The Maids of Paradise Part 30

The Bretons looked on in solemn astonishment: my comrade, Speed, languidly stood up on the elephant and informed the people that our circus was travelling to Lorient to fill a pressing engagement, and if we disappointed the good people of Lorient a riot would doubtless result, therefore it was not possible to give any performance before we reached Lorient--and the admission was only ten sous.

Our clown then picked up the tatters of his threadbare comic speech.

Speed, munching a stale sandwich, came strolling over to where I stood sponging out my horse's mouth with cool water.

"We'll ride into Paradise in full regalia, I suppose," he observed, munching away reflectively; "it's the cheapest reclame."

I dashed a bucket of water over my horse's legs. "You'd better look out for your elephant; those drunken Bretons are irritating him," I said. "Mahouts are born, not made."

Speed turned; the elephant was squealing and thrusting out a prehensile trunk among the people. There would be trouble if any fool gave him tobacco.

"Hi!" cried Speed, "tobah! Let the mem-log alone! Ai! he's s.n.a.t.c.hed a coiffe! Drop it, Djebe! C'hast buhan! Don't be afraid, mesdames; the elephant is not ugly! Chomit oll en ho trankilite!"

The elephant appeared to understand the mixture of Hindu, French, and Breton--or perhaps it was the sight of the steel ankus that Speed flourished in his quality of mahout. The crowd pressed forward again, rea.s.sured by the "Chomit oll en ho trankilite!"

Speed swallowed the last crumb of his sandwich, wiped his hands on his handkerchief, and shoved them into his shabby pockets; the ankus dangled from his wrist.

We were in seedy circ.u.mstances; an endless chain of bad luck had followed us from Chartres--bad weather, torrents of rain, flooded roads, damaging delays on railways already overcrowded with troops and war material, and, above all, we encountered everywhere that ominous apathy which burdened the whole land, even those provinces most remote from the seat of war. The blockade of Paris had paralyzed France.

The fortune that Byram had made in the previous year was already gone; we no longer travelled by rail; we no longer slept at inns; we could barely pay for the food for our animals.

As for the employes, the list had been cut down below the margin of safety, yet for a month no salaries had been paid.

As I stood there in the public square of Quimperle, pa.s.sing the cooling sponge over my horse's nose, old Byram came out of the hotel on the corner, edged his way through the stolid crowd that surrounded us gaunt mountebanks, and shuffled up to me.

"I guess we ain't goin' to push through to-night, Scarlett," he observed, wiping his sweating forehead on the sleeve of his linen duster.

"No, governor, it's too far," I said.

"We'll be all right, anyway," added Speed; "there's a change in the moon and this warm weather ought to hold, governor."

"I dunno," said Byram, with an abstracted glance at the crowd around the elephant.

"Cheer up, governor," I said, "we ought at least to pay expenses to the Spanish frontier. Once out of France we'll find your luck again for you."

"Mebbe," he said, almost wearily.

I glanced at Speed. This was the closest approach to a whine that we had heard from Byram. But the man had changed within a few days; his thin hair, brushed across his large, alert ears, was dusty and unkempt; hollows had formed under his shrewd eyes; his black broadcloth suit was as soiled as his linen, his boots shabby, his silk hat suitable only for the stage property of our clown.

"Don't ride too far," said Byram, as I set foot to stirrup, "them band-wagon teams is most done up, an' that there camuel gits meaner every minute."

I wheeled my horse out into the road to Paradise, cursing the "camuel," the bane of our wearied caravan.

"Got enough cash for the license?" asked Byram, uneasily.

"Plenty, governor; don't worry. Speed, don't let him mope. We'll be in Lorient this time to-morrow," I called back, with a swagger of a.s.sumed cheerfulness.

Speed stepped swiftly across the square and laid his hand on my stirrup.

"What are you going to do if you see Buckhurst?"

"Nothing."

"Or the Countess?"

"I don't know."

"I suppose you will go out of your way to find her if she's in Paradise?"

"Yes."

"And tell her the truth about Buckhurst?"

"I expect to."

After a moment's silence he said: "Don't do anything until I see you to-night, will you?"

"All right," I replied, and set my horse at a gallop over the old stone bridge.

The highway to the sea which winds down through acres of yellow gorse and waving broom to the cliffs of Paradise is a breezy road, swept by the sweet winds that blow across Brittany from the Cote d'Or to the Pyrenees.

It is a land of sea-winds; and when in the still noontide of midsummer the winds are at play far out at sea, their traces remain in the furrowed wheat, in the incline of solitary trees, in the breezy trend of the cliff-clover and the blackthorn and the league-wide sweep of the moorlands.

And through this land whose inland perfume always savored the unseen sea I rode down to Paradise.

It was not until I had galloped through the golden forest of Kerselec that I came in sight of the ocean, although among the sunbeams and the dropping showers of yellow beech-leaves I fancied I could hear the sound of the surf.

And now I rode slowly, in full sight of the sea where it lay, an immense gray band across the world, touching a looming horizon, and in throat and nostril the salt stung sweetly, and the whole world seemed younger for the breath of the sea.

From the purple mystery of the horizon to the landward cliffs the ocean appeared motionless; it was only when I had advanced almost to the cliffs that I saw the movement of waves--that I perceived the contrast between inland inertia and the restless repose of the sea, stirring ceaselessly since creation.

The same little sparkling river I had crossed in Quimperle I now saw again, spreading out a wide, flat current which broke into waves where it tumbled seaward across the bar; I heard the white-winged gulls mewing, the thunderous monotone of the surf, and a bell in some unseen chapel ringing sweetly.

I pa.s.sed a stone house, another; then the white road curved under the trees and I rode straight into the heart of Paradise, my horse's hoofs awaking echoes in the silent, stone-paved square.

Never had I so suddenly entered a place so peaceful, so quiet in the afternoon sun--yet the silence was not absolute, it was thrilling with exquisite sound, lost echoes of the river running along its quay of stone, half-heard harmonies of the ocean where white surf seethed over the sands beyond the headland.

There was a fountain, too, dripping melodiously under the trees; I heard the breathless humming of a spinning-wheel from one of the low houses of gray stone which enclosed the square, and a young girl singing, and the drone of bees in a bed of resida.

So this was Paradise! Truly the name did not seem amiss here, under the still vault of blue above; Paradise means peace to so many of us--surcease of care and sound and the brazen trample of nations--not the quiet of palace corridors or the tremendous silence of a cathedral, but the noiselessness of pleasant sounds, moving shadows of trees, wordless quietude, simplicity.

A young girl with a face like the Madonna stole across the square in her felt shoes.

"Can you tell me where the mayor lives?" I asked, looking down at her from my horse.

She raised her white-coiffed head with an innocent smile: "Eman' barz ar sal o leina."

"Don't you speak French?" I asked, appalled.

"Ho! ia; oui, monsieur, s'il faut bien. The mayor is at breakfast in his kitchen yonder."