The Maids of Paradise Part 55

"Fall in!" repeated the lieutenant.

The poacher's visage became inflamed. He hesitated, looking around for an avenue of escape. Then he caught my disgusted eye.

"For the last time," said the lieutenant, coolly drawing his revolver, "I order you to fall in!"

The poacher backed into the straggling rank, glaring.

"Now," said the lieutenant, "you may go to your house and get your packet. If we have left when you return, follow and report at the a.r.s.enal in Lorient. Fall out! March!"

The poacher backed out to the rear of the rank, turned on his heel, and strode away towards the coast, clinched fists swinging by his side.

There were not many names on the roll, and the call was quickly finished. And now the infantry drummers raised their sticks high in the air, there was a sharp click, a crash, and the square echoed.

"March!" cried the officer; and, drummers ahead, the long single rank shuffled into fours, and the column started, enveloped in a throng of women and children.

"Good-bye!" sobbed the women. "We will pray!"

"Good-bye! Pray!"

The crowd pressed on into the dusk. Far up the darkening road the white coiffes of the women glimmered; the drum-roll softened to a distant humming.

The children, who did not understand, had gathered around a hunchback, the exempt cripple of the roll-call.

"Ho! Fois!" I heard him say to the crowd of wondering little ones, "if I were not exempt I'd teach these Prussians to dance the farandole to my biniou! Oui, dame! And perhaps I'll do it yet, spite of the crooked back I was not born with--as everybody knows! Oui, dame! Everybody knows I was born as straight as the next man!"

The children gaped, listening to the distant drumming, now almost inaudible.

The cripple rose, lighted a lantern, and walked slowly out toward the cliffs, carrying himself with that uncanny dignity peculiar to hunchbacks. And as he walked he sang, in his thin, sharp voice, the air of "The Three Captains":

"J'ai eu dans son coeur la plac' la plus belle, La plac' la plus belle.

J'ai pa.s.se trois ans, trois ans avec elle, Trois ans avec elle.

J'ai eu trois enfants qui sont capitaines, Qui sont capitaines.

L'un est a Bordeaux, l'autre a la Roch.e.l.le, L'autre a la Roch.e.l.le.

Le troisieme ici, caressent les belles, Caressent les belles."

Far out across the shadowy cliffs I heard his lingering, strident chant, and caught the spark of his lantern; then silence and darkness fell over the deserted square; the awed children, fingers interlocked, crept homeward through the dusk; there was no sound save the rippling wash of the river along the quay of stone.

Tired, a trifle sad, thinking perhaps of those home letters which had come to all save me, I leaned against the river wall, staring at the darkness; and over me came creeping that apathy which I had already learned to recognize and even welcome as a mental anaesthetic which set that dark sentinel, care, a-drowsing.

What did I care, after all? Life had stopped for me years before; there was left only a sh.e.l.l in which that unseen little trickster, the heart, kept tap-tapping away against a tired body. Was that what we call life? The sorry parody!

A shape slunk near me through the dusk, furtive, uncertain. "Lizard,"

I said, indifferently. He came up, my gun on his ragged shoulder.

"You go with your cla.s.s?" I asked.

"No, I go to the forest," he said, hoa.r.s.ely. "You shall hear from me."

I nodded.

"Are you content?" he demanded, lingering.

The creature wanted sympathy, though he did not know it. I gave him my hand and told him he was a brave man; and he went away, noiselessly, leaving me musing by the river wall.

After a long while--or it may only have been a few minutes--the square began to fill again with the first groups of women, children, and old men who had escorted the departing conscripts a little way on their march to Lorient. Back they came, the maids of Paradise silent, tearful, pitifully acquiescent; the women of Bannalec, Faouet, Rosporden, Quimperle chattering excitedly about the scene they had witnessed. The square began to fill; lanterns were lighted around the fountain; the two big lamps with their bra.s.s reflectors in front of the mayor's house illuminated the pavement and the thin tree-foliage with a yellow radiance.

The chatter grew louder as new groups in all sorts of gay head-dresses arrived; laughter began to be heard; presently the squealing of the biniou pipes broke out from the bowling-green, where, high on a bench supported by a plank laid across two cider barrels, the hunchback sat, skirling the farandole. Ah, what a world entire was this lost little hamlet of Paradise, where merrymakers trod on the mourners' heels, where the scream of the biniou drowned the floating note of the pa.s.sing bell, where Misery drew the curtains of her bed and lay sleepless, listening to Gayety dancing breathless to the patter of a coquette's wooden shoes!

Long tables were improvised in the square, piled up with bread, sardines, puddings, hams, and cakes. Casks of cider, propped on skids, dotted the outskirts of the bowling-green, where the mayor, enthroned in his own arm-chair, majestically gave his orders in a voice thickened by pork, onions, and gravy.

Truly enough, half of Finistere and Morbihan was gathering at Paradise for a fete. The slow Breton imagination had been fired by our circus bills and posters; ancient Armorica was stirring in her slumber, roused to consciousness by the Yankee bill-poster.

At the inn all rooms were taken; every house had become an inn; barns, stables, granaries had their guests; fishermen's huts on coast and cliff were bright with coiffes and embroidered jerseys.

In their misfortune, the lonely women of Paradise recognized in this influx a G.o.dsend--a few francs to gain with which to face those coming wintry months while their men were absent. And they opened their tiny houses to those who asked a lodging.

The crowds which had earlier in the evening gathered to gape at our big tent were now noisiest in the square, where the endless drone of the pipes intoned the farandole.

A few of our circus folk had come down to enjoy the picturesque spectacle. Speed, standing with Jacqueline beside me, began to laugh and beat time to the wild music. A pretty maid of Bannalec, white coiffe and scarlet skirts a-flutter, called out with the broad freedom of the chastest of nations: "There is the lover I could pray for--if he can dance the farandole!"

"I'll show you whether I can dance the farandole, ma belle!" cried Speed, and caught her hand, but she s.n.a.t.c.hed her brown fingers away and danced off, laughing: "He who loves must follow, follow, follow the farandole!"

Speed started to follow, but Jacqueline laid a timid hand on his arm.

"I dance, M'sieu Speed," she said, her face flushing under her elf-locks.

"You blessed child," he cried, "you shall dance till you drop to your knees on the bowling-green!" And, hand clasping hand, they swung out into the farandole. For an instant only I caught a glimpse of Jacqueline's blissful face, and her eyes like blue stars burning; then they darkened into silhouettes against the yellow glare of the lanterns and vanished.

Byram rambled up for a moment, to comment on the quaint scene from a showman's point of view. "It would fill the tent in old Noo York, but it's n. g. in this here country, where everybody's either a coryphee or a clown or a pantaloon! Camuels ain't no rara avises in the Sairy, an' no n.i.g.g.e.rs go to burnt-cork shows. Phylosophy is the thing, Mr.

Scarlett! Ruminate! Ruminate!"

I promised to do so, and the old man rambled away, coat and vest on his arm, silk hat c.o.c.ked over his left eye, the lamp-light shining on the buckles of his suspenders. Dear old governor!--dear, vulgar incarnation of those fast vanishing pioneers who invented civilization, finding none; who, self-taught, unashamed taught their children the only truths they knew, that the nation was worthy of all good, all devotion, and all knowledge that her sons could bring her to her glory that she might one day fulfil her destiny as greatest among the great on earth.

The whining Breton bagpipe droned in my ears; the dancers flew past; laughter and cries arose from the tables in the square where the curate of St. Julien stood, forefinger wagging, soundly rating an intoxicated but apologetic Breton in the costume of Faouet.

I was tired--tired of it all; weary of costumes and strange customs, weary of strange tongues, of tinsel and mummers, and tarnished finery; sick of the sawdust and the rank stench of beasts--and the vagabond life--and the hopeless end of it all--the shabby end of a useless life--a death at last amid strangers! Soldiers in red breeches, peasants in embroidered jackets, strolling mountebanks all tinselled and rouged--they were all one to me.... I wanted my own land.... I wanted my own people.... I wanted to go home ... home!--and die, when my time came, under the skies I knew as a child,... under that familiar moon which once silvered my nursery windows....

I turned away across the bridge out into the dark road. Long before I came to the smoky, silent camp I heard the monotonous roaring of my lions, pacing their shadowy dens.

XVII

THE CIRCUS

A little after sunrise on the day set for our first performance, Speed sauntered into my dressing-room in excellent humor, saying that not only had the village of Paradise already filled up with the peasantry of Finistere and Morbihan, but every outlying hamlet from St. Julien to Pont Aven was overflowing; that many had even camped last night along the roadside; in short, that the country was unmistakably aroused to the importance of the Anti-Prussian Republican circus and the Flying Mermaid of Ker-Ys.