Chapter 13

VAGABONDIA

They took the road in the gray of a morning overcast with clouds and portentous of a storm. At the last moment, their host, with an eye upon the weather (and another upon Markham's hidden wallet), had sought to keep them until the skies were more propitious. But they were not to be dissuaded and trudged off briskly, Monsieur Duchanel and Madam Bordier accompanying them to the cross-roads and bidding them God-speed upon their journey.

Markham, pipe in mouth, his hat pulled over his eyes, his coat collar turned up, showed the way, while Hermia, her finery hidden under a long coat, followed, leading the donkey, which, after a few preliminary remonstrances, consented to accompany them. A tarpaulin covered Hermia's orchestra and Markham's knapsack which were securely packed upon the animal--a valiant, if silent company, marching confidently into the unknown, Hermia smiling defiance at the clouds, Markham smoking grimly, the donkey ambling impassively, the least concerned of the three.

A rain had fallen in the night but Hermia splashed through the mud and water joyously, like a child, thankful nevertheless for Markham's thoughtfulness which had provided her last night with a pair of stout shoes and heavy stockings. To a spirit less blithe than hers the outlook would have been gloomy enough, for all the morning the clouds scurried fast overhead and squalls of rain and fog drove into the misty south. The trees turned the white backs of their shivering leaves to the wind and dripped moisture. The birds silently preened their wet plumage on the fences or sought the shelter of the hedges. Nature had conspired. But Hermia plodded on undismayed, aware of her companion's long stride and his indifference to discomfort. Her shoes were soaked and at every step the donkey splashed her new stockings, but she did not care; for she had discovered a motive in life and followed her quest open-eyed, aware that already she was rearranging her scale of values to suit her present condition. She was beginning to feel the "needs and hitches" of life and had a sense of the flints strewn under foot. Her mind was already both occupied and composed. She was quite moist and muddy. She had never been moist or muddy before without the means at hand to become dry and clean. Those means lacking, mere comfort achieved an extraordinary significance--reached at a bound an importance which surprised her.

After a while Markham glanced at her and drew alongside.

"Discouraged?" he asked.

"Not a bit," she smiled at him. "But I hadn't an idea that rain was so wet."

"I promised you the fountain springs of life--not a deluge," he laughed. "But it won't last," he added cheerfully with a glance at the sky. "It should clear soon."

"I don't care. The sunshine will be so much the more welcome."

He smiled at her approvingly.

"You are learning. That's the vagabond philosophy."

He was a true prophet. In an hour a brisk wind from the west had blown the storm away and burnished the sky like a new jewel. All things animate suddenly awoke and field and road were alive with people. The birds appeared from tree and bush and set joyously about getting their belated breakfasts. A miracle had happened, it seemed to Hermia. The blood in her veins surged deliciously, and all the world rejoiced with her. And yet--it was merely that the sun had come out.

They had mounted a high hill and stopped for breath at its summit. The country over which they were to travel was spread out for their inspection. Down there in the valley the river choosing its leisurely course northward to the Seine, and beyond it the harlequin checkerboard of vine and meadow, the sentinel poplars, and to the east-ward the blue hills that sheltered Ivry-la-Bataille. Tiny villages, each with its slender campanile, made incidental notes of life and color and here and there, afar, the tall chimneys of factories stained the sky. About them in the nearer fields were hay-wagons and workers, men and women, their shouts and songs floating up the hill refined and mellowed by the distances.

Hermia took the air into her lungs, and surveyed the landscape.

"All this," said Markham, "is yours and mine--you see, when you have nothing, everything belongs to you."

She laughed.

"You won't dare to put that philosophy to the test. There's a delicious odor of cooking food. If everything belongs to me, I'll trouble you for the contents of that coffee-pot."

"Not hungry already--!"

"Frightfully so. I haven't eaten for ages."

He looked at his watch.

"It's only eleven, but of course--"

"Oh, don't let me interfere with your plans."

"You don't. I have no plans. We'll go into camp at once."

They descended the hill and after a while found a secluded spot near the river bank. Markham quickly unstrapped the donkey's pack and to Hermia's surprise drew forth a loaf of bread, some cheese, and a bottle of red wine which he set out with some pride on a flat rock near by.

"This," he announced, "is our _dêjeuner à la fourchette_. I won't apologize for it."

"Wonderful man! Somehow you remind me of the sleight-of-hand performer producing an omelette from a silk hat. I don't think I've ever been really hungry before in my life."

He opened the bottle with the corkscrew on his pocket-knife and watched her munching hungrily at the rye-bread.

"Half the pleasure in life, after all, is wanting a thing and getting it," he observed. "How can you want anything if you've already got it?"

"I can't," she mumbled, her mouth full, "unless perhaps it's this bread."

He passed the bottle to her and she drank from it sparingly, passing it to him again.

"Every wine is a vintage if you're thirsty enough," he added. "The trouble with our world is that most of its people are always about half full of food. You can't really enjoy things to eat or things to drink unless you're quite empty. It's the same thing with ideas. You can't think very clearly when you're half full of other people's biases."

"Or their b-bread and ch-cheese!" she said, choking. Further than that she did not reply at once. The reasons were obvious. But she munched reflectively, and when she had swallowed:

"If all your arguments are as convincing as your fare, then you and I shall never disagree," she said.

Clarissa, for that was the name she had given the beast, was turned loose in the meadow. Markham sat beside Hermia on the warm rock, and, between them, without further words, they finished both the wine and the food. Markham filled his pipe and stretched out at full length in lazy content while she sat beside him, brushing the dried cakes of mud from her skirt and stockings.

"Well, here we are across the Rubicon," she said at last.

He nodded.

"Are you sorry?"

"No, not in the least. I'm more astonished than anything else at the ridiculous simplicity of my emancipation. Yesterday at this hour I was a highly respectable if slightly pampered person with a shrewd sense of my own importance in the economic and social scheme; to-day I'm a mere biped--an instinct on legs, with nothing to recommend me but an amiable disposition and an abnormal appetite.

"You've made progress," he laughed lazily. "Yesterday you lisped knowingly of devil-wagons. You weren't even a biped. I'll admit it's something to have discovered the possession of legs."

"I do. And it's something more to have discovered the possession of an appetite."

"And still something more to discover a means to gratify it," he grunted.

If he sought to intimidate her, he failed of his object, for she only laughed at him.

"Oh, I shall not starve. Presently you shall hear me practice with my orchestra. Just now, _mon ami_, I'm too delightfully sleepy to think of doing anything else."

"Sleep, then."

He laid his coat on the rock, and she sank back upon it, but not to close her eyes. They were turned on a squadron of clouds which sailed in the wide bay between the forest and the hilltop. Markham, leaning on an elbow, puffed at his pipe in silence. She turned her head and looked at him.

"It's curious--" she began, and then passed.

"What is--curious?"

She laughed.

"Curious with what little ceremony I threw myself on your mercy; curious that you've been so tolerant with me; curious that--you've no curiosity."

"I never believe in being curious," he laughed. "When you're ready, you'll tell me and not before.

"About what?" "About young Armistead, for instance."

"We disagreed. He insisted on marrying me."

"That was tactless of him."

"You know it was only a trial engagement, and it _was_--a trial--to both of us."

Markham grinned.

"You've relieved my mind of one burden, at least," he said. "I like Reggie. He's a nice boy. But I haven't any humor to find him poking around in these bushes with a shotgun." "Oh, there's no danger of that," she replied demurely, oblivious of his humor. "Reggie and I have parted."

Markham's eyes were turned upon the clouds. "That's rather a pity--in a way," he said quietly. "I thought you were quite suited to each other. But then--" and he surprised a curious look in her yes "--if you were going to marry Reggie, you see, you couldn't be here--and I would be the loser."

"I don't see that that would have made the slightest difference," she replied rather tartly, "provided I had not married him."

"Oh, don't you?" he finished with a smile.

"No, I don't. And I don't believe you when you way that you think Reggie and I were sited to each other. Because if you thought I was the kind of girl to be satisfied with Reggie, you wouldn't have thought it worth while to make a vagabond of me."

His brows drew downward. "I haven't made a vagabond of you--not yet."

She examined his face steadily.

"You mean--that you don't believe me to be sincere?"

He didn't reply at once.

"I won't quibble with you, Hermia," he said in a moment. "You've paid me a pretty compliment by coming with me out here. But I'm not going to let it blind my judgment. You were hopelessly bored--back there. You've admitted it. You felt the need of some other form of amusement--so you chose this. That's all."

Hermia straightened and sat with her hands clasped around her knees, looking at vacancy. "That's unkind of you," she said quietly.

"I don't mean it to be unkind," he went on softly. "I don't deny the genuineness of your impulse. But you mustn't forget that you and I have grown up in different schools. I'm selfish in my way as you are in yours. I choose this life because I love it better than anything else, because it's my idea of contentment. I've approached it thoughtfully and with a great deal of respect, as a result of some years of patient and unsuccessful experiment with other forms of existence. That's the reason why I'm a little jealous for it, a little suspicious of your sudden conversion."

"You have no right to doubt my sincerity--not yet," she said.

"No," slowly. "Not yet. I'm only warning you that it isn't going to be easy--warning you that you will be placed in positions that may be unpleasant to you, when our relations may be questioned--"

"I've considered that," quickly. "I'm prepared for that. I will do what is required of me."

He took her hand and held it for a moment in his own, but she would not look at him.

"Hermia--"

"What, Philidor?"

"You're not angry?"

"Not in the least. I'm not a fool--"

Suddenly she sprang down the rock away from him, and, before he knew what she was about, had fastened her "orchestra" around her and was making the air hideous with sound. He sat up, swinging his long legs over the edge of the rock, watching her and laughing at the futile efforts of her members to achieve a concert. Even Clarissa stopped her grazing long enough to look up, ears erect, eying the musician in grave surprise, and then, with a contemptuous flirt of her tail, went on with her repast.

"Everyone knows a donkey has no soul for music," laughed Hermia, in a breathless pause between efforts.

"Meaning me?"

"Meaning both of you," said Hermia. "Wait a moment."

She tuned her mandolin, and, neglecting the harmonica, in a moment drew forth some chords and then sang:

/* "Sur le pont d'Avignon L'on y danse, l'on y danse, Sur le pont d'Avignon L'on y danse tout en rond." */

And then, after a pause, with an elaborate curtsey to Clarissa:

/* "Les beaux messieurs font comme ça Et puis encore comme ça." */

"The Pont d'Avignon?" he laughed with delight. "Bravo, Yvonne!"

"Now perhaps you'll believe in me."

"I do. I will. Until the end of time," he cried. "Once more now, with the drum _obbligato_."

She obeyed and found it difficult because every time her elbows struck the drum her fingers flew from the mandolin. But she managed it at last, and in the end made shift to use the harmonica, too.

Then followed "The Marseillaise." That was easier. The air had a swing to it, and she managed both the drum and the cymbals. But it was warm work and she stopped for a while, rosy and breathless.

"What do you think?"

"Oh, magnificent. Yvonne Deschamps--_Femme Orchestre, Messieurs et Dames_, queen of the lyrical world, the musical marvel of the century, artist by appointment to the President of the Réplublique Française and all the crowned heads of Europe. How will that do?"

"Beautifully. And you--what will _you_ do?"

"I-- Oh, I will pass the hat."

She laughed. "So! You intend to live in luxury at my expense. No, thank you, Monsieur Philidor. I'm doing my share. You shall do yours. I'll trouble you to keep your word. You shall paint portraits at two francs a head."

"I didn't really intend--"

"You shall keep your promise," she insisted.

"But, Hermia, I--"

"There are no 'buts'!" she broke in. "A moment ago you indulged in some fine phrases at the expense of my sincerity. Now look to yours. We'll have an honest partnership--an equal partnership, or we'll have no partnership."

He rubbed his head reflectively.

"Oh, I'll do it, I suppose," he said at last.

She laughed at him and resumed her practicing, making some notable improvements on her first attempts and adding "_Mère Michel_" and "_Au Claire de la Lune_," "_Le Roi Dagobert_" to her répertoire.

"Where on earth did you learn that?" he asked in an entr'acte.

"At school--in Paris."

"And the mandolin?"

"A parlor trick. You see, I'm not so useless, after all."

Presently, when she sat beside him to rest, he brought out a pad and crayon and made a drawing of her in her cap and bells. He began a little uncertainly, a little carelessly, but his interest growing, in a moment he was absorbed.

Whatever knowledge of her had been hidden from him as a man, it seemed suddenly revealed to the painter now. The broad, smooth brow which meant intelligence, the short nose, which meant amiability, the nostrils well arched, which meant pride, the first rounded lips, which meant sensibility, the sharp little declivity beneath them and the squarish chin, which meant either willfulness or determination (he chose the former), and the eyes, gray blue, set ever so slightly at an angle, which could mean much or nothing at all.

"Do you see me like that?" she laughed when it was finished. "I'm so glad. You _can_ draw, can't you?"

He held out his palm. "Two francs, please."

She put the sketch behind her back.

"Oh, no, Monsieur. Not so fast. You shall give me this for the sake of my _belle musique_. Is not that fair?"

"But I've taken rather a fancy to it myself."

"We'll compromise," and she stuck it up on a crevice of the rock, "and hang it on the wall of the dining-room."

Another rehearsal of Hermia's program, longer this time and with a greater care for details; and then Markham looked at his watch, knocked out his pipe, and reported that it was time they were on their way.

Half an hour later they had reached a fork of the road.

"Which way now, _camarade_?" cried Hermia, who was leading. Markham examined the bushes, the trees, and the fences. He stood for a moment looking down at a minute object by the side of the road, a twig, as Hermia saw, broken in the middle, the open angle toward them.

"What does that mean?" she asked.

"It's the _patteran_," he replied, "and it points to the west road."

And so to the westward they went.