The Maids of Paradise
Page 18When I came into camp, late that afternoon, I found Byram and Speed
groping about among a mass of newspapers and letters, the first mail
we circus people had received for nearly two months.
There were letters for all who were accustomed to look for letters
from families, relatives, or friends at home. I never received
letters--
I had received none of that kind in nearly a score of years,
yet that curious habit of expectancy had not perished in me, and I
found myself standing with the others while Byram distributed the
letters, one by one, until the last home-stamped envelope had been
given out, and all around me the happy circus-folk were reading in
homesick contentment. I know of no lonelier man than he who lingers
empty-handed among those who pore over the home mail.
But there were newspapers enough and to spare--French, English,
American; and I sat down by my lion's cage and attempted to form some
opinion of the state of affairs in France. And, as far as I could read
between the lines, this is what I gathered, partly from my own
knowledge of past events, partly from the foreign papers, particularly
the English:
When, on the 3d of September, the humiliating news arrived that the
Emperor was a prisoner and his army annihilated, the government, for
the first time in its existence, acted with promptness and decision
in a matter of importance.
Secret orders were sent by couriers to the
Bank of France, to the Louvre, and to the Invalides; and, that same
night, train after train rushed out of Paris loaded with the
battle-flags from the Invalides, the most important pictures and
antique sculptures from the Louvre, the greater part of the gold and
silver from the Bank of France, and, last but by no means least, the
crown and jewels of France.
This Speed and I already knew.
These trains were despatched to Brest, and at the same time a telegram
was directed to the admiral commanding the French iron-clad fleet in
the Baltic to send an armored cruiser to Brest with all haste
possible, there to await further orders, but to be fully prepared in
any event to take on board certain goods designated in cipher. This we
knew in a general way, though Speed understood that Lorient was to be
the port of departure.
The plan was a good one and apparently simple; and there seemed to be
no doubt that jewels, battle-flags, pictures, and coin were already
beyond danger from the German armies, now plodding cautiously
southward toward the capital, which was slowly recovering from its
revolutionary convulsions and preparing for a siege.
The plan, then, was simple; but, for an equally simple reason, it
miscarried in the following manner. Early in August, while the French
armies from the Rhine to the Meuse were being punished with frightful
regularity and precision, the French Mediterranean squadron had sailed
up and down that interesting expanse of water, apparently in patriotic
imitation of the historic
"King of France and twenty thousand men."
For, it now appeared, the French admiral was afraid that the Spanish
navy might aid the German ships in harassing the French transports,
which at that time were frantically engaged in ferrying a sea-sick
Algerian army across the Mediterranean to the mother country.
Of course there was no ground for the admiral's suspicions. The German
war-ships stayed in their own harbors, the Spaniards made no offensive
alliance with Prussia, and at length the French admiral sailed
triumphantly away with his battleships and cruisers.
On the 7th of August the squadron of four battleships, two armored
corvettes, and a despatch-boat steamed out of Brest, picking up on its
way northward three more iron-clad frigates, and several cruisers and
despatch-boats; and on the 11th of August, 1870, the squadron anchored
off Heligoland, from whence Admiral Fourichon proclaimed the blockade
of the German coast.
It must have been an imposing sight! There lay the great iron-clads,
the Magnanime, the Héroine, the Provence, the Valeureuse, the
Revanche, the Invincible, the Couronne! There lay the cruisers,
the Atalante, the Renaud, the Cosmao, the Decrès! There, too,
lay the single-screw despatch-boats Reine-Hortense, Renard, and
Dayot. And upon their armored decks, three by three, stalked the
French admirals. Yet, without cynicism, it may be said that the
admirals of France fought better, in 1870, on dry land than they did
on the ocean.
However, the German ships stayed peacefully inside their fortified
ports, and the three French admirals pranced peacefully up and down
outside, until the God of battles intervened and trouble naturally
ensued.
On the 6th of September all the seas of Europe were set clashing under
a cyclone that rose to a howling hurricane. The British iron-clad
Captain foundered off Finistère; the French fleet in the Baltic was
scattered to the four winds.
In the midst of the tempest a French despatch-boat, the Hirondelle,
staggered into sight, signalling the flag-ship. Then the French
admiral for the first time learned the heart-breaking news of Sedan,
and as the tempest-tortured battle-ship drove seaward the signals went
up: "Make for Brest!" The blockade of the German coast was at an
end.
On the 4th of September the treasure-laden trains had left Paris for
Brest. On the 5th the Hirondelle steamed out towards the fleet with
the news from Sedan and the orders for the detachment of a cruiser to
receive the crown jewels. On the 6th the news and the orders were
signalled to the flag-ship; but the God of battles unchained a tempest
which countermanded the order and hurled the iron-clads into outer
darkness.
Some of the ships crept into English ports, burning their last lumps
of coal, some drifted into Dunkerque; but the flag-ship disappeared
for nine long days, at last to reappear off Cherbourg, a stricken
thing with a stricken crew and an admiral broken-hearted.
So, for days and days, the treasure-laden trains must have stood
helpless in the station at Brest, awaiting the cruiser that did not
come.
On the 17th of September the French Channel squadron, of seven heavy
iron-clads, unexpectedly steamed into Lorient harbor and dropped
anchor amid thundering salutes from the forts; and the next day one of
the treasure-trains came flying into Lorient, to the unspeakable
Speed and I already knew the secret orders sent. The treasures,
including the crown diamonds, were to be stored in the citadel, and an
armored cruiser was to lie off the arsenal with banked fires, ready to
receive the treasures at the first signal and steam to the French
fortified port of Saïgon in Cochin China, by a course already
determined.
Why on earth those orders had been changed so that the cruiser was to
lie off Groix I could not imagine, unless some plot had been
discovered in Lorient which had made it advisable to shift the
location of the treasures for the third time.
Pondering there at the tent door, amid my heap of musty newspapers, I
looked out into the late, gray afternoon and saw the maids of Paradise
passing and repassing across the bridge with a clicking of wooden
shoes and white head-dresses glimmering in the dusk of the trees.
The town had filled within a day or two; the Paradise coiffe was not
the only coiffe to be seen in the square; there was the
delicate-winged head-dress of Faöuet, the beautiful coiffes of
Rosporden, Sainte-Anne d'Auray, and Pont Aven; there, too, flashed the
scarlet skirts of Bannalec and the gorgeous embroidered bodices of the
interior; there were the men of Quimperlé in velvet, the men of
Penmarch, the men of Faöuet with their dark, Spanish-like faces and
their sombreros, and their short yellow jackets and leggings. All in
holiday costume, too, for the maids were stiff in silver and lace, and
the men wore carved sabots and embroidered gilets.
"Governor," I called out to Byram, "the town is filling fast. It's
like a Pardon in Morbihan; we'll pack the old tent to the
nigger's-heaven!"
"It's a fact," he said, pushing his glasses up over his forehead and
fanning his face with his silk hat. "We're going to open to a lot of
money, Mr. Scarlett, and ... I ain't goin' to forgit them that stood
by me, neither."
He placed a heavy hand on my shoulder, and, stooping, peered into my
face.
"Air you sick, m' friend?" he asked.
"I, governor? Why, no."
"Ain't been bit by that there paltry camuel nor nothin', hev ye?"
"No; do I look ill?"
"Peaked--kind o' peaked. White, with dark succles under your eyes.
Air you nervous?"
"About the lions? Oh no. Don't worry about me, governor."
He sighed, adjusted his spectacles, and blew his nose.
"Mr. Speed--he's worriting, too; he says that Empress Khatoun means
to hev ye one o' these days."
"You tell Mr. Speed to worry over his own affairs--that child,
Jacqueline, for instance. I suppose she made her jump without trouble
to-day? I was too nervous to stay and watch her."
"M' friend," said Byram, in solemn ecstasy, "I take off my hat to
that there kid!" And he did so with a flourish. "You orter seen her;
she hung on that flying trap, jest as easy an' sassy! We was all half
crazy. Speed he grew blue around the gills; Miss Crystal, a-swingin'
there in the riggin' by her knees, kept a swallerin' an' lickin' her
lips, she was that scared.
"'Ready?' she calls out in a sort o' quaver.
"'Ready!' sez little Jacqueline, cool as ice, swingin' by her knees.
'Go!' sez Miss Crystal, an' the kid let go, an' Miss Crystal grabbed
her by the ankles. 'Ready?' calls up Speed, beside the tank.
"'Ready!' sez the kid, smilin'. 'Drop!' cries Speed. An' Jacqueline
shot down like a blazing star--whir! swish! splash! All over! An' that
there nervy kid a floatin' an' a sportin' like a minnie-fish at
t'other end o' the tank! Oh, gosh, but it was grand! It was jest--"
Speech failed; he walked away, waving his arms, his rusty silk hat on
the back of his head.
A few moments later drums began to roll from the square. Speed,
passing, called out to me that the conscripts were leaving for
Lorient; so I walked down to the bridge, where the crowd had gathered
and where a tall gendarme stood, his blue-and-white uniform distinct
in the early evening light. The mayor was there, too, dressed in his
best, waddling excitedly about, and buttonholing at intervals a young
lieutenant of infantry, who appeared to be extremely bored.
There were the conscripts of the Garde Mobile, an anxious peasant
rabble, awkward, resigned, docile as cattle. Here stood a farmer,
reeking of his barnyard; here two woodsmen from the forest, belted and
lean; but the majority were men of the sea, heavy-limbed, sun-scorched
fellows, with little, keen eyes always half closed, and big, helpless
fists hanging. Some carried their packets slung from hip to shoulder,
some tied their parcels to the muzzles of their obsolete muskets. A
number wore the boatman's smock, others the farmer's blouse of linen,
but the greater number were clad in the blue-wool jersey and cloth
béret of the sailor.
Husbands, sons, lovers, looked silently at the women. The men uttered
no protest, no reproach; the women wept very quietly. In their hearts
that strange mysticism of the race predominated--the hopeless
acceptance of a destiny which has, for centuries, left its imprint in
the sad eyes of the Breton. Generations of martyrdom leave a cowed and
spiritually fatigued race which breeds stoics.
Like great white blossoms, the spotless head-dresses of the maids of
Paradise swayed and bowed above the crowd.
A little old woman stood beside a sailor, saying to anybody who would
listen to her: "My son--they are taking my son. Why should they take
my son?"
Another said: "They are taking mine, too, but he cannot fight on
land. He knows the sea; he is not afraid at sea. Can nobody help us?
He cannot fight on land; he does not know how!"
A woman carrying a sleeping baby stood beside the drummers at the
fountain. Five children dragged at her skirts and peered up at the
mayor, who shrugged his shoulders and shook his fat head.
"What can I do? He must march with the others, your man," said the
mayor, again and again. But the woman with the baby never ceased her
eternal question: "What can we live on if you take him? I do not mean
to complain too much, but we have nothing. What can we live on, m'sieu
the mayor?"
But now the drummers had stepped out into the centre of the square and
were drawing their drum-sticks from the brass sockets in their
baldricks.
to their lovers. "We will pray for you!"
"Pray for us," said the men, holding their sweethearts' hands.
"Attention!" cried the officer, a slim, hectic lieutenant from
Lorient.
The mayor handed him the rolls, and the lieutenant, facing the
shuffling single rank, began to call off:
"Roux of Bannalec?"
"Here, monsieur--"
"Don't say, 'Here, monsieur!' Say, 'Present!' Now, Roux?"
"Present, monsieur--"
"Idiot! Kedrec?"
"Present!"
"That's right! Penmarch?"
"Present!"
"Rhuis of Sainte-Yssel?"
"Present!"
"Hervé of Paradise Beacon?"
"Present!"
"Laenec?"
"Present!"
"Duhamel?"
"Present!"
The officer moistened his lips, turned the page, and continued:
"Carnac of Alincourt?"
There was a silence, then a voice cried, "Crippled!"
"Mark him off, lieutenant," said the mayor, pompously; "he's our
little hunchback."
"Shall I mark you in his place?" asked the lieutenant, with a smile
that turned the mayor's blood to water. "No? You would make a fine
figure for a forlorn hope."
A man burst out laughing, but he was half crazed with grief, and his
acrid mirth found no response. Then the roll-call was resumed:
"Gestel?"
"Present!"
"Garenne!"
There was another silence.
"Robert Garenne!" repeated the officer, sharply. "Monsieur the mayor
has informed me that you are liable for military duty. If you are
present, answer to your name or take the consequences!"
The poacher, who had been lounging on the bridge, slouched slowly
forward and touched his cap.
"I am organizing a franc corps," he said, with a deadly sidelong
glance at the mayor, who now stood beside the lieutenant.
"You can explain that at Lorient," replied the lieutenant. "Fall in
there!"
"But I--"
"Fall in!" repeated the lieutenant.
The poacher's visage became inflamed. He hesitated, looking around for
an avenue of escape. Then he caught my disgusted eye.
"For the last time," said the lieutenant, coolly drawing his
revolver, "I order you to fall in!"
The poacher backed into the straggling rank, glaring.
"Now," said the lieutenant, "you may go to your house and get your
packet. If we have left when you return, follow and report at the
arsenal in Lorient. Fall out! March!"
The poacher backed out to the rear of the rank, turned on his heel,
and strode away towards the coast, clinched fists swinging by his
side.
There were not many names on the roll, and the call was quickly
finished. And now the infantry drummers raised their sticks high in
the air, there was a sharp click, a crash, and the square echoed.
"March!" cried the officer; and, drummers ahead, the long single rank
shuffled into fours, and the column started, enveloped in a throng of
women and children.
"Good-bye!" sobbed the women. "We will pray!"
"Good-bye! Pray!"
The crowd pressed on into the dusk. Far up the darkening road the
white coiffes of the women glimmered; the drum-roll softened to a
distant humming.
The children, who did not understand, had gathered around a hunchback,
the exempt cripple of the roll-call.
"Ho! Fois!" I heard him say to the crowd of wondering little ones,
"if I were not exempt I'd teach these Prussians to dance the
farandole to my biniou! Oui, dame! And perhaps I'll do it yet, spite
of the crooked back I was not born with--as everybody knows! Oui,
dame! Everybody knows I was born as straight as the next man!"
The children gaped, listening to the distant drumming, now almost
inaudible.
The cripple rose, lighted a lantern, and walked slowly out toward the
cliffs, carrying himself with that uncanny dignity peculiar to
hunchbacks. And as he walked he sang, in his thin, sharp voice, the
air of "The Three Captains":
"J'ai eu dans son coeur la plac' la plus belle,
La plac' la plus belle.
J'ai passé trois ans, trois ans avec elle,
Trois ans avec elle.
J'ai eu trois enfants qui sont capitaines,
Qui sont capitaines.
L'un est à Bordeaux, l'autre à la Rochelle,
L'autre à la Rochelle.
Le troisième ici, caressent les belles,
Caressent les belles."
Far out across the shadowy cliffs I heard his lingering, strident
chant, and caught the spark of his lantern; then silence and darkness
fell over the deserted square; the awed children, fingers interlocked,
crept homeward through the dusk; there was no sound save the rippling
wash of the river along the quay of stone.
Tired, a trifle sad, thinking perhaps of those home letters which had
come to all save me, I leaned against the river wall, staring at the
darkness; and over me came creeping that apathy which I had already
learned to recognize and even welcome as a mental anæsthetic which set
that dark sentinel, care, a-drowsing.
What did I care, after all? Life had stopped for me years before;
there was left only a shell in which that unseen little trickster, the
call life? The sorry parody!
A shape slunk near me through the dusk, furtive, uncertain. "Lizard,"
I said, indifferently. He came up, my gun on his ragged shoulder.
"You go with your class?" I asked.
"No, I go to the forest," he said, hoarsely. "You shall hear from
me."
I nodded.
"Are you content?" he demanded, lingering.
The creature wanted sympathy, though he did not know it. I gave him my
hand and told him he was a brave man; and he went away, noiselessly,
leaving me musing by the river wall.
After a long while--or it may only have been a few minutes--the square
began to fill again with the first groups of women, children, and old
men who had escorted the departing conscripts a little way on their
march to Lorient. Back they came, the maids of Paradise silent,
tearful, pitifully acquiescent; the women of Bannalec, Faöuet,
Rosporden, Quimperlé chattering excitedly about the scene they had
witnessed. The square began to fill; lanterns were lighted around the
fountain; the two big lamps with their brass reflectors in front of
the mayor's house illuminated the pavement and the thin tree-foliage
with a yellow radiance.
The chatter grew louder as new groups in all sorts of gay head-dresses
arrived; laughter began to be heard; presently the squealing of the
biniou pipes broke out from the bowling-green, where, high on a bench
supported by a plank laid across two cider barrels, the hunchback sat,
skirling the farandole. Ah, what a world entire was this lost little
hamlet of Paradise, where merrymakers trod on the mourners' heels,
where the scream of the biniou drowned the floating note of the
passing bell, where Misery drew the curtains of her bed and lay
sleepless, listening to Gayety dancing breathless to the patter of a
coquette's wooden shoes!
Long tables were improvised in the square, piled up with bread,
sardines, puddings, hams, and cakes. Casks of cider, propped on skids,
dotted the outskirts of the bowling-green, where the mayor, enthroned
in his own arm-chair, majestically gave his orders in a voice
thickened by pork, onions, and gravy.
Truly enough, half of Finistère and Morbihan was gathering at Paradise
for a fête. The slow Breton imagination had been fired by our circus
bills and posters; ancient Armorica was stirring in her slumber,
roused to consciousness by the Yankee bill-poster.
At the inn all rooms were taken; every house had become an inn; barns,
stables, granaries had their guests; fishermen's huts on coast and
cliff were bright with coiffes and embroidered jerseys.
In their misfortune, the lonely women of Paradise recognized in this
influx a godsend--a few francs to gain with which to face those coming
wintry months while their men were absent. And they opened their tiny
houses to those who asked a lodging.
The crowds which had earlier in the evening gathered to gape at our
big tent were now noisiest in the square, where the endless drone of
the pipes intoned the farandole.
A few of our circus folk had come down to enjoy the picturesque
spectacle. Speed, standing with Jacqueline beside me, began to laugh
and beat time to the wild music. A pretty maid of Bannalec, white
coiffe and scarlet skirts a-flutter, called out with the broad freedom
of the chastest of nations: "There is the lover I could pray for--if
he can dance the farandole!"
"I'll show you whether I can dance the farandole, ma belle!" cried
Speed, and caught her hand, but she snatched her brown fingers away
and danced off, laughing: "He who loves must follow, follow, follow
the farandole!"
Speed started to follow, but Jacqueline laid a timid hand on his arm.
"I dance, M'sieu Speed," she said, her face flushing under her
elf-locks.
"You blessed child," he cried, "you shall dance till you drop to
your knees on the bowling-green!" And, hand clasping hand, they swung
out into the farandole. For an instant only I caught a glimpse of
Jacqueline's blissful face, and her eyes like blue stars burning; then
they darkened into silhouettes against the yellow glare of the
lanterns and vanished.
Byram rambled up for a moment, to comment on the quaint scene from a
showman's point of view. "It would fill the tent in old Noo York, but
it's n. g. in this here country, where everybody's either a coryphee
or a clown or a pantaloon! Camuels ain't no rara avises in the Sairy,
an' no niggers go to burnt-cork shows. Phylosophy is the thing, Mr.
Scarlett! Ruminate! Ruminate!"
I promised to do so, and the old man rambled away, coat and vest on
his arm, silk hat cocked over his left eye, the lamp-light shining on
the buckles of his suspenders. Dear old governor!--dear, vulgar
incarnation of those fast vanishing pioneers who invented
civilization, finding none; who, self-taught, unashamed taught their
children the only truths they knew, that the nation was worthy of all
good, all devotion, and all knowledge that her sons could bring her to
her glory that she might one day fulfil her destiny as greatest among
the great on earth.
The whining Breton bagpipe droned in my ears; the dancers flew past;
laughter and cries arose from the tables in the square where the
curate of St. Julien stood, forefinger wagging, soundly rating an
intoxicated but apologetic Breton in the costume of Faöuet.
I was tired--tired of it all; weary of costumes and strange customs,
weary of strange tongues, of tinsel and mummers, and tarnished finery;
sick of the sawdust and the rank stench of beasts--and the vagabond
life--and the hopeless end of it all--the shabby end of a useless
life--a death at last amid strangers! Soldiers in red breeches,
peasants in embroidered jackets, strolling mountebanks all tinselled
and rouged--they were all one to me.... I wanted my own land.... I
wanted my own people.... I wanted to go home ... home!--and die, when
my time came, under the skies I knew as a child,... under that
familiar moon which once silvered my nursery windows....
I turned away across the bridge out into the dark road. Long before I
came to the smoky, silent camp I heard the monotonous roaring of my
lions, pacing their shadowy dens.