"I am Jean Courtray, Carillonneur of Sainte Lesse.... Have you never heard of the carillon of Sainte Lesse, or of me?"

"Never," said Burley. "We don't have anything like that in America."

The old carillonneur, Jean Courtray, began to speak in a low voice of his art, his profession, and of the great carillon of forty-six bells in the ancient tower of Sainte Lesse.

A carillon, he explained, is a company of fixed bells tuned according to the chromatic scale and ranging through several octaves. These bells, rising tier above tier in a belfry, the smallest highest, the great, ponderous bells of the ba.s.s notes lowest, are not free to swing, but are fixed to huge beams, and are sounded by clappers connected by a wilderness of wires to a keyboard which is played upon by the bell-master or carillonneur.

He explained that the office of bell-master was an ancient one and greatly honoured; that the bell-master was also a member of the munic.i.p.al government; that his salary was a fixed one; that not only did he play upon the carillon on fete days, market days, and particular occasions, but he also travelled and gave concerts upon the few existing carillons of other ancient towns and cities, not alone in France where carillons were few, but in Belgium and Holland, where they still were comparatively many, although the German barbarians had destroyed some of the best at Liege, Arras, Dixmude, Termonde, and Ypres.

"Monsieur," he went on in a voice which began to grow a little unsteady, "the Huns have destroyed the ancient carillons of Louvain and of Mechlin.

In the superb bell-tower of Saint Rombold I have played for a thousand people; and the Carillonneur, Monsieur Vincent, and the great bell-master, Josef Denyn, have come to me to congratulate me with tears in their eyes--in their eyes----"

There were tears in his own now, and he bent his white head and looked down at the worn floor under his crippled feet.

"Alas," he said, "for Denyn--and for Saint Rombold's tower. The Hun has pa.s.sed that way."

After a silence:

"Who is it now plays the carillon in Sainte Lesse!" asked Burley.

"My daughter, Maryette. Sainte Lesse has honoured me in my daughter, whom I myself instructed. My daughter--the little child of my old age, monsieur--is mistress of the bells of Sainte Lesse.... They call her Carillonnette in Sainte Lesse----"

The door opened and the girl came in.

CHAPTER XV

CARILLONETTE

Sticky Smith and Kid Glenn remained a week at Sainte Lesse, then left with the negroes for Calais to help bring up another cargo of mules, the arrival of which was daily expected.

A peloton of the Train-des-Equipages and three Remount troopers arrived at Sainte Lesse to take over the corral. John Burley remained to explain and interpret the American mule to these perplexed troopers.

Morning, noon, and night he went clanking down to the corral, his cartridge belt and holster swinging at his hip. But sometimes he had a little leisure.

Sainte Lesse knew him as a mighty eater and as a l.u.s.ty drinker of good red wine; as a mighty and garrulous talker, too, he became known, ready to accost anybody in the quiet and subdued old town and explode into French at the slightest encouragement.

But Burley had only women and children and old men on whom to practice his earnest and voluble French, for everybody else was at the front.

Children adored him--adored his big, silver spurs, his cartridge belt and pistol, the metal mule decorating his tunic collar, his six feet two of height, his quick smile, the even white teeth and grayish eyes of this American muleteer, who always had a stick of barley sugar to give them or an amazing trick to perform for them with a handkerchief or coin that vanished under their very noses at the magic snap of his finger.

Old men gossiped willingly with him; women liked him and their rare smiles in the war-sobered town of Sainte Lesse were often for him as he sauntered along the quiet street, clanking, swaggering, affable, ready for conversation with anybody, and always ready for the small, confident hands that unceremoniously clasped his when he pa.s.sed by where children played.

As for Maryette Courtray, called Carillonnette, she mounted the bell-tower once every hour, from six in the morning until nine o'clock in the evening, to play the pa.s.sing of Time toward that eternity into which it is always and ceaselessly moving.

After nine o'clock Carillonnette set the drum and wound it; and through the dark hours of the night the bells played mechanically every hour for a few moments before Bayard struck.

Between these duties the girl managed the old inn, to which, since the war, n.o.body came any more--and with these occupations her life was full--sufficiently full, perhaps, without the advent of John Burley.

They met with enough frequency for her, if not for him. Their encounters took place between her duties aloft at the keyboard under the successive tiers of bells and his intervals of prowling among his mules.

Sometimes he found her sewing in the parlour--she could have gone to her own room, of course; sometimes he encountered her in the corridor, in the street, in the walled garden behind the inn, where with basket and pan she gathered vegetables in season.

There was a stone seat out there, built against the southern wall, and in the shadowed coolness of it she sometimes sh.e.l.led peas.

During such an hour of liberty from the bell-tower he found the dark-eyed little mistress of the bells sorting various vegetables and singing under her breath to herself the carillon music of Josef Denyn.

"Tray chick, mademoiselle," he said, with a cheerful self-a.s.sertion, to hide the embarra.s.sment which always a.s.sailed him when he encountered her.

"You know, Monsieur Burley, you should not say '_tres chic_' to me," she said, shaking her pretty head. "It sounds a little familiar and a little common."

"Oh," he exclaimed, very red. "I thought it was the thing to say."

She smiled, continuing to sh.e.l.l the peas, then, with her sensitive and slightly flushed face still lowered, she looked at him out of her dark blue eyes.

"Sometimes," she said, "young men say '_tres chic_.' It depend on when and how one says it."

"Are there times when it is all right for me to say it?" he inquired.

"Yes, I think so.... How are your mules today?"

"The same," he said, "--ready to bite or kick or eat their heads off. The Remount took two hundred this morning."

"I saw them pa.s.s," said the girl. "I thought perhaps you also might be departing."

"Without coming to say good-bye--to _you_!" he stammered.

"Oh, conventions must be disregarded in time of war," she returned carelessly, continuing to sh.e.l.l peas. "I really thought I saw you riding away with the mules."

"That man," said Burley, much hurt, "was a bow-legged driver of the Train-des-Equipages. I don't think he resembles me."

As she made no comment and expressed no contrition for her mistake, he gazed about him at the sunny garden with a depressed expression. However, this changed presently to a bright and hopeful one.

"Vooz ate tray, tray belle, mademoiselle!" he a.s.serted cheerfully.

"Monsieur!" Vexed perhaps as much at her own quick blush as his abrupt eulogy, she bit her lip and looked at him with an ominously level gaze.

Then, suddenly, she smiled.

"Monsieur Burley, one does _not_ so express one's self without reason, without apropos, without--without encouragement----"

She blushed again, vividly. Under her wide straw hat her delicate, sensitive face and dark blue eyes were beautiful enough to inspire eulogy in any young man.

"Pardon," he said, confused by her reprimand and her loveliness. "I shall hereafter only _think_ you are pretty, mademoiselle--mais je ne le dirais ploo."