Part 27 (1/2)

”That must be seen,” returned the tall one firmly.

Again we all saluted and they left us, recovered their bicycles, and went spinning off back to Pont du Sable.

”_Nom d'un chien!_” muttered Tanrade, while the cure and I stared thoughtfully at a clump of gra.s.s.

”Why didn't he get me?” I ventured, after a moment.

”Foreigner,” explained Tanrade. ”You're in luck, old boy--no record of ident.i.ty, and how the devil do you suppose Le Bour could p.r.o.nounce your name?”

Half an hour later I found the Vicomte, who lived close to our village.

He was pacing up and down his salon in a rage.

”I was _not_ in the buckwheat!” he declared frantically. ”Do you suppose I have nothing better to do, my friend, than see this wretched business out at the county-seat? The Vicomtesse is furious. We were to leave, for a little voyage in Italy, next week. Ah, that young son of the Baron! He is the devil! _He_ is responsible for this--naturally.” And he fell again to pacing the room.

I looked blankly at the Vicomte.

”Son? What young son?” I asked.

The Vicomte stopped, with a gesture of surprise.

”Ah! _Sapristi!_ You do not know?” he exclaimed. ”You do not know that Babette Deslys is Le Bour's daughter? That the Baron's son ran away with her and a hundred thousand francs? That the hundred thousand francs belonged to Le Bour? _Sapristi!_ You did not know _that_?”

[Ill.u.s.tration: sign: CHa.s.sE GARDEe]

[Ill.u.s.tration: the yellow car]

CHAPTER TEN

THE BELLS OF PONT DU SABLE

The big yellow car came ripping down the road--a clean hard ribbon of a road skirting the tawny marsh that lay this sparkling August morning under a glaze of turquoise blue water at high tide.

With a devilish wail from its siren, the yellow car whizzed past my house abandoned by the marsh. I was just in time, as I raised my head above the rambling wall of my courtyard, to catch sight of my good friend the cure on the back seat, holding on tight to his saucer-like hat. In the same rapid glance I saw the fluttering ends of a bottle-green veil, in front of the cure's nose and knew Germaine was driving.

”Lucky cure!” I said to myself, as I returned to my half-finished sketch, ”carried off again to luncheon by one of the dearest of little women.”

No wonder during his lonely winters, when every villa or chateau of every friend of his for miles around is closed, and my vagabond village of Pont du Sable rarely sees a Parisian, the cure longs for midsummer.

It is his gayest season, since hardly a day pa.s.ses but some friend kidnaps him from his presbytery that lies snug and silent back of the crumbling wall which hides both his house and his wild garden from the gaze of the pa.s.ser-by.

He is the kind of cure whom it is a joy to invite--this straight, strong cure, who is French to the backbone; with his devil-may-care geniality, his irresistible smile of a comedian, his quick wit of an Irishman, and his heart of gold.

To-day Germaine had captured him and was speeding him away to a jolly luncheon of friends at her villa, some twenty kilometres below Pont du Sable--Germaine with her trim, lithe figure and merry brown eyes, eyes that can become in a flash as calm and serious as the cure's, and in turn with her moods (for Germaine is a pretty collection of moods) gleam with the impulsive devilry of a _gamine_; Germaine, who teases an old vagabond painter like myself, by daubing a purple moon in the middle of my morning sketch, adds a dab on my nose when I protest, and the next instant embraces me, and begs my forgiveness.

I cannot conceive of anyone not forgiving Germaine, beneath whose firm and delicate beauty lies her warm heart, as golden in quality as the cure's.