CHAPTER XIXCONCERNING A HANDKERCHIEF

“‘Fortunatus et ille, Deos qui novit agrestes,Panaque, Silvanumque senem, Nymphasque sorores!Illum non populi fasces, non purpura regumFlexit, et infidos agitans discordia fratres;’—

“‘Fortunatus et ille, Deos qui novit agrestes,

Panaque, Silvanumque senem, Nymphasque sorores!

Illum non populi fasces, non purpura regum

Flexit, et infidos agitans discordia fratres;’—

that line might almost apply to the Princes—

‘Aut conjurato descendens Dacus ab Istro’

—the Austrians to the life!

‘Non res Romano, perituraque regna.’

How extraordinarily apt a passage, citizen!”

It was, had it been true that agricultural delights had really banished political cares from the mind of his hearer. But the citation appeared to the Marquis a possible trap, and he preferred not to comment on it. The old man, however, turned the page and proceeded along a further stretch of delicate ground.

“Listen to this, citizen. Would you not say that Virgil was writing of the Assembly and theémigrés?

‘Hic stupet attonitus rostris: hunc plausus hiantemPer cuneos (geminatus enim plebisque patrumque)Corripuit:’

‘Hic stupet attonitus rostris: hunc plausus hiantem

Per cuneos (geminatus enim plebisque patrumque)

Corripuit:’

—Vergniaud, or whom you like—

‘gaudent perfusi sanguine fratrum,’—

may it not come to that! But listen—this is Coblentz:

‘Exilioque demos et dulcia limina mutant,Atque alio patriam quaerunt sub sole jacentem.’”

‘Exilioque demos et dulcia limina mutant,

Atque alio patriam quaerunt sub sole jacentem.’”

The reader looked up, and albeit Gilbert was quite innocent of any intention of seeking a country lying under another sun after the manner of theémigrés, he was not sure that his kindly-looking vis-à-vis, with his shrewd spectacled eyes, had not some suspicion of him. His uneasiness was not shared by Louis, who, as M. des Graves truly said, had forgotten his Virgil, and who was covertly yawning. The Marquis endeavoured to show an interest which should not commit him to any opinion on these interpretations.

“Very remarkable, very,” said the reader, shaking his head. He closed theGeorgics, took a long look at Château-Foix, and said: “You would be doing me a great favour, citizen, if you would tell me again about that English plan of sowing beans and clover—was it not?—alternately with wheat.”

Considerably relieved at forsaking so dangerous an exegesis, Gilbert readily complied with this request. It transpired in the course of a long conversation that the old man was by profession an apothecary at Mortagne, but that he had a little country house, with some land, near Verneuil, to which it was his joy to retreat from time to time, and where, indeed, he hoped shortly to retire for good. His name was Maillard; the girls who had seen him off were his sister’s children, who, with their mother, lived at Verneuil. This information, and much more on his horticultural successes and failures, he tendered simply and agreeably; asked no inconvenient questions, and forced Gilbert to tell no lies—except that, referring once to the bored Louis as “your friend,” he had to be corrected, and begged Gilbert’s pardon. Thus the miles of hillier country between Tourouvre and Mortagne passed, and at about eight in the evening they reached their destination.

“To what inn would you recommend us to go?” asked the Marquis, as, leaving Louis to bring forth the cabbages, he helped M. Maillard out with his basket, his pumpkin, and his nosegay.

The apothecary gave him a sudden glance so keen that Gilbert was startled. “Anywhere but to the Croix Blanche,” he said. “I would not recommend that. Thank you; my boy, here, will carry these things.Bon voyage,citizen, and a thousand thanks for your agreeable and instructive conversation.” He shook hands warmly, and trotted off.

“Good Lord!” exclaimed Louis, stretching himself, “I thought he was going to bestow the pumpkin on you. I want my supper; don’t you, after talking so much?”

But supper was not easy to find. Mortagne had been holding one of its big horse-fairs, and was very full. Two inns in succession refused them, and they were told that there was but one other—the Croix Blanche. Towards this the travelers bent their steps, not in very good humour.

“This comes of my having lost the baggage,” sighed the Vicomte. “They think we are tramps.”

“There’s one thing you don’t look like,” retorted Gilbert, “and that’s a servant. You see, it never occurred to that old man that you were one.”

“It shows his perspicacity,” returned Louis airily. “And for that I forgive him his boring conversation on potatoes. And—the deuce! isn’t this his shop?”

They stopped involuntarily and glanced in. The proprietor was behind the counter, and, chancing to look up, saw them and ran to the door. “Where are you going, citizen?” he asked. “Not to the Croix Blanche?”

“The other inns are full,” said the Marquis.

M. Maillard pulled at his chin. “You will be very uncomfortable,” he said slowly. “No, I really could not allow you to go there. You must give me the pleasure of your company for the night.”

Gilbert protested in vain, and in the end they followed M. Maillard through his shop, where a lank-haired young assistant was putting away bottles, to his domicile behind.

“Perhaps,” whispered Louis hopefully in his cousin’s ear, “the old boy has some more nieces here.”

But he had not, and Gilbert could not help smiling at the Vicomte’s face of dismay, when the latter, in his capacity of valet, was handed over to the sour-visaged housekeeper who was sole ruler of M. Maillard’s establishment. But whatever kind of evening Louis spent—and Gilbert did not see him again that night—Château-Foix was not unagreeably occupied with the converse of the good old apothecary. And never, as they discussed their well-cooked meal, or fingered the books in the little study, did it occur to Gilbert to wonder why the old man had been so anxious to keep him, even at this cost, from going to the Croix Blanche—where, at the same hour, the local Jacobin club was holding its bi-weekly meeting, and where the landlord, the greatest patriot in all Mortagne, was concluding a peroration demanding the head of every aristocrat in Normandy.

Of these things Gilbert was comfortably ignorant, and woke in the morning to find his cousin standing over him with a steaming jug in his hand.

“I have brought your shaving water,” said he, shaking the Marquis vigorously. “Kindly get up at once, and remove me from the roof which shelters that accursed woman in its kitchen, or I shall denounce you as an aristocrat!”

Gilbert hit out at him with his free arm, and Louis retreated laughing. “You have nearly dislocated my shoulder,” complained his victim, rubbing it. “Stay and help me to dress, as your duty is. Was the lady, then, so terrible?”

The Marquis’ toilet was nearly completed when a heavy but feminine tread was heard approaching. Saint-Ermay sprang up from the arm of the chair on which he was perched.

“Horrors! it’s that old woman!” he exclaimed. “Here, sit down, and give me your hair-ribbon or something!” He seized the comb from his cousin’s hand and pushing him into a chair, began upon Gilbert’s black locks with rather malicious energy as, in response to the Marquis’s permission, the housekeeper bore in his coffee and rolls. The door had hardly shut behind her ere Château-Foix snatched at the comb.

“Thank Heaven that I am not usually in your power like this!” he ejaculated. “I should certainly cut my hair à la Titus to escape your ministrations. No, thanks, I’ll tie it myself. Have you had breakfast?”

Louis nodded. “Ages ago—with that charmer. Shall I give you yours?”

And the Marquis, as he tied his hair, looked at the young man pouring out the coffee in the little prim room. If Louis’ facility for playing at being boys in a story of adventure, when they were grown men in real and grave peril, had caused him apprehension, and would probably cause it again, yet at this moment, in the morning sunshine, he liked him for it. Perhaps, in some subtle way, he felt that he was offering his cousin amends for his suspicions.

Three-quarters of an hour later, when, after an almost affectionate leave-taking of his host, he entered the yard of the principal inn with Louis, the sense of peril returned upon him vividly, and was not without its effect on the Vicomte. For two, three, four National Guards in succession were getting into the Bellême and Mamers diligence. The travellers’ eyes met.

“It is too risky,” said Gilbert in a low voice. “We must ride or walk, and get a conveyance further on.” To give countenance to their entry into the yard he enquired the time of the diligence back to Verneuil, and also contrived to elicit the fact that by avoiding the high-road and taking a cross-country route they could shorten their way, and cut off Bellême altogether. On reflection Gilbert judged it more prudent not to hire saddle-horses, and they set out on foot along the narrow road.

“Now you see how providential it was that I lost the baggage,” observed Louis, as they swung along. “But we are coming down in the world. First a post-chaise, then the diligence, and now the human foot. I wonder where we shall sleep to-night—as tramps, in a barn, I should surmise.”

He little knew how prophetic was his jest.

“If we really looked like tramps,” retorted the Marquis, “I daresay it might be better for us. I wish our clothes were not so new and respectable.”

“Roll in the dust, then,” suggested his cousin. “Or slit your coat with your penknife. We might have pawned these things at Mortagne. I should love to be disguised as asans-culotte, for I am tired of being so neat and sober in this raiment of your choice. And meanwhile—though as your servant it is no concern of mine—as what do you propose to pass yourself off, supposing some patriot insists on knowing your station in life? You can’t, with any prospect of being believed, say you are a bricklayer, or a carter.”

Gilbert replied that he thought the speaker was going to settle the question for him, and Louis looked at him critically.

“I am afraid it will have to be something very dull. You can’t look like a brigand or anything really desirable. A lawyer—a doctor—no,parbleu,I have it, of course—an apothecary, like our late host. It will be quite a safe profession, for not having any drugs with you, you cannot be called upon to make up pills on the spur of the moment. And, as I know to my cost, you can talk by the hour about vegetables.”

Gilbert smiled, but conceded that the plan, if called for, might be worth trying. “Only do not go about announcing us as druggists without necessity,” he warned the inventor. “I can bandage a cut, but that is the extent of my surgical knowledge.”

“Never mind; perhaps you will have a chance of putting even that accomplishment in practice,” said Louis, switching at a wayside thistle. And again he did not know that he was invested with the gift of prophecy.

“If you be the Earl, as I think you be,Sit down and drink the red wine with me;But I rede ye, when ye shall rise from the board,Ye commend your soul to the saints, my lord!”

“If you be the Earl, as I think you be,

Sit down and drink the red wine with me;

But I rede ye, when ye shall rise from the board,

Ye commend your soul to the saints, my lord!”

At noon they came into the square at Mamers. Louis was in wild spirits; amused with the country people who thronged the wide market-place—it was market-day—and wanting to buy all kinds of useless objects at the stalls as they picked their way through the crowd looking for an inn. The Hôtel d’Espagne appeared so full that they chose an eating-house instead, and hence, after a modest repast, Gilbert sallied forth to enquire for a conveyance. He came back with the disconcerting intelligence that the diligence for Fresnay and Sillé-le-Guillaume had already started, and that there would not be another till the late afternoon.

“We must walk it,” he said to Louis, adding in a lower tone: “It would be unwise to wait about here so long for the diligence.”

“How many miles is Sillé?” asked Louis, who was finishing his coffee. He made a slight grimace when he heard. “And we have already walked about a hundred!”

“We can always stop at Fresnay, which is about fifteen, instead of going further,” said his cousin.

“I suspect we shall,” returned the Vicomte. He got up with a little sigh. “Well, needs must when the devil drives! I beg your pardon, Gilbert; I did not mean to be personal. I should enjoy this walking tour better if it were not so hot.”

At that instant the Marquis became aware of two young peasant women who were looking at them with interest and whispering together. The elder of them suddenly approached him. “Messieurs,” she said, with the trace of a blush, “if you want to get to Fresnay, my sister and I are starting back for Saint-Ouen, which is almost on the way . . .” And she looked from one to the other of the travellers, the tint deepening on her round, fresh visage.

“Madame, we should inconvenience you,” said the Marquis, hesitating.

“Nenni,” replied the damsel, and she pointed through the open door to a large market cart which reclined on its shafts near the church. “You see, Monsieur, that it would hold a great many.”

And thus it was settled, and in a few moments they were following the sisters across the sunlit market-place to the vehicle in question, Louis carrying a large basket full of their purchases. His spirits were by no means lowered by this turn of affairs.

“We may feel particularly safe in the hands of these nymphs,” he observedsotto voceto Gilbert, “for they did not, as you may have noticed, treat us to the eternal ‘citizen’ which I am getting so sick of.”

Amid laughter they helped to put in the stout Percheron horse. The baskets and a good-sized roll of Mamers cloth were stowed away under the seats, together with a vociferous duck which had not been sold; and, with the eldest sister and Château-Foix seated in front, and Louis with the younger behind, also facing the horse, the equipage rattled out of the market-place. It attracted little attention. A swain, somewhat the worse for drink, who stood in a by-street, and requested the fair charioteer to tell him with whom she had taken up now, narrowly escaped destruction, the shaft catching him with some force and sending him into the gutter, wherein he sat, still repeating his query to the world in general.

“That was my second cousin, Michel,” observed the younger sister to Louis. And she added, somewhat unnecessarily: “He was drunk.”

The Percheron horse did not exert himself unduly up hills, and the miles rolled past but slowly. The sun was very hot, but the vehicle contained a large faded green umbrella, which the cousins held in turn over the heads of their respective partners. The heat, the hard seat, and the jogging made Gilbert feel tired and sleepy, but Louis kept up an animated conversation with both damsels at once. Occasionally he declared that the captive duck was biting large pieces out of his legs, a witticism which had enormous success. But in the end, despite the hilly road and the horse-flies, they reached the turning to Saint-Ouen. Great were the leave-takings; but the white caps, with many a backward turn, dwindled at last along the side road.

“Goddesses with the machine!” yawned Louis. “Good heavens! how thirsty I am!”

“No wonder,” retorted the Marquis. “And yet you complain of my talking too much to M. Maillard, a really intelligent man.”

“I was paying our fare,” said Louis, yawning again. “One had to do something. Would you rather have kissed them? Let’s get into the wood; this sun makes one damned sleepy.” He thrust his arm into Gilbert’s, and pulled him into the shade.

The road to Sillé-le-Guillaume lay through the heart of the forest—a matter of some four miles, so they had been told. It was now six o’clock; there was more than enough time to get to Sillé by dusk—time enough, in fact, to push on to Evron some eight miles beyond, had either of them had the inclination to do so. But, as Louis pointed out with some eloquence, the most sensible thing to do would be to lie down and rest in the wood. He was obviously tired, and Gilbert himself confessed to feeling weary. So they left the main road and plunged along a by-path until, finding a suitable tree, they threw themselves down beneath it.

The green coolness, after the hot hilly road and the day’s persistent sun, was delicious. In five minutes Louis was asleep. Gilbert studied him for a little, flung at his ease on the moss; yes, he looked too serenely unconscious for treachery. And how had he dared to put the letters of that terrible word near those of Lucienne’s name . . . how had he dared to! But the fatigue which, in quickening his mental vision, had begun to bring a hundred pictures of her, finally overpowered its own work, and he fell fast asleep.

He woke with a start, to find their late positions reversed, for Louis, wide awake, was sitting with his hands clasped round his knees regarding him with an air of amusement.

“I wouldn’t wake you,” he observed, “but do you know how long we’ve slept? We have been here nearly two hours.”

The long July day was dying rapidly now, was dead rather, and the two walked along under the trees agreeably enough, until they came to an unexpected and perplexing fork in the road. After due discussion they took the left-hand turning instead of keeping straight on, found after a time that they had strayed into a by-way, but persevered, and emerged, a little before nine o’clock, on another high-road. Along this, a few hundred yards to the right of them, shone the lights of a tiny village, which was obviously not Sillé. A passing rustic informed them that the hamlet was Pézé-le-Robert, and the road the highway from Beaumont-sur-Sarthe to Sillé-le-Guillaume.

Louis sighed. “Couldn’t we at least have supper here?” he asked pathetically. “It’s heart-rending to think how long it is since we had our last meal.”

The Marquis laughed. “Now that you remind me, I feel very hungry too,” he admitted. “Let us sup here, then, if we can; we might possibly get a bed as well.”

As it happened, the first house to which they came, a tiny low-browed inn, displayed a faded but recognisable wheatsheaf with the legend, “A la Gerbe d’Or.” A slatternly-looking woman with a dirty cloth in her hand appeared in response to their knock. In her wake the travellers exchanged the peculiar close smell of the passage for the hardly more agreeable though varied odours of the kitchen of the hostelry, which appeared to be its dining-room also. A couple of rough-looking men were playing cards at a table in the middle of the room. The woman ushered the cousins to a small oblong table nearer to the window, at the end of which sat an individual who was making great play with his soup. His liberal exhibition of the method of suction came, however, to an end about a moment after the two had sat down, when, leaning back in his chair, he pulled out a toothpick and used it vigorously. While engaged in the performance of this merely ceremonial act—for there was no meat in the soup—he subjected the newcomers to a steady scrutiny, not diverted until the advent of a plate of meat, to which he transferred his attention.

The thin soup was hot, at any rate, the stewed meat passable. The cousins were half-way through the latter before the man at the end of the table pushed away his empty plate.

“Pas mal, la mère,” he remarked. “A trifle overdone, perhaps. But it is something to get meat at all. Some never taste it from week’s end to week’s end. That’s true, isn’t it, citizen?” he added, leaning forward and pointedly addressing his query to the Marquis, who sat opposite at the other end of the little table.

“Perfectly,” responded Gilbert without enthusiasm.

“But you’ve never had to go without it, eh? You’ve never known a day when you haven’t eaten good, satisfying meat? Come now, confess it!” And he cackled with a rather unpleasant laughter.

The Marquis was taken aback, and he was also angry at the impertinence. He was about to reply in no very conciliatory spirit when Louis suddenly struck in.

“Do you think that we seem too fat and well-liking, citizen?” he asked gaily. “Our looks belie us if you do. For my part, it’s a long day since I have tasted meat like this.” Which was true.

“Come from far?” asked the other, producing the toothpick again.

“Far enough to be tired,” replied the Vicomte casually. “From Mamers, if it interests you to know.”

“Tired!” exclaimed the questioner with a sneer. “Gentry like you didn’t walk all the way from Mamers, I’ll wager.”

His tone was extremely offensive. From where he sat Louis could see the table in the middle of the room, and was aware that the two men sitting at it had stopped their card-playing to listen.

“Quite true,” he said, as he helped himself to wine. “Two charmingcitoyenneswere so kind as to give us a lift in their cart part of the way.”

“And shall you stop here to-night?”

“No,” said Gilbert curtly, tired of the insolent and significant interrogatory.

“Beds not good enough for you, I suppose,” riposted their fellow-guest.

Château-Foix took no notice, but saying to Louis in a low voice, “We had best begone as soon as we can,” he finished his plateful of meat in silence, and the Vicomte followed his example. At the end Gilbert knocked on the table with the handle of his knife to summon the landlady. “The reckoning, if you please,” he called out.

As if the word had been a preconcerted signal the little man at the other end of the table sprang to his feet. “There is another reckoning to be settled first!” he screamed. “You shall pay it before you leave this place. Citizens, I appeal to you to do your duty! These men areci-devants—they are aristocrats from Paris—escaping, most probably, from the just doom the nation imposes on them—aristocrats who have ground us down for a thousand years, and boast even now of seducing our wives and daughters. . . .”

The two other men were on their feet. The Marquis, conscious of unknown perils behind him, had also risen, but Louis, having a clear view of the whole room, was still sitting coolly in his chair against the wall. In spite of the extreme seriousness of the situation the orator’s interpretation of their ride in the market cart was too much for his gravity, and he was openly laughing. His sangfroid still further maddened the denunciator.

“I tell you that it is true!” cried the latter, his voice breaking on a high note of rage. “I denounce them—I spit on them—enemies of the nation—aristocrats——”

“Prove it!” said Gilbert sternly, grasping the back of his chair as a possible weapon. “You cannot!”

A positive yell of triumph and malice escaped the little man, and plucking something white from his breast he turned it about for a second feverishly, and then held out to his allies a fine lawn handkerchief with a tiny coronet in the corner.

“It is his!” he cried, pointing to Louis. “He cannot deny it. It was under the table by his foot . . . and look at it, my friends!”

The taller man snatched it from him. “It is true!” he cried with an oath. “No one but aci-devantcarries a handkerchief like that!”

Louis got leisurely up, his eyes dancing. “Ah, my friend,” he said softly, “there are so manyci-devantsnowadays. You no doubt are aci-devantscavenger or something of the sort, and the gentleman at the end of the table——”

His voice was drowned in the hubbub that ensued, as the individual in question, screaming “Arrest them!” flung himself towards Louis. There was the table between them, but the young man’s fist, shooting out like lightning, caught him between the eyes, and he staggered back, to subside upon the hearthstone. Ere he reached it the shorter of the two card-players was wrestling bodily with the Marquis, who had not space to use his chair. The other was crouching in the dusky corner near the window with the evident intention of taking Gilbert in the rear. Suddenly Château-Foix forced his vociferating foe downwards and backwards over the table, and at this the man in the corner sprang forward.

“Take care! he’s coming on you from behind!” shouted Louis, and he leapt from his own entrenched position between the table and the wall and rushed between them. In a second he was sent spinning out of the way, to be brought up by the centre table, over which he fell with a crash. But he had defeated the enemy’s design. Hurling his beaten opponent on to the ground the Marquis snatched up the scarcely-tasted bottle of wine by his plate and broke it fair and full across the head of his new assailant. The man collapsed groaning at his feet, and with his fall the coast was clear. The woman had fled long ago.

“Come on, Louis!” shouted Gilbert to his cousin, who was rather dizzily picking himself up from the debris of cards and shattered plates. “No—not by the door—the window!”

He had the casement open in an instant; the drop was barely five feet. Louis scrambled after him, and the Marquis, guided by instinct rather than by sight, hurried through a little orchard, a paddock, over a brook, through a meagre hedge, and, bearing always to the left, and away from Sillé-le-Guillaume, was forced at last to emerge into the high-road.

Assuring himself that Saint-Ermay was close at his heels, he started to run down the starlit road. His own footfalls filled his ears with a horrid sense of their betraying loudness, and it was not for a minute or so that he realised the growing faintness of those behind. When he did so he looked over his shoulder, and then stopped in astonishment. Louis, now some ten yards behind, had dropped to a walk, and a leisurely one at that. He went quickly back towards him.

“I thought you were a good runner,” was on his lips, instead of which he cried sharply: “What’s the matter?”

“Go on without me,” said the Vicomte breathlessly. “I—I really can come no further.” He staggered a little as he spoke; one hand was clutching at his left breast.

A quick fear shot into the Marquis’ mind. “Are you hurt, my dear boy?” he asked anxiously, taking a step towards him, for he looked as though he would fall.

“He had a knife . . .” said Louis faintly but succinctly, and with the words reeled sideways into his cousin’s arms.

“I must not think of thee. . . .. . . . . . . .But when sleep comes to close the difficult day,When night gives pause to the long watch I keep,And all my bonds I needs must loose apart,Must doff my will as raiment laid away,—With the first dream that comes with the first sleepI run, I run, I am gathered to thy heart.”—Alice Meynell,Renouncement.

“I must not think of thee. . . .

. . . . . . . .

But when sleep comes to close the difficult day,

When night gives pause to the long watch I keep,

And all my bonds I needs must loose apart,

Must doff my will as raiment laid away,—

With the first dream that comes with the first sleep

I run, I run, I am gathered to thy heart.”

—Alice Meynell,Renouncement.

Here, indeed, was a pretty problem. Louis’ head lay with alarming inertness against the Marquis’ shoulder, and Gilbert soon became aware that it was only the tightness of his own grip which kept the Vicomte in an upright position at all, for he had quite lost consciousness. After holding him thus for a moment, Château-Foix lowered his cousin to the ground until his head rested on his knee, and, peering into his face, felt hastily for his heart. Then he as hastily laid him down and stood up, listening, for he thought that he heard the pursuit.

The fancied sound brought him to his senses. Louis was at least alive, and whatever were his injury it was madness to stay to examine it on the high-road. He looked round. Not five yards from the dark figure at his feet there was a coppice running straight inland from the road, and bordering a field. And . . . yes, thank Heaven! . . . there was a gate in the field; Heaven send also that it were not fastened! Château-Foix sprang to it. It was not secured, but swung easily open when the latch was lifted. He came back and dragged at his cousin. Louis was slightly built, and he himself muscular, but it was no very easy task to lift such a dead weight from the ground. With the Vicomte at last in his arms, staggering a little beneath the weight, he hurried through the gate, shutting it with his foot.

The field stretched away in front and on the right with no sign of cover. The coppice which marched with it was plainly their best chance of safety, and Château-Foix plodded on beside it, looking for a gap in its strong boundary hedge of thorn, over which the trees leaned with little rustlings in the night wind, mocking him with the shelter he could not attain. For himself he might have forced a way, but it was out of the question to drag Louis through. A couple of sheep tumbled up almost under his feet, and cantered off, bleating. “Enough to give the alarm,” thought the Marquis. How heavy Louis was, and how still; it was like carrying a dead man. With an effort he shifted him higher over his shoulder; as he did so his cousin’s sleeve brushed against his cheek, and the sleeve was wet. He was now thirty yards or so from the road, and was beginning to despair of finding an opening, when suddenly the hedge thinned, presenting a narrow gap. He stumbled through it, took a few steps into the thickness of the coppice, laid his burden under a tree, and sank exhausted beside it.

It was much darker in the little wood, and though there was still no sign of pursuit, he feared to strike a light. However, he could just distinguish Louis’ pale features when he bent over him, and on unfastening his clothes his shirt glimmered white, except where it was stained a much darker hue. His heart was beating faintly but regularly, yet the Marquis exclaimed as his fingers met the lukewarm trickle whose nature he guessed too easily. As much by feeling as by sight he located its source, a stab in the left shoulder; how dangerous it was impossible to tell in the starlight. Presumably its recipient had fainted from loss of blood, a not very surprising consequence of his hasty flight.

Gilbert tied up the wound as best he could with his handkerchief. It was amazing that there was no sign of pursuit. Yet they were near, too near the Gerbe d’Or; nor did he suppose that a night in the open was beneficial to a wounded man, and he resolved to try to find a roof of some sort. Lest Louis should recover consciousness in his absence, he tore a leaf from his pocket-book, scribbled on it a line or two to that effect—it was true that he could hardly read them himself in the dim light—and closed the Vicomte’s hand round it. Then he took off his coat, spread it carefully over the prostrate figure, and made cautiously for the gap.

With his departing footsteps the thicket sank into silence. Now and again the leaves rustled, and a dead bramble branch, lifted by a gust, flung itself on to the Marquis’ coat and caught there. The loudest adjacent noise came from the sheep cropping the grass on the other side of the hedge; but down the road, in the direction of Sillé-le-Guillaume, faint shouts announced a tardy and mistaken pursuit. Louis lay stiller than sleep under his tree and heard nothing.

It might have been three-quarters of an hour afterwards that the Marquis returned. It was grown a little lighter now, and he scanned Saint-Ermay’s face with renewed anxiety as he bent over him. Then he poured a little eau-de-vie down his throat, and watched the effect. In less than a minute a contraction passed over the Vicomte’s features; he sighed, and moved his head restlessly on the arm which supported it. Château-Foix repeated the treatment, and Louis stirred, gasped a little, and opened his eyes.

“What execrable brandy!” he observed feebly, but with some emphasis.

“But you ought to be thankful for it,” returned the Marquis. “I had some difficulty in getting any. How do you feel now, Louis?”

With his cousin’s aid Saint-Ermay struggled into a sitting posture. “Much as usual, thank you,” he replied lightly. “I cannot think how I came to be so foolish as to faint. I remember——” He broke off, and as his gaze fell on the stem of a tree opposite him, he seemed to become aware for the first time that he was not where he had fallen.

“How the devil did I come here?” he demanded in tones of sudden surprise.

“I carried you.”

“You carried me! Great Heavens!” exclaimed the Vicomte, twisting himself in Gilbert’s hold to look at him. “How many miles, may I ask?”

“A matter of a hundred yards or so. It was nothing; you are not very heavy.”

“But those rascals from the inn?”

“There has been no pursuit—at least not in this direction.”

“But I suppose there may be. How long have I been here?”

“Nearly an hour,” said his cousin. “I have found a place of comparative shelter—if you think you can manage to get to it,” he added a little dubiously.

For answer Louis began to scramble to his feet. “My shoulder may be impaired, my dear Gilbert,” he retorted, “but my legs at least are sound.” He got to them as he spoke, but their condition was evidently by no means as unimpeachable as he had stated.

“I thought as much,” said the Marquis, putting an arm round him. “It is obvious that I shall have to carry you again if you do not move less violently.”

“Very well,” responded Louis submissively. “But it is nothing; I am only a little giddy; I can walk quite well.” Nevertheless he hastily put out his hand to a tree-trunk as Gilbert loosed his hold and stooped to pick up his coat. “And how far is it, this refuge of yours?” he enquired, as, with the assistance of his cousin’s arm, he made his way through the gap in the hedge.

“About two fields off; but we had better skirt round by the hedges for fear of being seen. It is a hayloft, and the owner will ask no questions.”

“Estimable man!” commented Saint-Ermay.

“It happens to be a woman,” observed the Marquis, as they emerged into the open field.

The Vicomte was delighted. “I might have known it!” he exclaimed. “Is she pretty? How did you work on her feelings, Gilbert? I have always said that if youwouldcondescend . . . (No, if I am not breaking your arm it is quite enough, thanks.) Did you give her a kiss?Mon Dieu,what I have missed!”

“For Heaven’s sake, be quiet!” urged Château-Foix. “It is no time for laughing. No, I did not kiss her—I should have been afraid. She is a middle-aged proprietress with a tongue, and she will allow me and the friend who has met with an accident to sleep in her loft. She asks no questions, and if we are taken, we are tramps who have sought refuge there without her knowledge. She has no servants.”

“Excellent!” said the Vicomte gaily. “You are a general and a diplomat thrown away. Still, your success remains unexplained. I am sure you must have whispered soft nothings of some sort to her. Or perhaps you bullied her; some like it, I believe. Commend me, after all, to you impervious men for managing a woman!”

“We are certainly lucky,” rejoined the Marquis, ignoring these remarks, “always supposing that she does not denounce us.”

“Denounce us! My dear Gilbert, you are too modest. It is evident to me that you have inspiredune grande passion, one of those great loves of antiquity or romance. Denounce us! You may be sure that the lady will be cut in pieces rather than betray your hiding-place—in fact, after the usual fashion of heroines, she will probably have you down from your loft, push you behind the curtains in her own chaste apartment, and lock the door. The minions of the . . . of the nation arrive; you know the scene . . . outraged modesty . . . ‘Ruffians, respect at least my bedchamber! Do you dare to suggest that there is a man in there!’ . . . Delicious! I only hope it may come to that, provided I witness it.”

With these and similar excursions of the fancy did Louis beguile their pilgrimage through the first field, though he stumbled more than once, and the weight on the Marquis’ arm grew perceptibly heavier as they proceeded. By the time they were in the second field he had dropped his banter, having obviously little breath to spare, and the two plodded slowly on in silence.

“Does your shoulder pain you?” asked the Marquis suddenly, noticing his laboured breathing.

“Oh,pas trop,” was the light reply, but it was given through closed teeth. Gilbert slipped his arm round the speaker.

“Put your right arm round my neck,” he suggested, and with an attempt at a laugh Louis obeyed. “Your ideas are always excellent,” he said faintly.

Five minutes more of slow and difficult progression brought them to their goal, a collection of scattered outhouses standing in a small and apparently deserted farmyard. Their shelter loomed before them: below, the habitat of a large hay waggon; above, a loft and granary.

“Yes, but how am I going to get you up?” asked the Marquis. He had found a lantern on a peg, and was lighting it, for it was very dusk in the shed. Louis, utterly spent, leant against the upright ladder which led to the desired haven. His breath came in gasps, and the light, when it was obtained, showed the beads on his forehead. “I don’t see how you will ever get up,” repeated Château-Foix, eyeing him dubiously.

Louis glanced up. “It certainly does look steep enough . . . for the path to Heaven,” he remarked with difficulty. “Perhaps . . . if you were to give me an example . . . and a little help on the way. . .”

The suggestion was adopted, and by dint of a good deal of hauling the Vicomte managed to clamber on to the floor above, where, with an unfinished jest on his lips, he immediately collapsed in a second dead faint. After he had seen his face, Gilbert was only surprised that he had held out so long.

The loft, not very large, was lighted by a round aperture at the farther side, and the hay was scarcely more than a carpeting to the floor, except about midway, against the wall, where it rose in an untidy pile to the roof. The Marquis, after a brief survey, lifted his insensible cousin once more in his arms, and carried him over to the other side of their refuge. As he picked up the lantern afterwards he saw that his hands were smeared with his blood. He descended into the yard, got a bucket of water from the well, and by the light of the lantern set to work to investigate the Vicomte’s injury.

After a little hesitation he began with his knife carefully to cut through the collar and the coat-sleeve. Louis still lay motionless. Gilbert next attacked his shirt, but as it had stuck in one place to the wound he was obliged to pull it away, and, gently as he did it, the pain of the operation was evidently severe enough to bring Saint-Ermay out of his swoon. As he opened his eyes the Marquis paused, with a mute question in his glance.

“Go on,” said Louis, with a grimace. “Yes, it hurts damnably, but I am sure that your intentions are good.”

With that he shut his eyes again, and Château-Foix went on with his ministrations. The stab, just below the left collar-bone, was sufficiently deep, though in itself, thought Gilbert, scarcely dangerous. He was not anatomist enough to realise how near it had come to being mortal. The palpable loss of blood impressed him most. As he was bathing the wound Louis suddenly opened his eyes again.

“Gilbert,” he said in an odd voice, “you should not do this. I wish you had left me on the road.”

The words woke in Gilbert’s mind an echo of Louis’ protestation in the bedroom at the Etats-Généraux on the night of his release, and of his own reception of it. Well, it was different now, thank God!

“I don’t know what you are talking about,” he said cheerfully—and even as he said it something whispered at the back of his mind, “Supposing you had not been mistaken. . . .” He paused in his work and looked down at his cousin. Louis’ eyes, a little sunk in his white face, met his full.

“You think I don’t mean it,” he said unsteadily, and without a trace of his usual light manner. “I do, on my honour!” He put up his right hand and caught weakly at Gilbert’s wrist. “Promise me, promise me,” he repeated imploringly, “that if they come here after us you will do the best for yourself!”

“I shall do that in any case, my dear boy,” replied his cousin. “Now, if you will let go my hand and lie still I will bandage this shoulder.”

The young man sighed, and released the hand. Nor did he say another word while the Marquis bound up his shoulder, using his cravat in default of anything better, except to remark, at the end of the operation, that he was very sleepy. He seemed, indeed, to be slipping back into unconsciousness of some kind. Gilbert arranged the surrounding hay as comfortably as he could, found on a nail an old and not very dirty horse-cloth, spread it over the Vicomte, and gave him some more brandy. As he withdrew the arm which he had put beneath his cousin’s head to raise it, Louis rallied himself for a last effort.

“If ever you loved me, Gilbert,” he pleaded, “promise me that you will do what I ask—that you will leave me if there is an alarm. If you are taken what will become of everybody at Chantemerle? What use is there in sacrificing yourself . . . and for me too. . . . For God’s sake, promise me!”

For the sake of quieting him Gilbert gave the promise he had no intention of keeping. The light of real feeling in the anxious, tired grey eyes had given him a little shock of emotion. He took his hand.

“I promise you that I will consider myself first. Now, will that satisfy you? . . . My dear Louis, you absolutely must get to sleep!”

“I obey,” said the Vicomte, smiling. “I expect I shall be all right to-morrow. If not, I rely on your promise. Good-night.”

He shut his eyes. Gilbert surveyed him for a moment, picked up the lantern, and went with it to the other side of the loft, leaving the recumbent figure in semi-darkness. He sat down himself with his back against the wall, and for prudence sake blew out the light. It was not till then that he discovered that the moon had risen.

He must have dropped off to sleep as he sat there, for he woke suddenly with a start to wonder where he was. He remembered instantly, and looked hastily across the half-darkness of the loft at the still figure on the other side. A shaft of moonlight, passing through the round aperture, lay across Louis’ breast and the lower part of his face. The silence, the danger, the fact that he had so lately carried his cousin senseless in his arms, suddenly tugged at the Marquis’ heart. They were playmates of but a few years agone. . . . As he gazed, the stream of moonlight broadened and grew brighter, and, lying like a pool of silver round Louis’ head, threw up his beautiful profile into startling pallor and relief. Château-Foix left his place, and going quietly through the rustling hay sat down by him.

The Vicomte was lying quite motionless, but his regular breathing and a short scrutiny showed that he was not unconscious but asleep. He was very pale; his hair was tangled and dusty, the ripped coat showed his torn and bloody shirt and bandaged shoulder; his left arm lay stiffly by his side. As Château-Foix sat with his chin in his hand and looked at him memories full of faint fragrance stirred in his heart. It was odd how Louis had retained his boyish appearance. At twenty-six he was still sometimes the self-same engaging boy, “beau comme l’amour et gentil comme un ange,” as all the countryside considered him, who had laughed and danced away his childhood in the old garden at Chantemerle. And there flashed into the watcher’s mental vision the picture of a certain day in their boyhood when Louis was brought home senseless, the result of a fall from a horse which he had been forbidden to ride. Just so he had looked when he had been carried in by lamenting servants, with a broken collar-bone and a livid bruise under his curls. As it had been of yesterday Gilbert recalled his mother’s horror, and his own terrified conviction that his cousin was killed. There, in place of the dark loft, was the wide hall at Chantemerle, the crackling fire, the boy, white and still, on the carved settle, the keen snowy air blowing in through the open door, and, breaking through the men who had just laid down their burden, a frightened, beautiful child, who clung sobbing to him because Hector had thrown Louis in the avenue, and he was dead.

Absurd little tragedy! Was it not Louis who, less than a month later, was descried by the Marquise galloping wildly round a frosty meadow on the very steed to which he owed his discomfiture? Was it not Lucienne who was shortly afterwards discovered in tears because Louis, scarcely convalescent, had teased her so horribly? And it was certainly he himself who, that same winter, settled a fierce dispute with the whilom invalid by the arbitrament of force in the shrubbery. . . . And, for the first time, the almost forgotten blow which had left him victor was a regret to him, for at the present moment it seemed an outrage. Château-Foix smiled at himself; smiled too, as, at the sudden withdrawal of the moonlight, he bent forward and put a light kiss on Louis’ forehead.

It was about six o’clock when Gilbert awoke the next morning, but as he raised himself on his elbow and looked down at his cousin, his hopes of quitting their hiding-place that day received their death-blow. For Louis was moaning faintly, moving his head from side to side with restless regularity. The Marquis got to his knees and bent uneasily over him. It was plain that he was in a high fever, and there was nothing for Château-Foix to do but to resign himself to a day of waiting.

The Vicomte’s condition scarcely showed a change through the whole of that long day. The Marquis sat by him, unable to do more than to keep him fairly quiet, and to force him once or twice to drink some milk which, with a loaf of bread, had mysteriously appeared in the shed below. He was becoming seriously alarmed as to his state when, about midday, the owner of the little farm suddenly paid her tenants a visit. She was a small, alert, black-eyed scold of forty-five or thereabouts, and as her rather formidable head appeared at the top of the ladder the Marquis became more fully conscious of the magnitude of his victory of the night before. But perhaps she had come to revoke her permission. He rose from his place and waited.

“You may come and take this basket,” announced the woman in her harsh, penetrating voice. “I have brought you something to eat, and there is another pitcher of milk down below.” As she scrambled on to the loft floor Gilbert began to thank her, but she cut him short. “Là là, that is enough. Time enough to thank me when you get safely out of my loft, without setting the hay on fire or trampling it all flat.” Here her restless little eyes fell on the prostrate form of Louis. “How is the other? He is lazy? He takes his ease, hein?” She began to wade through the hay.

“No,” returned the Marquis, following her, basket in hand. “I am afraid——”

“Ah, mon Dieu!” exclaimed Madame Geffroi, stopping short. She was evidently taken aback. Even in his present plight Louis, as usual, owed much to his looks. “Ah, the poor young man!” She knelt down by the Vicomte and possessed herself of his wrist. “Fever,” she remarked, shaking her head; and then, looking up at Château-Foix: “Show me the wound.”

Gilbert complied, quite expecting to hear his bandaging condemned. But Madame Geffroi touched the wounded shoulder gently with her coarse, red, peasant’s fingers, and as gently drew the slashed coat over it again. “Well enough for a man,” she remarked trenchantly. “You shall have some more linen—but next time I will bandage it myself, I think.”

It was such a relief to see a woman in his place that the Marquis clung to her opinion, and asked her, rather helplessly, what he ought to do. She told him, “Nothing, till the fever goes,” and they both looked at the unconscious young man in silence, she sitting back on her heels, Gilbert standing gloomily beside her. Louis tossed his head from side to side, and flung out an arm violently into the hay, with a heavy sigh. The Marquis thought that he heard the sigh echoed; at any rate, Madame Geffroi put her hand for an instant on the burning forehead. “Poor boy, poor boy!” she said almost softly, and, getting to her feet, retired as abruptly as she had come.

The slow hours crawled on with the shifting sunlight, until about three o’clock Louis ceased tossing and sank into a sort of stupor. Château-Foix was consequently a good deal surprised and alarmed when, after lying motionless for about an hour, he suddenly sat bolt upright in the hay and addressed some unknown person by name.

Gilbert sprang up and went over to him. “Lie down!” he said. “Don’t you know me, Louis?”

“Of course I do,” responded the Vicomte in a thick voice. His eyes were extraordinarily bright. “You are Antoine de Bercy . . . I wish I had killed you . . . liar! . . . you are not fit to speak her name. . . .” His voice tailed off into something incoherent.

“Lie down!” said Gilbert emphatically, and forced him to obey. He was becoming very uneasy. A man of the most punctilious delicacy in a matter of the kind, he would rather have heard anything than his cousin’s private affairs. The few words had already considerably enlightened him as to the reason of Louis’ duel with De Bercy, which the Vicomte had so unmistakably intimated that he did not wish to reveal.

Perhaps the Marquis’ vigorous action had broken the thread of Saint-Ermay’s rambling thoughts, for he went off at once on another trail, and for about an hour wandered from one subject to another, now fancying himself at Chantemerle, now in Paris, now playing again a forgotten childish game, now winning or losing (and usually the latter) at less innocuous sports. There were other matters too; and where Gilbert recognised a name it was difficult to avoid acquiring information. But how was it that, for the first time in his life, he felt disposed to condone the excessive number of his volatile kinsman’saffaires du cœur, fragmentary testimony to which was here offered him? He knew why, but would not acknowledge the answer.

The stream of reminiscences began at last to run dry, and Louis relapsed into a quieter mood, merely muttering in a low tone to himself at intervals. He had ceased to toss, so, hoping that there was some near prospect of his sleeping, Gilbert went and sat down by him, and, almost timidly, took his hand. He was lying quite still now, but his eyes were wide open and fixed on the opposite wall. Gilbert wished that they would shut.

Suddenly, and in a voice singularly altered, Saint-Ermay uttered another name. “Lucienne . . . Lucienne . . .” he said softly. The word lingered on his lips and died away. Every vein in the Marquis’ body hammered at its walls, but he sat motionless and did not withdraw his hand. After all, Louis had every right to speak of her; indeed, the extraordinary thing was that he had not done so before. And the fact that he still sat there was proof enough that Gilbert de Chantemerle expected to hear nothing that he should not have heard.

For a moment there was silence. All the little sounds of the farm mounted up with intense clearness. A hen was clucking loudly in the yard below. Louis gave a long sigh that was almost a groan, and the fingers of his left hand locked themselves tightly into his cousin’s. Then the voice began again.

“Lucienne, Lucienne . . . my love . . . I can’t . . . I can’t . . . O my God, if things had been different! What do you say . . . he trusts us . . . yes, he must never know . . . never know . . . nev——”

The Marquis wrenched his hand free of the burning fingers which clutched now about his wrist, and staggered to his feet. And as Louis, checked by the withdrawal of his hand, tried ineffectually to struggle up on to his elbow, and fell back with a gasp, Château-Foix recoiled still further, for he was literally afraid lest he should stoop and strike his cousin on the mouth, and the horror of the knowledge of his impulse floated recognisable, for a second of time, on the surface of the fathomless tide of hate and revulsion which swept over him.

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