Part 30

A cloud overspread the battered man's features. He had a wife and five children and played in theatre orchestras. At the present time he was trombone in the "Tournée Gulland," a touring opera company. It was not gay for a sensitive artist like him, and the trombone gave one a thirst which it took half a week's salary to satisfy. Mais enfin, que veux-tu? It was life, a dog's life, but life was like that. Aristide, he supposed, was making a fortune. Aristide threw back his head, and laughed at the exquisite humour of the hypothesis, and gaily disclosed his Micawberish situation. Roulard sat for a while thoughtful and silent. Presently a ray of inspiration dispelled the cloud from the features of the battered man.

"Tiens, mon vieux," said he, "I have an idea."

It was an idea worthy of Aristide's consideration. The drum of the Tournée Gulland had been dismissed for drunkenness. The vacancy had not been filled. Various executants who had drummed on approval--this being an out-week of the tour--had driven the chef d'orchestre to the verge of homicidal mania. Why should not Aristide, past master in drumming, find an honourable position in the orchestra of the Tournée Gulland?

Aristide's eyes sparkled, his fingers itched for the drumsticks, he started to his feet.

"Mon vieux Roulard!" he cried, "you have saved my life. More than that, you have resuscitated an artist. Yes, an artist. Sacré nom de Dieu! Take me to this chef d'orchestre."

So Roulard, when the hour of rehearsal drew nigh, conducted Aristide to the murky recesses of a dirty little theatre in the Batignolles, where Aristide performed such prodigies of repercussion that he was forthwith engaged to play the drum, the kettle-drum, the triangle, the cymbals, the castagnettes and the tambourine, in the orchestra of the Tournée Gulland at the dazzling salary of thirty francs a week.

To tell how Aristide drummed and cymballed the progress of Les Huguenots, Carmen, La Juive, La Fille de Madame Angot and L'Arlésienne through France would mean the rewriting of a "Capitaine Fracasse." To hear the creature talk about it makes my mouth as a brick kiln and my flesh as that of a goose. He was the Adonis, the Apollo, the Don Juan, the Irresistible of the Tournée. Fled truculent bass and haughty tenor before him; from diva to moustachioed contralto in the chorus, all the ladies breathlessly watched for the fall of his handkerchief; he was recognized, in fact, as a devil of a fellow. But in spite of these triumphs, the manipulation of the drum, kettle-drum, triangle, cymbals, castagnettes and tambourine, which at first had given him intense and childish delight, at last became invested with a mechanical monotony that almost drove him mad. All day long the thought of the ill-lit corner, on the extreme right of the orchestra, garnished with the accursed instruments of noise to which duty would compel him at eight o'clock in the evening hung over him like a hideous doom. Sweet singers of the female sex were powerless to console. He passed them by, and haughty tenor and swaggering basso again took heart of grace.

"Mais, mon Dieu, c'est le métier!" expostulated Roulard.

"Sale métier!" cried Aristide, who was as much fitted for the merciless routine of a theatre orchestra as a quagga for the shafts of an omnibus. "A beast of a trade! One is no longer a man. One is just an automatic system of fog-signals!"

In this depraved state of mind he arrived at Perpignan, where that befell him which I am about to relate.

Now, Perpignan is the last town of France on the Gulf of Lions, a few miles from the Spanish border. From it you can see the great white monster of Le Canigou, the pride of the Eastern Pyrenees, far, far away, blocking up the valley of the Tet, which flows sluggishly past the little town. The Quai Sadi-Carnot (is there a provincial town in France which has not a something Sadi-Carnot in it?) is on the left bank of the Tet; at one end is the modern Place Arago, at the other Le Castillet, a round, castellated red-brick fortress with curiously long and deep machicolations of the 14th century with some modern additions of Louis XI, who also built the adjoining Porte Notre Dame which gives access to the city. Between the Castillet and the Place Arago, the Quai Sadi-Carnot is the site of the Prefecture, the Grand Hôtel, various villas and other resorts of the aristocracy. Any little street off it will lead you into the seething centre of Perpignan life--the Place de la Loge, which is a great block of old buildings surrounded on its four sides by narrow streets of shops, cafés, private houses, all with balconies and jalousies, all cramped, crumbling, Spanish, picturesque. The oldest of this conglomerate block is a corner building, the Loge de Mer, a thirteenth century palace, the cloth exchange in the glorious days when Perpignan was a seaport and its merchant princes traded with Sultans and Doges and such-like magnificoes of the Mediterranean. But nowadays its glory has departed. Below the great gothic windows spreads the awning of a café, which takes up all the ground floor. Hugging it tight is the Mairie, and hugging that, the Hôtel de Ville. Hither does every soul in the place, at some hour or other of the day, inevitably gravitate. Lawyers and clients, doctors and patients, merchants, lovers, soldiers, market-women, loafers, horses, dogs, wagons, all crowd in a noisy medley the narrow cobble-paved streets around the Loge. Of course there are other streets, tortuous, odorous and cool, intersecting the old town, and there are various open spaces, one of which is the broad market square on one side flanked by the Théâtre Municipal.

From the theatre Aristide Pujol issued one morning after rehearsal, and, leaving his colleagues, including the ever-thirsty Roulard, to refresh themselves at a humble café hard by, went forth in search of distraction. He idled about the Place de la Loge, passed the time of day with a café waiter until the latter, with a disconcerting "Voilà! Voilà!" darted off to attend to a customer, and then strolled through the Porte Notre Dame onto the Quai Sadi-Carnot. There a familiar sound met his ears--the roll of a drum followed by an incantation in a quavering, high-pitched voice. It was the Town Crier, with whom, as with a brother artist, he had picked acquaintance the day before.

They met by the parapet of the Quai, just as Père Bracasse had come to the end of his incantation. The old man, grizzled, tanned and seamed, leant weakly against the parapet.

"How goes it, Père Bracasse?"

"Alas, mon bon Monsieur, it goes from bad to worse," sighed the old man. "I am at the end of my strength. My voice has gone and the accursed rheumatism in my shoulder gives me atrocious pain whenever I beat the drum."

"How much more of your round have you to go?" asked Aristide.

"I have only just begun," said Père Bracasse.

The Southern sun shone from a cloudless sky; a light, keen wind blowing from the distant snow-clad Canigou set the blood tingling. A lunatic idea flashed through Aristide's mind. He whipped the drum strap over the old man's head.

"Père Bracasse," said he, "you are suffering from rheumatism, bronchitis, fever and corns, and you must go home to bed. I will finish your round for you. Listen," and he beat such a tattoo as Père Bracasse had never accomplished in his life. "Where are your words?"

The old man, too weary to resist and fascinated by Aristide's laughing eyes, handed him a dirty piece of paper. Aristide read, played a magnificent roll and proclaimed in a clarion voice that a gold bracelet having been lost on Sunday afternoon in the Avenue des Platanes, whoever would deposit it at the Mairie would receive a reward.

"That's all?" he enquired.

"That's all," said Père Bracasse. "I live in the Rue Petite-de-la-Réal, No. 4, and you will bring me back the drum when you have finished."

Aristide darted off like a dragon-fly in the sunshine, as happy as a child with a new toy. Here he could play the drum to his heart's content with no score or conductor's bâton to worry him. He was also the one and only personage in the drama, concentrating on himself the attention of the audience. He pitied poor Roulard, who could never have such an opportunity with his trombone....

The effect of his drumming before the Café de la Loge was electric. Shopkeepers ran out of their shops, housewives craned over their balconies to listen to him. By the time he had threaded the busy strip of the town and emerged on to the Place Arago he had collected an admiring train of urchins. On the Place Arago he halted on the fringe of a crowd surrounding a cheap-jack whose vociferations he drowned in a roll of thunder. He drummed and drummed till he became the centre of the throng. Then he proclaimed the bracelet. He had not enjoyed himself so much since he left Paris.

He was striding away, merry-eyed and happy, followed by his satellites when a prosperous-looking gentleman with a very red face, a prosperous roll of fat above the back of his collar, and the ribbon of the Legion of Honour in his buttonhole, descending the steps of the great glass-covered café commanding the Place, hurried up and laid his finger on his arm.

"Pardon, my friend," said he, "what are you doing there?"

"You shall hear, monsieur," replied Aristide, clutching the drumsticks.

"For the love of Heaven!" cried the other hastily interrupting. "Tell me what are you doing?"