Part 35 (1/2)

”He works for us, monsieur. Your suspicions are harsh. Karl is quite harmless, poor boy.”

”What does he do after hours?” demanded Sticky Smith, watching the manuvres of the sickly blond youth and the wheelbarrow.

”Monsieur Smith, if you knew how innocent is his pastime!” she exclaimed, laughing. ”He collects and studies moths and b.u.t.terflies. Is there, if you please, a mania more harmless in the world?... And now I must return to my work, messieurs.”

As the two muleteers strode clanking away toward the ca.n.a.l in the meadow, the blond youth turned his head and looked after them out of eyes which were naturally pale and small, and which, as he watched the two Americans, seemed to grow paler and smaller yet.

That afternoon old Courtray, swathed in a shawl, sat on the mossy doorstep and fished among the water weeds of the river. The sun was low; work in the garden had ended.

Maryette had gone up into her belfry to play the sunset hymn on the n.o.ble old carillon. Through the sunset sky the lovely bell-notes floated far and wide, exquisitely chaste and aloof as the high-showering ecstasy of a skylark.

As always the little village looked upward and listened, pausing in its humble duties as long as their little bell-mistress remained in her tower.

After the hymn she played ”Myn hart is vol verlangen” and ”Het Lied der Vlamingen,” and ended with the delicate, bewitching little folk-song, ”Myn Vryer,” by Ha.s.selt.

Then in the red glow of the setting sun the girl laid aside her wooden gloves, rose from the ancient keyboard, wound up the drum, and, her duty done for the evening, came down out of the tower among the transparent evening shadows of the tree-lined village street.

The sun hung over Nivelle hills, which had turned to amethyst. Sunbeams laced the little river in a red net through which old Courtray's quill stemmed the ripples. He still clutched his fis.h.i.+ng pole, but his eyes were closed, his chin resting on his chest.

Maryette came silently into the garden and looked at her father--looked at the blond Karl seated on the river wall beside the dozing angler. The blond youth had a box on his knees into which he was intently peering.

The girl came to the river wall and seated herself at her father's feet.

The Belgian refugee student had already risen to attention, his heels together, but Maryette signed him to be seated again.

”What have you found now, Karl?” she inquired in a cautiously modulated voice.

”Ah, mademoiselle, fancy! I haff by chance with my cultivator among your potatoes already twenty pupae of the magnificent moth, Sphinx Atropos, upturned! See! Regard them, mademoiselle! What lucky chance! What fortune for me, an entomologist, this wonderful sphinx moth to discover encased within its chrysalis!”

The girl smiled at his enthusiasm:

”But, Karl, those funny, smooth brown things which resemble little polished evergreen-cones are not rare in my garden. Often, when spading or hoeing among the potato vines, I uncover them.”

”Mademoiselle, the caterpillar which makes this chrysalis feeds by night on the leaves of the potato, and, when ready to transform, burrows into the earth to become a chrysalis or pupa, as we call it. That iss why mademoiselle has often disinterred the pupae of this largest and strangest of our native sphinx-moths.”

Maryette leaned over and looked into the wooden box, where lay the chrysalides.

”What kind of moth do they make?” she asked.

He blinked his small, pale eyes:

”The Death's Head,” he said, complacently.

The girl recoiled involuntarily:

”Oh!” she exclaimed under her breath, ”--_that_ creature!”

For everywhere in France the great moth, with its strange and ominous markings, is perfectly well known. To the superst.i.tious it is a creature of evil omen in its fulvous, black and lead-coloured livery of death. For the broad, furry thorax bears a skull, and the big, mousy body the yellow ribs of a skeleton.

Measuring often more than five inches across the expanded wings, its formidable size alone might be sufficient to inspire alarm, but in addition it possesses a horrid attribute unknown among other moths and b.u.t.terflies; it can utter a cry--a tiny shrill, shuddering complaint.

Small wonder, perhaps, that the peasant holds it in horror--this sleek, furry, powerfully winged creature marked with skull and bones, which whirrs through the night and comes thudding against the window, and shrieks horridly when touched by a human hand.