Part 14 (2/2)
”_Sacre bon Dieu!_” she sobbed as she staggered with her burden. ”_C'est ma belle pet.i.te!_”
For weeks Yvonne lay in the hut of the worst vagabond of Pont du Sable.
So did a mite of humanity with black eyes who cried and laughed when he pleased. And Marianne fished for them both, alone and single-handed, wrenching time and time again comforts from the sea, for she would allow no one to go near them, not even such old friends as Monsieur le Cure and myself--that old hag, with her clear blue eyes, who walks with the stride of a man, and who looks at you squarely, at times disdainfully--even when drunk.
[Ill.u.s.tration: sabots]
[Ill.u.s.tration: a Normande]
CHAPTER SIX
THE BARON'S PERFECTOS
Strange things happen in my ”Village of Vagabonds.” It is not all fisher girls, Bohemian neighbours, romance, and that good friend the cure who shoots one day and confesses sinners the next. Things from the outside world come to us--happenings with sometimes a note of terror in them to make one remember their details for days.
Only the other day I had run up from the sea to Paris to replenish the larder of my house abandoned by the marsh at Pont du Sable, and was sitting behind a gla.s.s of vermouth on the terrace of the Cafe de la Paix when the curtain rose.
One has a desire to promenade with no definite purpose these soft spring days, when all Paris glitters in the warm sun. The days slip by, one into another--days to be lazy in, idle and extravagant, to promenade alone, seeking adventure, and thus win a memory, if only the amiable glance of a woman's eyes.
I was drinking in the tender air, when from my seat on the terrace I recognized in the pa.s.sing throng the familiar figure of the Brazilian banker, the Baron Santos da Granja. The caress of spring had enticed the Baron early this afternoon to the Boulevard. Although he had been pointed out to me but once, there was no mistaking his conspicuous figure as he strode on through the current of humanity, for he stood head and shoulders above the average mortal, and many turned to glance at this swarthy, alert, well-preserved man of the world with his keen black eyes, thin pointed beard and moustache of iron gray. From his patent-leather boots to his glistening silk hat the Baron Santos da Granja was immaculate.
Suddenly I saw him stop, run his eyes swiftly over the crowded tables and then, though there happened to be one just vacated within his reach, turn back with a look of decision and enter the Government's depot for tobacco under the Grand Hotel.
I, too, was in need of tobacco, for had not my good little maid-of-all-work, Suzette, announced to me only the day before:
”Monsieur, there are but three left of the big cigars in the thin box; and the ham of the English that monsieur purchased in Paris is no more.”
”It is well, my child,” I had returned resignedly, ”that ham could not last forever; it was too good.”
”And if Monsieur le Cure comes to dinner there is no more k.u.mmel,” the little maid had confessed, and added with a shy lifting of her truthful eyes, ”monsieur does not wish I should get more of the black cigars at the grocery?”
I had winced as I recalled the last box, purchased from the only store in Pont du Sable, where they had lain long enough to absorb the pungent odour of dried herring and kerosene.
Of course it was not right that our guests should suffer thus from an empty larder and so, as I have said, I had run up from the sea to replenish it. It was, I confess, an extravagant way of doing one's marketing; but then there was Paris in the spring beckoning me, and who can resist her seductive call at such a time?
But to my story: I finished my gla.s.s of vermouth, and, following the Baron's example, entered the Government's store, where I discovered him selecting with the air of a connoisseur a dozen thin boxes of rare perfectos. He chatted pleasantly with the clerk who served him and upon going to the desk, opened a Russian-leather portfolio and laid before the cas.h.i.+er six crisp, new one-hundred-franc notes in payment for the lot. I have said that the Baron was immaculate, and he _was_, even to his money. It was as spotless and unruffled as his linen, as neat, in fact, as were the n.o.ble perfectos of his choice, long, mild and pure, with tiny ends, and fat, comforting bodies that guaranteed a quality fit for an emperor; but then the least a bank can do, I imagine, is to provide clean money to its president.
As the Baron pa.s.sed out and my own turn at the desk came to settle for my modest provision of Havanas, I recalled to my mind the current gossip of the Baron's extravagance, of the dinners he had lately given that surprised Paris--and Paris is not easily surprised. What if he had ”sold more than half of his vast estate in Brazil last year”? And suppose he was no longer able or willing ”to personally supervise his racing stable,” that he ”had grown tired of the track,” etc. Nonsense! The press knows so little of the real truth. For me the Baron Santos da Granja a was simply a seasoned man of the world, with the good taste to have retired from its conspicuous notoriety; and good taste is always expensive. His bank account did not interest me.
I knew her well by sight, for she pa.s.sed me often in the Bois de Boulogne when I ran up to Paris on just such errands as my present one.
She had given me thus now and then glimpses of her feverish life--gleams from the facets, since her success in Paris was as brilliant as a diamond. Occasionally I would meet her in the shaded alleys, but always in sight of her brougham, which kept pace with her whims at a safe but discreet distance.