Complete Works of Robert Louis Stevenson (Illustrated) (383 page)

“It is already growing late,” he added.

Leon did not wait to be told twice. He returned to the Cafe of the Triumphs of the Plough with all expedition. Alas! the audience had melted away during his absence; Elvira was sitting in a very disconsolate attitude on the guitar-box; she had watched the company dispersing by twos and threes, and the prolonged spectacle had somewhat overwhelmed her spirits. Each man, she reflected, retired with a certain proportion of her earnings in his pocket, and she saw to-night’s board and to-morrow’s railway expenses, and finally even to-morrow’s dinner, walk one after another out of the cafe door and disappear into the night.

“What was it?” she asked languidly. But Leon did not answer. He was looking round him on the scene of defeat. Scarce a score of listeners remained, and these of the least promising sort. The minute hand of the clock was already climbing upward towards eleven.

“It’s a lost battle,” said he, and then taking up the money-box he turned it out. “Three francs seventy-five!” he cried, “as against four of board and six of railway fares; and no time for the tombola! Elvira, this is Waterloo.” And he sat down and passed both hands desperately among his curls. “O Fichu Commissaire!” he cried, “Fichu Commissaire!”

“Let us get the things together and be off,” returned Elvira. “We might try another song, but there is not six halfpence in the room.”

“Six halfpence?” cried Leon, “six hundred thousand devils! There is not a human creature in the town - nothing but pigs and dogs and commissaires! Pray heaven, we get safe to bed.”

“Don’t imagine things!” exclaimed Elvira, with a shudder.

And with that they set to work on their preparations. The tobacco- jar, the cigarette-holder, the three papers of shirt-studs, which were to have been the prices of the tombola had the tombola come off, were made into a bundle with the music; the guitar was stowed into the fat guitar-case; and Elvira having thrown a thin shawl about her neck and shoulders, the pair issued from the cafe and set off for the Black Head.

As they crossed the market-place the church bell rang out eleven.

It was a dark, mild night, and there was no one in the streets.

“It is all very fine,” said Leon; “but I have a presentiment. The night is not yet done.”

CHAPTER III

The “Black Head” presented not a single chink of light upon the street, and the carriage gate was closed.

“This is unprecedented,” observed Leon. “An inn closed by five minutes after eleven! And there were several commercial travellers in the cafe up to a late hour. Elvira, my heart misgives me. Let us ring the bell.”

The bell had a potent note; and being swung under the arch it filled the house from top to bottom with surly, clanging reverberations. The sound accentuated the conventual appearance of the building; a wintry sentiment, a thought of prayer and mortification, took hold upon Elvira’s mind; and, as for Leon, he seemed to be reading the stage directions for a lugubrious fifth act.

“This is your fault,” said Elvira: “this is what comes of fancying things!”

Again Leon pulled the bell-rope; again the solemn tocsin awoke the echoes of the inn; and ere they had died away, a light glimmered in the carriage entrance, and a powerful voice was heard upraised and tremulous with wrath.

“What’s all this?” cried the tragic host through the spars of the gate. “Hard upon twelve, and you come clamouring like Prussians at the door of a respectable hotel? Oh!” he cried, “I know you now! Common singers! People in trouble with the police! And you present yourselves at midnight like lords and ladies? Be off with you!”

“You will permit me to remind you,” replied Leon, in thrilling tones, “that I am a guest in your house, that I am properly inscribed, and that I have deposited baggage to the value of four hundred francs.”

“You cannot get in at this hour,” returned the man. “This is no thieves’ tavern, for mohocks and night rakes and organ-grinders.”

“Brute!” cried Elvira, for the organ-grinders touched her home.

“Then I demand my baggage,” said Leon, with unabated dignity.

“I know nothing of your baggage,” replied the landlord.

“You detain my baggage? You dare to detain my baggage?” cried the singer.

“Who are you?” returned the landlord. “It is dark - I cannot recognise you.”

“Very well, then - you detain my baggage,” concluded Leon. “You shall smart for this. I will weary out your life with persecutions; I will drag you from court to court; if there is justice to be had in France, it shall be rendered between you and me. And I will make you a by-word - I will put you in a song - a scurrilous song - an indecent song - a popular song - which the boys shall sing to you in the street, and come and howl through these spars at mid-night!”

He had gone on raising his voice at every phrase, for all the while the landlord was very placidly retiring; and now, when the last glimmer of light had vanished from the arch, and the last footstep died away in the interior, Leon turned to his wife with a heroic countenance.

“Elvira,” said he, “I have now a duty in life. I shall destroy that man as Eugene Sue destroyed the concierge. Let us come at once to the Gendarmerie and begin our vengeance.”

He picked up the guitar-case, which had been propped against the wall, and they set forth through the silent and ill-lighted town with burning hearts.

The Gendarmerie was concealed beside the telegraph office at the bottom of a vast court, which was partly laid out in gardens; and here all the shepherds of the public lay locked in grateful sleep. It took a deal of knocking to waken one; and he, when he came at last to the door, could find no other remark but that “it was none of his business.” Leon reasoned with him, threatened him, besought him; “here,” he said, “was Madame Berthelini in evening dress - a delicate woman - in an interesting condition” - the last was thrown in, I fancy, for effect; and to all this the man-at-arms made the same answer:

“It is none of my business,” said he.

“Very well,” said Leon, “then we shall go to the Commissary.” Thither they went; the office was closed and dark; but the house was close by, and Leon was soon swinging the bell like a madman. The Commissary’s wife appeared at a window. She was a thread-paper creature, and informed them that the Commissary had not yet come home.

“Is he at the Maire’s?” demanded Leon.

She thought that was not unlikely.

“Where is the Maire’s house?” he asked.

And she gave him some rather vague information on that point.

“Stay you here, Elvira,” said Leon, “lest I should miss him by the way. If, when I return, I find you here no longer, I shall follow at once to the Black Head.”

And he set out to find the Maire’s. It took him some ten minutes wandering among blind lanes, and when he arrived it was already half-an-hour past midnight. A long white garden wall overhung by some thick chestnuts, a door with a letter-box, and an iron bell- pull, that was all that could be seen of the Maire’s domicile. Leon took the bell-pull in both hands, and danced furiously upon the side-walk. The bell itself was just upon the other side of the wall, it responded to his activity, and scattered an alarming clangour far and wide into the night.

A window was thrown open in a house across the street, and a voice inquired the cause of this untimely uproar.

“I wish the Maire,” said Leon.

“He has been in bed this hour,” returned the voice.

“He must get up again,” retorted Leon, and he was for tackling the bell-pull once more.

“You will never make him hear,” responded the voice. “The garden is of great extent, the house is at the farther end, and both the Maire and his housekeeper are deaf.”

“Aha!” said Leon, pausing. “The Maire is deaf, is he? That explains.” And he thought of the evening’s concert with a momentary feeling of relief. “Ah!” he continued, “and so the Maire is deaf, and the garden vast, and the house at the far end?”

“And you might ring all night,” added the voice, “and be none the better for it. You would only keep me awake.”

“Thank you, neighbour,” replied the singer. “You shall sleep.”

And he made off again at his best pace for the Commissary’s.

Elvira was still walking to and fro before the door.

“He has not come?” asked Leon.

“Not he,” she replied.

“Good,” returned Leon. “I am sure our man’s inside. Let me see the guitar-case. I shall lay this siege in form, Elvira; I am angry; I am indignant; I am truculently inclined; but I thank my Maker I have still a sense of fun. The unjust judge shall be importuned in a serenade, Elvira. Set him up - and set him up.”

He had the case opened by this time, struck a few chords, and fell into an attitude which was irresistibly Spanish.

“Now,” he continued, “feel your voice. Are you ready? Follow me!”

The guitar twanged, and the two voices upraised, in harmony and with a startling loudness, the chorus of a song of old Beranger’s:-

“Commissaire! Commissaire!

Colin bat sa menagere.”

The stones of Castel-le-Gachis thrilled at this audacious innovation. Hitherto had the night been sacred to repose and nightcaps; and now what was this? Window after window was opened; matches scratched, and candles began to flicker; swollen sleepy faces peered forth into the starlight. There were the two figures before the Commissary’s house, each bolt upright, with head thrown back and eyes interrogating the starry heavens; the guitar wailed, shouted, and reverberated like half an orchestra; and the voices, with a crisp and spirited delivery, hurled the appropriate burden at the Commissary’s window. All the echoes repeated the functionary’s name. It was more like an entr’acte in a farce of Moliere’s than a passage of real life in Castel-le-Gachis.

The Commissary, if he was not the first, was not the last of the neighbours to yield to the influence of music, and furiously throw open the window of his bedroom. He was beside himself with rage. He leaned far over the window-sill, raying and gesticulating; the tassel of his white night-cap danced like a thing of life: he opened his mouth to dimensions hitherto unprecedented, and yet his voice, instead of escaping from it in a roar, came forth shrill and choked and tottering. A little more serenading, and it was clear he would be better acquainted with the apoplexy.

I scorn to reproduce his language; he touched upon too many serious topics by the way for a quiet story-teller. Although he was known for a man who was prompt with his tongue, and had a power of strong expression at command, he excelled himself so remarkably this night that one maiden lady, who had got out of bed like the rest to hear the serenade, was obliged to shut her window at the second clause. Even what she had heard disquieted her conscience; and next day she said she scarcely reckoned as a maiden lady any longer.

Leon tried to explain his predicament, but he received nothing but threats of arrest by way of answer.

“If I come down to you!” cried the Commissary.

“Aye,” said Leon, “do!”

“I will not!” cried the Commissary.

“You dare not!” answered Leon.

At that the Commissary closed his window.

“All is over,” said the singer. “The serenade was perhaps ill- judged. These boors have no sense of humour.”

“Let us get away from here,” said Elvira, with a shiver. “All these people looking - it is so rude and so brutal.” And then giving way once more to passion - “Brutes!” she cried aloud to the candle-lit spectators - “brutes! brutes! brutes!”

“Sauve qui peut,” said Leon. “You have done it now!”

And taking the guitar in one hand and the case in the other, he led the way with something too precipitate to be merely called precipitation from the scene of this absurd adventure.

CHAPTER IV

To the west of Castel-le-Gachis four rows of venerable lime-trees formed, in this starry night, a twilit avenue with two side aisles of pitch darkness. Here and there stone benches were disposed between the trunks. There was not a breath of wind; a heavy atmosphere of perfume hung about the alleys; and every leaf stood stock-still upon its twig. Hither, after vainly knocking at an inn or two, the Berthelinis came at length to pass the night. After an amiable contention, Leon insisted on giving his coat to Elvira, and they sat down together on the first bench in silence. Leon made a cigarette, which he smoked to an end, looking up into the trees, and, beyond them, at the constellations, of which he tried vainly to recall the names. The silence was broken by the church bell; it rang the four quarters on a light and tinkling measure; then followed a single deep stroke that died slowly away with a thrill; and stillness resumed its empire.

“One,” said Leon. “Four hours till daylight. It is warm; it is starry; I have matches and tobacco. Do not let us exaggerate, Elvira - the experience is positively charming. I feel a glow within me; I am born again. This is the poetry of life. Think of Cooper’s novels, my dear.”

“Leon,” she said fiercely, “how can you talk such wicked, infamous nonsense? To pass all night out-of-doors - it is like a nightmare! We shall die.”

“You suffer yourself to be led away,” he replied soothingly. “It is not unpleasant here; only you brood. Come, now, let us repeat a scene. Shall we try Alceste and Celimene? No? Or a passage from the ‘Two Orphans’? Come, now, it will occupy your mind; I will play up to you as I never have played before; I feel art moving in my bones.”

“Hold your tongue,” she cried, “or you will drive me mad! Will nothing solemnise you - not even this hideous situation?”

“Oh, hideous!” objected Leon. “Hideous is not the word. Why, where would you be? ‘Dites, la jeune belle, ou voulez-vous aller?’“ he carolled. “Well, now,” he went on, opening the guitar- case, “there’s another idea for you - sing. Sing ‘Dites, la jeune belle!’ It will compose your spirits, Elvira, I am sure.”

And without waiting an answer he began to strum the symphony. The first chords awoke a young man who was lying asleep upon a neighbouring bench.

“Hullo!” cried the young man, “who are you?”

“Under which king, Bezonian?” declaimed the artist. “Speak or die!”

Or if it was not exactly that, it was something to much the same purpose from a French tragedy.