Old men gossiped willingly with him; women liked him and their rare smiles in the war-sobered town of Sainte Lesse were often for him as he sauntered along the quiet street, clanking, swaggering, affable, ready for conversation with anybody, and always ready for the small, confident hands that unceremoniously clasped his when he passed by where children played.
As for Maryette Courtray, called Carillonnette, she mounted the bell-tower once every hour, from six in the morning until nine o’clock in the evening, to play the passing of Time toward that eternity into which it is always and ceaselessly moving.
After nine o’clock Carillonnette set the drum and wound it; and through the dark hours of the night the bells played mechanically every hour for a few moments before Bayard struck.
Between these duties the girl managed the old inn, to which, since the war, nobody came any more — and with these occupations her life was full — sufficiently full, perhaps, without the advent of John Burley.
They met with enough frequency for her, if not for him. Their encounters took place between her duties aloft at the keyboard under the successive tiers of bells and his intervals of prowling among his mules.
Sometimes he found her sewing in the parlour — she could have gone to her own room, of course; sometimes he encountered her in the corridor, in the street, in the walled garden behind the inn, where with basket and pan she gathered vegetables in season.
There was a stone seat out there, built against the southern wall, and in the shadowed coolness of it she sometimes shelled peas.
During such an hour of liberty from the bell-tower he found the dark-eyed little mistress of the bells sorting various vegetables and singing under her breath to herself the carillon music of Josef Denyn.
“Tray chick, mademoiselle,” he said, with a cheerful self-assertion, to hide the embarrassment which always assailed him when he encountered her.
“You know, Monsieur Burley, you should not say ‘très chic’ to me,” she said, shaking her pretty head. “It sounds a little familiar and a little common.”
“Oh,” he exclaimed, very red. “I thought it was the thing to say.”
She smiled, continuing to shell the peas, then, with her sensitive and slightly flushed face still lowered, she looked at him out of her dark blue eyes.
“Sometimes,” she said, “young men say ‘très chic.’ It depend on when and how one says it.”
“Are there times when it is all right for me to say it?” he inquired.
“Yes, I think so.... How are your mules today?”
“The same,” he said, “ — ready to bite or kick or eat their heads off. The Remount took two hundred this morning.”
“I saw them pass,” said the girl. “I thought perhaps you also might be departing.”
“Without coming to say good-bye — to you!” he stammered.
“Oh, conventions must be disregarded in time of war,” she returned carelessly, continuing to shell peas. “I really thought I saw you riding away with the mules.”
“That man,” said Burley, much hurt, “was a bow-legged driver of the Train-des-Equipages. I don’t think he resembles me.”
As she made no comment and expressed no contrition for her mistake, he gazed about him at the sunny garden with a depressed expression. However, this changed presently to a bright and hopeful one.
“Vooz ate tray, tray belle, mademoiselle!” he asserted cheerfully.
“Monsieur!” Vexed perhaps as much at her own quick blush as his abrupt eulogy, she bit her lip and looked at him with an ominously level gaze. Then, suddenly, she smiled.
“Monsieur Burley, one does not so express one’s self without reason, without apropos, without — without encouragement — —”
She blushed again, vividly. Under her wide straw hat her delicate, sensitive face and dark blue eyes were beautiful enough to inspire eulogy in any young man.
“Pardon,” he said, confused by her reprimand and her loveliness. “I shall hereafter only think you are pretty, mademoiselle — mais je ne le dirais ploo.”
“That would be perhaps more — comme il faut, monsieur.”
“Ploo!” he repeated with emphasis. “Ploo jamais! Je vous jure — —”
“Merci; it is not perhaps necessary to swear quite so solemnly, monsieur.”
She raised her eyes from the pan, moving her small, sun-tanned hand through the heaps of green peas, filling her palm with them and idly letting them run through her slim fingers.
“L’amour,” he said with an effort— “how funny it is — isn’t it, mademoiselle?”
“I know nothing about it,” she replied with decision, and rose with her pan of peas.
“Are you going, mademoiselle?”
“Yes.”
“Have I offended you?”
“No.”
He trailed after her down the garden path between rows of blue larkspurs and hollyhocks — just at her dainty heels, because the brick walk was too narrow for both of them.
“Ploo,” he repeated appealingly.
Over her shoulder she said with disdain:
“It is not a topic for conversation among the young, monsieur — what you call l’amour.” And she entered the kitchen, where he had not the effrontery to follow her.
That evening, toward sunset, returning from the corral, he heard, high in the blue sky above him, her bell-music drifting; and involuntarily uncovering, he stood with bared head looking upward while the celestial melody lasted.
And that evening, too, being the fête of Alincourt, a tiny neighbouring village across the river, the bell-mistress went up into the tower after dinner and played for an hour for the little neighbour hamlet across the river Lesse.
All the people who remained in Sainte Lesse and in Alincourt brought out their chairs and their knitting in the calm, fragrant evening air and remained silent, sadly enraptured while the unseen player at her keyboard aloft in the belfry above set her carillon music adrift under the summer stars — golden harmonies that seemed born in the heavens from which they floated; clear, exquisitely sweet miracles of melody filling the world of darkness with magic messages of hope.
Those widowed or childless among her listeners for miles around in the darkness wept quiet tears, less bitter and less hopeless for the divine promise of the sky music which filled the night as subtly as the scent of flowers saturates the dusk.
Burley, listening down by the corral, leaned against a post, one powerful hand across his eyes, his cap clasped in the other, and in his heart the birth of things ineffable.
For an hour the carillon played. Then old Bayard struck ten times. And Burley thought of the trenches and wondered whether the mellow thunder of the great bell was audible out there that night.
CHAPTER XVI
DJACK
There came a day when he did not see Maryette as he left for the corral in the morning.
Her father, very stiff with rheumatism, sat in the sun outside the arched entrance to the inn.
“No,” he said, “she is going to be gone all day today. She has set and wound the drum in the belfry so that the carillon shall play every hour while she is absent.”
“Where has she gone?” inquired Burley.
“To play the carillon at Nivelle.”
“Nivelle!” he exclaimed sharply.
“Oui, monsieur. The Mayor has asked for her. She is to play for an hour to entertain the wounded.” He rested his withered cheek on his hand and looked out through the window at the sunshine with aged and tragic eyes. “It is very little to do for our wounded,” he added aloud to himself.
Burley had sent twenty mules to Nivelle the night before, and had heard some disquieting rumours concerning that town.
Now he walked out past the dusky, arched passageway into the sunny street and continued northward under the trees to the barracks of the Gendarmerie.
“Bon jour l’ami Gargantua!” exclaimed the fat, jovial brigadier who had just emerged with boots shining, pipe-clay very apparent,
and all rosy from a fresh shave.
“Bong joor, mon vieux copain!” replied Burley, preoccupied with some papers he was sorting. “Be good enough to look over my papers.”
The brigadier took them and examined them.
“Are they en règle?” demanded Burley.
“Parfaitement, mon ami.”
“Will they take me as far as Nivelle?”
“Certainly. But your mules went forward last night with the Remount — —”
“I know. I wish to inspect them again before the veterinary sees them. Telephone to the corral for a saddle mule.”
The brigadier went inside to telephone and Burley started for the corral at the same time.
His cream-coloured, wall-eyed mule was saddled and waiting when he arrived; he stuffed his papers into the breast of his tunic and climbed into the saddle.
“Allongs!” he exclaimed. “Hoop!”
Half way to Nivelle, on an overgrown, bushy, circuitous path which was the only road open between Nivelle and Sainte Lesse, he overtook Maryette, driving her donkey and ancient market cart.
“Carillonnette!” he called out joyously. “Maryette! C’est je!”
The girl, astonished, turned her head, and he spurred forward on his wall-eyed mount, evincing cordial symptoms of pleasure in the encounter.
“Wee, wee!” he cried. “Je voolay veneer avec voo!” And ere the girl could protest, he had dismounted, turning the wall-eyed one’s nose southward, and had delivered a resounding whack upon the rump of that temperamental animal.
“Allez! Go home! Beat it!” he cried.
The mule lost no time but headed for the distant corral at a canter; and Burley, grinning like a great, splendid, intelligent dog who has just done something to be proud of, stepped into the market cart and seated himself beside Maryette.
“Who told you where I am going?” she asked, scarcely knowing whether to laugh or let loose her indignation.
“Your father, Carillonnette.”
“Why did you follow me?”
“I had nothing else to do — —”
“Is that the reason?”
“I like to be with you — —”
“Really, monsieur! And you think it was not necessary to consult my wishes?”
“Don’t you like to be with me?” he asked, so naïvely that the girl blushed and bit her lip and shook the reins without replying.
They jogged on through the disused byway, the filbert bushes brushing axle and traces; but presently the little donkey relapsed into a walk again, and the girl, who had counted on that procedure when she started from Sainte Lesse, did not urge him.
“Also,” she said in a low voice, “I have been wondering who permits you to address me as Carillonnette. Also as Maryette. You have been, heretofore, quite correct in assuming that mademoiselle is the proper form of address.”
“I was so glad to see you,” he said, so simply that she flushed again and offered no further comment.
For a long while she let him do the talking, which was perfectly agreeable to him. He talked on every subject he could think of, frankly practicing idioms on her, pleased with his own fluency and his progress in French.
After a while she said, looking around at him with a curiosity quite friendly:
“Tell me, Monsieur Burley, why did you desire to come with me today?”
He started to reply, but checked himself, looking into the dark blue and engaging eyes. After a moment the engaging eyes became brilliantly serious.
“Tell me,” she repeated. “Is it because there were some rumours last evening concerning Nivelle?”
“Wee!”
“Oh,” she nodded, thoughtfully.
After driving for a little while in silence she looked around at him with an expression on her face which altered it exquisitely.
“Thank you, my friend,” she murmured.... “And if you wish to call me Carillonnette — do so.”
“I do want to. And my name’s Jack.... If you don’t mind.”
Her eyes were fixed on her donkey’s ears.
“Djack,” she repeated, musingly. “Jacques — Djack — it’s the same, isn’t it — Djack?”
He turned red and she laughed at him, no longer afraid.
“Listen, my friend,” she said, “it is très beau — what have you done.”
“Vooz êtes tray belle — —”
“Non! Please stop! It is not a question of me — —”
“Vooz êtes tray chick — —”
“Stop, Djack! That is not good manners! No! I was merely saying that — you have done something very nice. Which is quite true. You heard rumours that Nivelle had become unsafe. People whispered last evening — something about the danger of a salient being cut at its base.... I heard the gossip in the street. Was that why you came after me?”
“Wee.”
“Thank you, Djack.”
She leaned a trifle forward in the cart, her dimpled elbows on her knees, the reins sagging.
Blue and rosy jays flew up before them, fluttering away through the thickets; a bullfinch whistled sweetly from a thorn bush, watching them pass under him, unafraid.
“You see,” she said, half to herself, “I had to come. Who could refuse our wounded? There is no bell-master in our department; and only one bell-mistress.... To find anyone else to play the Nivelle carillon one would have to pierce the barbarians’ lines and search the ruins of Flanders for a Beiaardier — a Klokkenist, as they call a carillonneur in the low countries.... But the Mayor asked it, and our wounded are waiting. You understand, mon ami Djack, I had to come.”
He nodded.
She added, naïvely:
“God watches over our trenches. We shall be quite safe in Nivelle.”
A dull boom shook the sunlit air. Even in the cart they could feel the vibration.
An hour later, everywhere ahead of them, a vast, confused thundering was steadily increasing, deepening with every ominous reverberation.
Where two sandy wood roads crossed, a mounted gendarme halted them and examined their papers.
“My poor child,” he said to the girl, shaking his head, “the wounded at Nivelle were taken away during the night. They are fighting there now in the streets.”
“In Nivelle streets!” faltered the girl.
“Oui, mademoiselle. Of the carillon little remains. The Boches have been shelling it since daylight. Turn again. And it is better that you turn quickly, because it is not known to us what is going on in that wooded district over there. For if they get a foothold in Nivelle on this drive they might cross this road before evening.”
The girl sat grief-stricken and silent in the cart, staring at the woods ahead where the road ran through taller saplings and where, here and there, mature trees towered.
All around them now the increasing thunder rolled and echoed and shook the ground under them. Half a dozen gendarmes came up at a gallop. Their officer drew bridle, seized the donkey’s head and turned animal and cart southward.
“Go back,” he said briefly, recognizing Burley and returning his salute. “You may have to take your mules out of Sainte Lesse!” he added, as he wheeled his horse. “We are getting into trouble out here, nom de Dieu!”
Maryette’s head hung as the donkey jogged along, trotting willingly because his nose was now pointed homeward.
The girl drove with loose and careless rein and in silence; and beside her sat Burley, his troubled gaze always reverting to the despondent form beside him.
“Too bad, little girl,” he said. “But another time our wounded shall listen to your carillon.”
“Never at Nivelle.... The belfry is being destroyed.... The sweetest carillon in France — the oldest, the most beautiful.... Fifty-six bells, Djack — a wondrous wilderness of bells rising above where one stands in the belfry, tier on tier, tier on tier, until one’s gaze is lost amid the heavenly company aloft.... Oh, Djack! And the great bell, Clovis! He hangs there — through hundreds of years he has spoken with his grea
t voice of God! — so that they heard him for miles and miles across the land — —”
“Maryette — I am so sorry for you — —”
“Oh! Oh! My carillon of Nivelle! My beloved carillon!”
“Maryette, dear! My little Carillonnette — —”
“No — my heart is broken — —”
“Vooz ates tray, tray belle — —”
The sudden crashing of heavy feet in the bushes checked him; but it was too late to heed it now — too late to reach for his holster. For all around them swarmed the men in sea-grey, jerking the donkey off his forelegs, blocking the little wheels with great, dirty fists, seizing Burley from behind and dragging him violently out of the cart.
A near-sighted officer, thin and spare as Death, was talking in a loud, nasal voice and squinting at Burley where he still struggled, red and exasperated, in the clutches of four soldiers:
“Also! That is no uniform known to us or to any nation at war with us. That is not regulation in England — that collar insignia. This is a case of a franc-tireur! Now, then, you there in your costume de fantasie! What have you to say, eh?”
There was a silence; Burley ceased struggling.
“Answer, do you hear? What are you?”
“American.”
“Pig-dog!” shouted the gaunt officer. “So you are one of those Yankee muleteers in your uniform, and armed! It is sufficient that you are American. If it had not been for America this war would be ended! But it is not enough, apparently, that you come here with munitions and food, that you insult us at sea, that you lie about us and slander us and send your shells and cartridges to England to slay our people! No! Also you must come to insult us in your clown’s uniform and with your pistol—” The man began to choke with fury, unable to continue, except by gesture.
But the jerky gestures were terribly significant: soldiers were already pushing Burley across the road toward a great oak tree; six men fell out and lined up.
“M-my Government—” stammered the young fellow — but was given no opportunity to speak. Very white, the chill sweat standing on his forehead and under his eyes, he stood against the oak, lips compressed, grey eyes watching what was happening to him.
Works of Robert W Chambers Page 849