Sometimes I find myself wondering who that sailor was and what his life had been.
Nobody knows.
THE DEVIL’S BRIDGE
‘THE PLAINS for Wisdom,’ said the curé of Cordonay, ‘The Valleys for Ignorance,’ and as a case in point he told me the story of the Devil’s Bridge.
Even today a stranger is as rare in the valley of the Sarne as a rainless hay harvest. Only one member of the Touring Club de France, a man with an itch for forgotten inns and old by-roads, has ever turned up the narrow lane to the left of the great church at Pont de Jacques, and he was towed back five hours later with a broken axle and the dustiest recollection of pine-woods and straggling hamlets. Small wonder if two hundred years ago the bishop was more certain of the existence of heaven than of these deserted parishes that crept up the mountain-side, fleeing, as it were, for protection from the dwellers in the plains.
From Pont de Jacques, where the Sarne loses its voice with its identity as it joins the Ysere above the nine-arched bridge, through Issy to Vignerolle, the road keeps to the right hand of its brawling companion. At Issy there is a bridge of stone, and there the road to Cordonay crosses the river. At Cordonay it becomes a cart-track, that runs out at last into a mule-path, zigzagging up the mountain’s shoulder, until of a sudden you are on the brown-stained snow of last winter and miss, as likely as not, the painted rock that marks the frontier.
And so it happened that at the time of my tale the bridge at Issy was the one link Cordonay had with the world; for no one counted the path across the frontier except Simon Pellier, to whom the by-path was the way of wealth.
Of course they had tried to build bridges. Each generation knew better than their fathers, but the teachers were always the same. Spring flood and avalanche were stronger than the men of Cordonay.
‘Wait until he has tried to bridge the Sarne,’ was a byword for the cautious in a whole string of parishes.
***
They sat round the fire warming themselves, Simon Pellier, his old father, and Jean, the charcoal-burner. Marie, Simon’s wife, lay in a sort of wooden box, covered by a rough blanket and a couple of sheepskins. During the long months that had gone by since Michaelmas, when a wasting disease had brought her to bed, her presence there had become so much a matter of course that even her mother, who sat on a stool by the door, never realised that Death had already crossed the threshold, and was only waiting for some quiet moment to claim his own.
In the corner beneath the stair that led to the hay-loft little Henriette sat, polishing a great copper pan. Her heart was in the work, for it was the one mirror she had, and yet she sighed. Was her hair really as red as that? After all, it might be but the glow of the fire-light or the warm tint of the metal.
The last fool in the village had cut his wisdom teeth. For six weeks, in spite of sneer and barbed proverb, the wooden bridge young André built had withstood the laughing Sarne. For six weeks the inn at Vignerolle was no farther away than the ‘Three Crowns’ at Issy, and since the credit was better and the wine no worse, drew all the custom. And then had come a month of rain, a ceaseless drip, drip, in the pine-woods. Inch by inch the Sarne had risen, sweeping all before it. Great logs and ice-worn boulders battered the groaning bridge, until with a final shriek the oak beams parted, speeding as drift-wood to the flooded plains.
Issy was again without a rival, and the landlord of the ‘Three Crowns’, pious man, added another guttering candle to the faded shrine of St Christopher, that stood in the centre of the five-arched span.
And, though all this had happened five nights ago, the talk was still of the Sarne and its bridges.
‘If it had not gone on Tuesday, tonight’s rain would have been more than enough to do the business,’ said Simon, the prophet of evil; ‘the wood was half green.’
‘Half green or not,’ said his father, ‘what good can come of an unblessed bridge? The Devil might have built it for all you cared.’
‘And he should have my thanks for one,’ the charcoal-burner declared with an oath. ‘He is a cunning craftsman, whatever men may say. In my mother’s parish was a field with five of the Devil’s arrows planted in the centre, each as big as a man. I never saw prettier target practice. Then there is the Devil’s Wine Bowl over at La Roche. He placed it on the top of the highest hill, where his thirst would be likely to be the greatest. It is deep enough to hold a dozen churches. Your bishops and curés, once they fell in, would be no better than drowning flies, and if I were the Devil, no little finger of mine should help them to crawl out. Here’s to the honest gentleman!’ and he raised his glass.
‘Hush!’ said the old woman in the corner. ‘It’s a short league from hell to Cordonay’; and she crossed herself in haste.
Henriette looked up from her polishing. ‘Someone knocked at the door,’ she said.
‘Nonsense, girl,’ growled Simon. ‘Who should knock on a night like this? Pass the wine, neighbour. We’ll have another log on the fire. The room’s all shadow.’
He had hardly finished speaking when the door was shaken beneath a storm of blows, and a deep voice cried:
‘Open in the Devil’s name!’
At the same moment a sudden gust of wind down the chimney filled the room with smoke so blinding, that no one saw the charcoal-burner as he crossed himself. Simon was the first to regain his composure. He swore at the girl and told her to open the door. Trembling, she withdrew the clumsy wooden bolt, and then ran back swiftly to the light and the fire. When she looked round again, she saw that a man had entered the room. He stood at first by the door, as if taking stock of his surroundings, wrapped in a dripping coat.
‘Good evening, friends,’ said he. ‘I thought I heard my name; but, be that as it may, the sky is a poor enough roof tonight.’
‘You’re welcome to the fire,’ said Simon surlily. ‘Draw up your stool.’
The stranger took off his cloak. He was a tall man, of a complexion far swarthier than any they had seen before, almost black, though neither features nor hair were those of a negro. A scar, white and puckered, disfigured the whole of the left side of his face.
‘You’re wet,’ said Simon.
‘It’s only the blessed saints that can ford bridgeless streams dryshod,’ the stranger answered.
‘You can never have crossed the Sarne?’
He shrugged his shoulders. ‘I’ve waded through bigger gutters.’
He had said enough at all events to drive away fear. Who was this to slight the Sarne?
The old father began the defence of the river. He told of the strong men it had swallowed, counting their lives on his gnarled fingers and swelling with pride. Then, if that were not enough, there were women and children too. All had to pay tribute. Simon was the next to take up the tale. ‘Where is the gutter that can cover your meadows with boulders as big as a calf, that can break every bone in your mule’s body, once sucked into its eddies? At Pont de Jacques you can tell the grey waters of the Sarne a mile below the spot where it joins the Ysere. There’s no drowning it in a hurry, however quickly it may drown you.’
Jean, the charcoal-burner, clinched the argument: ‘Build a bridge first,’ he said, ‘and then talk of gutters, if you will.’
‘Very well,’ said the stranger, and even Simon’s wife laughed, as she lay sleepless in her wooden box.
‘But I must be paid,’ he added.
Of course they would pay him, when the bridge was built, and Simon smiled in his sleeve. The men of the valley were all kinsmen. What was the use of carrying a knife, unless to settle the long debts owed to strangers?
‘And you must give me food and lodging,’ the man went on, ‘and whatever I may require for the building. As to the price—’ and they drew their stools closer to the blaze for pleasure in haggling with one whom they never meant to pay.
‘We are all poor men here,’ began Simon, ‘and the hay harvests for three years have failed. There is no wealth in the valley.’
‘I don’t want your money,�
� said the man.
‘Then what the devil are you asking for?’
‘The soul of the first to cross the bridge.’
They drank to the bargain. The bridge would be cheap, for no one valued overmuch his neighbour’s soul.
‘One glass more,’ said the stranger, whose spirits seemed to have risen, ‘and then to bed. There’s nothing like red wine,’ he added, wiping his lips.
‘It’s better than red hair, at all events,’ said Simon coarsely. ‘Here, wench, come and show the good man the loft; and take a sheepskin with you, for the nights are cold.’
Henriette climbed the stair, rushlight in hand. It was not the darkness that made her tremble, but the tread of the stranger, as he followed close behind her, breathing heavily. At last she reached the top of the stair. ‘The hay is over there in the corner,’ she said, her teeth chattering.
‘Goodnight, little Henriette,’ said the stranger. ‘You at any rate have no need to be frightened of the Devil. And, besides, he is not nearly as black as he is painted.’
***
For six long weeks the Devil worked at his bridge. That it was no ordinary one was certain, and rumour of the strange happenings at Cordonay brought many an idler to the blacksmith’s shop. There the bridge-builder had established himself, and there he brought from all the countryside as many chains as he could lay hands on.
‘It would have been an easy matter,’ said old father Pellier, ‘for the Devil to have brought his own chains. How am I to haul my logs from the forest when autumn comes?’
‘And if he did, what would happen to all the imps in hell?’ his wife had asked with a show of sense. ‘You can take it from me, that the honest fellow has more than he can do, forging fetters for all the newcomers, cunning workman though he be.’
From morning until night the stranger was at the anvil, working with a fiery energy, bending the will of those who helped him as easily as his hammer shaped the white iron. Little Henriette, when Simon Pellier had gone abroad, when the old wife was not looking, and the young wife was too ill to complain, would steal away to the smithy and there, sitting in the darkest corner behind the bellows and fancying herself unseen, would gaze in wondering awe at the white-scarred face of the stranger and his shining black arms, as the fire-light caught them swinging the hammer.
Sometimes he would surprise her, and that when she had made sure of having slipped in unobserved, by suddenly speaking to her. Without turning his head he seemed to read her thoughts. ‘That little mouse running past your feet is as tame as your linnet, Henriette. No, you drew back too quickly; you frightened him.’ Or, ‘You’re wondering why the scar on a black man’s face is white.’ ‘I was only looking at the sparks,’ said Henriette; and then the stranger would laugh, as if he knew that she was lying.
The Devil of Cordonay, for so he was called, was in truth a strange fellow. Some held that he was not a proper devil, but just a journeyman learning the Devil’s trade. What was the use of a devil who refused to frighten children? Yet when Jacques had the toothache and half thought of drowning himself in the Sarne, the stranger did but look at him, and before the old fellow knew what had happened, the tooth was drawn. There was a horse, too, that he had broken to harness in a day, that would have taken anyone else a good three weeks. And the way he twisted iron—he was the Devil, without a doubt. Pierre the dwarf had recognised him at once, and he should know. All the village had heard the tale of the horned escort that had forced his company upon the old man, as he returned from the fair at Pont de Jacques.
At last the work was finished. No bridge like this had ever been seen before; it hung suspended over the narrowest part of the ravine of the Sarne, seeming perilously slight, but strong as the chains that bore it.
But though the bridge was finished, the workman was still unpaid. The story of the bargain had become the common property of the valley. It was a good enough tale while the bridge was building—a tale not easily forgotten when the bridge was built. ‘The curé should be the first to cross it,’ said one. ‘What else is he paid for?’ But the curé, honest man, would have no dealings with the Devil’s handiwork.
A dry spring glided into a drier summer, the hay was harvested unspoiled, and, for the second time in memory of living man, the Sarne dwindled into a stream that hardly rose above the ankle. Men began to laugh at the Devil of Cordonay, and Simon, who found his food, to grumble; but the stranger smiled to himself, as he sat in the shady corner of the doorway, biding his time.
At last, one sultry August morning, when all the village was high up on the mountain-side at work on the aftermath, Simon Pellier’s wife turned over in her wooden box and, with her face to the wall, cried out for the priest. Simon stopped honing his scythe, and crossing the room drew back the coverlid. Ignorant and brutish as he was, he recognised the pallor of death on the face. He ran out of the house in search of Henriette, who was gathering dropped mulberries in the orchard. ‘You must hasten to Vignerolle,’ he cried, ‘and bring back the curé. The good wife is dying at last, and there is not a moment to lose, if he is to come in time.’
Henriette left the mulberries and ran. As she waded the river, there was a sound of muffled thunder in the hills, but not until she reached the sheltering pine-woods did she hear the heavy swish of rain. It came down almost perpendicularly, and before the girl had gone a mile upon her road, she was drenched to the skin. But the worst of the journey was still to come. Two miles out of Vignerolle the forest ceased abruptly, giving place to a bare, boulder-strewn plain. For a moment Henriette hesitated, but fear of Simon’s wrath and horror at the passing of a soul unshriven spurred her on. When, an hour later, she stumbled up the long cobbled street, a bitter disappointment awaited her. The curé had left the village early that morning to visit a sick man in some outlying chalet; he was to have been back by noon, but would doubtless wait for the rain to lessen before returning.
Henriette found her way to the inn and there, in exchange for the warmth of the fire, told the good woman of the house the news from Cordonay—how Pierre’s mare had foaled, and one of the good-for-nothing boys of Jean the charcoal-burner had cut his leg mowing the two-acre patch on the mountain-side. ‘And what about this Devil of yours?’ said the landlady, as she bustled about the room. ‘They tell me his horns are no larger than a year-old ram’s.’ ‘He has no more horns than a new-born babe,’ said Henriette, with a shade of reluctance in her voice. ‘None that you can see, I’ll be bound,’ the woman answered; ‘yet they’ll be there, safe enough. He built you your bridge, at all events, though I hear he’s still to be paid for it. As like as not it’s he that’s to answer for this storm. There’ll be no more wading the Sarne for many a year to come.’
In a flash Henriette realised that what the woman said was true; she knew how quickly the river rose after rain—even now it might be impassable. Rising half-dry from the fire, she ran out into the dripping street. She had scarcely gone a hundred yards, when she met the curé mounted on his mule. He was not in the best of tempers, and Henriette’s message was little to his liking, but having the modicum of human kindness that is ever found with corpulency, he stayed but to procure the things needful for the occasion, and bidding the girl catch hold of his stirrup-leather urged his beast into a trot. As he rode, Henriette, jerking along by his side, gasped out her fears. ‘We can ford the river,’ said the curé confidently, as he struck at the mule with his staff. The path through the wood was a quagmire in places, and twice the beast stumbled badly. Dusk was already falling when they reached the Devil’s Bridge.
‘Here,’ said the curé, ‘climb up on to my saddle and hold tight. We will see what the ford is like.’ But the mule jibbed at the swollen river, rushing down from the hills in spate; at the first step the water was up to the girth. The curé’s face became a shade whiter when he turned from the perils of the stream to the safety of the bridge that spanned it. He crossed himself, and leading the mule by the bridle climbed up the hill-side. ‘I’ll go first,’ he said, �
�and you, Henriette, follow close behind me. Catch hold of my skirt, and take care that the beast doesn’t bite you.’ He was obliged to shout his instructions into the girl’s ears, so loud was the voice of river and rain.
And so, the curé leading, they began the passage of the bridge, the mule’s feet clattering over the wood. ‘He is a priest,’ said Henriette to herself. ‘Doubtless the Blessed Virgin will give him another soul.’ The dull weight that, dark and undefined, had lain for months upon her mind seemed lifting at last, when suddenly the curé gave a vicious tug at the bridle. ‘Have a care for the mule,’ he shouted, and pushed the girl in front of himself and the plunging beast.
Before she realised what she had done, Henriette had crossed the Devil’s Bridge.
***
Simon Pellier was sitting at his door, waiting for them. His wife had died an hour back, and the curé’s journey had been in vain. Out in the rain stood the stranger. His pack was on his back, his ash stick in his hand. Over his shoulder was slung a bundle that was not his own, and round his neck hung a pair of little shoes. The curé’s eyes dropped, as he met the stranger’s gaze; Henriette never lifted hers.
‘You have the bridge,’ he said, ‘and I have got my wages at last. Come, Henriette, I have put your things together. It is time we were going.’
The Double Eye Page 21