The Blower of Bubbles Part 22

"Of me?"

She raised her wide brown eyes to his, and her eyelashes, which so jealously guarded those guileless depths, parted grudgingly, revealing to him their full beauty.... Another roar shattered the air, and she laid her hand upon his wrist. "You must not come," she said earnestly.

"He would throw you into the stream."

His melancholy face gave way to a boyish grin. "If he did, mademoiselle, my ghost would haunt him forever. All night it would sing outside his window--and, in truth, my singing is no less terrible than his."

There was another roar, followed by a reference to the untimely decease of ten thousand devils.

Without a word, she reached for her book, and, throwing her shawl over her left shoulder, hurried away. The aviator watched her girlish figure with its unconscious grace, then, turning about, he strolled to the machine, and, sitting on the side of the fuselage, surveyed its bullet-punctured carca.s.s.

"Five kilometers and a little better," he soliloquized in English, "and a doubtful prospect of a meal.... Contrast that with what the G.o.ds offer here--a cosy fire, coffee, eggs and chips, I warrant, and the daintiest of little maids--to say nothing of a musical uncle with an amiable propensity for throwing visitors into the stream. By Jove, it is chilly.... Over in dear old England they'll be roasting nuts and telling ghost-stories to-night."

The fast-thickening shadows deepened into the blackness of an October night; the wind grew quieter, but there was a bite in the air that made him draw his fur collar about his ears.

"What excellent French the little lady uses," he went on. "I wonder who her parents were, and why the deuce she has to live with this ogre. And what eyes! Enough to make one invent new songs of Araby just to see them sparkle and soften.... One moment sad, another tender--and always lovely. Steady, the Air Force--you're becoming sentimental."

He looked at the battered machine and shook his head; a solitary raindrop lit on his face and slid down its surface like a tear.

A belated gust of wind smote his face and left it moist. He rose in a determined manner and adjusted his helmet.

"_Adieu_, my Camel!" He took a last survey of the machine. "The kitchen is calling to my appet.i.te; a storm is brewing in the heavens; a pair of dark eyes is urging all the romance within me; so--mill-stream or no mill-stream--_mon oncle_, I come."

He squared his shoulders and, with the rather absurd long stride and the odd raising of the knee, made for the cottage door, from underneath which a faint glow of light was timidly emerging.

III

In response to his knock there was a roar from within, and the door opened enough to show the young lady in the doorway.

"Good evening," he said gravely. "I saw the light in here and decided to accept its kindly invitation."

She glanced over her shoulder; but the airman, gently putting her to one side, entered and looked serenely about the room, which appeared to be kitchen, dining-room, and parlor in one. Beside the stove he noticed the stooped figure of a man, whose huge black beard straggled over a suit of overalls that had once been dark blue, but had become a dirty white from constant a.s.sociation with flour.

"Good evening, monsieur." The airman handed his helmet to the girl and proceeded to unb.u.t.ton his coat. The miller's blotched eyes rose sulkily to the visitor's face.

"What do you want here?" His voice was nasal and slovenly, and there was a hoa.r.s.e growl in the words, as though his throat was parched and rusted.

"I am doing myself the honor of taking supper with you, monsieur." The airman's face was full of melancholy dignity as he divested himself of his coat.

The miller's mouth opened, and a rasping, deep snarl resonated disagreeably. "There is the village, five kilometers that way."

"Ah--but that is five kilometers too far."

"You cannot stay here"--the miller's voice rose angrily--"there is but food for two."

The Englishman tapped his pipe against his heel, and blew through it to ensure its being empty. "Then, monsieur," he said, "you must go hungry."

The Frenchman rose to his feet and brandished both arms above his head.

"Go!" he bellowed, and swore an oath that comprised a reference to the sacred name of one dog and the sudden demise of the afore-mentioned ten thousand devils who, it appeared, rested heavily on his conscience.

"Mademoiselle"--the young man turned politely to the girl--"I apologize for this gentleman. Shall I throw him into the stream, or would a cleansing spoil his particular style of mottled beauty?"

The miller became eloquent. His language was threatening, blasphemous, and deafening. His whole ungainly body vibrated with a fury which, at certain moments, grew to such a pitch that he would raise his chin upwards until all that could be seen was a forest of beard, the while he emitted an unearthly roar that could have been clearly heard on the village road. The girl, who had been making preparations for supper, glanced timidly at him, but continued her work. The cat, slumbering by the stove, opened his eyes dreamily as if some sweet strain had come to his ears then settled to slumber once more.

And the whole room resounded and quivered to the hurricane of sound.

With an air of complete imperturbability, the intruding guest slowly backed towards the table and became engrossed in the task of refilling his pipe, though beneath the glow-worm eyebrows his eyes (which were very clear and blue, as though his excursions into the last free element of nature had blown all the dust and grime away) held the orator in a steady look.

"Fill your pipe?" he said cryptically, choosing a moment when his host was swelling up with a breath that promised to burst his ribs.

The response was startling.

Exhausting the air from his lungs with the noise of steam escaping from an overcharged boiler, the miller rushed blindly forward, crouching so low that his beard against his discolored clothes suggested an ugly bush against a background of slushy snow.

With the precision of a guardsman forming fours, the airman took one pace to the rear with his left foot and one to the right with his right foot. This maneuver, successfully completed, placed the table between himself and his a.s.sailant, and, tilting it dexterously, he swiftly thrust that article of furniture forward, where it came into violent contact with the irate miller's knees and shins. With an indescribable howl the worthy man fell back in a paroxysm of agony, grasping his knees with both hands, and rocking to and fro like a demented dervish.

The airman bowed gravely to the girl. "I learned that," he said, "from a gentleman by name of Charlie Chaplin. If you can oblige me with a custard pie I shall hurl it at your uncle and thus complete the Chaplinesque method of discounting violence."

The young woman's brows puckered. The spectacle of her uncle's discomfiture had not disturbed her so much as this new kind of a person who could bow so courteously, whose eyes twinkled humorously, and whose words were full of gravity on the subject of custard pies. She came of a race that coordinated gestures and the play of features with speech; but this stranger of the air--_Sapristi!_

The moaning of the uncle grew less and his figure stopped its rocking; but his red, blotchy eyes looked furtively at the young man, biding their owner's time for a renewal of hostilities.

With an air of deep dejection the airman gazed at the unlovely spectacle, then, very slowly, unfastened his holster and drew a revolver.

"Monsieur," he said, "I offer peace. The alternative is--that I fill you full of holes--which would interfere with your singing. I intend to have supper here, because I saw hens outside. If they have given no eggs, we shall eat the hens themselves as a punishment. We are allies, you and I; let us be friends as well. Monsieur"--he struck a Napoleonic att.i.tude--"_Vive l'Entente!_"

The swarthy face of the miller, who had retained his posture on the floor throughout, wrinkled hideously into a grin, which developed into a roaring laugh that set a solitary vase jingling.

With a doubtful air of appreciation, the airman surveyed him, his head inclining dubiously to one side. "Come, monsieur," he said, after the miller's unpleasant mirth had subsided, "you sit there--at the far end of the table; mademoiselle--when you have given us the supper things--here; and I, at this end. Just to show how completely I trust you, my host, I will keep my revolver beside my plate; and should it be necessary for me to blow your brains out during the meal, it will be with the very keenest regret that I lose a friend for whom I have acquired such an instantaneous and profound affection."

Thus the young lady with the guileless eyes, the youth who had descended from the clouds, and the stentorian miller with the painful knees, sat down together for their evening repast.

And the mill-stream, chuckling as it sportively tumbled over the chute, made a pleasant serenade.

IV

The airman glanced at his wrist-watch; it was half-past nine. The miller slept by the side of the stove, his chin crushing his beard against his chest. Louis also slept, having curled himself into a black, furry ball, apparently possessed of neither head nor tail. A clock brazenly stating the time to be five-thirty, ticked lazily as though finding itself four hours behind the correct hour, there was no chance of its ever catching up, and it only kept going because it was the sporting thing to do. Just over the clock a picture of Marshal Joffre gazed paternally on the quiet scene.

Seated at the table, which was covered by a geranium-colored cloth, the girl and the airman sat silent, while a shaded lamp lent a crimson glow through which her deep eyes gleamed, like the first stars of a summer evening.

To her romance had come.

She was no longer the miller's niece, but the girl who had seen the Fairy Prince. All the sighs, all the questionings, all the longings of her girlhood had culminated in this amazing adventure of a fair-haired knight who, descending from the clouds, had proceeded to terrorize her uncle who was feared for miles around. It was wonderful. And he was so droll, this young man; and his voice had a little soothing drop in it, at times, that left a fluttering echo in her heart.

She had left the convent when ten years of age, on the death of her mother. Her father--but then gossip was never kind. He was an officer who had deserted his pretty little wife for another woman--or so rumor had it; and her mother had died, a flower stricken by a frost. The daughter had been taken by a relative, the owner of a lonely mill, and for six years had lived in solitude, her horizon of life limited to the adjacent village, her knowledge of women gained from the memory of a sad, yearning face, paler than the pillow on which it rested, and an occasional visit to the cure's sister. Of men she knew only her uncle and the few villagers that had not gone to fight for La Belle France.

From unquestioning childhood she had pa.s.sed to that stage in a girl's life when the emotions leap past the brain, fretful of the latter's plodding pace. Her mind untutored, unsharpened by contact with other minds, left her the language and the reasonings of a child; but her imagination, feeding on the strange longings and dreams which permeated her life, pictured its own world where romance held sway over all the creatures that inhabited its realm.