The Maids of Paradise Part 32

"No," he said, shortly.

"Do you know the name of the cruiser?"

"She's a new one, the _Fer-de-Lance_. And if I were not a patriot and a Breton I'd say: 'May Sainte-Anne rot her where she lies; she's brought a curse on the coast from Lorient to the Saint-Julien Light!--and the ghosts of the Icelanders will work her evil yet.'"

The mayor's round, hairless face was red; he thumped the arm of his chair with pudgy fists and wagged his head.

"We have not seen the end of this," he said--"oh no! There's a curse coming on Paradise--the cruiser brought it, and it's coming. He! did a Bannalec man not hear the were-wolf in Kerselec forest a week since?

Pst! Not a word, monsieur. But old Kloark, of Roscoff, heard it too--oui dame!--and he knows the howl of the Loup-Garou! Besides, did I not with my own eyes see a black cormorant fly inland from the sea?

And, by Sainte-eline of Paradise! the gulls squeal when there's no storm brewing and the lancons p.r.i.c.k the dark with flames along the coast till you'd swear the witches of Ker-Is were lighting death-candles from Paradise to Pont-Aven."

"Do you believe in witches, monsieur the mayor?" I asked, gravely.

He gave me a shrewd glance. "Not at all--not even in bed and the light out," he said, with a fat swagger. "_I_ believe in magic? Ho!

foi non! But many do. Oui dame! Many do."

"Here in Paradise?"

"Parbleu! Men of parts, too, monsieur. Now there's Terrec, who has the evil eye--not that I believe it, but, d.a.m.n him, he'd better not try any tricks on me!

"Others stick twigs of aubepine in their pastures; the apothecary is a man of science, yet every year he makes a bonfire of dried gorse and drives his cattle through the smoke. It may keep off witches and lightning--or it may not. I myself do not do such things."

"Still you believe the cruiser out at sea yonder is going to bring you evil?"

"She has brought it. But it's all the same to me. I am mayor, and exempt, and I have cider and tobacco and boudin for a few months yet."

He caressed his little, selfish chin, which hung between his mottled jowls, peered cunningly at me, and opened his mouth to say something, but at that moment we both caught sight of a peasant running and waving a packet of blue papers in the air. "Monsieur the mayor!

Monsieur the mayor!" he called, while still far away.

"Cre cochon de malheur!" muttered the mayor, turning pale. "He's got a telegram!"

The man came clattering across the square in his wooden shoes.

"A telegram," repeated the mayor, wiping the sudden sweat from his forehead. "I never get telegrams. I don't want telegrams!"

He turned to me, almost bursting with suppressed prophecy.

"It has come--the evil that the black cruiser brings us! You laughed!

Tenez, monsieur; there's your bad luck in these blue morsels of paper!"

And he s.n.a.t.c.hed the telegram from the breathless messenger, reading it with dilating eyes.

For a long while he sat there studying the telegram, his fat forefinger following the scrawl, a crease deepening above his eyebrows, and all the while his lips moved in noiseless repet.i.tion of the words he spelled with difficulty and his labored breathing grew louder.

When at length the magistrate had mastered the contents of his telegram, he looked up with a stupid stare.

"I want my drummer. Where's the town-crier?" he demanded, as though dazed.

"He has gone to Lorient, m'sieu the mayor," ventured the messenger.

"To get drunk. I remember. Imbecile! Why did he go to-day? Are there not six other days in this cursed week? Who is there to drum? n.o.body.

n.o.body knows how in Paradise. Seigneur, Dieu! the ignorance of this town!"

"M'sieu the mayor," ventured the messenger, "there's Jacqueline."

"Ho! Vrai. The Lizard's young one! She can drum, they say. She stole my drum once. Why did she steal it but to drum upon it?"

"The little witch can drum them awake in Ker-Is," muttered the messenger.

The mayor rose, looked around the square, frowned. Then he raised his voice in a bellow: "Jacqueline! Jacqueline! _Thou_ Jacqueline!"

A far voice answered, faintly breaking across the square from the bridge: "She is on the rocks with her sea-rake!"

The mayor thrust the blue telegram into his pocket and waddled out of his garden, across the square, and up the path to the cliffs.

Uninvited, I went with him.

X

THE TOWN-CRIER

The bell in the unseen chapel ceased ringing as we came out on the cliffs of Paradise, where, on the horizon, the sun hung low, belted with a single ribbon of violet cloud.

Over acres of foaming shoals the crimson light flickered and spread, painting the eastern cliffs with sombre fire. The ebb-tide, red as blood, tumbled seaward across the bar, leaving every ledge a glowing cinder under the widening conflagration in the west.

The mayor carried his silver-b.u.t.toned jacket over his arm; the air had grown sultry. As we walked our gigantic shadows strode away before us across the kindling stubble, seeming to lengthen at every stride.

Below the cliffs, on a crescent of flat sand, from which sluggish, rosy rivulets crawled seaward, a man stood looking out across the water. And the mayor stopped and called down to him: "Ohe, the Lizard! What do you see on the ocean--you below?"

"I see six war-ships speeding fast in column," replied the man, without looking up.

The mayor hastily shaded his eyes with one fat hand, muttering: "All poachers have eyes like sea-hawks. There is a smudge of smoke to the north. Holy Virgin, what eyes the rascal has!"

As for me, strain my eyes as I would, I saw nothing save the faintest stain of smoke on the horizon.

"He, Lizard! Are they German, your six war-ships?" bawled the mayor.

His voice had suddenly become tremulous.

"They are French," replied the poacher, tranquilly.

"Then Sainte-eline keep them from the rocks!" sang out the mayor.

"Ohe, Lizard, I want somebody to drum and read a proclamation.

Where's Jacqueline?"

At that instant a young girl, a mere child, appeared on the beach, dragging a sea-rake over the ground behind her. She was a lithe creature, bare-limbed and ragged, with the sea-tan on throat and knee.