Village of Vagabonds

Berkeley Smith Frank

Description

It was in fat Madame Fontaine's little cafe at Bar la Rose, that Norman village by the sea, that I announced my decision. It being market-day the cafe was noisy with peasants, and the crooked street without jammed with carts. Monsieur Torin, the butcher, opposite me, leaned back heavily from his glass of applejack and roared.

Informations

• Publié par: Pub One Info
• Date de parution: 23 octobre 2010
• Nombre de lectures: 0
• EAN13: 9782819905738
• Langue: English

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CHAPTER ONE
THE HOUSE BY THE MARSH
It was in fat Madame Fontaine's little café at Barla Rose, that Norman village by the sea, that I announced mydecision. It being market-day the café was noisy with peasants, andthe crooked street without jammed with carts. Monsieur Torin, thebutcher, opposite me, leaned back heavily from his glass ofapplejack and roared.
Monsieur Pompanet, the blacksmith, at my elbow, putdown his cup of black coffee delicately in its clean saucer andopened his honest gray eyes wide in amazement. SimultaneouslyMonsieur Jaclin, the mayor, in his freshly ironed blouse, who forwant of room was squeezed next to Torin, choked out a wheezy" Bon Dieu! " and blew his nose in derision. "Pont du Sable – Bon Dieu! " exclaimed all three. "Pont du Sable – BonDieu! " " Cristi! " thundered Torin. "You say you are goingto live in Pont du Sable? Hélas! It is not possible,my friend, you are in earnest!" "That lost hole of a village of sacré vagabonds," echoed Pompanet. "Why, the mud when thetide is out smells like the devil. It is unhealthy." "Père Bordierand I went there for ducks twenty years ago," added the mayor. "Wewere glad enough to get away before dark. B-r-r! It was lonelyenough, that marsh, and that dirty little fishing-village no longerthan your arm. Bah! It's a hole, just as Pompanet says."
Torin leaned across the table and laid a heavy handhumanely on my shoulder. "Take my advice," said he, "don't give upthat snug farm of yours here for a lost hole like Pont du Sable.""But the sea-shooting is open there three hundred and sixty-fivedays in the year," I protested, with enthusiasm. "I'm tired oftramping my legs off here for a few partridges a season. Besides,what I've been looking for I've found – a fine old abandoned housewith a splendid old courtyard and a wild garden. I had the goodluck to climb over a wall and discover it." "I know the place youmean," interrupted the mayor. "It was a post-tavern in the old daysbefore the railroad ran there." "And later belonged to the estateof the Marquis de Lys," I added proudly. "Now it belongs to me.""What! You've bought it!" exclaimed Torin, half closing hisveal-like eyes. "Yes," I confessed, "signed, sealed, and paid for.""And what the devil do you intend to do with that old stone pilenow that you've got it?" sneered Jaclin. "Ah! You artists are queerfellows!" "Live in it, messieurs," I returned as happily as Icould, as I dropped six sous for my glass into Madame Fontaine'sopen palm, and took my leave, for under the torrent of theirprotest I was beginning to feel I had been a fool to be carriedaway by my love of a gun and the picturesque.
The marsh at Pont du Sable was an old friend ofmine. So were the desert beach beyond the dunes, and the lostfishing-village – "no longer than your arm." I had tramped in windand rain and the good sunlight over that great desert of pastyblack clay at low tide. I had lain at high tide in a sand-pit atthe edge of the open sea beyond the dunes, waiting for chance shotsat curlew and snipe. I had known the bay at the first glimmer ofdawn with a flight of silver plovers wheeling for a rush over mydecoys. Dawn – the lazy, sparkling noon and the golden hours beforethe crisp, still twilight warned me it was high time to start backto Bar la Rose fourteen kilometres distant. All these had becomeenchanting memories.
Thus going to Pont du Sable for a day's shootingbecame a weekly delight, then a biweekly fascination, then anincorrigible triweekly habit. There was no alternative left me nowbut to live there. The charm of that wild bay and its lost villagehad gotten under my skin. And thus it happened that I deserted myfarm and friends at Bar la Rose, and with my goods and chattelsboarded the toy train one spring morning, bound for my abandonedhouse, away from sufficient-unto-itself Bar la Rose and itspigheaded inhabitants, the butcher, the blacksmith, and themayor.
It is such a funny little train that runs to mynew-found Paradise, rocking and puffing and grumbling along on itsnarrow-gauge track with its cars labelled like grown-up ones,first, second, and third class; and no two painted the same colour;and its noisy, squat engine like the real ones in the toy-stores,that wind up with a key and go rushing off frantically in tangents.No wonder the train to my lost village is called " Le petitdéraillard " – "The little get-off-the-track." And so I say, itmight all have come packed in excelsior in a neat box, complete,with instructions, for the sum of four francs sixty-five centimes,had it not been otherwise destined to run twice daily, rain orshine, to Pont du Sable, and beyond.
Poor little train! It is never on time, but it doesits best. It is at least far more prompt than its passengers, formost of them come running after it out of breath. "Hurry up,mademoiselle!" cries the engineer to a rosy-cheeked girl in sabots,rushing with a market-basket under one arm and a live goose underthe other. "Eh, my little lady, you should have gotten out of bedearlier!" laughs the conductor as he pulls her aboard. "Toot!Toot!" And off goes the little get-off-the-track again, rocking andrumbling along past desert stretches of sand dunes screening theblue sea; past modern villas, isolated horrors in brick, pink, andbaby blue, carefully planted away from the trees. Then suddenly thedesert is left behind! Past the greenest of fields now, dotted withsleek, grazing cattle; past groves of pine; past snug Norman farmswith low-thatched roofs half-smothered in yellow roses. Again thedunes, as the toy train swings nearer the sea. They are no longerdesert wastes of sand and wire-grass, but covered now with a riotof growing things, running in one rich congested sweep of orchards,pastures, feathery woodlands and matted hedges down to the veryedge of the blue sea.
A sudden turn, and the toy train creeps out of agrove of pines to the open bay. It is high tide. A flight ofplover, startled by the engine, go wheeling away in a silver streakto a spit of sand running out from the marsh. A puff of smoke fromthe sand-spit, and the band leaves two of its members to agentleman in new leather leggings; then, whistling over thecalamity that has befallen them, they wheel again and strike forthe open sea and safety.
Far across the expanse of rippling turquoise waterstands a white lighthouse that at dusk is set with a yellowdiamond. Snug at the lower end of the bay, a long mile from wherethe plovers rise, lies the lost village. Now the toy train iscrawling through its crooked single street, the engine-bell ringingfuriously that stray dogs and children, and a panicky flock ofsheep may have time to get out of the way. The sheep are in chargeof a rough little dog with a cast in one eye and a slim, bareleggedgirl who apologizes a dozen times to monsieur the engineer betweenher cries to her flock. "They are not very well brought up, mylittle one – those sacred mutton of yours," remarks the engineer ashe comes to a dead stop, jumps out of his cab, and helps straightenout the tangle. "Ah, monsieur!" sighs the girl in despair. "Whatwill you have? It is the little black one that is always toblame!"
The busy dog crowds them steadily into line. Heseems to be everywhere at once, darting from right to left, nowrounding up a stubborn ewe and her first-born, now cornering theblack one. "Toot! Toot!" And the little get-off-the-track goesrumbling on through the village, past the homes of the fishermen –a straggling line of low stone houses with quaint gabled roofs, andstill quainter chimneys, and old doorways giving glimpses of darkinteriors and dirt floors. Past the modest houses of the mayor, thebaker, the butcher and Monsieur le Curé; then through the smallpublic square, in which nothing ever happens, and up to a box of astation. "Pont du Sable!" cries the conductor, with as muchimportance as if he had announced Paris.
I have arrived.
There was no doubt about my new-found home beingabandoned! The low stone wall that tempered the wind from courtyardand garden was green with lichens. The wide stone gateway, with itsoaken doors barred within by massive cross-hooks that could havewithstood a siege; the courtyard, flanked by the house and itsrambling appendages that contained within their cavernous interiorsthe cider-press and cellars; the stable with its long stone manger,and next it the carved wooden bunk for the groom of two centuriesago; the stone pig-sty; the tile-roofed sheds – all had about themthe charm of dignified decay.
But the "château" itself!
Generations of spiders had veiled every nook andcorner within, and the nooks and corners were many. These cobwebshung in ghostly festoons from the low-beamed ceiling of the livingroom, opening out upon the wild garden. They continued up thenarrow stone stairway leading to the old-fashioned stone-pavedbedrooms; they had been spun in a labyrinth all over the generous,spooky, old stone-paved attic, whose single eye of a window lookedout over the quaint gables and undulating tiled roofs of adjoiningattics, whose dark interiors were still pungent with the tons ofapples they had once sheltered. Beyond my rambling roofs were richorchards and noble trees and two cool winding lanes running up tothe green country beyond.
Ten days of strenuous settling passed, at the end ofwhich my abandoned house was resuscitated, as it were. WithoutSuzette, my little maid-of-all-work, it would have been impossible.I may say we attacked this seemingly superhuman task together – andSuzette is so human. She has that frantic courage of youth, and asmile that is irresistible. "To-morrow monsieur shall see," shesaid. "My kitchen is clean – that is something, eh? And the bedsare up, and the armoires, and nearly all of monsieur's old studiofurniture in place. Eh, ben! To-morrow night shall see mostof the sketches hung and the rugs beaten – that is again something,eh? Then there will be only the brass and the andirons and the gunsto clean."
Ten days of st