“But it is ridiculous,” maintained the tanner stoutly. “Who ever heard of an executioner having a nervous headache? There’s no precedent for it. And ‘out of sorts,’ too! Suppose the criminals said they were out of sorts, and didn’t feel up to being executed?”
“Well, suppose they did,” replied the Mayor, “we’d try and meet them half-way, I daresay. They’d have to be executed some time or other, you know. Why on earth are you so captious about trifles? The prisoners won’t mind, and I don’t mind: nobody’s inconvenienced, and everybody’s happy!”
“You’re right there, Mr. Mayor,” put in another councilman. “This executing business used to give the town a lot of trouble and bother; now it’s all as easy as kiss-your-hand. Instead of objecting, as they used to do, and wanting to argue the point and kick up a row, the fellows as is told off for execution come skipping along in the morning, like a lot of lambs in May-time. And then the fun there is on the scaffold! The jokes, the back answers, the repartees! And never a word to shock a baby! Why, my little girl, as goes through the market-place every morning—on her way to school, you know—she says to me only yesterday, she says, ‘Why, father,’ she says, ‘it’s as good as the play-actors,’ she says.”
“There again,” persisted Robinet; “I object to that too. They ought to show a properer feeling. Playing at mummers is one thing, and being executed is another, and people ought to keep ’em separate. In my father’s time, that sort of thing wasn’t thought good taste, and I don’t hold with new-fangled notions.”
“Well, really, neighbour,” said the Mayor, “I think you’re out of sorts yourself today. You must have got out of bed the wrong side this morning. As for a little joke, more or less, we all know a maiden loves a merry jest when she’s certain of having the last word! But I’ll tell you what I’ll do, if it’ll please you; I’ll go round and see Jeanne myself on my way home, and tell her—quite nicely, you know—that once in a way doesn’t matter; but that if she feels her health won’t let her keep regular business hours, she mustn’t think of going on with anything that’s bad for her. Like that, don’t you see? And now, gentlemen, let’s read the minutes!”
Thus it came about that Jeanne took her usual walk that evening with a ruffled brow and a swelling heart; and her little hand opened and shut angrily as she paced the ramparts. She couldn’t stand being found fault with. How could she help having a headache? Those clods of citizens didn’t know what a highly strung sensitive organisation was. Absorbed in her reflections, she had taken several turns up and down the grassy footway before she became aware that she was not alone. A youth, of richer dress and more elegant bearing than the general run of the Radegundians, was leaning in an embrasure, watching the graceful figure with evident interest.
“Something has vexed you, fair maiden?” he observed, coming forward deferentially as soon as he perceived he was noticed; “and care sits but awkwardly on that smooth young brow.”
“Nay, it is nothing, kind sir,” replied Jeanne; “we girls who work for our living must not be too sensitive. My employers have been somewhat exigent, that is all. I did wrong to take it to heart.”
“’Tis the way of the bloated capitalist,” rejoined the young man lightly, as he turned to walk by her side. “They grind us, they grind us; perhaps some day they will come under your hands in turn, and then you can pay them out. And so you toil and spin, fair lily! And yet, methinks, those delicate hands show little trace of labour?”
“You wrong me, indeed, sir,” replied Jeanne merrily. “These hands of mine, that you are so good as to admire, do great execution!”
“I can well believe that your victims are numerous,” he replied; “may I be permitted to rank myself among the latest of them?”
“I wish you a better fortune, kind sir,” answered Jeanne demurely.
“I can imagine no more delightful one,” he replied; “and where do you ply your daily task, fair mistress? Not entirely out of sight and access, I trust?”
“Nay, sir,” laughed Jeanne, “I work in the market-place most mornings, and there is no charge for admission; and access is far from difficult. Indeed, some complain—but that is no business of mine. And now I must be wishing you a good-evening. Nay,”—for he would have detained her,—“it is not seemly for an unprotected maiden to tarry in converse with a stranger at this hour. Au revoir, sir! If you should happen to be in the market-place any morning—” And she tripped lightly away. The youth, gazing after her retreating figure, confessed himself strangely fascinated by this fair unknown, whose particular employment, by the way, he had forgotten to ask; while Jeanne, as she sped homewards, could not help reflecting that, for style and distinction, this new acquaintance threw into the shade all the Enguerrands and others she had met hitherto—even in the course of business.
IV
The next morning was bright and breezy, and Jeanne was early at her post, feeling quite a different girl. The busy little market-place was full of colour and movement, and the gay patches of flowers and fruit, the strings of fluttering kerchiefs, and the piles of red and yellow pottery, formed an artistic setting to the quiet impressive scaffold which they framed. Jeanne was in short sleeves, according to the etiquette of her office, and her round graceful arms showed snowily against her dark blue skirt and scarlet, tight-fitting bodice. Her assistant looked at her with admiration.
“Hope you’re better, miss,” he said respectfully. “It was just as well you didn’t put yourself out to come yesterday; there was nothing particular to do. Only one fellow, and he said he didn’t care; anything to oblige a lady!”
“Well, I wish he’d hurry up now, to oblige a lady,” said Jeanne, swinging her axe carelessly to and fro: “ten minutes past the hour; I shall have to talk to the Mayor about this.”
“It’s a pity there ain’t a better show this morning,” pursued the assistant, as he leant over the rail of the scaffold and spat meditatively into the busy throng below. “They do say as how the young Seigneur arrived at the Château yesterday—him as has been finishing his education in Paris, you know. He’s as likely as not to be in the market-place today; and if he’s disappointed, he may go off to Paris again, which would be a pity, seeing the Château’s been empty so long. But he may go to Paris, or anywhere else he’s a mind to, he won’t see better workmanship than in this here little town!”
“Well, my good Raoul,” said Jeanne, colouring slightly at the obvious compliment, “quality, not quantity, is what we aim at here, you know. If a Paris education has been properly assimilated by the Seigneur, he will not fail to make all the necessary allowances. But see, the prison-doors are opening at last!”
They both looked across the little square to the prison, which fronted the scaffold; and sure enough, a small body of men, the Sheriff at their head, was issuing from the building, conveying, or endeavouring to convey, the tardy prisoner to the scaffold. That gentleman, however, seemed to be in a different and less obliging frame of mind from that of the previous day; and at every pace one or other of the guards was shot violently into the middle of the square, propelled by a vigorous kick or blow from the struggling captive. The crowd, unaccustomed of late to such demonstrations of feeling, and resenting the prisoner’s want of taste, hooted loudly; but it was not until that ingenious mediæval arrangement known as la marche aux crapauds had been brought to bear on him that the reluctant convict could be prevailed upon to present himself before the young lady he had already so unwarrantably detained.
Jeanne’s profession had both accustomed her to surprises and taught her the futility of considering her clients as drawn from any one particular class; yet she could hardly help feeling some astonishment on recognising her new acquaintance of the previous evening. That, with all his evident amiability of character, he should come to this end, was not in itself a special subject for wonder; but that he should have been conversing with her on the rampart
s at the hour when—after courteously excusing her attendance on the scaffold—he was cooling his heels in prison for another day, seemed hardly to be accounted for, at first sight. Jeanne, however, reflected that the reconciling of apparent contradictions was not included in her official duties.
The Sheriff, wiping his heated brow, now read the formal procès delivering over the prisoner to the executioner’s hands; “and a nice job we’ve had to get him here,” he added on his own account. And the young man, who had remained perfectly tractable since his arrival, stepped forward and bowed politely.
“Now that we have been properly introduced,” said he courteously, “allow me to apologise for any inconvenience you have been put to by my delay. The fault was entirely mine, and these gentlemen are in no way to blame. Had I known whom I was to have the pleasure of meeting, wings could not have conveyed me swiftly enough.”
“Do not mention, I pray, the word inconvenience,” replied Jeanne, with that timid grace which so well became her. “I only trust that any slight discomfort it may be my duty to cause you before we part will be as easily pardoned. And now—for the morning, alas! advances—any little advice or assistance that I can offer is quite at your service; for the situation is possibly new, and you may have had but little experience.”
“Faith! none worth mentioning,” said the prisoner gaily. “Treat me as a raw beginner. Though our acquaintance has been but brief, I have the utmost confidence in you.”
“Then, sir,” said Jeanne, blushing, “suppose I were to assist you in removing this gay doublet, so as to give both of us more freedom and less responsibility?”
“A perquisite of the office?” queried the prisoner with a smile, as he slipped one arm out of its sleeve.
A flush came over Jeanne’s fair brow. “That was ungenerous,” she said.
“Nay, pardon me, sweet one,” said he, laughing: “’twas but a poor jest of mine—in bad taste, I willingly admit.”
“I was sure you did not mean to hurt me,” she replied kindly, while her fingers were busy in turning back the collar of his shirt. It was composed, she noticed, of the finest point lace; and she could not help a feeling of regret that some slight error—as must, from what she knew, exist somewhere—should compel her to take a course so at variance with her real feelings. Her only comfort was that the youth himself seemed entirely satisfied with his situation. He hummed the last air from Paris during her ministrations, and when she had quite finished, kissed the pretty fingers with a metropolitan grace.
“And now, sir,” said Jeanne, “if you will kindly come this way: and please to mind the step—so. Now, if you will have the goodness to kneel here—nay, the sawdust is perfectly clean; you are my first client this morning. On the other side of the block you will find a nick, more or less adapted to the human chin, though a perfect fit cannot, of course, be guaranteed in every case. So! Are you pretty comfortable?”
“A bed of roses,” replied the prisoner. “And what a really admirable view one gets of the valley and the river, from just this particular point!”
“Charming, is it not?” replied Jeanne. “I’m so glad you do justice to it. Some of your predecessors have really quite vexed me by their inability to appreciate that view. It’s worth coming here to see it. And now, to return to business for one moment,—would you prefer to give the word yourself? Some people do; it’s a mere matter of taste. Or will you leave yourself entirely in my hands?”
“Oh, in your fair hands,” replied her client, “which I beg you to consider respectfully kissed once more by your faithful servant to command.”
Jeanne, blushing rosily, stepped back a pace, moistening her palms as she grasped her axe, when a puffing and blowing behind caused her to turn her head, and she perceived the Mayor hastily ascending the scaffold.
“Hold on a minute, Jeanne, my girl,” he gasped. “Don’t be in a hurry. There’s been some little mistake.”
Jeanne drew herself up with dignity. “I’m afraid I don’t quite understand you, Mr. Mayor,” she replied in freezing accents. “There’s been no little mistake on my part that I’m aware of.”
“No, no, no,” said the Mayor apologetically; “but on somebody else’s there has. You see it happened in this way: this here young fellow was going round the town last night; and he’d been dining, I should say, and he was carrying on rather free. I will only say so much in your presence, that he was carrying on decidedly free. So the town-guard happened to come across him, and he was very high and very haughty, he was, and wouldn’t give his name nor yet his address—as a gentleman should, you know, when he’s been dining and carrying on free. So our fellows just ran him in—and it took the pick of them all their time to do it, too. Well, then, the other chap who was in prison—the gentleman who obliged you yesterday, you know—what does he do but slip out and run away in the middle of all the row and confusion; and very inconsiderate and ungentlemanly it was of him to take advantage of us in that mean way, just when we wanted a little sympathy and forbearance. Well, the Sheriff comes this morning to fetch out his man for execution, and he knows there’s only one man to execute, and he sees there’s only one man in prison, and it all seems as simple as A B C—he never was much of a mathematician, you know—so he fetches our friend here along, quite gaily. And—and that’s how it came about, you see; hinc illæ lachrymæ, as the Roman poet has it. So now I shall just give this young fellow a good talking to, and discharge him with a caution; and we sha’n’t require you any more today, Jeanne, my girl.”
“Now, look here, Mr. Mayor,” said Jeanne severely, “you utterly fail to grasp the situation in its true light. All these little details may be interesting in themselves, and doubtless the press will take note of them; but they are entirely beside the point. With the muddleheadedness of your officials (which I have frequently remarked upon) I have nothing whatever to do. All I know is, that this young gentleman has been formally handed over to me for execution, with all the necessary legal requirements; and executed he has got to be. When my duty has been performed, you are at liberty to reopen the case if you like; and any ‘little mistake’ that may have occurred through your stupidity you can then rectify at your leisure. Meantime, you’ve no locus standi here at all; in fact, you’ve no business whatever lumbering up my scaffold. So shut up and clear out.”
“Now, Jeanne, do be reasonable,” implored the Mayor. “You women are so precise. You never will make any allowance for the necessary margin of error in things.”
“If I were to allow the necessary margin for all your errors, Mayor,” replied Jeanne coolly, “the edition would have to be a large-paper one, and even then the text would stand a poor chance. And now, if you don’t allow me the necessary margin to swing my axe, there may be another ‘little mistake’—”
But at this point a hubbub arose at the foot of the scaffold, and Jeanne, leaning over, perceived sundry tall fellows, clad in the livery of the Seigneur, engaged in dispersing the municipal guard by the agency of well-directed kicks, applied with heartiness and anatomical knowledge. A moment later, there strode on to the scaffold, clad in black velvet, and adorned with his gold chain of office, the stately old seneschal of the Château, evidently in a towering passion.
“Now, mark my words, you miserable little bladder-o’-lard,” he roared at the Mayor (whose bald head certainly shone provokingly in the morning sun), “see if I don’t take this out of your skin presently!” And he passed on to where the youth was still kneeling, apparently quite absorbed in the view.
“My lord,” he said firmly though respectfully, “your hair-brained folly really passes all bounds. Have you entirely lost your head?”
“Faith, nearly,” said the young man, rising and stretching himself. “Is that you, old Thibault? Ow, what a crick I’ve got in my neck! But that view of the valley was really delightful!”
“Did you come here simply to admire
the view, my lord?” inquired Thibault severely.
“I came because my horse would come,” replied the young Seigneur lightly: “that is, these gentlemen here were so pressing; they would not hear of any refusal; and besides, they forgot to mention what my attendance was required in such a hurry for. And when I got here, Thibault, old fellow, and saw that divine creature—nay, a goddess, dea certé—so graceful, so modest, so anxious to acquit herself with credit— Well, you know my weakness; I never could bear to disappoint a woman. She had evidently set her heart on taking my head; and as she had my heart already—”
“I think, my lord,” said Thibault, with some severity, “you had better let me escort you back to the Château. This appears to be hardly a safe place for light-headed and susceptible persons!”
Jeanne, as was natural, had the last word. “Understand me, Mr. Mayor,” said she, “these proceedings are entirely irregular. I decline to recognise them, and when the quarter expires I shall claim the usual bonus!”
V
When, an hour or two later, an invitation arrived—courteously worded but significantly backed by an escort of half-a-dozen tall archers—for both Jeanne and the Mayor to attend at the Château without delay, Jeanne for her part received it with neither surprise nor reluctance. She had felt it especially hard that the only two interviews fate had granted her with the one man who had made some impression on her heart should be hampered, the one by considerations of propriety, the other by the conflicting claims of her profession and its duties. On this occasion, now, she would have an excellent chaperon in the Mayor; and, business being over for the day, they could meet and unbend on a common social footing. The Mayor was not at all surprised either, considering what had gone before; but he was exceedingly terrified, and sought some consolation from Jeanne as they proceeded together to the Château. That young lady’s remarks, however, could hardly be called exactly comforting.
The Kenneth Grahame MEGAPACK® Page 48