In and out of Three Normandy Inns Part 5

"_E'ben--et toi_--what do you want?"

The giant stopped laughing long enough to turn tyrant. The woman, at the first of his growl, smiled feebly, going back with unresisting meekness to her knees, to her pots, and her kettles. The dog growled in imitation of his master; obviously the soul of the dog was in the wrong body.

Meanwhile the master of the dog and the woman had forgotten both now; he was continuing, in a masterful way, to enlighten us about the peculiarities of his native village. The talk had now reached the subject of the church.

"Oh, yes, it is fine, very, and old; it and this old house are the oldest of all the inhabitants of this village. The church came first, though, it was built by the English, when they came over, thinking to conquer us with their Hundred Years' War. Little they knew France and Frenchmen. The church was thoroughly French, although the English did build it; on the ground many times, but up again, only waiting the hand of the builder and the restorer."

Again the slim-waisted shape of the old wife ventured forth into the room.

"Yes, as he says"--in a voice that was but an echo--"the church has been down many times."

"_Tais-toi--c'est moi qui parle_," grumbled anew her husband, giving the withered face a terrific scowl.

"_Ohe, oui, c'est toi_," the echo bleated. The thin hands meekly folded themselves across her ap.r.o.n. She stood quite still, as if awaiting more punishment.

"It is our good cure who wishes to pull it down once more," her terrible husband went on, not heeding her quiet presence. "Do you know our cure? Ah, ha, he's a fine one. It's he that rules us now--he's our king--our emperor. Ugh, he's a bad one, he is."

"Ah, yes, he's a bad one, he is," his wife echoed, from the side wall.

"Well, and who asked you to talk?" cried her husband, with a face as black as when the cure's name had first been mentioned. The echo shrank into the wall. "As I was telling these ladies"--he resumed here his boot work, clamping the last between his great knees--"as I was saying, we have not been fortunate in cures, we of our parish. There are cures and cures, as there are f.a.gots and f.a.gots--and ours is a bad lot. We've had nothing but trouble since he came to rule over us. We get poorer day by day, and he richer. There he is now, feeding his hens and his doves--look, over there--with the ladies of his household gathered about him--his mother, his aunt, and his niece--a perfect harem. Oh, he keeps them all fat and sleek, like himself! Bah!"

The grunt of disgust the cobbler gave filled the room like a thunder-clap. He was peering over his last, across the open counter, at a little house adjoining the church green, with a great hatred in his face. From one of the windows of the house there was leaning forth a group of three heads; there was the tonsured head of a priest, round, pink-tinted, and the figures of two women, one youthful, with a long, sad-featured face, and the other ruddy and vigorous in outline. They were watching the priest as he scattered corn to the hens and geese in the garden below the window.

The cobbler was still eying them fiercely, as he continued to give vent to his disgust.

"_Mechant homme--lui_," he here whipped his thread, venomously, through the leather he was sewing. "Figure to yourselves, mesdames, that besides being wicked, our cure is a very shrewd man; it is not for the pure good of the parish he works, not he."

"Not he," the echo repeated, coming forth again from the wall. This time the whisper pa.s.sed unnoticed; her master's hatred of the cure was greater than his pa.s.sion for showing his own power.

"Religion--religion is a very good way of making money, better than most, if one knows how to work the machine. The soul, it is a fine instrument on which to play, if one is skilful. Our cure has a grand touch on this instrument. You should see the good man take up a collection, it is better than a comedy."

Here the cobbler turned actor; he rose, scattering his utensils right and left; he a.s.sumed a grand air and a mincing, softly tread, the tread of a priest. His flexible voice imitated admirably the rounded, unctuous, autocratic tone peculiar to the graduates of St. Sulpice.

"You should hear him, when the collection does not suit him: '_Mes freres et mes soeurs_, I see that _le bon Dieu_ isn't in your minds and your hearts to-day; you are not listening to his voice; the Saviour is then speaking in vain?' Then he prays--" the cobbler folded his hands with a great parade of reference, lifting his eyes as he rolled his lids heavenward hypocritically--"yes, he prays--and then he pa.s.ses the plate himself! He holds it before your very nose, there is no pus.h.i.+ng it aside; he would hold it there till you dropped--till Doomsday. Ah, he's a hard crust, he is! There's a tyrant for you--_la monarchie absolue_--that's what he believes in. He must have this, he must have that. Now it is a new altar-cloth, or a fresh Virgin of the modern make, from Paris, with a robe of real lace; the old one was black and faded, too black to pray to. Now it is a _huissier_, forsooth, that we must have, we, a parish of a few hundred souls, who know our seats in the church as well as we know our own noses. One would think a 'suisse'

would have done; but we are swells now--_avec ce gaillard-la_, only the tiptop is good enough. So, if you grace our poor old church with your presence you will be shown to your bench by a very splendid gentleman in black, in knee-breeches, with silver chains, with a three-cornered hat, who strikes with his stick three times as he seats you. Bah!

ridiculous!"

"Ridiculous!" the woman repeated, softly.

"They had the cure once, though. One day in church he announced a subscription to be taken up for restorations, from fifty centimes to--to anything; he will take all you give him, avaricious that he is!

He believes in the greasing of the palm, he does. Well, think you the subscription was for restorations, _mesdames_? It was for demolition--that's what it was for--to make the church level with the ground. To do this would cost a little matter of twenty thousand francs, which would pa.s.s through his hands, you understand. Well, that staggered the parish. Our mayor--a man _pas trop fin_, was terribly upset. He went about saying the cure claimed the church as his; he could do as he liked with it, he said, and he proposed to make it a fine modern one. All the village was weeping. The church was the oldest friend of the village, except for such as I, whom these things have turned pagan. Well, one of our good citizens reminds the mayor that the church, under the new laws, belongs to the commune. The mayor tells this timidly to the cure. And the cure retorts, 'Ah, _bien_, at least one-half belongs to me.' And the good citizen answers--he has gone with the mayor to prop him up--'Which half will you take? The cemetery, doubtless, since your charge is over the souls of the parish.' Ah! ah!

he p.r.i.c.ked him well then! he p.r.i.c.ked him well!"

The low room rang with the great shout of the cobbler's laughter. The dog barked furiously in concert. Our own laughter was drowned in the thunder of our host's loud guffaws. The poor old wife shook herself with a laugh so much too vigorous for her frail frame, one feared its after-effects.

The after-effects were a surprise. After the first of her husband's spasms of glee the old woman spoke out, but in trembling tones no longer.

"Ah, the cemetery, it is I who forgot to go there this week."

Her husband stopped, the laugh dying on his lip as he turned to her.

"_Ah, ma bonne_, how came that? You forgot?" His own tones trembled at the last word.

"Yes, you had the cramps again, you remember, and there was no money left for the bouquet."

"Yes, I remember," and the great chest heaved a deep sigh.

"You have children--you have lost someone?"

"_Helas!_ no living children, mademoiselle. No, no--one daughter we had, but she died twenty years ago. She lies over there--where we can see her. She would have been thirty-eight years now--the fourteenth of this very month!"

"Yes, this very month."

Then the old woman, for the first time, left her refuge along the wall; she crept softly, quietly near to her husband to put her withered hand in his. His large palm closed over it. Both of the old faces turned toward the cemetery; and in the old eyes a film gathered, as they looked toward all that was left of the hope that was buried away from them.

We left them thus, hand in hand, with many promises to renew the acquaintance.

The village was no longer abroad in the streets. During our talk in the shop the night had fallen; it had cast its shadow, as trees cast theirs, in a long, slow slant. Lights were trembling in the dim interiors; the shrill cries of the children were stilled; only a m.u.f.fled murmur came through the open doors and windows. The villagers were pattering across the rough floors, talking, as their sabots clattered heavily over the wooden surface, as they washed the dishes, as they covered their fires, shoving back the tables and chairs. As we walked along, through the nearer windows came the sound of steps on the creaking old stairs, then a rustling of straw and the heavy fall of weary bodies, as the villagers flung themselves on the old oaken beds, that groaned as they received their burden. Presently all was still.

Only our steps resounded through the streets. The stars filled the sky; and beneath them the waves broke along the beach. In the closely packed little streets the heavy breathing of the sleeping village broke also in short, quick gasps.

Only we and the night were awake.

CHAPTER VII.

SOME NORMAN LANDLADIES.

Quite a number of changes came about with our annexation of an artist and his garden. Chief among these changes was the surprising discovery of finding ourselves, at the end of a week, in possession of a villa.

"It's next door," Renard remarked, in the casual way peculiar to artists. "You are to have the whole house to yourselves, all but the top floor; the people who own it keep that to live in. There's a garden of the right sort, with espaliers, also rose trees, and a tea house; quite the right sort of thing altogether."

The unforeseen, in its way, is excellent and admirable. _De l'imprevu,_ surely this is the dash of seasoning--the caviare we all crave in life's somewhat too monotonous repasts. But as men have been known to admire the still life in wifely character, and then repented their choice, marrying peace only to court dissension, so we, incontinently deserting our humble inn chambers to take possession of a grander state, in the end found the capital of experience drained to pay for our little infidelity.

[Ill.u.s.tration: A DEPARTURE--VILLERVILLE]

The owners of the villa Belle Etoile, our friend announced, he had found greatly depressed; of this, their pa.s.sing mood, he had taken such advantage as only comes to the knowing. "They speak of themselves drearily as 'deux pauvres malheureux' with this villa still on their hands, and here they are almost 'touching June,' as they put it. They also gave me to understand that only the finest flowers of the aristocracy had had the honor of dwelling in this villa. They have been able, I should say, more or less successfully to deflower this 'fine fleur' of some of their gold. But they are very meek just now--they were willing to listen to reason."

The "two poor unhappies" were looking surprisingly contented an hour later, when we went in to inspect our possessions. They received us with such suave courtesy, that I was quite certain Renard's skill in transactions had not played its full gamut of capacity.

Civility is the Frenchman's mask; he wears it as he does his skin--as a matter of habit. But courtesy is his costume de bal; he can only afford to don his bravest attire of smiles and graciousness when his pocket is in holiday mood. Madame Fouchet we found in full ball-room toilet; she was wreathed in smiles. Would _ces dames_ give themselves the trouble of entering? would they see the house or the garden first? would they permit their trunks to be sent for? Monsieur Fouchet, meanwhile, was making a brave second to his wife's bustling welcome; he was rubbing his hands vigorously, a somewhat suspicious action in a Frenchman, I have had occasion to notice, after the completion of a bargain. Nature had cast this mild-eyed individual for the part of accompanyist in the comedy we call life; a _role_ he sometimes varied as now, with the office of _claqueur_, when an uncommonly clever proof of madame's talent for business drew from him this noiseless tribute of applause.

His weak, fat contralto called after us, as we followed madame's quick steps up the waxed stairway; he would be in readiness, he said, to show us the garden, "once the chambers were visited."

"It wasn't a real stroke, mesdames, it was only a warning!" was the explanation conveyed to us in loud tones, with no reserve of whispered delicacy, when we expressed regret at monsieur's detention below stairs; a partially paralyzed leg, dragged painfully after the latter's flabby figure, being the obvious cause of this detention.

The stairway had the line of beauty, describing a pretty curve before its gla.s.sy steps led us to a narrow entry; it had also the brevity which is said to be the very soul, _l'anima viva_, of all true wit; but it was quite long and straight enough to serve Madame Fouchet as a stage for a prolonged monologue, enlivened with much affluence of gesture. Fouchet's seizure, his illness, his convalescence, and present physical condition--a condition which appeared to be bristling with the tragedy of danger, "un vrai drame d'anxiete"--was graphically conveyed to us. The horrors of the long winter also, so sad for a Parisian--"si triste pour la Parisienne, ces hivers de province"--together with the miseries of her own home life, between this paralytic of a husband below stairs, and above, her mother, an old lady of eighty, nailed to her sofa with gout. "You may thus figure to yourselves, mesdames, what a melancholy season is the winter! And now, with this villa still on our hands, and the season already announcing itself, ruin stares us in the face, mesdames--ruin!"