LITMIR.BIZ

Скачать книгу

of the Midi – he was striding along the edge of the Rhône, till at the end of the quay we turned in the direction of the Durance, the swift river which comes rushing from the mountains, and the muddy torrent of which makes turbulent the clear glaucous-blue of the Rhône from a little below Avignon.

      By this time my stomach, always on campaign, began to remind me that, though I had been learning the secrets of Communism, particularism was still rampant within my body.

      "Let us go to see Madame Félix," I suggested. "Her husband spoke at the reunion to-day. He is a chief among the workmen, but his wife is worth a score of him when a fellow is hungry, and his daughter Jeanne Félix is the girl best worth looking at in these parts – our friends at the Château alone excepted."

      Gaston Cremieux smiled indulgently and with a sort of patient scorn for my enthusiasms.

      "I hardly know what it is to be hungry," he said gently; "and except some of our brave mothers of the Commune, and of course Rhoda Polly, one woman is much the same to me as another."

      It was on the tip of my tongue to say, as I should have done to Deventer, "Then the more fool you!" But there was actually something about the young ex-Procureur of the Republic which made one shrink from familiarity. Instead, I turned through a growth of tall rushes, the cane-brakes peculiar to Provence, in the direction of the little ferry-house. It was war-year, and nobody had thought of cutting them. The stiff leaves whistled frostily as we pushed our way through, the supple yellow cannes clattering behind us as they sprang back. After them came a tangle of withered vines, still clinging to the trellis of a dismantled house, and then we found ourselves on the river bank overlooking the cottage belonging to Mère Félix of the Durance Ferry. The boats were all on the other side, so I was obliged to make a trumpet of my hands and call loud and long for "Mariana," which besides being the baptismal name of the lady of the house, is an excellent resonant word to carry across an estuary. Now the Durance, though an absurdly tricky river, is no arm of the sea. Its race is short and turbulent, though it makes as much trouble as possible (which is no little) for those who dwell on its banks. It plays with inundations, whirlpools, eddies, and deceitful currents, as a child with toys. You cannot row for ten strokes straight upon it, for it will bubble up and snatch the oar out of your hand, or failing in this, it will suddenly send the bow of your boat deep into a reed-bed as if it were part of a conjuring trick. I knew somewhat more of the matter than most, for had not Jeanne Félix taught me? I had often gone over to spend a day there during the long vacations. For my father, buried among his books, made no objections to my roaming the country at will.

      Cremieux and I presently stood at the top of a rough and tumble-down flight of steps which led to a pier in somewhat better condition. I recognised the work of my own hands upon this last. For Jeanne and I had coopered it up only last year, so that her passengers might land without risking their lives each time. Paths extended both up and down stream, but as yet nothing had been done to the flight of rough-hewn steps of split pinewood leading to the forest above. These things I did not communicate to my new revolutionary friend, for I was busy wondering what effect Jeanne Félix would have upon him.

      My fourth or fifth shout brought the Mère Félix wrathfully down to the river edge where her white cap and broad head ribbons showed between the tall cannes. She had a couple of oars upon one shoulder and called across at us, "Who is making such a noise with their Marianas? There is no Mariana here except to my husband, the Père Félix, who is now from home, doubtless at one of his foolish reunions – "

      "Dear Mariana," I answered, showing myself at the end of the little pier, "push out a boat and you can kiss me for it. My father says you may. Also send Jeanne quickly, for she and I can row so well together."

      "It is that rascal of an English student, Monsieu' Aügoose from Gobelet. Well, I might have guessed. Yet it is not playtime at St. André that I have heard. I shall have you sent back and whipped. What, they do not whip at St. André? Ah, it is no wonder, then, that you young people wax so impertinent. If only you were my boy, I should not call upon Père Félix to help me. No, no – I would – " and the old lady, smacking one hard hand upon the other, conveyed her meaning exactly.

      "Send Jeanne," I repeated, taking no notice of her pantomime.

      "Send Jeanne," she imitated my college-trained voice, "Jeanne – Jeanne – it is always Jeanne!"

      "Perhaps," I ventured, "when you were Jeanne's age it was always 'Mariana'! I'll wager that more people than Père Félix called you that in those days, petite mère!"

      "Here comes Jeanne at last," she called, so that I could hear. "Do not put up with his insolence, Jeanne. He is a spoilt schoolboy, nothing more."

      Jeanne stepped sagely into the skiff, with a foot so light and practised that the frail craft hardly quivered in the water. She was a tall, dark girl with a supple figure, both light and well-rounded, remarkably Diana-ish in a land where the women, save a few, are inclined to shortness, and in addition are already overshadowed by the stoutness which inevitably overtakes them after marriage.

      Jeanne Félix received us without the least embarrassment into her boat. When I mentioned my friend's name in introducing him, there was one rapid up-and-down flicker of the drooping eyelashes, a flash of velvet eyes, and then without a word or a salutation she handed me the bow oar as if we had parted only the night before.

      When we landed on the neat little embarcadère, below the Restaurant Sambre-et-Meuse, Madame Félix had vanished. I knew her to be already busy with the menu of our dinner, a matter which, in spite of her abuse of me, she would entrust to nobody.

      There was a great chestnut tree before the door, and though the month was January, my pocket thermometer registered 62° Fahrenheit in our shadowed nook.

      Here we sat and waited, talking with Jeanne till her mother should call us in to lunch.

      The reformer smoked innumerable cigarettes, but he said little. I fancy he had not much small talk, and at times he seemed so far away that I wondered whether he heard the light badinage in which Jeanne and I are fond of engaging. Jeanne is freed from all fear of her mother's reproof and I do as I like, because I am a choice favourite with that lady, being the only person in the world she permits herself to abuse grossly, except her goodman Père Félix – who, according to her, is still more impayable and gifted with a faculty of irritation not to be told.

      As for me, I am younger and not her husband, but she has known me since I could really receive from her palm the manual chastisement she had so familiarly illustrated.

      Still, I must admit that so far as Cremieux was concerned, interest in the Restaurant Sambre-et-Meuse awaked only when from the river-path along the Durance we heard the sound of voices, and presently Père Félix emerged talking eagerly with Pipe-en-Bois Soult, nicknamed the Marshal, and several of the Old Guard of the Commune. Then his eyes lit up suddenly. He rose as if throwing a weight from his shoulders. He had come to his own again. This man bore the weight of a bullet he had gained on the day of the coup d-étât. Pipe-en-Bois had been in front of the battle about the Luxembourg that morning of 1848 when Cavaignac's fusillade proved the futility of moderate Republican promises.

      In the kitchen was great rattling of dishes, the voice of Mère Félix calling on her daughter Jeanne, summoning from a great way off her "torchon" Babette, a kind of scullery-maid gathered chance-wise from among the numerous squatter families clustered along the river's edge.

      Such long-limbed slatterns were plentiful as blackberries and of as rank a growth all along the Durance. Monsieur Brunet, horsemaster and former "Red of the Midi," owned the water meadows all about, and smilingly allowed the little street of wooden houses fringing the banks. A stray rabbit might be caught out of the pine knolls, but Monsieur's grazing rights must be respected, and his ponies and brood-mares left in peace.

      Probably none except the family Félix all along that riverine sweep of reed-bed paid a penny of rent or a tax to the Government. The rural guard with his sash and his great brass plate of office must, of course, have known of the colony. But for some reason or another he said nothing, and all the time the huts of the "zoniers" tailed out at both ends into more and more ramshackle sheds and bicoques.

      Here arose the danger of the community.

Скачать книгу