Monsieur Jonquelle (13 page)

A peasant cobbling a shoe sat on a bench before a shop. Above his head, against the wall in the sun, a bullfinch hung in a wooden cage. The peasant was about sixty, as the Captain had noticed more than once, but he was hale and strong, and he wondered why it was, that in France's desperate need he was not somewhere in the service.

The officer stopped and dismissed his refrain
with a kiss blown from the tips of his fingers into the sky.

“Old man,” he said, “why don't you get a gun and fight the Germans?”

The peasant put down the piece of leather that he was stitching to the shoe and looked up at the Captain of Artillery. His face was expressionless and stolid.

“It would be of no use,” he said.

“Of no use!” echoed the Captain. “How do you know it would be of no use?”

“Well, Monsieur,” replied the peasant, “who should know it better than I?”

At this moment the bullfinch, in its wooden cage, touched by the sun began to whistle a tune. The Captain of Artillery started, listened, and as he listened, gradually drew himself up until he was a rigid military figure. The bird paused, omitted portions of the tune, and repeated his notes.

The Captain, standing as though enchanted into bronze, made suddenly a belligerent gesture as of one driving a short sword upward.

“
Diable
,” he said, and he went on with a quick military stride.

At the red brick wall of the château, where the gate entered, he gave a word to the sentry and went in. It was past noon and the Captain was shown at once into the dining room.

It was a big, airy room on the second floor, lined with windows. The table was laid with a splendid cloth to the floor. There were flowers in a great bowl, and the westering sun entered. A shutter had been set to shade it from the table.

It was a table laid precisely as one would lay it in a time of peace in a villa on the Riviera. The war might have been in the moon or read out of a fairy book, for all the quiet elegance of this brilliant sunlit room.

For the second time on this afternoon the Captain of Artillery had a distinct surprise. The table was laid for three and two men already sat with their legs under it. The host, Mr. Marmaduke Wood, and a tall gray man, in an English tweed.

They had a bottle of champagne and they discussed the arias of the opera like men who knew all the songs in the world.

There was evidence of more than one bottle poured out in this talk. The American had his head, although his face was a trifle purpled, but the wine had gotten a certain hold upon the stranger. He got up a bit unsteadily when the host arose; he bowed and addressed the officer.

“I am the secret agent you sent for,” he said. “I have a lot of names; Cordon Rouge will do as well as any,” and he laughed in a queer high note.

Then he put his hand into his pocket, took out
a leather wallet and fumbling among the documents it held, handed the astonished Captain a piece of paper. It was a line in the official cipher from the war department.

“We send you the best man in France,” it said, over a signature.

The amazed Provençal returned the paper and Monsieur Cordon Rouge replaced it in his wallet. The Captain of Artillery had cause, he thought, for this amazement. A secret agent, who made neither himself nor his mission any secret, and was named, quite fittingly it seemed, for a wine of France, was something new to him.

“Monsieur,” added the agent with a gesture, “let us have no secrets from our host. I owe him that, since my admission to his table was perhaps a trifle upon faith. I said, Monsieur, that I came as your friend and guest; and he received me to his courtesy upon that introduction.”

He swung about with a conscious gesture, the gesture of a man in pride.

“Monsieur Marmaduke Wood,” he added, “some one is signaling the position of the French artillery to the German lines. The Captain here has sent to Paris for a secret agent, and Monsieur”—he paused, thrust his hand into the bosom of his waistcoat, and bowed in a genial fashion—“I am come to find him.”

The American smiled and drew out a chair for the Captain of Artillery.

“I am honored to receive Monsieur Cordon Rouge,” he said, “even upon his own recognizance.”

The manners of the American were excellent even if he had come up from the stockyards in Chicago as he freely said. He had very nearly a continental address. It was the wonder of the world how these middle-class Americans took on the veneer of Europe. This Illinois packer was not over-dressed. He had trained himself almost into a military figure, with his close-cropped hair to hide the gray of one in the afternoon of life. Mobile, the Captain thought, these rich men from beyond the sea; a French bourgeois grown rich could not thus take on at middle sixty the manners of a baron.

The Provençal sat down to the excellent lunch, but his blood was hot. This creature had the impudence of Satan, to ring a bell and say that he was the friend and guest of Henri Alphonse Marie of Tarascon, a Captain of Artillery in the armies of the republic. There should be a word aside for this.… And with this glib assurance to force his way in to the host's table! The insolence of it was not to be endured.

“Monsieur Cordon Rouge,” he said over his pigeon, “it is perhaps the privilege of the Department
of War in Paris to select my guests, but I have an unreasonable habit of choosing my friends for myself.”

The agent put down his fork and looked the Captain in the face.

“Monsieur,” he said, “your habit is unwise, and I beg you to abandon it—a friend is a gift of God.”

“I shall be charmed to discuss that with you, Monsieur,” replied the Captain, his face flushed, “when your mission here is ended. There is a bit of turf behind the château.”

The agent drew a parallelogram on the cloth with the handle of his fork.

“How much turf, Monsieur?” he said.

“Enough,” replied the Captain, “to kill a man on.”

The agent fingered the stem of his glass.

“Monsieur,” he said, “a man may be killed on a very little ground but one must have six feet of turf to bury him under.”

“There is also enough for that,” replied the Captain, “do you undertake, Monsieur, to provide a dead man.”

“I do,” replied the agent.

“Now that,” said the Captain of Artillery, “is entirely satisfactory, except, Monsieur, that the element of time remains a bit vague. Shall we say,” and he paused, “that Monsieur Cordon
Rouge will provide this dead man within two hours after his mission here is ended.”

The agent leered over the table.

“Within two hours after this luncheon is ended, Monsieur. My mission, as you name it, is already ended.”

The Captain of Artillery appeared to be astonished.

“You mean,” he said, “that you know who is in communication with the German lines?”

“I do,” replied the agent.

“The very man?”

The agent looked hard at the Captain across the table.

“The very man!” he said.

The Captain of Artillery, to the eye, was not disconcerted.

“Perhaps, Monsieur Cordon Rouge,” he said, “you will tell us when precisely you solved this problem.”

“With pleasure,” replied the agent; “when I walked in the village this morning.”

“And what did you see, Monsieur Cordon Rouge, when you walked in the village?”

“Now, Monsieur,” replied the agent, “one man may see one thing and another man another, when he walks in a village.… Also, Monsieur, one may see a number of things, if he stands at a window and looks down into a village.

“As, for example, Monsieur, half an hour ago when I stood at the window yonder, I saw Henri Alphonse Marie, of Tarascon, advancing in the road. He is a Captain of Artillery in the armies of the republic, and yet, Monsieur, he sings a roundelay the refrain of which runs in his own language:

“‘
Ah! qu'elle est belle La Marguerite
!'

“And yet, Monsieur, mark you this, that ballad is not a song of France. It is a song of another nation, Monsieur. Observe, Monsieur;” and he began to sing in English:

“Gold on her head, and gold on her feet,
And gold where the hems of her kirtle meet,
And a golden girdle round my sweet;—
Ah! qu'elle est belle La Marguerite.”

His glass went up and his voice bellowed the refrain.

“Observe, Monsieur,” he added, “that I did not stop, stare, and fall into a military attitude with astonishment at hearing a soldier in France sing a song of another nation!”

“And why should you, Monsieur?” said the Captain with composure.

“And why not, Monsieur,” continued the agent, “since Henri Alphonse Marie of Tarascon, a Captain of Artillery, did so stop, stare, and fall into
a military attitude at hearing a bird in a cage whistling a foreign tune.”

“But, Monsieur,” cried the Captain, “did you hear that tune—it was Blücher's March!”

The American, who began to be uneasy for the peace of his guests, now politely interfered.

“Monsieur Cordon Rouge,” he said with a courteous bow from the hips, “is there not a considerable difference in these two cases? France is not at war with England but allied with her. We are not concerned to hear an English song sung in a French village. But to hear a martial tune of the German Empire whistled in a French village at this time, must, I admit, surprise one. The German advance has not reached this village. Captain Marie must be permitted some astonishment. Whence came this bullfinch, and how, Monsieur, did he manage to hear Blücher's March in a French village? … And especially, Monsieur, would Captain Marie be all the more concerned since the presence of a spy somewhere about is clearly indicated by the German fire.”

He paused and turned to his guest from Tarascon.

“Captain Marie,” he continued, “may I inquire who it is in the village that possesses this extraordinary bird? I must confess to sharing with you a certain astonishment.”

“The shoemaker,” replied the Captain.

“Then, gentlemen,” continued the American, “let us by all means have this shoemaker here with his bullfinch and inquire into this affair?”

The Captain wrote an order and the host sent it out. But the secret agent seemed not altogether pleased.

“Monsieur,” he said, addressing the Captain of Artillery, “how do you know that this bird is whistling Blücher's March?”

“I have heard it on several days,” said the Captain dryly.

“Then you knew before to-day that it whistled this march?”

“No,” replied the Captain, “I did not. I heard the bird behind the shop, and in certain parts of the cottage, but never until to-day before the door. That is to say, my attention was never before sufficiently directed to this bullfinch to determine the tune he whistled.”

“And how did you determine it to-day?” said the secret agent.

“Monsieur,” cried the Captain, “I know that tune when I hear it.”

“Are you certain?” returned the agent.

He leaned back in his chair and began to whistle. His foot beating time moved out from under the cover of the tablecloth. He gave the tune precisely as the bullfinch had given it in the sun before the shoemaker's door. He hesitated and repeated
but he could not whistle the march to its end.

“
Diable
!” he said, “what are the notes I omit?”

“Alas, Monsieur,” replied the American, “I cannot help you out. I never heard the portions of this tune that you omit,” and he ran the notes that the agent had given in a lower key.

The agent's foot under the martial air beat heavily on the floor. And suddenly the Captain of Artillery observed a thing that flooded him with light. The agent's shoes were not alike, one of them was a sabot, and he remembered that the shoe the old peasant stitched was leather!

At this moment the sentry brought in the shoemaker and the bullfinch in its wooden cage.

Before any one could speak, the agent addressed him in a tone of menace.

“Answer what you are asked,” he said.

One could not tell whether it was a threat upon the old peasant to be frank or to be cunning; to say all he knew, or to answer every interrogation with deliberate care. Then he made a gesture as of one abandoning the witness to the Captain of Artillery.

The officer turned about in his chair.

“This bird,” he said, indicating the bullfinch with his finger, “whistles Blücher's March.”

“Yes, Monsieur,” replied the peasant.

“That is a German tune.”

“Yes, Monsieur.”

“Who taught him?”

“I taught him, Monsieur.”

“Then you are a German!” said the Captain of Artillery.

“No, Monsieur,” replied the peasant, “I am a Frenchman from the Province of the Jura.”

The agent interrupted. “I can vouch for that,” he said.

“Monsieur Cordon Rouge,” replied the Captain of Artillery, “I shall be obliged if you do not interrupt me. In spite of your commission I am determined to look a little into this affair for myself.”

“Oh, by all means,” returned the agent, “but I beg you to remember, Monsieur, that one does not become a German merely because one knows a German tune.”

For a moment the Captain did not go on. He sat looking at the peasant. The sun lay about the floor. Outside the great artillery duel went on booming over the château.

Presently the Captain continued his examination.

“Before your shop to-day,” he went on, “you said it was of no use to resist the Germans. That seemed a strange expression, Monsieur, and I inquired how you knew that it was of no use. You replied with a still stranger expression, ‘Who
should know it better than I?' These were suspicious words, Monsieur; what do they mean?”

The old man looked about. He carried something under his arm wrapped in paper. He put it now into his blouse. Then he began to speak slowly and with repetition.