"_Eh ben!_ Su-Tum-Tum," he replied.

"Where had you drifted? To the Corean coast?"

"_Mais non_," he retorted, annoyed at my dullness to comprehend. "We were saved--_comprenez-vous?_--for there, to starboard, lay Su-Tum-Tum as plain as a sheep's nose."

"England? Impossible!" I returned.

"_Mais parfaitement!_" he declared, with a hopeless gesture.

"_Su-Tum-Tum_," he reiterated slowly for my benefit.

"Never heard of it," I replied.

The next instant he was out of his chair, and fumbling in a drawer of the table extracted a warped atlas, reseated himself, and began to turn the pages.

"_Eh, voila!_" he cried as his forefinger stopped under a word along the English coast. "That's Su-Tum-Tum plain enough, isn't it?"

"Ah! Southampton!" I exclaimed. "Of course--plain as day."

"Ah!" e.j.a.c.u.l.a.t.ed the mayor, leaning back in his chair with a broad smile of satisfaction. "You see, I was right, Su-Tum-Tum. _Eh ben!_ Do you know," he said gently as I left him, "when you first came to Pont du Sable there were times then, my poor friend, when I could not understand a word you said in French."

Then, as if a sudden thought had struck him, he called me back as he closed the gate.

"Are those gipsies still camped outside your wall?" he inquired, suddenly a.s.suming the dignity of his office. "_Bon Dieu!_ They are a bad lot, those vagabonds! If I don't tell them to be off you won't have a duck or a chicken left."

"Let them stay," I pleaded, "they do no harm. Besides, I like to see the light of their camp-fire at night scurrying over my wall."

"How many are there?" inquired his excellency.

"Seven or eight, not counting the dogs chained under the wagons," I confessed reluctantly, fearing the hand of the law, for I have a fondness for gipsies. "But you need not worry about them. They won't steal from me. Their wagons are clean inside and out."

"_Ah, mais!_" sighed the mayor. "It's just like you. You spoil your cat, you spoil your dog, and now you're spoiling these rascals by giving them a snug berth. Have they their papers of ident.i.ty?"

"Yes," I called back, "the chief showed them to me when he asked permission to camp."

"Of course," laughed the mayor. "You'll never catch them without them--signed by officials we never can trace."

He waved me a cheery _au revoir_ and returned to the well of the groaning windla.s.s while I continued on my way through the village.

Outside the squat stone houses, nets were drying in the sun. Save for the occasional rattle of a pa.s.sing cart, the village was silent, for these fisher-folk go barefooted. Presently I reached the public square, where nothing ever happens, and, turning an iron handle, entered Pont du Sable's only store. A box of a place, smelling of dried herring, kerosene, and cheese; and stocked with the plain necessities--almost everything, from lard, tea, and big nails to soap, tarpaulins, and applejack. The night's catch of mackerel had been good, and the small room with its zinc bar was noisy with fisher-folk--wiry fishermen with legs and chests as hard as iron; slim brown fisher girls as hardy as the men, capricious, independent and saucy; a race of blonds for the most part, with the temperament of brunettes. Old women grown gray and leathery from fighting the sea, and old men too feeble to go--one of these hung himself last winter because of this.

It was here, too, I found Marianne, dripping wet, in her tarpaulins.

"What luck?" I asked her as I helped myself to a package of cigarettes from a pigeonhole and laid the payment thereof on the counter.

"_Eh ben!_" she laughed. "We can't complain. If the good G.o.d would send us such fis.h.i.+ng every night we should eat well enough."

She strode through the group to the counter to thrust out an empty bottle.

"Eight sous of the best," she demanded briskly of the mild-eyed grocer.

"My man's as wet as a rat--he needs some fire in him and he'll feel as fit as a marquis."

A good catch is a tonic to Pont du Sable. Instantly a spirit of good humour and camaraderie spreads through the village--even old scores are forgotten. A good haul of mackerel means a let-up in the daily struggle for existence, which in winter becomes terrible. The sea knows not charity. It ma.s.sacres when it can and adds you to the line of dead things along its edge where you are only remembered by the ebb and flow of the tide. On blue calm mornings, being part of the jetsam, you may glisten in the sun beside a water-logged spar; at night you become a nonent.i.ty, of no more consequence along the wavering line of drift than a rotten gull. But if, like Marianne, you have fought skilfully, you may again enter Pont du Sable with a quicker eye, a harder body, and a deeper knowledge of the southwest gale.

Within the last week Pont du Sable has undergone a transformation. The dead village is alive with soldiers, for it is the time of the manoeuvres. Houses, barns and cow-sheds are filled by night with the red-trousered infantry of the French _Republique_. By day, the window panes s.h.i.+ver under the distant flash and roar of artillery. The air vibrates with the rip and rattle of musketry--savage volleys, filling the heavens with shrill, vicious waves of whistling bullets that kill at a miraculous distance. It is well that all this murderous fire occurs beyond the desert of dunes skirting the open sea, for they say the result upon the iron targets on the marsh is something frightful. The general in command is in a good humour over the record.

Despatch-bearers gallop at all hours of the day and night through Pont du Sable's single street. The band plays daily in the public square.

Sunburned soldiers lug sacks of provisions and bundles of straw out to five hundred more men bivouacked on the dunes. Whole regiments return to the little fis.h.i.+ng-village at twilight singing gay songs, followed by the fisher girls.

Ah! Mesdames--voila du bon fromage!

Celui qui l'a fait il est de son village!

Voila du bon fromage au lait!

Il est du pays de celui qui l'a fait.

Three young officers are stopping at Monsieur le Cure's, who has returned from the sick roses of his friend; and Tanrade has a colonel and two lieutenants beneath his roof. As for myself and the house abandoned by the marsh, we are very much occupied with a bl.u.s.tering old general, his aide-de-camp, and two common soldiers; but I tremble lest the general should discover the latter two, for you see, they knocked at my door for a lodging before the general arrived, and I could not refuse them. Both of them put together would hardly make a full-sized warrior, and both play the slide-trombone in the band. Naturally their artistic temperament revolted at the idea of sleeping in the only available place left in the village--a cow-shed with cows. They explained this to me with so many polite gestures, mingled with an occasional salute at their a.s.sured gratefulness should I acquiesce, that I turned them over for safe keeping to Suzette, who has given them her room and sleeps in the garret. Suzette is overjoyed. Dream of dreams! For Suzette to have one real live soldier in the house--but to have two! Both of these red-eared, red-trousered dispensers of harmony are perfect in deportment, and as quiet as mice. They slip out of my back gate at daylight, bound for the seat of war and slip in again at sundown like obedient children, talk in kitchen whispers to Suzette over hot cakes and cider, and go punctually to bed at nine--the very hour when the roaring old general and his aide-de-camp are toasting their gold spurs before my fire.

The general is tall and broad-shouldered, and as agile as a boy. There is a certain hard, compact firmness about him as if he had been cast in bronze. His alert eyes are either flas.h.i.+ng in authority or beaming in gentleness. The same play between dominant roughness and tenderness is true, too, of his voice and manner.

"Madame," he said, last night, after dinner, as he bent and graciously kissed Alice de Breville's hand, "forgive an old savage who pays you homage and the a.s.surance of his profound respect." The next moment my courtyard without rocked with his reprimand to a bungling lieutenant.

To-night the general is in an uproar of good humour after a storm, for did not some vagabonds steal the danger-posts intended to warn the public of the location of the firing-line, so that new ones had to be sent for? When the news of the theft reached him his rage was something to behold. I could almost hear the little slide-trombonists shake as far back as Suzette's kitchen. Fortunately, the cyclone was of short duration--to-night he is pleased over the good work of his men during the days of mock warfare and at the riddled, twisted targets, all of which is child's play to this veteran who has weathered so many real battles.

To-night he has dined well, and his big hand is stroking the Essence of Selfishness who purrs against his medalled chest under a caress as gentle as a woman's. He sings his favourite airs from "Faust" and "Ada"

with gusto, and roars over the gallant stories of his aide-de-camp, who, being from the south of _La belle France_, is never at a loss for a tale--tales that make the general's medals twinkle merrily in the firelight. It is my first joyful experience as host to the military, but I cannot help being nervous over Suzette and the trombonists.

"Bah! Those _sacre_ musicians!" exclaimed the general to-night as he puffed at his cigarette. "If there's a laggard in my camp, you may be sure it is one of those little devils with a horn or a whistle. _Mon Dieu!_ Once during the manoeuvres outside of Perigord I found three of them who refused to sleep on the ground--stole off and begged a lodging in a chateau, _parbleu!_"

"Ah--indeed?" I stammered meekly.

"Yes, they did," he bellowed, "but I cured them." I saw the muscles in his neck flush crimson, and tried to change the subject, but in vain.

"If they do that in time of peace, they'll do the same in war," he thundered.

"Naturally," I murmured, my heart in my throat. The aide-de-camp grunted his approval while the general ran his hand over the gray bristles on his scarred head.

"Favours!" roared the general. "Favours, eh? When my men sleep on the ground in rough weather, I sleep with them. What sort of discipline do you suppose I'd have if I did not share their hards.h.i.+ps time and time again? Winter campaigns, forced marches--twenty-four hours of it sometimes in mountain snow. Bah! That is nothing! They need that training to go through worse, and yet those good fellows of mine, heavily loaded, never complain. I've seen it so hot, too, that it would melt a man's boots. It is always one of those imbeciles, then, with nothing heavier to carry than a clarinet, who slips off to a comfortable farm."

"_Bien entendu, mon general!_" agreed his aide-de-camp tersely as he leaned forward and kindled a fresh cigarette over the candle-shade.

Happily I noticed at that moment that the cigarette-box needed replenis.h.i.+ng. It was an excuse at least to leave the room. A moment later I had tiptoed to the closed kitchen door and stood listening.

Suzette was laughing. The trombonists were evidently very much at ease.

They, too, were laughing. Little pleasantries filtered through the crack in the heavy door that made me hold my breath. Then I heard the gurgle of cider poured into a gla.s.s, followed swiftly by what I took to be unmistakably a kiss.

It was all as plain now as Su-Tum-Tum. I dared not break in upon them.

Had I opened the door, the general might have recognized their voices.

Meanwhile, silly nothings were demoralizing the heart of my good Suzette. She would fall desperately in love with either one or the other of those _sacre_ virtuosos. Then another thought struck me! One of them might be Suzette's sweetheart, hailing from her own village, the manoeuvres at Pont du Sable a lucky meeting for them. A few sentences that I now hurriedly caught convinced me of my own denseness in not having my suspicions aroused when they singled out my domain and begged my hospitality.