CHAPTER V
It was the late afternoon of a sweltering July day. The near hills slumbered in the sunshine. Far away beyond them grey peaks of Alpine spurs, patched with snow, rose in faint outline against the sky. The valley lay in rich idleness, green and gold and fruitful, yielding itself with a maternal largeness to the white fifteenth century château on the hillside. A long white road stretched away to the left following the convolutions of the valley, until it became a thread; on the right it turned sharply by a clump of trees which marked a farm. In the middle of it all, in the grateful shadow cast by a wayside café, sat Paragot and myself, watching with thirsty eyes the buxom but slatternly patronne pour out beer from a bottle. A dirty, long-haired mongrel terrier lapped water from an earthenware bowl, at the foot of the wooden table at which we sat. This was Narcisse, a recent member of our vagabond family, whom my master had casually adopted some weeks before and had christened according to some lucus a non lucendo principle of his own. I think he was the least beautiful dog I have ever met; but I loved him dearly.
Paragot drained his tumbler, handed it back to be refilled, drained it again and cleared his throat with the contentment of a man whose thirst has been slaked.
"Now one can spit," he exclaimed heartily.
"That is always a comfort to a man," remarked the patronne.
"It is the potentiality that is the comfort. Have you apartments for the night, Madame?"
"They are for des messieurs– for gentlemen," said the patronne diffidently.
Narcisse having also finished his draught stretched himself out on the ground, his chin on his fore paws, and glanced furtively upwards at the disparaging lady.
"Tron de l'air!" cried Paragot, "are we not gentlemen?"
"Tiens, you are of the Midi," cried the woman, recognising the expletive – for no one born north of Avignon says "Tron de l'air" – "I too am from Marseilles. My husband was a Savoyard. That is why I am here."
"I am a gentleman of Gascony," said my master, "and this is my son Asticot."
"It is a droll name," said the patronne.
"We are commercial travellers on our rounds with samples of philosophy."
"It is a droll trade," said the patronne.
We were greasy and dirty, sunburnt to the colour of Egyptian felaheen and dressed in the peasant's blue blouse. Creatures more unlike professors of philosophy could not be conceived. But the patronne seemed to be impressed – as who was not? – by Paragot.
"The rooms will be three francs, Monsieur," she said after a calculating pause.
"I engage them," said my master. "Asticot, aid Madame to take our luggage up to our bedchambers." I grasped my bundle and handed Paragot's dilapidated canvas gripsack to the patronne. He arrested her.
"One moment, Madame. As you see, my portmanteau contains a shirt, a pair of socks, a comb and a toothbrush. Also a copy of the works of the divine vagrant Maître François Villon, which I will take out at once. He was a thief and a reprobate and got nearer hanged than any man who ever lived, and he is the dearest friend I have."
"You have droll friends," remarked the patronne continuing her litany.
"And to think that he died four hundred years ago," sighed my master. "Isn't it strange, Madame, that all the bravest men and most beautiful women are those that are dead?"
The landlady laughed. "You talk like a true Gascon, Monsieur. In this country people are so silent that one loses the use of one's tongue."
I departed with her to see after domestic arrangements and when I returned I found Paragot smoking his porcelain pipe, and talking to a dusty child in charge of a goat. Having, at that period, a soul above dusty children in charge of goats. I sprawled on the ground beside Narcisse, and being tired by the day's tramp fell into a doze. The good earth, when you have a casing of it already on clothes and person, is a comfortable couch; but I think you must be in your teens to enjoy it.
I awoke to the sound of Paragot's voice talking to Narcisse. The goat child had slipped away. An ox cart laden with hay lumbered past. The mellowness of late afternoon lay over the land. The shadow cast by the little white café had deepened gradually far beyond the table. From within the house came the faint clatter of footsteps and cooking utensils. Paragot was still smoking. Narcisse sat on his haunches, his ill shaped head to one side and his ears cocked. After making a vicious dig at a flea, he yawned and trotted about after the manner of his kind in search of adventure. Paragot summoned him back.
"My good Narcisse, every spot on the earth has its essential quality which the wise man or dog knows how to enjoy in its entirety. In great cities where life is pulsating around you, you are alert for the unexpected. The underlying principle of a world's backwater like this is restful stagnation. Here you must wallow in the uneventful. In vain you sniff around in quest of the exciting, mistaking like your fellow in the fable the shadow for the substance. The substance here is rest. Here nothing ever happens."
"Pardon, Monsieur," said a voice close upon us. "Is it very far to Chambéry?"
"It does not matter," said a second voice following hard on the first, "for I can go no further."
I jumped to my feet and my master started round in his chair. The first speaker was a girl, the second an old man. She had merely the comeliness of tanned and hair-bleached peasant youth; he was wizened, lined, browned and bent. A cotton umbrella shaded the girl's bare head and she carried in her hand a cane valise covered with grey canvas. The old man was burdened with two ancient shabby cases, one evidently containing a violin and the other some queerly shaped musical instrument. Both the new comers were wayworn and dirty, and my master seeing suffering on the old man's face rose and courteously offered him a chair.
"Sit down and rest," said he, "and Mademoiselle, you are thinking of going to Chambéry? But it is nearly a day's journey on foot."
"We have to play at a wedding tomorrow, Monsieur," said the girl piteously. "It was arranged two months ago, and we must get there in some manner."
"There is a railway station not far off," said I.
"Alas! we have only ten sous in the world, which is not enough to pay for our tickets," she answered. "Imagine, Monsieur, I had a piece of twenty francs in my pocket this morning, and I went to the station to get a ticket, for I had counted on going by railway, as my grandfather is so ill, and when I came to pay, I found I had lost my louis. How, the bon Dieu only knows. It is desolating, Monsieur; we had to walk so as to keep our engagement at Chambéry. If we miss it, nous sommes dans la purée pour tout de bon."
To be in the purée is to be in a very bad mess indeed. The prospect of abject pennilessness filled the damsel's eyes with woe.
"You earn your living by playing at weddings for folks to dance?" asked my master.
"Yes, Monsieur. My grandfather plays the violin and I the zither – we also go to fairs. In the winter we play at cafés in large towns. Life is hard, Monsieur, is it not?"
She closed her umbrella and laid it on the valise. The old man sat by the table, his head resting on his hands, saying nothing.
"When I think of my good louis that is gone!" she added tragically.
The only feature making for charm in a coarse homely face was a set of white even teeth. I found her singularly unattractive. A tear rolled down her cheek and its course was that of a rill in a dusty plain.
"Suppose I lend you the money for the railway tickets?" said my master kindly.
"O Monsieur," she cried, "I should thank you from the depths of my heart. Grandpère," she turned to the old man who, ashen faced, was staring in front of him, "Monsieur will lend us enough money to get to Chambéry."
"I can go no further," he murmured.
Then his eyelids quivered, his body moved spasmodically, and he swayed sideways off the chair on to the ground.
We rushed to aid him.