Bab Bab 27 · I. What becomes of the Old Stage-coaches.

. I. What becomes of the Old Stage-coaches.

COME to look closely at the vehicle, it was an old stage-coach all

of the olden time, upholstered in faded deep blue cloth, with those

enormous rough woollen balls which, after a few hours’ journey, finally

establish a raw spot in the small of your back.

Tartarin of Tarascon had a corner of the inside, where he installed

himself most free-and-easily: and, preliminarily to inspiring the rank

emanations of the great African felines, the hero had to content himself

with that homely old odour of the stage-coach, oddly composed of a

thousand smells, of man and woman, horses and harness, eatables and

mildewed straw.

There was a little of everything inside--a Trappist monk, some Jew

merchants, two fast ladies going to join their regiment, the Third

Hussars, a photographic artist from Orleansville, and so on. But,

however charming and varied was the company, the Tarasconian was not in

the mood for chatting; he remained quite thoughtful, with an arm in the

arm-rest sling-strap and his guns between his knees. All churned up his

wits--the precipitate departure, Baya’s eyes of jet, the terrible chase

he was about to undertake, to say nothing of this European coach; with

its Noah’s Ark aspect, rediscovered in the heart of Africa, vaguely

recalling the Tarascon of his youth, with its races in the suburbs,

jolly dinners on the river-side--a throng of memories, in short.

Gradually night came on. The guard lit up the lamps. The rusty diligence

danced creakingly on its old springs; the horses trotted and their bells

jangled. From time to time in the boot arose a dreadful clank of iron:

that was the war material.

Tartarin of Tarascon, nearly overcome, dwelt a moment scanning the

fellow-passengers, comically shaken by the jolts, and dancing before

him like the shadows in galanty-shows, till his eyes grew cloudy and his

mind befogged, and only vaguely he heard the wheels grind and the sides

of the conveyance squeak complainingly.

Suddenly a voice called Tartarin by his name, the voice of an old fairy

godmother, hoarse, broken, and cracked.

“Monsieur Tartarin!” three times.

“Who’s calling me?”

“It’s I, Monsieur Tartarin. Don’t you recognise me? I am the old

stage-coach who used to do the road betwixt Nimes and Tarascon twenty

year agone. How many times I have carried you and your friends when you

went to shoot at caps over Joncquieres or Bellegarde way! I did not know

you again at the first, on account of your Turk’s cap and the flesh you

have accumulated; but as soon as you began snoring--what a rascal is

good-luck!--I twigged you straight away.”

“All right, that’s all right enough!” observed the Tarasconian, a shade

vexed; but softening, he added, “But to the point, my poor old girl;

whatever did you come out here for?”

“Pooh! my good Monsieur Tartarin, I assure you I never came of my

own free will. As soon as the Beaucaire railway was finished I was

considered good for nought, and shipped away into Algeria. And I am not

the only one either! Bless you, next to all the old stage-coaches of

France have been packed off like me. We were regarded as too much the

conservative--‘the slow-coaches’--d’ye see, and now we are here

leading the life of a dog. This is what you in France call the Algerian

railways.”

Here the ancient vehicle heaved a long-drawn sigh before proceeding. “My

wheels and linchpin! Monsieur Tartarin, how I regret my lovely Tarascon!

That was the good time for me, when I was young!--You ought to have seen

me starting off in the morning, washed with no stint of water and all

a-shine, with my wheels freshly varnished, my lamps blazing like a brace

of suns, and my boot always rubbed up with oil! It was indeed lovely

when the postillion cracked his whip to the tune of ‘Lagadigadeou, the

Tarasque! the Tarasque!’ and the guard, his horn in its sling and laced

cap cocked well over one ear, chucking his little dog, always in a fury,

upon the top, climbed up himself with a shout: ‘Right-away!’

“Then would my four horses dash off to the medley of bells, barks, and

horn-blasts, and the windows fly open for all Tarascon to look with

pride upon the royal mail coach dart over the king’s highway.

“What a splendid road that was, Monsieur Tartarin, broad and well

kept, with its mile-stones, its little heaps of road-metal at regular

distances, and its pretty clumps of vines and olive-trees on either

hand! Then, again, the roadside inns so close together, and the changes

of horses every five minutes! And what jolly, honest chaps my patrons

were!--village mayors and parish priests going up to Nimes to see their

prefect or bishop, taffety-weavers returning openly from the Mazet,

collegians out on holiday leave, peasants in worked smock-frocks, all

fresh shaven for the occasion that morning; and up above, on the top,

you gentlemen-sportsmen, always in high spirits, and singing each your

own family ballad to the stars as you came back in the dark.

“Deary me! it’s a change of times now! Lord knows what rubbish I am

carting here, come from nobody guesses where! They fill me with small

deer, these negroes, Bedouin Arabs, swashbucklers, adventurers from

every land, and ragged settlers who poison me with their pipes, and all

jabbering a language that the Tower of Babel itself could make nothing

of! And, furthermore, you should see how they treat me--I mean, how they

never treat me: never a brush or a wash. They begrudge me grease for my

axles. Instead of my good fat quiet horses of other days, little Arab

ponies, with the devil in their frames, who fight and bite, caper

as they run like so many goats, and break my splatterboard all to

smithereens with their lashing out behind. Ouch! ouch! there they are at

it again!

“And such roads! Just here it is bearable, because we are near the

governmental headquarters; but out a bit there’s nothing, Monsieur--not

the ghost of a road at all. We get along as best we can over hill and

dale, over dwarf palms and mastic-trees. Ne’er a fixed change of horses,

the stopping being at the whim of the guard, now at one farm, again at

another.

“Somewhiles this rogue goes a couple of leagues out of the way to have

a glass of absinthe or champoreau with a chum. After which, ‘Crack on,

postillion!’ to make up for the lost time. Though the sun be broiling

and the dust scorching, we whip on! We catch in the scrub and spill

over, but whip on! We swim rivers, we catch cold, we get swamped, we

drown, but whip! whip! whip! Then in the evening, streaming--a nice

thing for my age, with my rheumatics--I have to sleep in the open air

of some caravanseral yard, open to all the winds. In the dead o’ night

jackals and hyaenas come sniffing of my body; and the marauders who

don’t like dews get into my compartment to keep warm.

“Such is the life I lead, my poor Monsieur Tartarin, and that I shall

lead to the day when--burnt up by the sun and rotted by the damp nights

until unable to do anything else, I shall fall in some spot of bad

road, where the Arabs will boil their kouskous with the bones of my old

carcass”--

“Blidah! Blidah!” called out the guard as he opened the door.