Part 31 (1/2)

”_Allons-y_--” he repeated--”Come and have a gla.s.s.”

They had crossed in the mud to a dingy tent lighted by a lantern; here they seated themselves on a rough bench at a board table, his arm still around her. She turned to leer at him now, half closing her clear blue eyes. When he had swallowed his first thimbleful of applejack he spat, and wiped his mouth with the back of his free hand, while the girl grew garrulous under the warmth of the liquor and his rough affection. Again she gave him her lips between two wet oaths. No one paid any attention to them--it was what a _fete_ was made for. For a while they left their gla.s.ses and danced with the rest to the strident music of the merry-go-round organ.

It was long after midnight when Garron paid his score under the tent.

She had told him much in the meantime--there was no one to care whom she followed. She told him, too, she had come to the _fete_ from a hamlet called Les Forets, where she had been was.h.i.+ng for a woman. The moon was up when they took the highroad together, following it until it reached the beginning of Pont du Sable, then Garron led the way abruptly to the right up a tangled lane that ran to an old woodroad that he used to gain the Great Marsh. They went lurching along together in comparative silence, the man steadying the girl through the dark places where the trees shut out the moon. Garron knew the road as well as his pocket--it was a favourite with him when he did not wish to be seen. Now and then the girl sang in a maudlin way:

”_Entrez, entrez, messieurs, C'est l'amour qui vous attend._”

It was gray dawn when they reached the edge of the Great Marsh that lay smothered under a blanket of chill mist.

”It is over there, my nest,” muttered Garron, with a jerk of his thumb indicating the direction in which his hut lay. Again he drew her roughly to him.

”_Dis donc, toi!_” he demanded brusquely: ”how do they call you?” It had not, until then, occurred to him to ask her name.

”_Eh ben_--Julie,” she replied. ”It's a _sacre_ little name I never liked. _Eh, tu sais_,” she added slowly--”when I don't like a thing--”

she drew back a little and gazed at him sullenly--”_Eh ben_--I am like that when I don't like a thing.” Her flash of temper pleased him--he had had enough of the trustful kitten of Villette's.

”Come along,” said he gruffly.

”_Dis donc, toi_,” she returned without moving. ”It is well understood then about my dress and the shoes?”

”_Mais oui! Bon Dieu!_” replied the peasant irritably. He was hungry and wanted his soup. He swore at the chill as he led the way across the marsh while she followed in his tracks, satisfied with his promise of the dress and shoes. She wanted a blue dress and she had seen the shoes that pleased her some months before in the grocery at Pont du Sable when a dog and she had dragged a fisherwoman in her cart for their board and lodging.

By the time they reached the forks of the stream the rising sun had melted the blanket of the mist until it lay over the desolate prairie in thin rifts of rose vapour.

It was thus the miser, Garron, found his mate.

Julie proved to be a fair cook, and the two lived together, at the beginning, in comparative peace. Although it was not until days after the _fete_ at Avelot that she managed to hold him to his promise about the blue dress, he sent her to Pont du Sable for her shoes the day after their arrival on the marsh--she bought them and they hurt her. The outcome of this was their first quarrel.

”_Sacre bon Dieu!_” he snarled--”thou art never content!” Then he struck her with the back of his clenched fist and, womanlike, she went whimpering to bed. Neither he nor she thought much of the blow. Her mind was on the shoes that did not fit.

When she was well asleep and snoring, he ran his sinewy arm in the hole he had made in the double wall--lifted the end of a short, heavy plank, caught it back against a nail and gripped the packet of bank notes that lay snug beneath it. Satisfied they were safe and his mate still asleep, he replaced the plank over his fortune--crossed the dirt floor to his barrier of a door, dropped an iron rod through two heavy staples, securely bolting it--blew out the tallow dip thrust in the neck of an empty bottle, and went to bed.

Months pa.s.sed--months that were bleak and wintry enough on the marsh for even a hare to take to the timber for comfort. During most of that winter Garron peddled the skins of rabbits he snared on the marsh, and traded and bought their pelts, and he lived poor that no one might suspect his wealth. He and his mate rose, like the wild fowl, with the sun and went to bed with it, to save the light of the tallow dip. Though I have said she could easily have strangled him with her hands, she refrained. Twice, when she lay half awake she had seen him run his wiry arm in the wall--one night she had heard the lifting of the heavy plank and the faint crinkling sound of the package as he gripped it. She had long before this suspected he had money hidden.

Julie was no fool!

With the spring the marsh became more tenable. The smallest song birds from the woods flitted along the ditches; there were days, too, when the desolate prairie became soft--hazy--and inviting.

At daybreak, the beginning of one of these delicious spring days, Garron, hearing a sharp cry without, rose abruptly and unbolted his barrier. He would have stepped out and across his threshold had not his bare foot touched something heavy and soft. He looked down--still half asleep--then he started back in a sort of dull amazement. The thing his foot had touched was a bundle--a rolled and well-wrapped blanket, tied with a stout string. The sharp cry he had heard he now realized, issued from the folds of the blanket. Garron bent over it, his thumb and forefinger uncovering the face of a baby.

”_Sacristi!_” he stammered--then leaned back heavily against the old rudder of a door. Julie heard and crawled out of bed. She was peering over his shoulder at the bundle at his feet before he knew it.

Garron half wheeled and faced her as her breath touched his coa.r.s.e ear.

”_Eh bien!_ what is it?” he exclaimed, searching vainly for something else to say.