The Arm Chair at the Inn Part 7

start makes it difficult for a white man to catch up with them. All that day I followed him, never getting near him, although the spoor, stripped saplings, and vines showed that he was but a few miles ahead. At nightfall I gave him up, sent my men back, and, to avoid fording a deep stream, made a short detour to the right. The sun had set and darkness had begun to fall. And it comes all at once and almost without warning in these parts.

"My men being out of reach, I pushed ahead until I struck a narrow path twisting in and out of the heavier trees and less tangled underbrush.

Here I came upon an open place with signs of cultivation and caught sight of another unexpected village, the first I had run across in that day's march. This one, on nearer approach, proved to be a collection of small huts straggling along the edge of what at last became a road or street. Squatting in front of these rude dwellings sat the inhabitants staring at me in wonder--the first white man they had ever seen.

"It was a curious sight and an uncanny one--these silent black savages watching my advance. One man had thrown his arm around his wife, as if to protect her; she crouching close to him--both naked as the day they were born. I used the pair in a group I exhibited two or three years ago which bore the t.i.tle, 'They Have Eyes and See Not'--you may perhaps remember it. I wanted to express the instinctive recognition of the savage for what he feels dimly is to conquer him, and I tried as well to give something of the pathos of the surrender.

"There was no movement as I approached--no greeting--no placing of yams, coa.r.s.e corn, and pieces of dried game and dried meat on the ground at their feet, especially the flesh of animals, in preparing which they are experts, a whole carca.s.s being sometimes so dried. They only stared wonderstruck--absorbed in my appearance. Now and then, as I pa.s.sed rapidly along so as to again reach my men before absolute darkness set in, I would stop and make the sign of peace. This they returned, showing me that their customs, and I hoped their language, was not unlike what I understood.

"When I was abreast of the middle of the village a sudden desire for a pipe--that solace of the lone man--took possession of me and I began fumbling about my clothes for my matchbox. Then I remembered that I had given it to one of my carriers to start our morning blaze. I now began to scan the dwellings I pa.s.sed for some signs of a fire. My eye finally caught between the supports of the last hut on the line the glow of a heap of embers, and huddled beside it the dim outline of two figures--that of a man and a woman.

"For a moment I hesitated. I was alone, out of the hearing of my followers, and darkness was rapidly falling. As long as I kept on a straight course I was doubtless safe; if I halted or, worse yet, if I entered his hut without invitation, the result might be different. Then the picture began to take hold of me: the rude primeval home; the warmth and cheer of the fire; the cuddling of man and wife close to the embers, the same the world over whether cannibal or Christian. Involuntarily my thoughts went back to my own fireside, thousands of miles away: those I loved were sitting beside the glowing coals that gave it life, a curl of smoke drifting toward the near hills.

"I turned sharply, walked straight into the hut, and, making the sign of peace, asked in Mabunga for a light for my pipe.

"The man started--I had completely surprised him--sprang to his feet, and, looking at me in amazement, returned my greeting in the same tongue, touching his forehead in peaceful submission as he spoke. The woman made neither salutation nor gesture. I leaned over to pick up a coal, and, to steady myself, laid my hand on the woman's shoulder.

"It was cold and hard as wood!

"I bent closer and scanned her face.

"She was a dried mummy!

"The man's gaze never wavered.

"Then, he said slowly: 'She was my woman--I loved her, and I could not bury her!'"

Herbert's denouement had come as an astounding surprise. He looked round at the circle of faces, his eyes resting on Le Blanc's and Lemois' as if expecting some reply.

The older man roused himself first.

"Your story, Monsieur Herbert," he said with a certain quaver in his voice, "has opened up such a wide field that I no longer think of the moral, although I see clearly what you intended to prove. When your climax came"--and his eyes kindled--"I felt as if I were standing on some newly discovered cliff of modern thought, below which rolled a thick cloud of superst.i.tion rent suddenly by a flash of human sympathy and love. Below and beyond stretched immeasurable distances fading into the mists of the ages. You will excuse the way I put it--I do not mean to be fanciful nor pedantic--but it does not seem that I can express my meaning in any other way. _Mon Dieu_, what a lot of cheap dancing jacks we are! We dig and sell our product; we plead to save a criminal; we toil with our hands and scheme with our heads, and when it is all done it is to get a higher place in the little world we ourselves make. Once in a while there comes a flash of lightning like this from on high and the cloud is rent in twain and we look through and are ashamed. Thank you again, Monsieur Herbert. You have widened my skull--cracked it open an inch at least, and my heart not a little. Your savage should be canonized!"

And he left the room.

VI

PROVING THAT THE COURSE OF TRUE LOVE NEVER DID RUN SMOOTH

Mignon's coffee-roaster was silent this morning. By listening intently a faint rhythm could be heard coming from beyond the kitchen door, telling that she was alive and about her work, but the garden was not the scene of her operations. Rain had fallen steadily all night and was still at it, driving every one within doors. Furthermore, somewhere off in the North Sea the wind had suddenly tumbled out of bed and was raising the very Old Harry up and down the coast. Reports had come in of a bad wreck along sh.o.r.e, and much anxiety was felt for the fis.h.i.+ng fleet.

To brave such a downpour seemed absurd, and so we pa.s.sed the morning as best we could. I made a sketch in color of the Marmouset; Herbert and Brierley disposed themselves about the room reading, smoking, or criticising my work; Louis upstairs was stretching a canvas--nothing appealed to him like a storm--and he had determined, as soon as the deluge let up--no moderate downpour ever bothers him--to paint the surf das.h.i.+ng against the earth cliffs that frowned above the angry sea.

Lemois did not appear until near noon, his excuse being that he had lain awake half the night thinking of Herbert's story of the African's dried wife, and had only dropped off to sleep when the fury of the storm awoke him.

As luncheon was about to be served, Le Blanc arrived in his car one ma.s.s of mud, the gla.s.s window in the rear of the cover smashed by the wind.

He brought news of a serious state of things along the coast. The sea in its rage, so his story ran, was biting huge mouthfuls out of the bluffs, the yellow blood of the dissolving clay staining the water for half a mile out. One of the card-board, jig-saw, gimcrack villas edging the cliff had already slid into the boiling surf, and the rest of them would follow if the wind held for another hour.

We drew him to the fire, helped him off with his drenched coat, each of us becoming more and more thoughtful as we listened to his description.

Lea and Mignon, unheeded, came in bearing the advance dishes--some oysters and crisp celery. They were soon followed by Lemois, who, instead of helping, as was his invariable custom, in the arrangement of the table, walked to the hearth and stood gazing into the coals. He, too, was thoughtful, and after a moment asked if we would permit Mignon to replace him at the coffee-table that evening, as he must be off for a few hours, and possibly all night, explaining in answer to our questions that the storm had already reached the danger line, and he felt that as ex-mayor of the village he should be within reach if any calamity overtook the people and fishermen in and around Buezval. We all, of course, offered to go with him--Louis being especially eager--but Lemois insisted that we had better finish our meal, promising to send for us if we were really needed.

His departure only intensified our apprehensions as to the gravity of the situation. What had seemed to us at first picturesque, then threatening, a.s.sumed alarming proportions. The gale too, during luncheon, had gone on increasing. Great puffs of smoke belched from the throat of the chimney into the room, and we heard the thrash of the rain and shrill wails of the burglarious wind rising and falling as it fingered the cracks and crevices of the old building. Now and then an earthen tile would be ripped from the roof and sent cras.h.i.+ng into the court. "By Jove!--just hear that wind!" followed by an expectant silence, interrupted almost every remark.

As the fury of the storm increased we noticed that a certain nervous anxiety had taken possession of our pretty Mignon, who, at one crash louder than the others, so far forgot herself as to go to the window, trying to peer out between the bowed shutters, her baffled eyes seeking Lea's for some comforting a.s.surance, the older woman, without ceasing her ministrations to our needs, patting the girl's shoulder in pa.s.sing.

Suddenly the great outside door of the court, which had been closed to break the force of the wind, gave way with a bang; then came the m.u.f.fled cry of a man in distress, and Gaston burst in, clad in oilskins, his south-wester tied under his chin, rivers of rain pouring from his hat and overalls. Mignon gave a half-smothered sob of relief and would have sunk to the floor at his feet had not Lea caught her.

The young fisherman staggered back against the edge of the fire-jamb, his hand on his chest.

"It's madame la marquise!" he gasped. He had run the two miles from Buezval and had barely breath enough to reach the Inn. "I came for Monsieur Lemois! There isn't a moment to lose--the sea is now up to the porch. She is lost if you wait!"

"Madame lost!" we cried in unison.

"No," he panted, "the house. She is not there. Find Monsieur Lemois!--all of you must come!"

Le Blanc was out of his chair before Gaston had completed his sentence.

"Get your coats and meet me at the garage!" he shouted. "I'll run the motor out; we'll be there in ten minutes! My coat too, Lea!" and he slammed the door behind him.

The old woman clattered upstairs into the several rooms for our ulsters and water-proofs, but Mignon sat still, too overjoyed to move or speak.

Gaston, she knew, was going out into the rain again, but he was safe on the land now and not on a fis.h.i.+ng craft, fighting his way into the harbor, as she had feared all day. The young fellow looked at her from under the brim of his dripping south-wester, but there was no word of recognition, though he had come as much to tell her he was safe as to summon us to madame's villa. I caught her lifted eyes and the furtive glance of grat.i.tude she gave him.

It was a wild dash up the coast; Le Blanc driving, Herbert handling the siren, the others packed in, crouching close, Gaston holding to the foot-board, where he roared in our ears the details of the impending calamity, his breath having now come back to him. The cliff, he explained, that supported the tennis court of an adjoining villa had given way, taking with it a slice of madame's lawn, leaving only the gravel walk under her library windows. The surf, goaded by the thrash of the wind, was, when he left, cutting great gashes in the toe of the newly exposed slope. Another hour's work like the last--and it was not high water until four o'clock--would send the cottage heels over head into the sea. Madame was in Paris, and the caretakers--an old fisherman and his wife--too old to work--were panic-stricken, calling piteously for Monsieur Lemois, whom their mistress trusted most of all the people in and about the village.

The end of the sh.o.r.e road had now been reached, our siren blowing continuously. With a twist of the wheel we swerved from the main highway, climbed a short hill, and chugged along an overhanging road flanked by a row of little black lumps of cottages in silhouette against the white fury of the smas.h.i.+ng surf. The third of these, so Gaston said, was madame's. Thank G.o.d it was still square-sided and the chimneys still upright. We were in time anyhow!

More than once have I helped in a fire or lent a welcoming hand to a s.h.i.+pwrecked crew breasting an ugly sea in a water-logged boat; but to hold on to a cottage sliding into the sea--as one would to the heels of a would-be suicide determined to dash himself to pieces on the sidewalk below--was a new experience to me.

Not so to Herbert--that is, you would never have supposed it from the way he took hold of things. In less time than I tell it, he had swung wide the rear door of madame's villa, stationed Brierley, Le Blanc, and myself at the side entrances to keep out poachers, formed a line of fishermen (whom Gaston knew) to pa.s.s out bric-a-brac, pictures, and rare furniture to the garage at the end of the lawn--the only safe place under cover--and, with Louis to help, was packing it with household goods.

While this was going on, although we did not know it, Lemois was half-way down the slope watching the encroaching sea; calculating the number of minutes which the villa had to live; watching, too, the slow crumbling of the cliff. He knew something of these earth slides--or thought he did--and, catching sight of our rescue party, struggled up to warn us.

But Herbert had not furled a mainsail off Cape Horn for nothing. He also knew the sea and what its savage force could do. He, too, had swept his eyes over the crumbling slopes, noted the wind, looked at his watch, and, bounding back, had given orders to go ahead. There was possibly an hour--certainly thirty minutes--before the house, caught by the tide at high water, would sag, tilt, and pitch headlong, like a bird-cage dropped from a window-sill, and no power on earth could save it. Until then the work of rescuing madame's belongings must go on.

Louis' enormous strength now came into play: first it was an inlaid cabinet, mounted in bronze, with heavy gla.s.s doors. This, stripped of its curios, which he crammed into his pockets, was picked up bodily and carried without a break to the garage, a hundred yards in the rear; then followed bronzes that had taken two men to place on their pedestals; pictures in heavy frames; a harp m.u.f.fled in a water-proof cover, which became a toy in his hands; even the piano went out on the run and was slid along the porch and down the steps, and, with the aid of Gaston and another fisherman, whirled under cover.

The fight now was against time, Lemois indicating the most valuable articles. Soon the first floor was entirely cleared except for some heavy pieces of furniture, and a dash was made upstairs for madame's bedroom and boudoir, filled with choice miniatures, larger portraits, and the little things she loved and lived with. The pillows were now torn from the beds, emptied, and every conceivable kind of small precious thing--silver-topped toilet articles, an ivory crucifix, bits of Dresden china--all the odds and ends a woman of quality, taste, and refinement uses and must have--were dumped one after another into the pillow-sacks and carried carefully to shelter. Then followed the books and rare ma.n.u.scripts.

Herbert, who, between every trip to the garage or to the crowd of willing workers outside, had paused to watch the sea, now bawled up the staircase ordering every man out. The last moment of safety had arrived.

Lemois, intent on rescuing a particular portfolio of etchings, either would not or did not hear. Gaston, more alert, and who had been helping him to carry down an armful of the more precious books, sprang past Herbert, despite his cry, and dashed back up the steps, shouting as he raced on that Lemois was still upstairs. Herbert made a plunge to follow when Louis threw his arms around him.

"No, for G.o.d's sake! She's going! Out of this!--quick! Jump, Herbert, or you'll be killed!"

As the two men cleared the doorway there came a racking, splitting, tearing noise; a doubling under of the posts of the front porch; a hail of broken gla.s.s and clouds of blinding dust from squares of plaster as the ceilings collapsed; then the whole structure canted--slid ten feet and stopped, the brick chimneys smas.h.i.+ng their full length into the crumbling ma.s.s. When the dust and flying splinters settled, Herbert and Louis were standing on firm ground within a foot only of the upheaved edge of raw earth. Staring them in the face, like the upturned feet of a prostrate man, were the bottom timbers of the cottage.