tending this little a.s.s.

At the touch of the silky cloth the donkey, who had not twopennyworth of life in him, opened his large grey eye and winked his long ears two or three times, as much as to say, "Oh, thank you!" before a final spasm shook it from head to tail, whereafter it stirred no more.

"Noiraud! Blackey!" suddenly screamed a voice, choking with anguish, as the branches in a thicket hard by moved at the same time.

Tartarin had no more than enough time to rise and stand upon guard. This was the female!

She rushed up, fearsome and roaring, under form of an old Alsatian woman, her hair in a kerchief, armed with large red umbrella, and calling for her a.s.s, till all the echoes of Mustapha rang. It certainly would have been better for Tartarin to have had to deal with a lioness in fury than this old virago. In vain did the luckless sportsman try to make her understand how the blunder had occurred, and he had mistaken "Noiraud" for a lion. The harridan believed he was making fun of her, and uttering energetical "Der Teufels!" fell upon our hero to bang him with the gingham. A little bewildered, Tartarin defended himself as best he could, warding off the blows with his rifle, streaming with perspiration, panting, jumping about, and crying out:

"But, Madame, but"--

Much good his buts were! Madame was dull of hearing, and her blows continued hard as ever.

Fortunately a third party arrived on the battlefield, the Alsatian's husband, of the same race; a roadside innkeeper, as well as a very good ready-reckoner, which was better. When he saw what kind of a customer he had to deal with--a slaughterer who only wanted to pay the value of his victim--he disarmed his better-half, and they came to an understanding.

Tartarin gave two hundred francs, the donkey being worth about ten--at least that is the current price in the Arab markets. Then poor Blackey was laid to rest at the root of a fig-tree, and the Alsatian, raised to joviality by the colour of the Tarascon ducats, invited the hero to have a quencher with him in his wine-shop, which stood only a few steps off on the edge of the highway. Every Sunday the sportsmen from the city came there to regale of a morning, for the plain abounded with game, and there was no better place for rabbits for two leagues around.

"How about lions?" inquired Tartarin.

The Alsatian stared at him, greatly astounded.

"Lions!"

"Yes, lions. Don't you see them sometimes?" resumed the poor fellow, with less confidence.

The Boniface burst out in laughter.

"Ho, ho! bless us! lions! What would we do with lions here?"

"Are there, then, none in Algeria?"

"'Pon my faith, I never saw any, albeit I have been twenty years in the colony. Still, I believe I have heard tell of such a thing--leastwise, I fancy the newspapers said--but that is ever so much farther inland--down South, you know"--

At this point they reached the hostelry, a suburban pothouse, with a withered green bough over the door, crossed billiard-cues painted on the wall, and this harmless sign over a picture of wild rabbits, feeding:

"GAME FELLOWS MEET HERE."

"Game fellows!" It made Tartarin think of Captain Bravida.

VII. About an Omnibus, a Moorish Beauty, and a Wreath of Jessamine.

COMMON people would have been discouraged by such a first adventure, but men of Tartarin's mettle do not easily get cast down.

"The lions are in the South, are they?" mused the hero. "Very well, then. South I go."

As soon as he had swallowed his last mouthful he jumped up, thanked his host, nodded good-bye to the old hag without any ill-will, dropped a final tear over the hapless Blackey, and quickly returned to Algiers, with the firm intention of packing up and starting that very day for the South.

The Mustapha highroad seemed, unfortunately, to have stretched since overnight; and what a sun and dust there were, and what a weight in that shelter-tent! Tartarin did not feel to have the courage to walk to the town, and he beckoned to the first omnibus coming along, and climbed in.

Oh, our poor Tartarin of Tarascon! how much better it would have been for his name and fame not to have stepped into that fatal ark on wheels, but to have continued on his road afoot, at the risk of falling suffocated beneath the burden of the atmosphere, the tent, and his heavy double-barrelled rifles.

When Tartarin got in the 'bus was full. At the end, with his nose in his prayer-book, sat a large and black-bearded vicar from town; facing him was a young Moorish merchant smoking coa.r.s.e cigarettes, and a Maltese sailor and four or five Moorish women m.u.f.fled up in white cloths, so that only their eyes could be spied.

These ladies had been to offer up prayers in the Abdel Kader cemetery; but this funereal visit did not seem to have much saddened them, for they could be heard chuckling and chattering between themselves under their coverings whilst munching pastry. Tartarin fancied that they watched him narrowly. One in particular, seated over against him, had fixed her eyes upon his, and never took them off all the drive. Although the dame was veiled, the liveliness of the big black eyes, lengthened out by k'hol; a delightfully slender wrist loaded with gold bracelets, of which a glimpse was given from time to time among the folds; the sound of her voice, the graceful, almost childlike, movements of the head, all revealed that a young, pretty, and loveable creature bloomed underneath the veil. The unfortunate Tartarin did not know where to shrink. The fond, mute gaze of these splendrous Oriental orbs agitated him, perturbed him, and made him feel like dying with flushes of heat and fits of cold shivers.

To finish him, the lady's slipper meddled in the onslaught: he felt the dainty thing wander and frisk about over his heavy hunting boots like a tiny red mouse. What could he do? Answer the glance and the pressure, of course. Ay, but what about the consequences? A loving intrigue in the East is a terrible matter! With his romantic southern nature, the honest Tarasconian saw himself already falling into the grip of the eunuchs, to be decapitated, or better--we mean, worse--than that, sewn up in a leather sack and sunk in the sea with his head under his arm beside him.

This somewhat cooled him. In the meantime the little slipper continued its proceedings, and the eyes, widely open opposite him like twin black velvet flowers, seemed to say:

"Come, cull us!"

The 'bus stopped on the Theatre place, at the mouth of the Rue Bab-Azoon. One by one, embedded in their voluminous trousers, and drawing their m.u.f.flers around them with wild grace, the Moorish women alighted. Tartarin's confrontatress was the last to rise, and in doing so her countenance skimmed so closely to our hero's that her breath enveloped him--a veritable nosegay of youth and freshness, with an indescribable after-tang of musk, jessamine, and pastry.

The Tarasconian stood out no longer. Intoxicated with love, and ready for anything, he darted out after the beauty. At the rumpling sound of his belts and boots she turned, laid a finger on her veiled mouth, as one who would say, "Hush!" and with the other hand quickly tossed him a little wreath of sweet-scented jessamine flowers. Tartarin of Tarascon stooped to pick it up; but as he was rather clumsy, and much overburdened with implements of war, the operation took rather long.

When he did straighten up, with the jessamine garland upon his heart, the donatrix had vanished.