Chapter XXI
THE DISADVANTAGES OF NOT BEING ABLE TO SPEAK FRENCH
In the meantime Bertie slept, perhaps still continuing to dream of his mother. When he woke he thought the captain was still taking his rest. He remained for a time motionless in bed. But it began to dawn upon him that the room was very quiet, that there was no sound even of gentle breathing. If the captain slept, he slept with uncommon soundness.
So he sat up to see if the captain really was asleep, and saw that the opposite bed was empty. Still the truth did not at once occur to him. It was quite possible that the captain had not chosen to wait till his companion awoke before he himself got up.
For the better part of an hour Bertie lay and wondered. By degrees he could not but perceive that the captain's absence was peculiar. Considering the close watch and ward which he had kept upon the lad, it was surprising that he should leave him so long to the enjoyment of his own society.
An idea occurred to Bertie. Supposing the captain was guarding him even in his absence? Then the door would be locked. He got up to see. No; he had only to turn the handle, and the door was open. What could it mean? Bertie returned to his bed to ponder.
Another half-hour passed, and still no signs of the captain. Bertie would have liked to get up, but did not dare. Supposing when the captain returned he chose to be indignant because the lad had taken upon himself to move without his advice?
There came a tapping at the door. Was it the captain? He would scarcely knock at the door to ask if he might be allowed to enter. The tapping again.
"Come in," cried Bertie.
Still the tapping continued. Then some one spoke in French. It was the old crone's voice.
"M'sieu veut se lever? C'est midi!"
Not in the least understanding what was said, Bertie cried again, "Come in!"
The door was opened a few inches, and the old crone looked in. She stared at Bertie sitting up in bed, and Bertie stared at her.
"M'sieu, vot' oncle! Il dort?"
"I don't know what you mean," said Bertie.
They were in the agreeable position of not having either of them the faintest conception of what the other said. She came further into the room and looked about her. Then she saw that the captain's bed was empty.
"Vot' oncle! Où est-il donc?"
Bertie stared, as though by dint of staring he could get at what she meant. The Mecklemburg House curriculum had included French, but not the sort of French which the old lady talked. "Mon père" and "ma mère," that was about the extent of Bertie's knowledge of foreign tongues; and even those simple words he would not have recognised coming from the peculiarly voluble lips of this ancient dame.
While he was still endeavouring to understand, from the expression of her face, what it was she said, all at once she began to scold him. Of course he had still not the slightest knowledge as to what were the actual words she used; but her voice, her gestures, and the expression of her countenance needed no interpreter. Never very much to look at, she suddenly became as though possessed with an evil spirit, seeming to rain down anathemas on his non-understanding head with all the virulence of the legendary witch of old.
What was the matter Bertie had not the least conception, but that something was the matter was plain enough. Her shrill voice rose to a piercing screech. She seemed half choked with the velocity of her speech. Her wrinkled face assumed a dozen different hideous shapes. She shook her yellow claws as though she would have liked to have attacked him then and there.
Suddenly she went to the door and called to some one down below. A man in sabots came stamping up the stairs. He was a great hulking fellow in a blouse and a great wide-brimmed felt hat. He listened to what the woman said, or rather screamed, looking at Bertie all the time from under his overhanging brows. Then he took up the lad's clothes which lay upon the bed, and very coolly turned out all the pockets. Finding nothing in the shape of money to reward his search, he put them down again and glowered at Bertie.
Some perception of the truth began to dawn upon the lad. Could the captain have gone-absconded, in fact-and forgotten to pay his bill? From the proceedings of the man and woman in front of him it would seem he had. The man had apparently searched the youngster's pockets in quest of money to pay what the captain owed, and searched in vain.
All at once he caught Bertie by the shoulders and lifted him bodily on to the floor. Then he pointed to his clothing, saying something at the same time. Bertie did not understand what he said, but the meaning of his gesture was plain enough.
Bertie was to put on his clothes and dress. So Bertie dressed. All the time the woman kept up a series of exclamations. More than once it was all that the man could do to prevent her laying hands upon the boy. He himself stood looking grimly on, every now and then seeming to grunt out a recommendation to the woman to restrain her indignation.
When the boy was dressed he unceremoniously took him by the collar of the coat and marched him from the room. The old crone brought up the rear, shrieking out reproaches as they went.
In this way they climbed down the rickety stairs, Bertie first-a most uncomfortable first; the man next, holding his coat collar, giving him little monitory jerks, in the way the policeman had done down Piccadilly; the woman last, raining abuse upon the unfortunate youngster's head. This was another stage on the journey to the Land of Golden Dreams.
Across the room below to the front door. There was a temporary pause. The old crone gave the boy two sounding smacks, one on each side of the head, given with surprising vigour considering her apparent age. Then the man raised his foot, sabot and all, and kicked the young gentleman into the street!
Then Bertie felt sure that the captain had forgotten to pay his bill.
He stood for a moment in the narrow street, not unnaturally surprised at this peremptory method of bidding a guest farewell. But it would have been quite as well if he had stood a little less upon the order of his going; for the crone, taking advantage of his momentary pause, caught off her slipper and flung it at his head. This, too, was delivered with vigour worthy of a younger arm, and as it struck Bertie fairly on the cheek he received the full benefit of the lady's strength. The other slipper followed, but that Bertie just dodged in time. Still, he thought that under the circumstances, perhaps, he had better go. So he went.
But not unaccompanied.
A couple of urchins had witnessed his unceremonious exit, and they had also seen the slippers aimed. The whole proceeding seemed to strike them in a much more humorous light than it did Bertie, and to mark their enjoyment of the fun they danced about and shrieked with laughter.
As Bertie began to slink away the man said to them something which seemed to make them prick up their ears. They followed Bertie, pointing with their fingers.
"V'là un Anglais! C'est un larron! au voleur! au voleur!"
What it was they shrieked in their shrill voices Bertie had not the least idea, but he knew it was unpleasant to be pointed and shouted at, for their words were caught up by other urchins of their class, and soon he had a force of ragamuffins shrieking close at his heels.
"V'là un Anglais! un Anglais! C'est un lar-r-ron!"
The stress which they laid upon the larron was ear-splitting.
As he went, his following gathered force. They were a ragged regiment. Some hatless, some shoeless, all stockingless; for even those who wore sabots showed an inch or two of naked flesh between the ends of their breeches and the tops of their wooden shoes.
As Bertie found his way into the better portions of the town the procession created a sensation. Shopkeepers came to their doors to stare, the loungers in the cafés stood to look. Some of the foot-passengers joined the rapidly-swelling crowd.
The boy with his sullen face passed on, his lips compressed, his eyes with their dogged look. What the hubbub was about, why they followed him, what it was they kept on shouting, he did not understand. He knew that the captain had left him, and left him penniless. What he was himself to do, or where he was going, he had not the least idea. He only knew that the crowd was hunting him on.
There was not one friendly face among those around him-not one who could understand. The boys seemed like demons, shrieking, dancing, giving him occasional shoves. Separately he would have tackled any one of them, for they could not despise him for being English more heartily than he despised them for being French. But what could he do against that lot? – a host, too, which was being reinforced by men. For the cry "Un Anglais!" seemed to be infectious, and citizens of the grimier and more popular type began to swell the throng and shriek "Un Anglais!" with the boys.
One man, a very dirty and evil-looking gentleman, laying his two hands on Bertie's shoulders, started running, and began pushing him on in front of him. This added to the sport. The cavalcade broke into a trot. The shrieks became more vigorous. Suddenly Bertie, being pushed too vigorously from behind, and perhaps a little bewildered by the din, lost his footing and fell forward on his face. The man, taken unawares, fell down on top of him. The crowd shrieked with laughter.
A functionary interfered, in the shape of a sergent de ville. He wanted to know what the disturbance was about. Two or three dozen people, who knew absolutely nothing at all about it, began explaining all at once. They did not render the matter clearer. Nor did the man who had pushed Bertie over. He was indignant; not because he had pushed Bertie over, but because he had fallen on him afterwards. He evidently considered himself outraged because Bertie had not managed to enjoy a monopoly of tumbling down.
The policeman, not much enlightened by the explanations which were poured upon him, marched Bertie off to the bureau de police. They manage things differently in France, and the difference is about as much marked in a police station as anywhere else. Bertie found himself confronted by an official who pelted him with questions he did not understand, and who was equally at a loss to understand the observations he made in reply. Then he found himself locked up. It is probable that while he was held in durance vile an attempt was made to discover an interpreter; it would appear from what followed that if such an attempt were made, it was made in vain.
The afternoon passed away. Still the boy was left to enjoy his own society. He had plenty of leisure to think; to wonder what was going to happen to him-what was the next page which was to be unfolded in the history of his adventures. He had leisure to learn that he was getting hungry. But no one brought him anything to eat.
At last, just as he was beginning to think that he surely was forgotten, an official appeared, who, without a word, took him by the collar of his coat-he had been taken a good many times by the collar of his coat of late-led him straight out of the station-house, through some by-streets to the outskirts of the town.
Then, when he had taken him some little distance outside the walls, and a long country road stretched away in front, he released the lad's collar, and with a very expressive gesture, which even Bertie was not at a loss to understand, he bade him take himself away.
And Bertie took himself away, walking smartly off in the direction in which the sergeant pointed-away from the town. The policeman watched him for some time, standing with his hands in his pockets; and then, when a curve in the road took the lad out of sight, he returned within the walls.
It was already evening. The uncertain weather which had prevailed during the last few days still proved its uncertainty. The day had been fine, the evening was clouded. The wind was high, and, blowing from the north-west, blew the clouds tumultuously in scurrying masses across the sky.
The country was bare, nearly treeless. It was very flat. The scant fields of Finistère offered no protection from the weather, and but little pleasure to the eye. It was a bleak, almost barren country, with but little natural vegetation-harsh, stony, and inhospitable.
Along the wind-swept road he steadily trudged. He knew not whither he was going, not even whence he came. He was a stranger in a strange land. The captain had asked him whether he spoke French; he supposed, therefore, that this land was France. But the captain had confused him-bidden him ask for tickets for Constantinople. Even Bertie's scanty geographical knowledge told him that Constantinople was not France. On the other hand, the same scant store suggested that it needed a longer flight than they had taken to bring him into Turkey.
A very slight knowledge of French would have enabled him to solve the question. If he had only been able to ask, Where am I? The person asked might have taken him to be an English lunatic in a juvenile stage of his existence, but would probably have replied. Unfortunately this knowledge was wanting. If sometimes a little knowledge is a dangerous thing, it is also, and not seldom, very much the other way.
Nearly all that night Bertie went wandering on. The darkness gathered. The wind seemed to whistle more loudly when the darkness came, but there was no escape from it for him. Seen in the light of clustering shadows the country seemed but scantily peopled. He scarcely met a soul. A few peasants, a cart or two-these were the only moving things he saw. And when the darkness deepened he seemed to be alone in all the world.
A house or two he passed, even some villages, in which there were no signs of life except an occasional light gleaming through a wayside window. He made no attempt to ask for food, or drink, or shelter. How could he have asked? As he went further and further from the town he began to come among the Breton aborigines; and in Brittany, as in Wales, you find whole hamlets in which scarcely one of the inhabitants has a comprehensible knowledge of the language of the country which claims them as her children. Even French would have been of problematic service in the parts into which he had found, or rather lost his way, and he was not even aware that there was a place called Brittany, and a tongue called Breton. He was a stranger in a strange land indeed!
It was a horrible night, that first one he spent wandering among the wilds of Finistère. After he had gone on and on and on, and never seemed to come to anything, and the winds shrieked louder, and he was hungry and thirsty and weary and worn, and there was nothing but blackness all around and the terror-stricken clouds whirling above his head, somewhere about midnight he thought it was time he should find some shelter and rest.
So he clambered over a stone wall which bound the road on either side, and on the other side of this stone wall he ventured to lie down. It was not comfortable lying; there was no grass, there were thistles, nettles, weeds, and stones-plenty of stones. On this bed he tried to take some rest, trusting to the wall to shelter him.
In vain. It requires education to become accustomed to a bed of stones. All things come by custom, but those who are used to sheets find stony soil disagreeable ground. Bertie gave it up. The wind seemed to come through the chinks in the wall with even greater bitterness than if there had been no wall at all. The stones were torture. There was nothing on which he could lay his head. So he got up and struck across the field, seeking for a sheltered place in which to lie. For another hour or so he wandered on, now sitting down for a moment or two, now kneeling, and feeling about with his hand for comfortable ground. In an open country, on a dark and windy night, it is weary searching for one's bed, especially in a country where stones are more plentiful than grass.
In his fruitless wanderings, confused by the darkness and the strangeness of the place, Bertie went over the same ground more than once. Without knowing it, meaning to go forwards, he went back. When he suspected that this was the case, his helplessness came home to him more forcibly than it had done before. What was he to do if he could not tell the way he had come from the way he was going?
At last he blundered on some trees. He welcomed them as though they had been friends. He sat down at the foot of one, and found that the ground was coated by what was either moss or grass. Compared to his bed of stones it was like a bed of eider-down. It was quite a big tree, and he found that he could so lean against it that it would serve as a very tolerable barrier against the wind at his back.
At the foot of this tree he sat down, and pillowing his head against the trunk he sought for sleep. But sleep was coy, and would not come on being wooed. The utter solitude of his position kept him wakeful. Robinson Crusoe's desolation was scarcely more complete; his helplessness was not so great. It came upon Bertie, as it came upon Crusoe in his lonely island, that he was wholly in the hands of God. The teachings which he had been taught at his mother's knee, and which seemed to go into one ear and out of the other, proved to be the bread which is cast upon the waters, returning after many days. He remembered with startling vividness how his mother had told him that God holds us all in the hollow of His hand: he understood the meaning of that saying now.
He was so sleepy, so tired out and out, that from very weariness he forgot that he was hungry and athirst. Yet, in some strange fantastic way, the thought, despite his weariness, prevented him from sleeping-that the winds which whistled through the night were the winds of God. The winds of God! And it seemed to him that all things were of God, the darkness and the solitude, and the mysterious place. Who shall judge him? Who shall say that it was only because he was in trouble that he had such thoughts? It is something even if in times of trouble we think of God. "God is a very present help in times of trouble," has been written on some page of some old book.
Bertie was so curiously impressed by a sense of the presence of the Almighty God that he did what he had not done for a very long time-he got up, and kneeling at the foot of the friendly tree, he prayed. And it is not altogether beyond the range of possibility that, when he again sought rest, it was because of his prayer that God sent sleep unto his eyes.
Chapter XXII
THE END OF THE JOURNEY
Throughout the day which followed, and throughout the night, and throughout the succeeding days and nights, Bertie wandered among the wilds of Finistère, and among its lanes and villages. How he lived he himself could have scarcely told. The misfortunes which had befallen him since he had set out on his journey to the Land of Golden Dreams had told upon him. He became ill in body and in mind. He needed rest and care, good food and careful nursing. What he got was no food, or scarcely any, strange skies to shelter him, a strange land to serve him as his bed.
It was fortunate that summer was at hand. Had it been winter he would have lain down at night, and in the morning they would have found him dead. But he was at least spared excessive cold. The winds were not invariably genial. The occasional rain was not at all times welcome-to him at least, whatever it might have been to the thirsty earth-but there was no frost. If frost had come he would certainly have died.
What he ate he scarcely knew. Throughout the whole of his wanderings he never received food from any human being. He found his breakfast, dinner, tea, and supper in the fields and on the hedges. A patch of turnips was a godsend. There was one field in particular in which grew both swedes and turnips. It was within a stone's-throw of a village; to reach it from the road you had to scramble down a bank. To this he returned again and again. He began to look upon it almost as his own.
Once, towards evening, the farmer saw him getting his supper. The farmer saw the lad before the lad saw him. He stole upon him unawares, bent upon capturing the thief. He had almost achieved his purpose, and was within half a dozen yards of the miscreant, when, not looking where he was going in his anxiety to keep his eyes upon the pilferer, he caught his sabot in a hole, and came down upon his knees. As he came he gave vent to a deep Breton execration.
Startled, Bertie looked behind and saw the foe. He was off like the wind. When the farmer had regained, if not his temper, at least his perpendicular, he saw, fifty yards ahead, a wild-looking, ragged figure tearing for his life. The Breton was not built for speed. He perceived that he might as well attempt to rival the swallow in its flight as outrun the boy. So he contented himself with shaking his fists and shouting curses after the robber of his turnip field.
Never washing, never taking his clothes from his back nor his shoes from his feet, in appearance Bertie soon presented a figure which would have discredited a scarecrow. Scrambling through hedges, constant walking over stony ways, beds on dampish soil-these things told upon his garments; they soon began to drop away from him in shreds. His face went well with his clothing. Very white and drawn, very thin and dirty, his ravenous eyes looked out from under a tangled shock of hair. One night he had been startled in his sleep, as he often was, and he had sprung up, as a wild creature springs, and run for his life, not waiting to inquire what it was that had startled him, whether it was the snapping of a twig or the movement of a rabbit or a bird. In his haste he left his hat behind him, and as he never returned to get it, afterwards he went with his head uncovered.
It began to be rumoured about those parts that some strange thing had taken up its residence in the surrounding country. The Breton peasants and small farmers are ignorant, credulous, superstitious. The slightest incident of an unusual character they magnify into a mystery.
It was told in the hamlets that some wild creature had made its appearance in their neighbourhood. Some said it was a boy, some said it was a man, some said it was a woman; some said it was neither one thing nor the other, but a monster which had taken human shape.
Bertie lent an air of veracity to the different versions by his own proceedings. He was not in his own right mind. Had care been taken, and friends been near, all might have been well; as it was, fever was taking more and more possession of his brain. He shunned his fellow-creatures. At the sight of a little child he would take to his heels and run. He saw an enemy in every bush, in every tree; in a man or a woman he saw his worst enemy of all.
In consequence the tales gained ground and grew. A lout, returning from his labour in the fields, saw on a distant slope in the gathering twilight a wild-looking figure, who, at sight of him, turned and ran like the wind. The lout ran too. The tale did not lose by being told. Bertie was magnified into a giant, his speed into speed of the swiftest bird. The lout declared that he uttered mysterious sounds as he ran. He became a mysterious personage altogether-and a horrible one.
Others saw this thing of evil, for that it was a thing of evil all were agreed. The farmer who saw him in his turnip field had a wondrous tale to tell.
He had not tripped through his own stupidity and clumsiness. On the contrary, it was all owing to the influence of the evil eye. Bertie, being a thing of evil, had seen him-as things of evil have doubtless the power of doing-although his approach was made from the rear; and, seeing him, had glanced at him with his evil eye through the back of his head, as things possessing that fatal gift have, we may take it for granted, the power of doing. Nay, who shall decide that the evil eye is not itself located in the back of the head?
Anyhow, under its influence the farmer tripped. This became clearer to his mind the more he thought of it, and, it may be also added, the farther off the accident became. The next morning he remembered that he had been conscious of a mysterious something in his joints as he approached the turnip stealer-a something not to be described, but altogether mysterious and horrible. In the afternoon he declared that he had not followed the plunderer because he had been rooted to the ground, he knew not how nor why-rooted in the manner of his own turnips, which he had seen disappearing from underneath his eyes.
That night the tale grew still more horrible. He had a couple of glasses of brandy, at two sous a glass, with a select circle of his friends, and under the influence of conviviality the farmer made his neighbours' hair stand on end. He went to bed with the belief impressed firmly on his mind that he had encountered Old Nick in person, engaged in the nefarious and characteristic action of stealing turnips from his turnip field.
Thus it came about that while Bertie avoided aboriginals, the aboriginals were equally careful in avoiding him. One day some one heard him speak. That was the climax. The tongue he spoke was neither Breton nor French. Delirium was overtaking the lad, and under its influence he was beginning to spout all sorts of nonsense in his feverish wanderings here and there.
The aboriginal in question had seen him running across the field and shouting as he ran. He declared, probably with truth, that never had he heard the like before. It was undoubtedly the language which was in common use among things of evil. This conclusion was not flattering to English-speaking people, but there are occasions on which ignorance is not bliss, and it is not folly to be wise. Being a Breton peasant of average education, this aboriginal decided that Bertie's English was the language in common use among things of evil.
That settled the question. There are possibly Beings-Beings in this case should be written with a capital letter-of indifferent, and worse than indifferent character, who have at least some elementary acquaintance with the Breton tongue. Let so much be granted. But it cannot be doubted-at any rate no one did doubt it-that the fact of this stranger speaking in a strange tongue made it as plain as a pike-staff that he was the sort of character which is better left alone.
So, as a rule, they left him alone in the severest manner.
Of course this could not endure for ever. Bertie was approaching the Land of Golden Dreams in a sense of which he had not dreamed even in his wildest dreams. One cannot subsist on roots alone. Nor can a young gentleman, used to cosy beds and well-warmed rooms and regular meals, exist for long on such a diet, under ever-changing skies, in an inhospitable country, in the open air. Bertie was worn to a shadow. He was wasted not only physically, but mentally and morally. He was a ghost of what he once had been, enfeebled in mind and body.
If something did not happen soon to change his course of living, he would soon bring his journeying to an untimely end, and reach the Land of Dreams indeed.
Something did happen, but it was not by any means the sort of thing which was required.
One day a great hunt took place in that district. It was first-rate sport. They occasionally hunt wolves, and even wild boars in Finistère, but this time what was hunted was a boy. And the boy was Bertie.
The mayor of St. Thégonnec was a wise man. All mayors are of necessity, and from the nature of their office, wise, especially the mayors of rural France; and this mayor was the wisest of wise mayors. He was a miller by trade, honest as millers go, and as pig-headed a rustic as was ever found in Finistère. His name was Baudry-Jean Baudry.
It was reported to M. Baudry by his colleague, the mayor of the commune of Plouigneau, which lies on the other side of Morlaix, that there was a Being-with a capital B-which had come no one knew from whence, and which was plundering the fields in a way calculated to make the blood of all honest men turn cold-or hot, as might accord best with the natural disposition of the blood of the man in question.
The mayor of St. Thégonnec had told this story to the mayor of Morlaix; and the mayor of Morlaix, being the mayor of the arrondissement, had thought it an excellent opportunity to snub the mayor of a mere commune, and had snubbed the mayor of St. Thégonnec accordingly; who, coming fresh from the snubbing, had encountered his colleague in the market-place, and then and there told his wrongs.
The two worthies agreed that, at the first opportunity, they would lay violent hands upon this plunderer of the fields of honest men, and make him wish that he had left such fields alone.
Such an opportunity, or what looked like such an one, was not long in offering itself to M. Baudry.
One afternoon he was engaged in his occupation of grinding flour, standing in an atmosphere which would have rendered life disagreeable, if not altogether unsupportable, to any one but a miller, when Robert, Madame Perchon's eldest born, put his head inside the open door of the mill.
"This creature, M. le Maire; this creature!"
Robert Perchon was an undersized youth of some twenty years of age, who had escaped military service not only as being the eldest son of a widow, but as being in possession of an unrivalled squint, which would have excluded him in any case, and which would have rendered it really difficult for a drill sergeant to have ascertained to his own satisfaction whether, at any given moment, the recruit had his "eyes front" or behind.
"Ah, at last! Where is this vagabond? We will settle his business in a trice!"
Having shouted instructions to his assistant to keep his eyes upon the stones, M. le Maire came forth.
"He is in the buck-wheat field! I was going to the little field by the river, when, behold! what should I see in the buck-wheat field, lying close to the hedge, and yet among the wheat, what but this creature, fast asleep! It is so, I give you my word. At this time of day, when all honest people are at work, in the middle of my field there was this creature, fast asleep. I knew him at once, although I have not seen the wretch before; but I have heard him described, and there is indeed something absolutely diabolical in his aspect even as he lies among my buck-wheat fast asleep!"