Part 2

"Some of them will," remarked Louis with a ruminating smile. "And it was a good season, you say, Lemois?" he continued; "lots of people shedding shekels and lots of tips for dear old Leà? That's the best part of it. And did they really order good things--the beggars?--or had you cleaned them out of their last franc on their first visit? Come now--how many Pêche-Flambées, for instance, have you served, Lemois, to the mob since July--and how many demoiselles de Cherbourg--those lovely little girl lobsters without claws?"

"Do you mean the on-shore species--those you find in the hotels at Trouville?" returned Lemois, rubbing his hands together, his thoughtful face alight with humor. "We have two varieties, you know, Monsieur Louis--the on-shore--the Trouville kind who always bring their claws with them--you can feel them under their kid gloves."

"Oh, let up!--let up!" retorted Louis. "I mean the kind we devour; not the kind who devour us."

"Same thing," remarked Herbert in his low, even tones from the depths of the chair, as he stretched a benumbed hand toward the fire. "It generally ends in a broil, whether it's a woman or a lobster."

Louis twisted his body and caught the sculptor by the lapel of his coat.

"None of your cheap wit, Herbert! Marc, the lunatic, would have said that and thought it funny--you can't afford to. Move up, I tell you, you bloated mud-dauber, and give me more room; you'd spread yourself over two chairs with four heads on their corners if you could fill them."

Whereupon there followed one of those good-natured rough-and-tumble dog-plays which the two had kept up through their whole friendship. Indeed, a wrestling match started it. Herbert, then known to the world as an explorer and writer, was studying at Julien's at the time. Louis, who was also a pupil, was off in Holland painting. Their fellow students, noting Herbert's compact physique, had bided the hour until the two men should meet, and it was when the room looked as if a cyclone had struck it--with Herbert on top one moment and Louis the next--that the friendship began. The big-hearted Louis, too, was the first to recognize his comrade's genius as a sculptor. Herbert had a wad of clay sent home from which he modelled an elephant. This was finally tossed into a corner. There it lay a shapeless mass until his conscience smote him and the whole was transformed into a Congo boy. Louis insisted it should be sent to the Salon, and thus the explorer, writer, and painter became the sculptor. And so the friendship grew and strengthened with the years. Since then both men had won their gold medals at the Salon--Louis two and Herbert two.

The same old dog-play was now going on before the cheery fire, Louis scrouging and pushing, Herbert extending his muscles and standing pat--either of them could have held the other clear of the floor at arm's length--Herbert, all his sinews in place, ready for any move of his antagonist; Louis, a Hercules in build, breathing health and strength at every pore.

Suddenly the tussle in the chair ceased and the young painter, wrenching himself loose, sprang to his feet.

"By thunder!" he cried, "I forgot all about it! Have you heard the news? Hats off and dead silence while I tell it! Lemois, stop that confounded racket with your dishes and listen! Let me present you to His Royal Highness, Monsieur Herbert, the Gold Medallist--his second!" and he made a low salaam to the sculptor stretched out in the Florentine. He was never so happy as when extolling Herbert's achievements.

"Oh, I know all about it!" laughed back Lemois. "Le Blanc was here before breakfast the next morning with the _Figaro_. It was your African--am I not right, Monsieur Herbert?--the big black man with the dagger--the one I saw in the clay? Fine!--no dryads, no satyrs nor demons--just the ego of the savage. And why should you not have won the medal?" he added in serious tones that commanded instant attention. "Who among our sculptors--men who make the clay obey them--know the savage as you do? And to think, too, of your being here after your triumph, under the roof of my Marmouset. Do you know that its patron saint is another African explorer--the first man who ever set foot on its western shores--none other than the great Bethencourt himself? He was either from Picardy or Normandy--the record is not clear--and on one of his voyages--this, remember, was in the fifteenth century, the same period in which the stone chimney over your heads was built--he captured and brought home with him some little black dwarfs who became very fashionable. You see them often later on in the prints and paintings of the time, following behind the balloon petticoats and high headdresses of the great ladies. After a time they became a regular article of trade, these marmots, and there is still a street in Paris called 'The Marmouset.' So popular were they that Charles VI is said to have had a ministry composed of five of these little rascals. So, when you first showed me your clay sketch of your African, I said--'Ah! here is the spirit of Bethencourt! This Monsieur Herbert is Norman, not English; he has brought the savage of old to light, the same savage that Bethencourt saw--the savage that lived and fought and died before our cultivated moderns vulgarized him.' That was a glorious thing to do, messieurs, if you will think about it"--and he looked around the circle, his eyes sparkling, his small body alive with enthusiasm.

Herbert extended his palms in protest, muttering something about parts of the statue not satisfying him and its being pretty bad in spots, if Lemois did but know it, thanking him at the same time for comparing him to so great a man as Bethencourt; but his undaunted admirer kept on without a pause, his voice quivering with pride: "The primitive man demanding of civilization his right to live! Ah! that is a new motive in art, my friends!"

"Hear him go on!" cried Louis, settling himself again on the arm of Herbert's chair; "talks like a critic. Gentlemen, the distinguished Monsieur Lemois will now address you on----"

Lemois turned and bowed profoundly.

"Better than a critic, Monsieur Louis. They only see the outside of things. Pray don't rob Monsieur Herbert of his just rights or try to lean on him; take a whole chair to yourself and keep still a moment. You are like your running water--you----"

"Not a bit like it," broke in Herbert, glad to turn the talk away from himself. "His water sometimes reflects--he never does."

"Ah!--but he does reflect," protested Lemois with a comical shrug; "but it is always upsidedown. When you stand upsidedown your money is apt to run out of your pockets; when you think upsidedown your brains run out in the same way."

"But what would you have me do, Lemois?" expostulated Louis, regaining his feet that he might the better parry the thrust. "Get out into your garden and mount a pedestal?"

"Not at this season, you dear Monsieur Louis; it is too cold. Oh!--never would I be willing to shock any of my beautiful statues in that way. You would look very ugly on a pedestal; your shoulders are too big and your arms are like a blacksmith's, and then you would smash all my flowers getting up. No--I would have you do nothing and be nothing but your delightful and charming self. This room of mine, the 'Little Dwarf,' is built for laughter, and you have plenty of it. And now, gentlemen"--he was the landlord once more--both elbows uptilted in a shrug, his shoulders level with his ears--"at what time shall we serve dinner?"

"Not until Brierley comes," I interposed after we were through laughing at Louis' discomfiture. "He is due now--the Wigwag train from Pont du Sable ought to be in any minute."

"Is Marc coming with him?" asked Herbert, pushing his chair back from the crackling blaze.

"No--Marc can't get here until late. He's fallen in love for the hundredth time. Some countess or duchess, I understand--he is staying at her château, or was. Not far from here, so he told Le Blanc."

"Was walking past her garden gate," broke in Louis, "squinting at her flowers, no doubt, when she asked him in to tea--or is it another Fontainebleau affair?"

"That's one love affair of Marc's I never heard of," remarked Herbert, with one of his meaning smiles, which always remind me of the lambent light flashed by a glowworm, irradiating but never creasing the surface as they play over his features.

"Well, that wasn't Marc's fault--you _would_ have heard of it had he been around. He talked of nothing else. The idiot left Paris one morning, put ten francs in his pocket--about all he had--and went over to Fontainebleau for the day. Posted up at that railroad station was a notice, signed by a woman, describing a lost dog. Later on Marc came across a piece of rope with the dog on one end and a boy on the other. An hour later he presented himself at madame's villa, the dog at his heels. There was a cry of joy as her arms clasped the prodigal. Then came a deluge of thanks. The gratitude of the poor lady so overcame Marc that he spent every sou he had in his clothes for flowers, sent them to her with his compliments and walked back to Paris, and for a month after every franc he scraped together went the same way. He never called--never wrote her any letters--just kept on sending flowers; never getting any thanks either, for he never gave her his address. Oh, he's a Cap and Bells when there's a woman around!"

A shout outside sent every man to his feet; the door was flung back and a setter dog bounded in followed by the laughing face of a man who looked twenty-five of his forty years. He was clad in a leather shooting-jacket and leggings, spattered to his hips with mud, and carried a double-barrelled breech-loading gun. Howls of derision welcomed him.

"Oh!--what a spectacle!" cried Louis. "Don't let Brierley sit down, High-Muck, until he's scrubbed! Go and scrape yourself, you ruffian--you are the worst looking dog of the two."

The Man from the Latin Quarter, as he is often called, clutched his gun like a club, made a mock movement as if to brain the speaker, then rested it tenderly and with the greatest care against one corner of the fireplace.

"Sorry, High-Muck, but I couldn't help it. I'd have missed your dinner if I had gone back to my bungalow for clothes. I've been out on the marsh since sunup and got cut off by the tide. Down with you, Peter! Let him thaw out a little, Herbert; he's worked like a beaver all day, and all we got were three plover and a becassine. I left them with Pierre as I came in. Didn't see a duck--haven't seen one for a week. Wait until I get rid of this," and he stripped off his outer jacket and flung it at Louis, who caught it with one hand and, picking up the tongs, held the garment from him until he had deposited it in the far corner of the room.

"Haven't had hold of you, Herbert, since the gold medal," the hunter resumed. "Shake!" and the two pressed each other's hands. "I thought 'The Savage' would win--ripping stuff up and down the back, and the muscles of the legs, and he stands well. I think it's your high-water mark--thought so when I saw it in the clay. By Jove!--I'm glad to get here! The wind has hauled to the eastward and it's getting colder every minute."

"Cold, are you, old man!" condoled Louis. "Why don't you look out for your fire, High-Muck? Little Brierley's half frozen, he says. Hold on!--stay where you are; I'll put on another log. Of course, you're half frozen! When I went by your marsh a little while ago the gulls were flying close inshore as if they were hunting for a stove. Not a fisherman fool enough to dig bait as far as I could see."

Brierley nodded assent, loosened his under coat of corduroy, searched in an inside pocket for a pipe, and drew his chair nearer, his knees to the blaze.

"I don't blame them," he shivered; "mighty sensible bait-diggers. The only two fools on the beach were Peter and I; we've been on a sand spit for five hours in a hole I dug at daylight, and it was all we could do to keep each other warm--wasn't it, old boy?" (Peter, coiled up at his feet, cocked an ear in confirmation.) "Where's Marc, Le Blanc, and the others--upstairs?"

"Not yet," replied Herbert. "Marc expects to turn up, so he wired High-Muck, but I'll believe it when he gets here. Another case of Romeo and Juliet, so Louis says. Le Blanc promises to turn up after dinner. Louis, you are nearest--get a fresh glass and move that decanter this way,--Brierley is as cold as a frog."

"No--stay where you are, Louis," cried the hunter. "I'll wait until I get something to eat--hot soup is what I want, not cognac. I say, High-Muck, when are we going to have dinner? I'm concave from my chin to my waistband; haven't had a crumb since I tumbled out of bed this morning in the pitch dark."

"Expect it every minute. Here comes Leà now with the soup and Mignon with hot plates."

Louis caught sight of the two women, backed himself against the jamb of the fireplace, and opened wide his arms.

"Make way, gentlemen!" he cried. "Behold the lost saint--our Lady of the Sabots!--and the adorable Mademoiselle Mignon! I kiss the tips of your fingers, mademoiselle. And now tell me where that fisher-boy is--that handsome young fellow Gaston I heard about when I was last here. What have you done with him? Has he drowned himself because you wouldn't be called in church, or is he saving up his sous to put a new straw thatch on his mother's house so there will be room for two more?"

Pretty Mignon blushed scarlet and kept straight on to the serving-table without daring to answer--Gaston was a tender subject to her, almost as tender as Mignon was to Gaston--but Leà, after depositing the tureen at the top of the table, made a little bob of a curtsy, first to Herbert and then to Louis and Brierley--thanking them for coming, and adding, in her quaint Normandy French, that she would have gone home a month since had not the master told her of our coming.

"And have broken our hearts, you lovely old gargoyle!" laughed Louis. "Don't you dare leave the Inn. They are getting on very well at the church without you. Come, Herbert, down with you in the old Florentine. I'll sit next so I can keep all three wooden heads in order," and he wheeled the chair into place.

"Now, Leà--the soup!"

III

WITH SPECIAL REFERENCE TO A CERTAIN COLONY OF PENGUINS

Lemois, as was his custom, came in with the coffee. He serves it himself, and always with the same little ceremony, which, while apparently unimportant, marks that indefinable, mysterious line which he and his ancestry--innkeepers before him--have invariably maintained between those who wait and those who are waited upon. First, a small spider-legged mahogany table is wheeled up between the circle and the fire, on which Leà places a silver coffee-pot of Mignon's best; then some tiny cups and saucers, and a sugar-dish of odd design--they said it belonged to Marie Antoinette--is laid beside them. Thereupon Lemois gravely seats himself and the rite begins, he talking all the time--one of us and yet aloof--much as would a neighbor across a fence who makes himself agreeable but who has not been given the run of your house.

To the group's delight, however, he was as much a part of the coterie as if he had taken the fifth chair, left vacant for the always late Marc, who had not yet put in an appearance, and a place we would have insisted upon his occupying, despite his intended isolation, but for a certain look in the calm eyes and a certain dignity of manner which forbade any such encroachments on his reserve.

To-night he was especially welcome. Thanks to his watchful care we had dined well--Pierre having outdone himself in a pigeon pie--and that quiet, restful contentment which follows a good dinner, beside a warm fire and under the glow of slow-burning candles, had taken possession of us.

"A wonderful pie, Lemois--a sublime, never-to-be-forgotten pie!" exclaimed Louis, voicing our sentiments. "Every one of those pigeons went straight to heaven when they died."

"Ah!--it pleased you then, Monsieur Louis? I will tell Pierre--he will be so happy."

"Pleased!" persisted the enthusiastic painter. "Why, I can think of no better end--no higher ambition--for a well-brought-up pigeon than being served hot in one of Pierre's pies. Tell him so for me--I am speaking as a pigeon, of course."

"What do you think the pigeon himself would have said to Pierre before his neck was wrung?" asked Herbert, leaning back in his big chair. "Thank you--only one lump, Lemois."

"By Jove!--why didn't I ask the bird?--it might have been illuminating--and I speak a little pigeon-English, you know. Doubtless he would have told me he preferred being riddled with shot at a match and crawling away under a hedge to die, to being treated as a common criminal--the neck-twisting part, I mean. Why do you want to know, Herbert?"

"Oh, nothing; only I sometimes think--if you will forgive me for being serious--that there is another side to the whole question; though I must also send my thanks to Pierre for the pie."

That one of their old good-natured passages at arms was coming became instantly apparent--tilts that every one enjoyed, for Herbert talked as he modelled--never any fumbling about for a word; never any uncertainty nor vagueness--always a direct and convincing sureness of either opinion or facts, and always the exact and precise truth. He would no sooner have exaggerated a statement than he would have added a hair's-breadth of clay to a muscle. Louis, on the other hand, talked as he painted--with the same breeze and verve and the same wholesome cheer and sanity which have made both himself and his brush so beloved. When Herbert, therefore, took up the cudgels for the cooked pigeon, none of us were surprised to hear the hilarious painter break out with:

"Stop talking such infernal rot, Herbert, and move the matches this way. How could there be another side? What do you suppose beef and mutton were put into the world for except to feed the higher animal, man?"

"But _is_ man higher?" returned Herbert quietly, in his low, incisive voice, passing Louis the box. "I know I'm the last fellow in the world, with my record as a hunter--and I'm sometimes ashamed of it--to advance any such theory, but as I grow older I see things in a different light, and the animal's point of view is one of them."

"Pity you didn't come to that conclusion before you plastered your studio with the skins of the poor devils you murdered," he chuckled, winking at Lemois.

"That was because I didn't know any better--or, rather, because I didn't _think_ any better," retorted Herbert. "When we are young, we delude ourselves with all sorts of fallacies, saying that things have always been as they are since the day of Nimrod; but isn't it about time to let our sympathies have wider play, and to look at the brute's side of the question? Take a captive polar bear, for instance. It must seem to him to be the height of injustice to be hunted down like a man-eating tiger, sold into slavery, and condemned to live in a steel cage and in a climate that murders by slow suffocation. The poor fellow never injured anybody; has always lived out of everybody's way; preyed on nothing that robbed any man of a meal, and was as nearly harmless, unless attacked, as any beast of his size the world over. I know a case in point, and often go to see him. He didn't tell me his story--his keeper did--though he might have done so had I understood bear-talk as well as Louis understands pigeon-English," and a challenging smile played over the speaker's face.

"You ought to have stepped inside and passed the time of day with him. They wouldn't have fed him on anything but raw sculptor for a month."

Herbert fanned his fingers toward Louis in good-humored protest, and kept on, his voice becoming unusually grave.

"They wanted, it seems, a polar bear at the Zoo, because all zoos have them, and this one must keep up with the procession. It would be inspiring and educating for the little children on Sunday afternoons--and so the thirty pieces of silver were raised. The chase began among the icebergs in a steam-launch. The father and mother in their soft white overcoats--the two baby bears in powder-puff furs--were having a frolic on a cake of floating ice when the strange craft surprised them. The mother bear tucked the babies behind her and pulled herself together to defend them with her life--and did--until she was bowled over by a rifle ball which went crashing through her skull. The father bear fought on as long as he could, dodging the lasso, encouraging the babies to hurry--sweeping them ahead of him into the water, swimming behind, urging them on, until the three reached the next cake. But the churning devil of a steam launch kept after them--two armed men in the bow, one behind with the lariat. Another plunge--only one baby now--a staggering lope along the edge of the floe, the little tot tumbling, scuffling to its feet; crying in terror at being left behind--doing the best it could to keep up. Then only the gaunt, panic-stricken, shambling father bear--slower and slower--the breath almost out of him. Another plunge--a shriek of the siren--a twist of the rudder--the lasso curls in the air, the launch backs water, the line tautens, there is a great swirl of foam broken by lumps of rocking ice, and the dull, heavy crawl back to the ship begins, the bear in tow, his head just above the water. Then the tackle is strapped about his girth, the 'Lively now, my lads!' rings out in the Arctic air, and he is hauled up the side and dumped half dead on deck, his tongue out, his eyes shot with blood.

"You can see him any day at the Zoo--the little children's noses pressed against the iron bars of his cage. They call him 'dear old Teddy bear,' and throw him cakes and candies, which he sniffs at and turns over with his great paw. As for me, I confess that whenever I stand before his cage I always wonder what he thinks of the two-legged beasts who are responsible for it all--his conscience being clear and neither crime, injustice, nor treachery being charged against him. Yes, there are two sides to this question, although, as Louis has said, it might have been just as well to have thought about it before. Speak up, Lemois, am I right or wrong? You have something on your mind; I see it in your eyes."

"It's more likely on his stomach," interrupted Louis; "the pigeon may have set too heavy."

"You are more than right, Monsieur Herbert," Lemois answered in measured tones, ignoring the painter's aside. He was stirring his cup as he spoke, the light of the fire making a silhouette of his body from where I sat. "For your father bear, as you call him, I have every sympathy; but I do not have to go to the North Pole to express what we owe to animals. I bring the matter to my very door, and I tell you from my heart that if I had my way there would never be anything served in my house which suffered in the killing--not even a pigeon."

Everybody looked up in astonishment, wondering where the joke came in, but our landlord was gravity itself. "In fact," he went on, "I believe the day will come when nothing will be killed for food--not even your dear demoiselle de Cherbourg, Monsieur Louis. Adam and Eve got on very well without cutlets or broiled squab, and yet we must admit they raised a goodly race. I, myself, look forward to the time when nothing but vegetables and fruit, with cheese, milk, and eggs, will be eaten by men and women of refinement. When that time comes the butcher will go as entirely out of fashion as has the witch-burner and, in many parts of the world, the hangman."

"But what are you going to do with Brierley, who can't enjoy his morning coffee until he has bagged half a dozen ducks on his beloved marsh?" cried Louis, tossing the stump of his cigar into the fire.