CHAPTER III
THE “Black Head” presented not a single chink of light upon the street,and the carriage gate was closed.
“This is unprecedented,” observed Léon. “An inn closed by five minutesafter eleven! And there were several commercial travellers in the caféup to a late hour. Elvira, my heart misgives me. Let us ring the bell.”
The bell had a potent note; and being swung under the arch it filled thehouse from top to bottom with surly, clanging reverberations. The soundaccentuated the conventual appearance of the building; a wintrysentiment, a thought of prayer and mortification, took hold upon Elvira’smind; and, as for Léon, he seemed to be reading the stage directions fora lugubrious fifth act.
“This is your fault,” said Elvira: “this is what comes of fancyingthings!”
Again Léon pulled the bell-rope; again the solemn tocsin awoke the echoesof the inn; and ere they had died away, a light glimmered in the carriageentrance, and a powerful voice was heard upraised and tremulous withwrath.
“What’s all this?” cried the tragic host through the spars of the gate.“Hard upon twelve, and you come clamouring like Prussians at the door ofa respectable hotel? Oh!” he cried, “I know you now! Common singers!People in trouble with the police! And you present yourselves atmidnight like lords and ladies? Be off with you!”
“You will permit me to remind you,” replied Léon, in thrilling tones,“that I am a guest in your house, that I am properly inscribed, and thatI have deposited baggage to the value of four hundred francs.”
“You cannot get in at this hour,” returned the man. “This is no thieves’tavern, for mohocks and night rakes and organ-grinders.”
“Brute!” cried Elvira, for the organ-grinders touched her home.
“Then I demand my baggage,” said Léon, with unabated dignity.
“I know nothing of your baggage,” replied the landlord.
“You detain my baggage? You dare to detain my baggage?” cried thesinger.
“Who are you?” returned the landlord. “It is dark—I cannot recogniseyou.”
“Very well, then—you detain my baggage,” concluded Léon. “You shallsmart for this. I will weary out your life with persecutions; I willdrag you from court to court; if there is justice to be had in France, itshall be rendered between you and me. And I will make you a by-word—Iwill put you in a song—a scurrilous song—an indecent song—a popularsong—which the boys shall sing to you in the street, and come and howlthrough these spars at midnight!”
He had gone on raising his voice at every phrase, for all the while thelandlord was very placidly retiring; and now, when the last glimmer oflight had vanished from the arch, and the last footstep died away in theinterior, Léon turned to his wife with a heroic countenance.
“Elvira,” said he, “I have now a duty in life. I shall destroy that manas Eugène Sue destroyed the concierge. Let us come at once to theGendarmerie and begin our vengeance.”
He picked up the guitar-case, which had been propped against the wall,and they set forth through the silent and ill-lighted town with burninghearts.
The Gendarmerie was concealed beside the telegraph office at the bottomof a vast court, which was partly laid out in gardens; and here all theshepherds of the public lay locked in grateful sleep. It took a deal ofknocking to waken one; and he, when he came at last to the door, couldfind no other remark but that “it was none of his business.” Léonreasoned with him, threatened him, besought him; “here,” he said, “wasMadame Berthelini in evening dress—a delicate woman—in an interestingcondition”—the last was thrown in, I fancy, for effect; and to all thisthe man-at-arms made the same answer:
“It is none of my business,” said he.
“Very well,” said Léon, “then we shall go to the Commissary.” Thitherthey went; the office was closed and dark; but the house was close by,and Léon was soon swinging the bell like a madman. The Commissary’s wifeappeared at a window. She was a thread-paper creature, and informed themthat the Commissary had not yet come home.
“Is he at the Maire’s?” demanded Léon.
She thought that was not unlikely.
“Where is the Maire’s house?” he asked.
And she gave him some rather vague information on that point.
“Stay you here, Elvira,” said Léon, “lest I should miss him by the way.If, when I return, I find you here no longer, I shall follow at once tothe Black Head.”
And he set out to find the Maire’s. It took him some ten minuteswandering among blind lanes, and when he arrived it was alreadyhalf-an-hour past midnight. A long white garden wall overhung by somethick chestnuts, a door with a letter-box, and an iron bell-pull, thatwas all that could be seen of the Maire’s domicile. Léon took thebell-pull in both hands, and danced furiously upon the side-walk. Thebell itself was just upon the other side of the wall, it responded to hisactivity, and scattered an alarming clangour far and wide into the night.
A window was thrown open in a house across the street, and a voiceinquired the cause of this untimely uproar.
“I wish the Maire,” said Léon.
“He has been in bed this hour,” returned the voice.
“He must get up again,” retorted Léon, and he was for tackling thebell-pull once more.
“You will never make him hear,” responded the voice. “The garden is ofgreat extent, the house is at the farther end, and both the Maire and hishousekeeper are deaf.”
“Aha!” said Léon, pausing. “The Maire is deaf, is he? That explains.”And he thought of the evening’s concert with a momentary feeling ofrelief. “Ah!” he continued, “and so the Maire is deaf, and the gardenvast, and the house at the far end?”
“And you might ring all night,” added the voice, “and be none the betterfor it. You would only keep me awake.”
“Thank you, neighbour,” replied the singer. “You shall sleep.”
And he made off again at his best pace for the Commissary’s. Elvira wasstill walking to and fro before the door.
“He has not come?” asked Léon.
“Not he,” she replied.
“Good,” returned Léon. “I am sure our man’s inside. Let me see theguitar-case. I shall lay this siege in form, Elvira; I am angry; I amindignant; I am truculently inclined; but I thank my Maker I have still asense of fun. The unjust judge shall be importuned in a serenade,Elvira. Set him up—and set him up.”
He had the case opened by this time, struck a few chords, and fell intoan attitude which was irresistibly Spanish.
“Now,” he continued, “feel your voice. Are you ready? Follow me!”
The guitar twanged, and the two voices upraised, in harmony and with astartling loudness, the chorus of a song of old Béranger’s:—
“Commissaire! Commissaire! Colin bat sa ménagère.”
The stones of Castel-le-Gâchis thrilled at this audacious innovation.Hitherto had the night been sacred to repose and nightcaps; and now whatwas this? Window after window was opened; matches scratched, and candlesbegan to flicker; swollen sleepy faces peered forth into the starlight.There were the two figures before the Commissary’s house, each boltupright, with head thrown back and eyes interrogating the starry heavens;the guitar wailed, shouted, and reverberated like half an orchestra; andthe voices, with a crisp and spirited delivery, hurled the appropriateburden at the Commissary’s window. All the echoes repeated thefunctionary’s name. It was more like an entr’acte in a farce ofMolière’s than a passage of real life in Castel-le-Gâchis.
The Commissary, if he was not the first, was not the last of theneighbours to yield to the influence of music, and furiously throw openthe window of his bedroom. He was beside himself with rage. He leanedfar over the window-sill, raying and gesticulating; the tassel of hiswhite night-cap danced like a thing of life: he opened his mouth todimensions hitherto unprecedented, and yet his voice, instead of escapingfrom it in a roar, came forth shrill and choked and tottering.
A littlemore serenading, and it was clear he would be better acquainted with theapoplexy.
I scorn to reproduce his language; he touched upon too many serioustopics by the way for a quiet story-teller. Although he was known for aman who was prompt with his tongue, and had a power of strong expressionat command, he excelled himself so remarkably this night that one maidenlady, who had got out of bed like the rest to hear the serenade, wasobliged to shut her window at the second clause. Even what she had hearddisquieted her conscience; and next day she said she scarcely reckoned asa maiden lady any longer.
Léon tried to explain his predicament, but he received nothing butthreats of arrest by way of answer.
“If I come down to you!” cried the Commissary.
“Aye,” said Léon, “do!”
“I will not!” cried the Commissary.
“You dare not!” answered Léon.
At that the Commissary closed his window.
“All is over,” said the singer. “The serenade was perhaps ill-judged.These boors have no sense of humour.”
“Let us get away from here,” said Elvira, with a shiver. “All thesepeople looking—it is so rude and so brutal.” And then giving way oncemore to passion—“Brutes!” she cried aloud to the candle-litspectators—“brutes! brutes! brutes!”
“Sauve qui peut,” said Léon. “You have done it now!”
And taking the guitar in one hand and the case in the other, he led theway with something too precipitate to be merely called precipitation fromthe scene of this absurd adventure.