[Ill.u.s.tration: the upturned gabion]

[Ill.u.s.tration: game birds on the marsh]

CHAPTER TWELVE

MIDWINTER FLIGHTS

One dines there much too well.

This snug Restaurant des Rois stands back from the grand boulevard in a slit of a street so that its ancient windows peer out askance at the gay life streaming by the corner.

The burgundy at "Les Rois" warms the soul, and the Chablis! Ah! where else in all Paris is there such Chablis? golden, sound and clear as topaz. Chablis, I hold, should be drank by some merry blonde whose heart is light; Burgundy by a brunette in a temper.

The small cafe on the ground floor is painted white, relieved by a frieze of gilded garlands and topped by a ceiling frescoed with rosy nymphs romping in a smoked turquoise sky.

Between five and seven o'clock these midwinter afternoons the cafe is filled with its _habitues_--distinguished old Frenchmen, who sip their absinthe leisurely enough to glance over the leading articles in the conservative _Temps_ or the slightly gayer _Figaro_. Upstairs, by means of a spiral stairway, is a labyrinth of narrow, low-ceiled corridors leading to half a dozen stuffy little _cabinets particuliers_, about whose faded lambrequins and green velveted chairs there still lurks the scent of perfumes once in vogue with the gallants, beaux and belles of the Second Empire.

Alice de Breville, Tanrade, and myself, are dining to-night in one of these _intime_ little rooms. The third to the left down the corridor.

_Sapristi!_ what a change in Tanrade. He is becoming a responsible person---he has even grown neat and punctual--he who used to pound at the door of my house abandoned by the marsh at Pont du Sable, an hour late for dinner, dressed in a fisherman's sea-going overalls of brown canvas, a pair of sabots and a hat that any pa.s.sing vagabond might have discarded by the roadside. I could not help noticing carefully to-night his new suit of black broadcloth, with its standing collar, b.u.t.toned up under his genial chin. His black hair is neatly combed and his broad-brimmed hat that hangs over my own on the wall, is but three days old. Thus had this _bon garcon_ who had won the Prix de Rome been transformed---and Alice was responsible, I knew, for the change. Who would not change anything for so exquisite and dear a friend as Alice?

She, too, was in black, without a jewel--a gown which her lithe body wore with all its sveltness--a gown that matched her dark eyes and hair, accentuating the clean-cut delicacy of her features and the ivory clearness of her olive skin. She was a very merry Alice to-night, for her long engagement at the Bouffes Parisiennes was at an end. And she had been making the best of her freedom by keeping Tanrade hard at work over the score of his new ballet. They are more in love with each other than ever--so much so that they insist on my dining with them, and so these little dinners of three at "Les Rois" have become almost nightly occurrences. It is often so with those in love to be generous to an old friend--even lovers have need of company.

We were lingering over our coffee when the talk reverted to the new ballet.

"It is done, _ma cherie_," declared Tanrade, in reply to an imperative inquiry from Alice. "Baviere shall have the whole of the second act to-morrow."

"And the ballet in the third?" she asked sternly, lifting her brilliant eyes.

"_Eh, voila!_" laughed that good fellow, as he drew forth from his pocket a thin roll of ma.n.u.script and spread it out before her, that she might see--but it was not discreet for me to continue, neither is it good form to embrace before the old _garcon de cafe_, who at that moment entered apologetically with the liqueurs--as for myself, I have long since ceased to count in such tender moments of reward, during which I am of no more consequence than a faithful poodle.

Again the garcon entered, this time with smiling a.s.surance, for he brought me a telegram forwarded from my studio by my concierge. I opened the despatch: the next instant I jumped to my feet.

"Read!" I cried, poking the blue slip under Tanrade's nose, "it's from the cure."

"Howling northeast gale"--Tanrade read aloud--"Duck and geese--come midnight train, bring two hundred fours, one hundred double zeros for ten bore."

"_Vive le cure!_" I shouted, "the good old boy to let us know. A northeast gale at last--a howler," he says.

"He is charming--the cure," breathed Alice, her breast heaving--"Charming!" she repeated in a voice full of suppressed emotion.

Tanrade did not speak. He had let the despatch slip to the floor and sat staring at his gla.s.s.

"You'll come, of course," I said with sudden apprehension, but he only shook his head. "What! you're not going?" I exclaimed in amazement.

"We'll kill fifty ducks a night--it's the gale we've been waiting for."

I saw the sullen gleam that had crept into Alice's eyes soften; she drew near him--she barely touched his arm:

"Go, _mon cher_!" she said simply--"if you wish."

He lifted his head with a grim smile, and I saw their eyes meet. I well knew what was pa.s.sing in his mind--his promise to her to work--more than this, I knew he had not the heart to leave her during her well-earned rest.

"_Ah! les hommes!_" Alice exclaimed, turning to me impetuously--"you are quite crazy, you hunters."

I bowed in humble apology and again her dark eyes softened to tenderness.

"_Non_--forgive me, _mon ami_," she went on, "you are sane enough until news comes of those wretched little ducks, then, _mon Dieu!_ there is no holding you. Everything else goes out of your head; you become as mad as children rus.h.i.+ng to a fete. Is it not so?"

Still Tanrade was silent. Now and then he gave a shrug of his big shoulders and toyed with his half empty gla.s.s of liqueur. _Sapristi!_ it is not easy to decide between the woman you love and a northeast gale thras.h.i.+ng the marsh in front of my house abandoned. He, like myself, could already picture in his mind's eye duck after duck plunge out of the night among our live decoys. My ears, like his own, were already ringing with the roar of the guns from the _gabions_--I could not resist a last appeal.

"Come," I insisted--"both of you--no--seriously--listen to me. There is plenty of dry wood in the garret; you shall have the _chambre d'amis_, dear friend, and this brute of a composer shall bunk in my room--we'll live, and shoot and be happy. Suzette will be overjoyed at your coming.

Let me wire her to have breakfast ready for us?"

Alice laughed softly: "You are quite crazy, my poor friend," she said, laying her white hand on my shoulder. "You will freeze down there in that stone house of yours. Oh, la! la!" she sighed knowingly--"the leaks for the wind--the cold bedrooms, the cold stone floors--B-r-r-h-h!"

Tanrade straightened back in his chair: "No," said he, "it is impossible; Baviere can not wait. He must have his score. The rehearsals have been delayed long enough as it is--Go, _mon vieux_, and good luck to you!"

Again the old garcon entered, this time with the timetable I had sent him for in a hurry.

"_Voila_, monsieur!" he began excitedly, his thumbnail indicating the line--"the 12.18, as monsieur sees, is an express--monsieur will not have to change at Lisieux."

"_Bon!_" I cried--"quick--a taxi-auto."

"_Bien_, monsieur--a good hunt to monsieur," and he rushed out into the narrow corridor and down the spiral stairs while I hurried into my coat and hat.

Tanrade gripped my hand:

"Shoot straight!" he counselled with a smile. Alice gave me her cheek, which I reverently kissed and murmured my apologies for my insistence in her small ear. Then I swung open the door and made for the spiral stairs. At the bottom step I stopped short. I had completely forgotten I should not return until after New Year's, and I rushed back to wish them a _Bonne Annee_ in advance, but I closed the door of the stuffy little _cabinet particulier_ quicker than I opened it, for her arms were about the st.u.r.dy neck of a good comrade whose self-denial made me feel like the mad infant rus.h.i.+ng to the fete.

"_Bonne Annee, mes enfants!_" I called from the corridor, but they did not hear.

Ten minutes later I reached my studio, dumped three hundred cartridges into a worn valise and caught the 12.18 with four minutes to spare.

_Enfin!_ it is winter in earnest!

The northeast gale gave, while it lasted, the best shooting the cure and I have ever had. Then the wind s.h.i.+fted to the southwest with a falling barometer, and the flights ceased. Again, for three days, the Norman coast has been thrashed by squalls of driving snow. The wild geese are honking in V-shaped lines to an inland refuge for the white sea is no longer tenable. Curlews cry hoa.r.s.ely over the frozen fields. It is tough enough lying hidden in my sand pit on the open beach beyond the dunes, where I crack away at the ricketing flights of fat gray plover and beat myself to keep warm. Fuel is scarce and there is hardly a sou to be earned fis.h.i.+ng in such cruel weather as this.

The country back of my house abandoned by the marsh is now stripped to bare actualities--all things are reduced to their proper size. Houses, barns and the skeletons of leafless trees stand out, naked facts in the landscape. The orchards are soggy in mud and the once green feathery lane back of my house abandoned, is now a rough gash of frozen pools and rotten leaves.