Part 28 (2/2)
He sank his chin in his hands and gazed at me with a look of utter despair.
I regarded him keenly, then I went to the decanter and poured out for him a stiff gla.s.s of applejack.
”Drink that,” said I, ”and get normal.”
With an impetuous gesture he waved it away.
”No, not now!” he exclaimed, ”wait until I tell you all--nothing until I tell you.”
”Go on, then,” I returned, ”I want to hear all about this wretched business. Go slow and tell it to me from top to bottom. I am not as convinced of the cure's guilt as you are, old boy. There may be nothing in it more than a pack of village lies; and if there is a vestige of the truth, we may, by putting our heads together, help matters.”
He started to speak, but I held up my hand.
”One thing before you proceed,” I declared with conviction. ”I can no more believe the cure is dishonest than Alice or yourself. It is ridiculous to presume so for a moment. I have known the cure too well.
He is a prince. He has a heart as big as all outdoors. Look at the good he's done in this village! There is not a vagabond in it but will tell you he is as right as rain. Ask the people he helps what they think of him, they'll tell you 'he's just the cure for Pont du Sable.' _Voila!_ That's what they'll tell you, and they mean it. All the gossip in the world can't hurt him. Here,” I cried, forcing the gla.s.s into his hand, ”get that down you, you maker of ballets, and proceed with the horrible details, but proceed gently, merrily, with the right sort of beat in your heart, for the cure is as much a friend of yours as he is of mine.”
Tanrade shrugged his broad shoulders, and for some moments sipped his gla.s.s. At length, he set it down on the broad table at his elbow, and said slowly: ”You know how good Alice is, how much she will do for any one she is fond of--for a friend, I mean, like the cure. Very well, it is not an easy thing to give a concert in Paris that earns fifteen hundred francs for a cure whom, it is safe to say, no one in the audience, save Germaine, Alice and myself had ever heard of. It was a veritable _tour de force_ to organize. You were not there. I'm glad you were not. It was a dull old concert that would not have amused you much--La.s.sive fell ill at the last moment, Delmar was in a bad humour, and the quartet had played the night before at a ball at the elysee and were barely awake. Yet in spite of it the theatre was packed; a chic audience, too. Frambord came out with half a column in the _Critique des Arts_ with a pretty compliment to Alice's executive energy, and added 'that it was one of the rare soirees of the season.' He must have been drunk when he wrote it. I played badly--I never can play when they gabble. It was as garrulous as a fish market in front. _Enfin!_ It was over and we telegraphed his reverence the result; from a money standpoint it was a '_succes fou_.'”
Tanrade leaned back and for a few seconds gazed at the ceiling of my den.
”Where every penny has gone,” he resumed, with a strained smile, ”_Dieu sait!_ There is no bell, not even the sound of one, _et voila!_”
He turned abruptly and reached for his gla.s.s, forgetting he had drained it. A fly was buzzing on its back in the last drop. And then we both smiled grimly, for we were thinking of Monsieur le Cure.
I rang the bell of the presbytery early the next morning, by inserting my jackknife, to spare my fingers, in a loop at the end of a crooked wire which dangles over the rambling wall of the cure's garden. The door itself is of thick oak, and framed by stones overgrown with lichens--a solid old playground for nervous lizards when the sun s.h.i.+nes, and a favourite sticking place for snails when it rains. I had to tug hard on the crooked wire before I heard a faint jingle issuing in response from the cure's cavernous kitchen, whose hooded chimney and stone-paved floor I love to paint.
Now came the klop-klop of a pair of sabots--then the creak of a heavy key as it turned over twice in the rusty lock, and his faithful Marie cautiously opened the garden door. I do not know how old Marie is, there is so little left of this good soul to guess by. Her small shrunken body is bent from age and hard work. Her hands are heavy--the fingers gnarled and out of proportion to her gaunt thin wrists. She has the wrinkled, leathery face of some kindly gnome. She opened her eyes in a sort of mute appeal as I inquired if Monsieur le Cure was at home.
”Ah! My poor monsieur, his reverence will see no one”--she faltered--”_Ah! Mais_”--she sighed, knowing that I knew the change in her master and the gossip thereof.
”My good Marie,” I said, persuasively patting her bony shoulder, ”tell his reverence that I _must_ see him. Old friends as we are--”
”_Bon Dieu, oui!_” she exclaimed after another sigh. ”Such old friends as you and he--I will go and see,” said she, and turned bravely back down the path that led to his door while I waited among the roses.
A few moments later Marie beckoned to me from the kitchen window.
”He will see you,” she whispered, as I crossed the stone floor of the kitchen. ”He is in the little room,” and she pointed to a narrow door close by the big chimney, a door provided with old-fas.h.i.+oned little gla.s.s panes upon which are glued transparent chromos of wild ducks.
I knocked gently.
”_Entrez!_” came a tired voice from within.
I turned the k.n.o.b and entered his den--a dingy little box of a room, sunk a step below the level of the kitchen, with a smoke-grimed ceiling and corners littered with dusty books and pamphlets.
He was sitting with his back to me, humped up in a worn arm-chair, before his small stove, just as Tanrade had found him. As I edged around his table--past a rack holding his guns, half-hidden under two dilapidated game bags and a bicycle tyre long out of service, he turned his hollow eyes to mine, with a look I shall long remember, and feebly grasped my outstretched hand.
”Come,” said I, ”you're going to get a grip on yourself, _mon ami_.