Thus the night wore on, and at last, as the dawn brightened on the grey, heaving waters, the coast of Brittany was visible on their left. The wind, now considerably abated, had gone round several points towards the north, and had St. Malo been their objective instead of the spot they particularly wished to avoid, they could have run before it for that harbour. As it was, they must make farther along the coast for the little bay which La Vireville had in view. It was true that, owing to the change in the wind, they would have difficulty in reaching this point before sunrise, and a man with a price on his head, like La Vireville, does not of preference select full daylight to land on a guarded coast, in precisely that region of it where he may with most probability be expected to land; but there was no help for it. There was always the bare possibility of falling in with one of the Jersey luggers before they got there, and thus making their landing unnecessary. Moreover, a sort of informal armistice was supposed to be in existence at the moment, on account of negotiations for a settlement then going forward between Republicans and Royalists in the west, though La Vireville pinned very little trust to the truce in question.
The unwished-for sun was already rising when Anne-Hilarion, rather wan, was fetched from his place of retirement and persuaded to try to eat something. He displayed small interest and no disappointment on learning that he was being taken to Brittany instead of to Jersey. When this information was being imparted to him the fishing-boat was already edging in towards the coast—a coast of cliffs and bays equally asleep in the early sunshine, whence, so her crew hoped, her small size and her inconspicuous brown sail would save her from observation. After the night of cold and peril the change of atmosphere was not unwelcome. In another half-hour, with luck, they would reach the little bay La Vireville had in mind.
The émigré was just coaxing Anne to finish a slice of bread at which he was languidly nibbling when François bent forward from the tiller and said a couple of words:
"The Blues!"
La Vireville followed his pointing finger. On the low cliff a little ahead of them, which they would shortly pass to port, was a small wooden building, and, pacing up and down in front of it, a man in uniform with a musket over his shoulder.
The Chouan and the fisherman looked at one another. They could not hope, at so short a distance, to escape notice, unless the sentry were blind; the question was whether, in view of the truce, he would or would not consider their craft suspicious. On their present course every moment brought them nearer to the headland, and consequently within better range, while if they tacked and stood out to sea they ran the chance both of attracting more attention and of giving evidence of an uneasy conscience.
"We had better continue as we are, eh?" remarked La Vireville.
Francois nodded.
"I am going to put you back in the bows, Anne," said the émigré. "It is warmer there." And, catching him up, he went forward with him over the uneven stone ballast and deposited him as low as possible among the lobster-pots and nets. The coast was hidden from his own view by the lug-sail, and he could not see what was passing there. TheMarie-Françoisheld on at a good speed.
"He has seen us," observed François after a moment. A sort of smile flickered over his face, and he pulled the mainsheet a little tighter round the thwart.
La Vireville came back and stood by the mast. They were now abreast of the guardhouse. "He has roused the others," said François grimly. "He was not blind, that parishioner, worse luck!"
And with the words came the sound of a shout from the cliff, then of a shot. A bullet splashed into their wake a yard or so behind them.
Fortuné de la Vireville shrugged his shoulders. They were very obviously not out of range. But neither he nor the Norman had any impulse to bring to, which was evidently the course intimated by the bullet.
"So much for the truce!" he said aloud, and as the words left his mouth came a second and more menacing crackle from the cliff. At the same moment La Vireville was conscious of a violent blow on the side of the head—so violent, indeed, that it threw him off his balance. He had a lightning impression, compound of resentment and surprise, that the yard had been hit and had fallen on him. And then, suddenly, in the midst of the sunshine, it was night. . . .
La Vireville opened his eyes. It was day again, bright sunlight. TheMarie-Françoiswas bounding forward before a spanking breeze. For a second or two La Vireville could not remember why he was there—hardly, indeed, who he was. Then he looked up instinctively at the yard. It was there, unharmed, at the top of the brown, swelling sail. He himself was half lying, half sitting on the seat that ran round the gunwale, and everything was as before the helmsman at the tiller——
The helmsman!
"My God!" said La Vireville aloud. The fisherman was indeed sitting in the sternsheets, his arm over the tiller; but he was sitting in a heap, and his face was upturned to the sky. Under the tiller was a red pool shifting with the motion of the boat. The Chouan stared at him horror-struck. "My God!" he said again. "He's been hit. . . . Anne, Anne, where are you?"
Only then did he become aware of something clutching tightly one of his legs, and, looking down, saw the child clinging there, his face hidden. The émigré moved to take him in his arms, and was instantly conscious that he was very dizzy and that there was blood on the breast of his own coat. "Ciel!did they get me too?" he wondered, and putting up a hand to his head withdrew it with a reddened palm. How long ago did it all happen? There was the coast, but no guardhouse. It must be out of sight now behind the headland. The wind had taken them on, the dead hand had steered them—if indeed François were dead? He must see to him first.
"Anne—my little pigeon, my comrade, it is all right," he said, stooping to him. At the sound of his voice the child lifted his head, took one look at him, and screamed. La Vireville then realised that there must be blood down his face, and, pulling out his handkerchief, did his best to remove it. Afterwards he twisted the handkerchief hurriedly round his head, in which, so far as he knew, there might be a bullet, though he inclined to think that it was a ball ricochetting off the mast which had given him a glancing blow. Otherwise he would hardly be alive to speculate about it. Not that there was any time just then for speculation. . . . Anne-Hilarion suffered himself to be lifted on to his friend's knee, and, shuddering convulsively, hid his face once more in his breast. La Vireville comforted him as well as he could, trying hastily to dissipate the terror which seemed to have frozen him, for he could not devote much time to consolation now, when Francois might be bleeding to death. So he soon lifted the little boy off his knee, and put him down facing the bows, telling him not to look round; and Anne, sobbing now as if his heart would break, leant his head on the gunwale, and so remained.
But François was quite dead. He had fallen back and died instantly, so the Chouan judged, shot, probably, through the heart. It was for this, thought La Vireville, that he had dragged him from his wife. . . . He pulled the body with difficulty away from the tiller, laid it on the ballast, spread over it a small spare mizen, and sat down at the helm to think. But he found himself looking rather hopelessly at the mess of blood below the tiller; something must be done to it, for the sake of the little boy who had been through so much. He found a rag under the seat, and with this converted the pool into a smear, and then perceived that, still bleeding himself from the head, he was leaving wherever he moved a further series of bright splashes. "I must stop that," he thought, and took stronger measures with a piece of sailcloth hacked off the mizen.
But all the while he was aware of strange momentary gaps in consciousness, though his brain was clear enough. At any cost, he must not lose his senses again—or if he must, let it at least be on land. Only an extraordinary coincidence had saved theMarie-Françoisfrom being blown on to the rocks or out to sea. Anne was still sobbing; the time to comfort him was not yet come. The pressing need was to make a decision while he yet could. Fortunately he knew his whereabouts exactly. . . . After a few moments' thought he made the decision, altered the boat's course a trifle, and, sitting there steering with the dead fisherman at his feet, began gently to talk to Anne at the other end of the boat.
And so, presently, the sun shining, the waves slapping her sides, and the lug-sail wide with the following wind, theMarie-Françoisbegan to make for the cliffs, just where a spit of rock ran out at their feet and they sloped to a little cove. Here there was only a lazy swell that stirred the long seaweed, for it was half-tide.
"We are going ashore here, child," said La Vireville, letting down the sail. "You will not see this boat again." For he meant to sink her if it could be done; she was too clear an indication of their whereabouts, and here, so near his own command, he would have small difficulty in getting another boat for Jersey, and men to sail her, too, more capable of the task than he felt at present.
White, dishevelled, and tear-stained, the little boy got off the seat. "Are we to get out now?" he asked uncertainly, as the sail came down with a run.
"Yes, little one, and be careful that you do not slip," said the émigré, putting him over the side on to the rock, and scrambling after him. Once there he spread his cloak on the seaweed. "Now sit quiet for a moment," he went on, in a business-like tone, "and take care of these things for me." He put the water-keg, the compass, and what remained of the provisions beside him, and armed himself with an oar.
"I am not going to leave you, Anne," he said. "I am only going to the end of this rock; but I want you to look at the compass carefully while I am away, so that when I come back in a minute or two you will be able to tell me which is the north. Will you?"
"Yes, M. le Chevalier," responded Anne, and averted his eyes not unwillingly from La Vireville's bandaged head to the still-swinging compass-card.
With the oar La Vireville manœuvred the boat farther out along the spit of rock, where she would catch a better wind for his purpose. Then he clambered on board again, and, lifting the sail, looked regretfully at the young, sunburnt face beneath. Thinking of the dead fisherman's wife, he turned out his pockets; there was nothing there but a claspknife and a twist of tobacco, but round his neck was a medal, and on his finger a silver ring, and these he took. Then with a rope he lashed the body to the thwarts and made fast the tiller. The last thing was done with an auger from the locker. Hastily he then hoisted the sail, scrambled back on to the rock, and pushed the boat off with the oar.
Slowly at first, then faster as the breeze caught her, theMarie-Françoismoved away. Her executioner had bored only small holes, so that she should be well out in the bay before her doom came upon her; but she was settling little by little as she went. She began at last to lie over to the wind, and that hastened the end; the water without and the water within met over the gunwale; she heeled suddenly over, struggled to right herself, heeled over again . . . and was gone. The brown sail lay a second or two on the water, then it followed the rest, and theMarie-Françoisand her master went down to the bottom of the bay.
An oar, a loose spar, some indeterminate objects, and a couple of lobster-pots bobbed on the surface of the waves as La Vireville, dizzy with pain and regret, made his way back over the seaweed to the forlorn, frightened child for whom these two lives had just been thrown away.
Anne-Hilarion was still sitting obediently on the cloak, staring at the now stationary compass. La Vireville stooped and kissed him before he had time to ask any questions. "Anne, you have been a very brave little boy! Now you will go on being brave, will you not? The fisherman and his boat have gone home; you will not see them any more. But we do not need them, because for the rest of the day we are going to stay here, in a cave that I know of. You can help me to carry these things to it. Mind you do not slip on the seaweed!"
Employment, of whatever kind, was exactly the tonic needed by the child at the moment. He picked up the nearly empty basket of food and followed the émigré, who carried the water-keg and the compass. The sea whispered up the side of the rock, lifting the seaweed. "Be very careful," adjured La Vireville over his shoulder. "Here we are. I expect you have never been in a cave before?"
Only just above high-water mark, of a slit-like entrance so narrow that La Vireville, stooping, could only just squeeze through, and with even this entrance partly screened by a projecting rock, the cave opened out within to respectable proportions. The Chevalier de la Vireville had not, in fact, been guided, in his choice of a landing-place, entirely by the fact of his mishap, which made an immediate haven a necessity, nor by the knowledge that the soldiers on the cliff might very possibly come along in pursuit. The thought of this very spot had visited his mind once or twice earlier on the voyage.
Anne hesitated a moment, rather daunted by the darkness, so La Vireville set down his burdens and took him by the hand.
"It will soon get lighter," he said cheerfully. "Come and sit down by me." He disposed his own long legs with some haste upon the sandy floor, for his head was swimming so much that he feared to fall.
Anne came willingly enough and nestled up to him. "We are quite safe now, are we not, M. le Chevalier?"
"Quite," said Fortuné, with his arm round him. "And I think the best thing we could do would be to go to sleep, don't you, nephew?"
"I am in effect very sleepy," said Anne, leaning his head against him with a sigh. A moment's silence, and he went on, in a changed voice, as if against his will, "I was frightened . . . there was blood . . . you too, and the fisherman——"
"Of course you were frightened for a moment," interrupted the émigré, holding him tighter. "But listen, my little pigeon, and I will explain it all. The soldiers on the cliff fired at us, as you know, and a bullet hit François the fisherman, and because it hurt him very much, he fainted—you understand? At the same time your uncle got a blow on the head from another bullet, which hit the mast first and then knocked him down. But, you see, he is quite recovered now. In the same way, when François had lain down a little in the bottom of the boat he felt better again, and after you and I had got out of her he was able to sail her back home; for, you know, with this wind and in the daylight we should never have got to Jersey to-day. We shall go at night, when the soldiers can't see us. So you see, mon petit, that there is nothing to be alarmed at now, and as for hearing shots and seeing . . . a little blood . . . you must remember that you too will fight for the King some day!"
"Yes," said the little boy. "Unless I write a big book like Grandpapa."
"Well, whatever you do, you must never let yourself be frightened."
"I suppose that you and Papa are never frightened?" deduced Anne.
"Never!" responded La Vireville firmly. ("Heaven forgive me for a liar!" he added inwardly.)
"Then I will try not to be," announced Anne, with another sigh, and, to the Chouan's relief, he settled down against him, and almost instantly fell asleep.
As for La Vireville, he remained for some time in the same position, his back against the rocky wall of the cave, looking down at the brown head with its heavy silken curls that rested confidingly against his redingote, and reflecting on the chance that had given him so unusual a companion in these regions. This cave had known in the past year very different occupants, for it had served, and would shortly serve again, as a depot for arms and ammunition, smuggled in under cover of night from Jersey, and smuggled out again, in the same conditions, by the Chouans of the parishes which he commanded in the neighbourhood. He touched one of the soft ringlets that held so many gleams of gold in their brown, then, very cautiously, so as not to disturb the sleeper, he slipped down at full length on the floor of the cave, taking Anne with him in an encircling arm, and, pillowing his own aching head on the other, tried to follow his example.
During the afternoon Anne-Hilarion woke up, in a mood for converse, and with his sleep his late adventures seemed, temporarily at least, blotted from his mind. Having eaten, he made inquiries after La Vireville's head, but instead of reviving the question of how he got the hurt, branched off into an account of Baptiste's calamitous fall off a ladder at some undated epoch, and the large swelling on his forehead which was the result. From this topic he entered that of a gathered finger once sustained by Elspeth, which had, she said, pained her right up to her shoulder, and to which a succession of poultices had been applied. La Vireville rather absently remarking that it would be impossible to make poultices at present, nothing but seaweed being available for the purpose, Anne, for some reason, found this observation so exquisitely humorous that he laughed over it for a long time.
"If we were wrecked on a desert island, like Robinson Crusoe, of whom Grandpapa has read to me," he concluded, "we might have to make poultices of seaweed. Perhaps we might even have to eat it. Do you know about Robinson Crusoe, M. le Chevalier?"
"No," answered Fortuné drowsily. "Tell me about him."
Anne told him, to the appropriate sound of the waves without.
"One hears the sea in here," he remarked at the end. "But not so much as last night. Last night it was as it says in 'Noroway-over-the-foam':
"'The lift grew dark, and the wind blew loud,And gurly grew the sea . . .'"
"'The lift grew dark, and the wind blew loud,And gurly grew the sea . . .'"
"'The lift grew dark, and the wind blew loud,And gurly grew the sea . . .'"
"'The lift grew dark, and the wind blew loud,
And gurly grew the sea . . .'"
And he added, crooning the words to himself:
"'Half owre, half owre to Aberdour'Tis fifty fathoms deep;And there lies gude Sir Patrick SpensWi' the Scots lords at his feet.'"
"'Half owre, half owre to Aberdour'Tis fifty fathoms deep;And there lies gude Sir Patrick SpensWi' the Scots lords at his feet.'"
"'Half owre, half owre to Aberdour'Tis fifty fathoms deep;And there lies gude Sir Patrick SpensWi' the Scots lords at his feet.'"
"'Half owre, half owre to Aberdour
'Tis fifty fathoms deep;
And there lies gude Sir Patrick Spens
Wi' the Scots lords at his feet.'"
"Whatever are you talking about, child?" asked La Vireville uneasily, coming out of his doze.
But Anne went on, apparently fascinated by the words, and not much thinking of their meaning, which had on a past occasion so much distressed him:
"'O lang, lang may the ladies sit,Wi their fans into their hand,Before they see Sir Patrick SpensCome sailing to the strand!'And lang, lang may the maidens sitWi' their gowd kames in their hair,A-waiting for their ain dear loves!For them they'll see nae mair.'"
"'O lang, lang may the ladies sit,Wi their fans into their hand,Before they see Sir Patrick SpensCome sailing to the strand!'And lang, lang may the maidens sitWi' their gowd kames in their hair,A-waiting for their ain dear loves!For them they'll see nae mair.'"
"'O lang, lang may the ladies sit,Wi their fans into their hand,Before they see Sir Patrick SpensCome sailing to the strand!
"'O lang, lang may the ladies sit,
Wi their fans into their hand,
Before they see Sir Patrick Spens
Come sailing to the strand!
'And lang, lang may the maidens sitWi' their gowd kames in their hair,A-waiting for their ain dear loves!For them they'll see nae mair.'"
'And lang, lang may the maidens sit
Wi' their gowd kames in their hair,
A-waiting for their ain dear loves!
For them they'll see nae mair.'"
La Vireville winced, and his hand went to the medal and the ring in his pocket.
"Your selection of poetry is not very cheerful, my small friend," he remarked.
Anne-Hilarion looked at him with large eyes of surprise. "Do you not like it, M. le Chevalier? I think it has so pleasant a sound. But I expect your head aches a good deal, does it not? Then I will not say any more of it. That is the end, I think." He had been sitting on a pile of dried seaweed at a little distance, whence he could see out of the cave entrance; now he got up, and came and slipped his hand into his friend's. "If you wish to sleep, M. le Chevalier——"
"You will play sentry, eh?" finished La Vireville, smiling up at him. "Very well, only you must promise on no account to go outside the cave. We shall leave it as soon as it is dark. That is," he added to himself, "if this accursed head of mine is steady enough for me to walk by then." For he was beginning to fear that it might not be, and it was therefore with relief that he accepted Anne's suggestion, and closed his eyes again.
Left to his own devices, the Comte de Flavigny sat for quite a long time solemnly and sympathetically regarding his prostrate companion—rather as that companion had, earlier, studied him. M. le Chevalier looked so long, lying there, longer even, Anne thought, than when he was on his feet. Then the watcher got up and proceeded to make a careful tour round his domain. A meticulous search yielded nothing of more interest than an empty water-keg, similar to their own, abandoned in a corner. Having exhausted the hopeful emotions of this quest, Anne looked longingly at the entrance of the cave, whence he could see a slit of sea and sky, and hear the waves and the gulls. He desired greatly to go out, but his promise rendered that impossible. So he returned to his heap of seaweed, and wondered if François the fisherman had got nearly home by now; for he did not in the least doubt the explanation of recent events that had been given him, though he did not much care to dwell upon them. Then he thought of his grandfather, and speculated as to what he was doing; he thought also of Elspeth, and Baptiste, and the exotic Lal Khan. He would soon be seeing them again now.
M. le Chevalier stirred in his sleep—if indeed he were really asleep, of which Anne was not sure—threw out an arm, and said something that sounded angry.
Suddenly Anne bethought him that he had not said his prayers since . . . he could not exactly remember when. So he knelt down on the seaweed and applied himself to his devotions, adding a special petition on behalf of the Chevalier de la Vireville. After that he himself fell asleep again.
It was quite dark in the cave when La Vireville dragged himself to his feet and told Anne that it was time for them to be leaving it. The subsequent Odyssey was, to Anne at least, full of interest, and undoubtedly possessed more reality to him than to his half-dazed companion. After they had made their way through the narrow opening of the cave they had to scramble over many rocks full of pools in which, so Anne opined, there might be crabs, only it was too dark to see them—even though it was not so dark outside the cave as in it. His views on their alleged presence, and the likelihood of their seizing hold of the travellers' feet and retaining them willy-nilly till the tide came up again, were discouraged by La Vireville (or at least their utterance was), and he was told that he must not speak above a whisper. So in silence they clambered, in silence they arrived upon a beach which was first sand, where the waves were coming in gently, and then pebbles, which not only made a noise but also hurt the feet. Here La Vireville picked up Anne under one arm and so carried him. Then, when they were at the top of the bank of pebbles, they had to climb a low cliff where there was a path, somewhat difficult to see. After that they were on the level, on grass, and soon after in a strange, tunnel-like lane, very deep and dark indeed, and so narrow that they could only just go abreast. Soon there were great trees growing on the banks of this lane, and it became so dark that Anne could only see a few feet in front, but M. le Chevalier went on without hesitating, though not very fast. Sometimes Anne walked by his side, his hand in his; sometimes he was carried. Then they were out of the lane, in among more and more trees. Anne began to be tired, and M. le Chevalier seemed tired too, for he stopped and sat down occasionally, and once or twice he said things to himself which Anne did not understand.
There was some animal or bird among these trees which kept making a strange noise, and this M. le Chevalier would now and then imitate exactly. Anne asked what it was, and was told that it was an owl. After a little it seemed to Anne that there were people too in the forest, strange shadowy forms in curious garments. He commented on this, and M. le Chevalier told him not to be frightened, that they were all friends, and would do him no harm, and that it was, in fact, they who made the sound like an owl which he had answered. And, almost as he said it, two men seemed to come up out of the ground, two men with great wide-brimmed hats and long loose hair. They each carried a gun. It was too dark to see their faces. M. de la Vireville spoke to one in a strange tongue, and then he said to Anne, "Let him carry you, little one, and don't be frightened." So the man took him up in his arms, and Anne, being tired, was glad of this, though he had to struggle against a certain amount of the alarm which he had promised to try never to feel again.
M. le Chevalier, who was of course too big to be carried, however tired he might feel, took the arm of the other man, and they went on again. And then, just as Anne was thinking that he would ask to be put down—for, after all, the man who carried him smelt almost too disagreeably—they came to a little hut roofed with branches, and one of the men knocked, and made the noise of the owl, and the door opened and they all went in.
In the hut was another man in strange dress, and here, by a couple of rushlights, Anne, when he was deposited on his feet, had his first full view of a Chouan.
By his side there stood an oldish man, not very tall, with enormously powerful shoulders and rather a short neck. On the lank, grizzled hair that fell to these shoulders was a large wide-brimmed hat; he wore the strangest breeches that Anne had ever seen, made of some dirty white material, pleated and full like a woman's skirt; from these to his sabots his legs were clad in deerskin gaiters. But his coat engaged the little boy's attention almost more, for it was blue, very short, and appeared to have another underneath it, and the front was elaborately embroidered in whorls of yellow and red. Pinned on to it was a tiny soiled square of linen, roughly worked with the emblem of the Sacred Heart, and a rosary was looped through one of the button-holes. The man's little twinkling eyes, set deep in his head, looked, Anne decided, rather wicked, and he had never seen a face which seemed so much as if it never could be washed clean, so grey and leathery was the wrinkled skin. The Chouan carried a musket slung across his back, and a knife and two pistols in a leather belt.
M. le Chevalier, sitting on the edge of the table, with both hands to his head, now addressed this being as "Grain d'Orge," and said a few words to him in a strange language. Anne had by this time arrived at the conclusion that this was the man who had carried him, so when the lips of the being parted in what the little boy supposed to be a smile (displaying a few yellow teeth, and causing innumerable more wrinkles to appear), and it held out a large grey hand, uttering something unintelligible, Anne gathered that he was being given a friendly greeting of some kind, and with very little hesitation laid his own hand in Grain d'Orge's capacious paw.
"'O Richard, ô mon roi,L'univers t'abandonne;Sur la terre il n'y a que moiQui s'intéresse à ta personne,'"
"'O Richard, ô mon roi,L'univers t'abandonne;Sur la terre il n'y a que moiQui s'intéresse à ta personne,'"
"'O Richard, ô mon roi,L'univers t'abandonne;Sur la terre il n'y a que moiQui s'intéresse à ta personne,'"
"'O Richard, ô mon roi,
L'univers t'abandonne;
Sur la terre il n'y a que moi
Qui s'intéresse à ta personne,'"
sang a clear tenor voice in the forest next morning—the once famous air out of that opera ofRichard Cœur-de-Lionwhich had served the Royalists of three or four years ago as a rallying-cry. The singer, a fair-haired young Breton with a face of refinement and intelligence, was busy polishing his English musket. He was, or had been, a law student at Rennes, and now was one of 'Monsieur Augustin's' lieutenants. A little way off Anne-Hilarion was crouched in a patch of primroses, which he was adding one by one to the tight, hot bunch in his hand. Grain d'Orge and another Chouan of about the same standard of personal cleanliness, sitting on a fallen trunk, their muskets resting against them, regarded his labours with a wide, admiring grin. And under a beech-tree, a fresh bandage round his head, La Vireville himself lay propped on his elbows, reading and re-reading a letter. A map lay open on the ground beside him. Over this peaceful and almost pastoral scene shone the young green of April's trees and the soft blue of her sky, a setting with which the child plucking flowers was more consonant than the armed peasants. But the latter, by the attention which they paid to his movements, did not seem to find it so.
La Vireville suddenly rolled over and sat up. "Le Goffic, come here a moment, will you?"
The young Breton ceased his song, put down his weapon, and obeyed. His leader motioned to him to sit down beside him.
"You know, of course, Charles, that 'M. Alexis,' the leader of the Carhoët division, was killed the other day while I was away?"
"Yes, Monsieur Augustin."
"He seems to have been killed by treachery," said La Vireville, referring to the letter in his hand, "at a farm near Lanrivain. Let me see, where is that exactly?" He searched on the map lying beside him.
"Grain d'Orge knows that neighbourhood well," suggested his lieutenant.
"Yes, of course he does," assented the émigré, relinquishing the search. "I will ask him in a moment, since I shall have further need of his topographical knowledge. For there is another matter in this letter of M. du Boishardy's. He wishes me to take over the command of the Carhoët division, now vacant through 'M. Alexis' death."
Now M. du Boishardy commanded the whole department of the Côtes-du-Nord for the King, and La Vireville was consequently more or less under his orders. The young Breton's face fell.
"And leave us?" he exclaimed.
"No, no! M. du Boishardy wishes me to combine the two if possible. I should have to appoint a subordinate in any case. The pressing need, however, seems to be that I should go over there in person as soon as possible, for it appears that they are all at sixes and sevens since their leader's death. I must proceed to Carhoët directly I return from Jersey—for to Jersey I must go, to see the Prince de Bouillon, even if I had not the infant there to convoy into British hands. The best plan, I take it, would be to sail direct from Jersey to that part of the coast, if it is possible to land there. Grain d'Orge!"
In front of that warrior, fingering his musket with one hand, was now standing Anne-Hilarion, who had abandoned his primrose-plucking, though still retaining his spoil. The old Chouan's French was very limited, for which reason conversation with him, for those ignorant of Breton, was difficult; but he and the Comte de Flavigny did appear to be holding discourse of some kind. La Vireville's summons brought not only him but Anne and his flowers also.
"Thank you, my child," said La Vireville, accepting the hot nosegay. "Now you can go back and pick some for Grain d'Orge."
The Chouan grinned. "You wanted me, Monsieur Augustin?"
"Yes. Sit down there. You know the Carhoët division well, don't you?"
"Like the palm of my hand, Monsieur Augustin." He began to arrange some of Anne's primroses on the ground. "See, here is Porhoët, the little fishing village, in the Bay of St. Guénaël, and there is Carhoët, seven miles inland, and there is the wood of Roscanvel, and there is Lanrivain, and close by there, I think, is the farm where 'M. Alexis' was killed the other day, as we heard. There is a path leading to it through a copse, and it was doubtless by that that the Blues came when they surprised him. . . . Yes, I know it well, though I cannot read the map. My sister lives at Carhoët, and I have a nephew at Roscanvel."
"Good," said La Vireville, studying the chart of blossoms. "Well, mon gars, I want to go to Carhoët directly I return from Jersey. You could meet me at the fishing village, Porhoët, I suppose, and conduct me to Carhoët and some other places that I want to visit there? Can one land with any measure of safety at Porhoët?"
Grain d'Orge nodded his great head. "Surely, Monsieur Augustin. 'M. Alexis' had an agent of some kind living at Porhoët for the Jersey correspondence, so that once I get into touch with him it should not be difficult. One should take precautions, though, in spite of the truce; is it not so, Monsieur Augustin?"
"The headache which I have at this moment, mon vieux, supplies a sufficient answer to that question."
"You will not go to the peace conferences at La Prévalaye, then, Monsieur Augustin?" asked his younger lieutenant.
La Vireville shrugged his shoulders. "Do you think, my dear Le Goffic, that I am a particularly good exemplar of peace—a man who has been fired on during this truce which Grain d'Orge so rightly distrusts? No, I do not believe in the possibility of a lasting peace at present, and I am sure that even if it is concluded it will be broken in a month or two. Neither side really wants it; they are merely deluded if they think they do. M. du Boishardy—he writes to me from La Prévalaye itself—is young and enthusiastic, and believes too readily in the good in other people. But he recognises that he is not likely to see me there—otherwise he would hardly have suggested my going over to Carhoët."
"Monsieur Augustin is right," said Grain d'Orge sagely, shaking his grizzled locks. "Nobody wants a peace, and it will not last."
"Well, you shall guide me to Carhoët from Porhoët in a day or two. I must make a try for Jersey to-night if the wind serves. Burn the flare at ten o'clock, for I think we shall find that the Jersey lugger will be off the point. I know that the Prince is impatient to see me, and it is possible that he may have forgotten I was coming from Southampton, not from here."
"I will see to the matter," said Le Goffic.
"There is something else of importance that I want to discuss with you two," went on La Vireville, lowering his voice; and his two dissimilar lieutenants, seated on the beech-mast like himself, brought themselves nearer. "If—note that I only sayif—there were to be an émigré landing, supported by the British Government this summer, somewhere in the Morbihan, do you think that our gars could be relied on to follow me to Southern Brittany to co-operate with it?"
Anne-Hilarion had picked primroses, as suggested, for Grain d'Orge, but he had not given them to him, for, sensible little boy that he was, he knew the signs of a grown-up being really too absorbed to attend to him, since Grandpapa himself sometimes exhibited them. The most unmistakable of these were written now upon the three men who sat, talking so earnestly, under the beech-tree. He had approached them tentatively once or twice, but even M. le Chevalier took no notice of him—did not, in fact, appear to be aware that he was there—so in the end he presented his second harvest to the other Chouan, who received it with testimonies of extreme gratitude, and arranged some of the flowers round his greasy wide-brimmed hat. This man could not speak a word of French, so all he and Anne could do was to sit side by side on the log and smile spasmodically at each other. Anne regretted that his foreign shell with the stripes was in M. le Chevalier's pocket, for a scheme had just visited him of filling it with water and putting primroses into it. He gave a sudden little yawn. What a long, long time M. le Chevalier was talking. . . .
His head was all but nodding when he felt a hand on his shoulder, and there was M. le Chevalier bending over him.
"Are you bored to death, my child, or asleep?" he asked kindly. "I have been a terrible while talking, have I not? It is Grain d'Orge's fault; he is so obstinate. Now, would you like to come for a little walk in the wood before we have our next meal? There is just time, and I have something to show you."
Anne-Hilarion jumped up from the log with much alacrity.
"What is it that we are going to see, M. le Chevalier?" he asked, as he set off, his hand in his friend's. "Do ogres live in this forest—or giants? Or perhaps there is buried treasure? You know, I have never seen so many trees all together at one time as this. I could not count them,possibly!"
"No, I should think not," agreed La Vireville. "You cannot even see them all. This is the way, where the little path strikes off. I am going to show you, Anne, the château of Kerdronan, where I lived when I was a boy like you."
"Oh, M. le Chevalier, I shall like that!"
"Wait till you see it!" said Fortuné.
And they went along the path, little more than a track, that wound between the trees. Over and about them were the fledgling beech-leaves, of the loveliest green of hope and innocence, so young and untried that they resembled gleams of bright water rather than anything more palpable; and underfoot, crackling like paper, were their fellows of last year.
"Then you used to come and play in this wood when you were a boy, M. le Chevalier?" began Anne-Hilarion again.
"I knew every inch of it once," replied the émigré.
Anne-Hilarion gave a sigh of envy. "But you ran away to sea, did you not?" he asked, and there was a strong suggestion of reproach in his tone.
La Vireville smiled. "Never!" he said. "What put such an idea into your head? I was in the navy once, it is true—I served under Suffren—but I assure you that I got there by the most legitimate channels. Mind that root, child!"
"Papa said that you had been a sailor," explained Anne, "and I thought——"
"I see," said his friend, amused.
"Are there as many trees as this in Jersey?" was Anne-Hilarion's next question.
"No, nephew, there are not. By the way, I don't believe I have ever told you where I am going to take you when we get to St. Helier—to Jersey, that is?"
"Perhaps to the house of a pirate?" suggested Anne-Hilarion hopefully.
This time La Vireville laughed outright. "My child, what an imagination you have! No; to the house of my mother. She lives there."
"Why?" inquired his charge.
La Vireville did not answer for a moment. "For various reasons," he replied, at length. "One of them you will see in a few minutes."
"I should think," observed Anne, looking about him as they went on, "that it was in a big wood like this, where nobody could see them, that the two brothers of Liddesdale met and fought."
"Who were they?" asked the Frenchman. "I never heard of them."
"They are in a story of Elspeth's that she told me once. They fought about a lady, and the lady was false to both of them. Is that why people generally fight duels, M. le Chevalier?"
La Vireville switched at an anemone with a hazel twig that he had pulled off.
"Good God!" he exclaimed to himself. "It is not the only reason, child," he returned. "But duels are not subjects for little boys to talk about."
Ordinarily Anne-Hilarion would have been deterred at once by a tone and a phraseology so foreign to the speaker, as he knew him, but he was undeniably wrought upon by his surroundings, and pursued the forbidden topic.
"I expect you have fought a duel, have you not, M. le Chevalier?" he said tentatively, looking up at his tall companion. But La Vireville was silent.
"Perhaps several?" suggested the inquirer; and though he still got no answer, went on, "Were any of them here, in this wood?"
"No," said the Chouan, walking very fast. "—Now leave the subject alone, there's a good child! You will see in a moment what we have come to see. Here the wood ends, but it goes on again afterwards."
They had come, in fact, to the edge of the forest—or, rather, to an extensive clearing crossed by a deep-rutted woodland road. The émigré led the way along this for twenty yards or so, and the stopped.
There in front of them, at the end of a grass-grown avenue of larches, now swaying in all their first delicate green joy, stood the corpse of a large seventeenth century manor-house. Not decay, but violence, had slain it; it was gutted from end to end, so that with its blackened, jagged walls, its grinning rafters, and the few tall chimneys that yet stood, it looked, between those arcades of feathery mirth, like a skeleton in fairyland.
"Oh, poor house!" exclaimed Anne-Hilarion compassionately. "What has happened to it? Whose is it?"
"Mine," replied La Vireville. His mouth was rather grim.
"Is that Ker-where you lived?"
La Vireville nodded. "The Blues burnt it down two years ago. It does not look very pretty now, does it? Yet it was beautiful once."
"Oh, M. le Chevalier, you must have been very sorry!"
"Sorry? Of course I was sorry, Anne. I was born there, and my father and grandfather before me. . . . Well, there are no more of us, so perhaps it does not much matter. We must go back now."
The little boy stood with a very grave face under the larches, and looked at the irremediable havoc towards which they led. Then he thrust his hand silently into his friend's, and they both turned back into the wood.
"So, after all, Anne, your good-bye to France is a very peaceful one," observed La Vireville some hours later.
He spoke the truth. The deck of theAristocrate, one of the armed luggers employed in the Jersey correspondence, was under their feet, and theAristocrateherself, her sail ready to go up to the favouring wind, lay gently rolling on a tranquil sea. The little boat, manned by La Vireville's own gars, which had brought them out without adventure to the lugger, was just pulling away. La Vireville, standing by the side, looked after her.
"Yes, this is really your farewell to France. God knows when you will see it again."
"I think, perhaps," replied the Comte de Flavigny in his uncompromising treble, "that I would rather live in England. Though I like the Chouans. . . . But you will, no doubt, be going back to France, M. le Chevalier?"
"I? Yes, in a couple of days, most probably," answered the émigré rather absently, gazing at the moon-silvered coast, dear and implacable, where one day, as he well knew, he should land for the last time.
"And what the devil is this, M. de la Vireville?" demanded a voice behind him, and La Vireville turned to see Lieutenant Gosset, the Jerseyman who commanded theAristocrate. "Have you kidnapped it, or is it, perchance, your own?" went on the sailor.
"Neither," answered La Vireville. "Let me make known to you the Comte Anne-Hilarion de Flavigny. We have been making a little tour of Northern France together." And Anne made a bow, while Gosset laughed, half puzzled, and the lugger's mainsail went up.
"May I stay on deck with you a little quarter of an hour?" begged Anne, snuggling down by La Vireville's side in the moonlight. "And tell me, please, M. le Chevalier, about Madame your mother, to whom we are going. Is she—is she old?"
"That depends on what you consider old, my pigeon. She does not seem so to me. But perhaps I am old myself; I expect you think so, don't you? Her hair is grey, it is true—but so would mine be, Anne, if I had to look after you much longer."
Anne smiled, recognising this for a jest, not to be taken seriously. He studied his friend, whose bandaged head was bare in the windy moonlight.
"I like your hair," he observed thoughtfully. "But already—is it rude of me to say so?—there are some grey hairs there . . . only a few." He laid a small finger on La Vireville's temple. "I saw them when you were asleep in the cave."
"I have so many cares," sighed the Chouan. "You have seen, Anne, what a quantity of people I have to look after in Brittany. Then there is my mother—and, lately, a certain small boy. . . . And, by the way, it is time that small boy went to bed. We shall not reach St. Helier till morning."
He went off to see what accommodation had been prepared for the child. When he returned, he found Anne giving an account of his adventures to the interested Gosset, who was standing looking down at him with his hands on his hips.
"And now," finished Anne, "M. le Chevalier is going to take me to Mme. de la Vireville in Jersey, and then I shall go home to my Grandpapa in London."
"You seem to have had a stirring time, by gad!" commented the sailor. "But I did not know that you had a wife, La Vireville! Since when are you married, may I ask, and who is the fortunate lady?"
The Frenchman frowned. "You are misinformed," he said shortly. "I have never had a wife. It is my mother to whom I am taking him."
"I beg your pardon!" exclaimed Gosset, struck by the sudden change in his face, and La Vireville turned and walked away.
The port of St. Helier, reached at last after such vicissitudes of seafaring, was ringing with Jersey-French and English, and here and there with the genuine tongue of Gaul, for the place was full of Royalist refugees. As the tall Frenchman with the bandaged head, holding by the hand the little boy in the dishevelled English clothes, made his way between fishermen, loiterers, and an occasional man-of-war's man from the English frigate in the roads, he nodded to an acquaintance or two, not staying, however, to satisfy the curiosity of any.
It happened that their road from the harbour led through some stalls of market produce. Anne was chattering gaily as they passed between heaps of apples and onions, when the course of his legs was suddenly checked, and, through surprise, that of his tongue also, by the fact that his conductor had stopped. He looked up, and followed the direction of his friend's eyes to where, by a stall a little farther on, two women had paused. The one was an upstanding Jersey peasant girl with a basket on her arm, the other a little elderly lady in black. At the moment one of her diminutive hands was resting on a robust cabbage, where it looked like a belated butterfly.
"No, this is larger than I require," she was saying, in the prettiest broken English.
La Vireville, followed by Anne, went up behind her and stooped over her.
"Reconsider your decision,petite maman, I pray you," he said softly. "A man is hungry after the sea, and there are two of us——"
The reticule in the lady's other hand went to earth as she turned and grasped his arm. "Fortuné! Mon fils! Dieu soit loué! But I expected you days ago! I have been in torment that you came not. Where have you been—and ah, my God, what have you done to your head?"
The little white hands went fluttering over him as if they must assure themselves that he was really there. He was so much taller than she that to meet her upturned face with its delicate cheeks and young eyes he had to stoop a long way. The kiss was given and returned among the stalls with that candour of the Latin races, the testimony of whose emotions is not confined to withindoors, and it is probable that for Mme. de la Vireville at that moment, if not for her son, the market-place did not exist. And being half French itself, it looked on with sympathy.
But the man at least remembered the existence of someone else, and while those fingers were still stroking his arm and the soft voice was yet asking him questions, he caught hold of his mother's hand.
"You want to know where I have been,ma mère?I have been in France with a travelling companion, whose acquaintance you must now make. Here he is."
Mme. de la Vireville, still under the sway of emotion, turned, looking for something of the size of her son. So at first she saw no one. Then she gave an exclamation.
"Anne, let me present you to my mother.Ma mère, this is the Comte Anne-Hilarion de Flavigny. We will tell you our adventures presently; but just now I fancy that M. le Comte is hungry."
"The little angel!" murmured Mme. de la Vireville, and this time it was she who had to stoop. "He shall come home with us at once, le cher petit."
And Anne finished his journey, therefore, holding a hand of each.
Mme. de la Vireville lived in the plainest way in a small house in St. Helier. Indeed no other manner of life was open to her, for she and her son were very poor, though they had not always been so. But resource was innate to her French blood. Besides, Jersey was dear to her—dearer at least than England would have been—for it was near France, and those expeditions in which Fortuné so frequently hazarded his life had Jersey for their starting-point. So, at irregular intervals, she was able to see him; sometimes he even slept a night or two beneath her roof. Every time they parted she knew that the odds were considerably on the side of their never meeting again. But she had in her little body the soul of a hero, and in consequence her son kept back few secrets from her; indeed, he often came to her for advice, as he would have done to a comrade. In spite of great sorrows she had about her something eternally young, something in the mind corresponding to the almost infantine freshness of her oval face under its crown of grey hair.
The simple meal was gay. The small visitor, bathed, brushed, even mended as to his more noticeable rents, had one side of the table to himself, and plied a very creditable knife and fork. How much he loved and admired Fortuné, and how fond Fortuné was of him, soon became apparent to Mme. de la Vireville; and when she slipped out into the kitchen to put the last touches to the salad, Jeanne Carré, the Jersey girl, observed respectfully:
"One might almost say, Madame, that it was M. le Chevalier's son sitting there at table with you!"
A vivid look of pain shot across Mme. de la Vireville's face, and was gone in an instant. "Yes, might one not, my child?" she answered quietly. But later, when she was back in the little parlour with her guests, and sat for a moment studying the two, her gaze was clouded with a profound sadness. And, as it happened, her son looked up and caught the expression. His eyes smiled at her, but his mouth was grave.
At the end of the repast Anne-Hilarion was installed in an arm-chair with a book, while mother and son conferred together on the window-seat.
"You will oblige me, Fortuné," began Mme. de la Vireville, "by going as soon as possible to a surgeon. You are telling me the truth when you say that it is nothing serious?" she added, eyeing the bandage round his head with suspicion.
"Have you ever known me lie to you, little mother?" he retorted. "The bullet must have struck the mast and glanced off on to my head, which is equally hard. I promise you that I will have the scratch attended to. But first I must make inquiries about the English frigate. Should she be sailing this afternoon or evening, as I suspect, Anne must go in her."
"You will not go with him yourself, Fortuné?"
"No, I must find an officer to whom to confide him. It should not be difficult. And after that I must see the Prince without delay; I am already four or five days late, and as usual there is some business about landing muskets."
The light that had sprung into his mother's eyes died out of them. "Surely, if you are not going to England, you could stay here this one night?"
La Vireville bent forward and kissed her. "We will see, my heart. Meanwhile, I leave M. le Comte in your charge."
A couple of hours later he returned with a young man in uniform, and Mr. Francis Tollemache, of His Britannic Majesty's Navy, had his first glimpse of a French interior.
"My mother speaks a little English," said La Vireville encouragingly in that tongue, "and Anne is fluent except when he talks Scotch. ThePomoneis sailing for Weymouth this afternoon," he explained to Mme. de la Vireville. "Her captain will give Anne a passage, and Mr. Tollemache, who has a few days' leave on arrival, will be kind enough to take him to London with him."
And while his mother started to captivate the young lieutenant, La Vireville took his travelling companion on his knee and told him what had been arranged. Anne-Hilarion quietly hid his face in the émigré's breast, and the latter half thought that he was crying—a rare occurrence.
"You will not mind, will you, Anne, that I do not come with you?" he asked coaxingly. "They will be very kind to you on board the man-of-war, and you will like to see a frigate. In a few days you will be back with Grandpapa; I don't suppose Papa will have got home yet. Think how anxious they must be about you in Cavendish Square!"
But Anne would say nothing save, in a little voice, "I wish you were coming, M. le Chevalier; I wish you were coming!"
And La Vireville, holding him tight, was surprised to find how much he wished he were.
"You promised to be my uncle in England also," said the little boy presently in rather a melancholy voice.
"Well, so I will, my child, when next I come over. But I have my folk in Brittany to look after now. You remember Grain d'Orge and the rest, don't you?"
Meanwhile Mr. Tollemache, at the other side of the room, had brought about the very catastrophe he wished to avoid, having from sheer apprehension talked in his own tongue (he knew no other) so fast and so loud to Mme. de la Vireville that he had caused the complete shipwreck of what had never been a very sea-worthy vessel—her English. She had therefore relapsed into French and he into silence. Perceiving this, La Vireville put down Anne and went over to them.
"Suppose,ma mère," he suggested, "that we leave the fellow-travellers to make each other's acquaintance without us?" And the next moment the Comte de Flavigny and Mr. Tollemache were left alone.
Anne-Hilarion looked a trifle shy, but eyed his new acquaintance with interest; Mr. Tollemache, on the other hand, appeared to be suffering a certain degree of anguish, and to have no idea what to say. It was Anne, therefore, who broke the ice by remarking: "You are going to take me in your ship, Monsieur?"
"Yes," said the sailor. "Old—I mean the captain has given permission."
"You are not the captain then?"
"God bless me, no!"
"That was the ship—that large one we saw at entering?"
The young man nodded. "ThePomone, forty-four guns. I'll show you all over her when we get on board." And, seeing the direction of the little boy's eyes, he half shamefacedly hitched forward his sword. "Would you like to look at this?"
Anne came nearer, and in order better to approximate their heights Mr. Tollemache decided to sit down. Anne then stood by his knee and examined the sword-hilt with gravity. After which he said, in his most earnest manner, "I should very much like to see your ship, Monsieur. You see, I have been in a great many lately, and they were all different. Yes, if you would please draw your sword. You have perhaps killed pirates with it?" . . .
When La Vireville came back in a quarter of an hour or so he felt—was it possible?—a tiny prick of jealousy at seeing Anne on the young lieutenant's knee. It was true that the child slipped off at once and came to him, but his conversation for the moment was entirely pervaded by the scraps of information he had just acquired about the British Navy.
"By Jove, it's time to go!" exclaimed Mr. Tollemache, catching sight of the clock. "Are the boy's things ready?"
"He has only got what he stands up in," said La Vireville, smiling. "No, here's my mother with a bundle she has put together, but Heaven knows what is in it."
"Well, there will be no lack of boat-cloaks to keep him warm," returned the sailor. "I promise you I will look after him; he seems a jolly little beggar." And he added feelingly: "It's a mercy he can talk English!"
So, farewells to Mme. de la Vireville over, they walked down to the quay, the new protector and the old, with Anne between them. A boat's crew from the frigate was already waiting at the slip. La Vireville went down on one knee and put an arm about his little comrade.
"Will you kiss me, Anne?"
For answer, Anne clung to him so tightly that a curl became entangled on a button and took a deal of disengaging. . . .
Then once again Anne was in a boat—but not with him. La Vireville turned on his heel with Mr. Tollemache's "Give way, men!" in his ears, then changed his mind, and stood watching the progress of the gig as the oars urged it forward over the dancing water. The small figure in the stern looked back at him all the time.
Philip d'Auvergne, titular Prince de Bouillon and captain in the British Navy, received the Chevalier de la Vireville rather petulantly in the little house which he inhabited under the shadow of the half-ruined castle of Montorgueil, over at Gorey. He was a good-looking, florid man of one-and-forty, somewhat overfond of surrounding with circumstance the title which had so strangely descended upon him, and converted an unknown naval officer of Jersey into a French prince of the house of Turenne—deprived, it is true, of his principality by the Revolution—while leaving him all the while a British subject. At heart he was generous and loyal.
"What the devil is this I hear about a wild-goose chase to France after a little boy, M. de la Vireville?" he began angrily. "Is this the meaning of your being so long overdue? I wanted you yesterday to land a party ofémigrésnear Cancale, and I had to employ Chateaubriand instead."
"Permit me to observe to your Highness," returned the culprit coolly, "that I am not, at this moment, disposed to lend my services to that side of the correspondence. My men in my own command have a prior claim on my attention just now."
"I am glad you realise that, Monsieur," retorted the Prince rather tartly. "Yet the muskets and ammunition have been waiting for them nearly a week."
La Vireville gave his shoulders a slight shrug. "The delay was unavoidable, mon Prince," he said, wondering whether it were the hot room which was making his head ache so. "I am ready to superintend the landing of that cargo whenever you please."
The Prince seem mollified. "Good," he remarked. "Sit down, M. de la Vireville, and before we go into details over that affair I will tell you an important piece of news. . . . You have nothing serious the matter with your head, I trust?"
"Nothing," the émigré assured him, as, half expecting that he was going to be told about the Carhoët command, he took a seat opposite Captain d'Auvergne at the big table, strewn with maps and papers.
"His Majesty's Government," went on the Prince, bringing out the words as if their utterance gave him pleasure, "have decided to support a Royalist expedition this summer to the coast of France, to land perhaps in Southern Brittany, perhaps in Vendée. You could co-operate with your Chouans, I suppose?"
"A little while ago, mon Prince," replied La Vireville, "I should have said No. But, having already heard of the likelihood of such a step, I took the opportunity of sounding my men on the point yesterday—by which your Highness sees that my delay has not been without fruit. And I am now convinced that I could, with some difficulty, get them to follow me to Finistère or Morbihan, but south of the Loire, no. They would never leave Brittany."
Leaning back in his carved chair, with the crown on the top, the Prince de Bouillon digested this information. La Vireville thought that his face had a little fallen on learning that the proposed expedition was no secret to his visitor. Although he liked him in spite of them, the Chouan was well aware of Captain d'Auvergne's weaknesses, and he let his gaze stray up to the framed pedigree on the wall behind the Prince's head that showed where, in the mists of the thirteenth century, that branch had burgeoned on the ancient stem of La Tour d'Auvergne which was to blossom, during the eighteenth, in the present scion. From that it wandered out of the window, whence he could see the blue expanse of Gorey Bay. He wondered whether thePomonehad weighed yet. . . . Confound this beating in his head!
His Serene Highness suddenly bent forward and laid a hand on his arm. "La Vireville, I am afraid you are unwell! Itisyour head, then; what have you done to it?"
"I beg your pardon," exclaimed the émigré, removing the hand with which he had unconsciously covered his eyes. "The fact is that I have a damnable headache—a relic of the wild-goose chase, nothing more. It will be gone to-morrow, Monseigneur."
"Then to-morrow, my dear fellow, will serve us to discuss matters. I was sure," said the good-natured Prince, "that there was something under that bandage, and that you have not had it attended to since you landed. No, I thought not. Will you take a glass of wine? . . . Well, go home to Madame de la Vireville, make her my compliments, and tell her that I am sending my surgeon to see you at once."
But as La Vireville left Gorey he wondered whether it were not rather a touch of heartache than of headache that he had.
The smile which Mme. de la Vireville gave the Prince's surgeon when, after examination of her son's hurt, he ordered him at least three days' complete rest, must have gone to his head, for, being a young man and a jocular, he remarked to his patient as he left, "You have a trifle on the breast of your coat, Monsieur—an involuntary token at parting, I take it—which you may like to know of. . . . I hope I have not been indiscreet!"
La Vireville, who, in obedience to orders, was then lying at full length on the little sofa, stared at the speaker rather haughtily and made no answer. But when the door had shut he said, "Look at my coat for me, little mother, and let us see what that farceur meant."
Mme. de la Vireville, who had the sight of a girl, bent over him, and after a second pointed to where, round a button, were tangled two long bright brown hairs.
Her son frowned, then he smiled. "Take them off, my little heart, and keep them for me. I may as well have some souvenir of my 'nephew,' since it is likely to be long enough before I see him again."
Later he was still lying there, and she sat on a stool beside him, her head resting against his pillow, her hand in his. Suddenly he said, though he had been silent a long time:
"I think if . . . I thinkherswould have been like Anne."
She understood him perfectly, because she, and she alone, knew the bitter grave where his heart was buried.
"Yes . . . but he would have been less fair." She put her hand on his dark hair, and, drawing his bandaged head to her shoulder, kissed it passionately.
For the second time that day Baptiste was distractedly polishing his silver. About every six minutes a tear rolled off his sharp nose on to salver or tankard and had to be wiped off, and the dull patch rubbed up again. Lal Khan, putting Mr. Elphinstone's bedroom to rights with long, dusky fingers, stared mournfully at a miniature propped on the dressing-table, and shook his head. And still further upstairs Mrs. Elspeth Saunders was mending stockings; her nose was red, so too her eyes. In the kitchen the cook and the rest of the domestics were discussing the situation, as they had almost unceasingly discussed it for the last few days since Elspeth's return. Her own account of what had happened they had long ago threshed bare: had thrilled to hear how, when she reached Rose Cottage at seven o'clock that fateful morning, as arranged, she had been met by one of the old ladies with the horrifying news that their guest had evidently spirited Anne-Hilarion away in the night; how, almost beside herself at this intelligence, she had suffered them to hustle her into a postchaise on a totally false scent, which caused her to traverse many miles of the county of Kent until, half-crazed and wholly destitute of money, she returned at last in sheer desperation to London, there to hear that La Vireville had already started to France in pursuit of the child. The opinion of the region was divided, some of its inmates inclining to blame Mrs. Saunders, some to commiserate. And it was either the consciousness of unjust condemnation or of her own innate superiority which kept Elspeth so much alone in the big house over which hung that piercing sense of something gone that would never, perhaps, come back again. . . .
"'Twas but a few days syne A was tellin' a piece to the bairn in his bed!" Elspeth rapped her thimble suddenly against her teeth, flung down her mending, and marched downstairs. At the library door she knocked, and, receiving no answer, looked in. The room was empty and the fire burnt low. Muttering to herself anent the negligence of "yon black heathen," she made it up. There was a book open on the table, but no signs that Mr. Elphinstone had been occupied, as of custom, with his memoirs. Elspeth left the library and went to the pantry.
"Where is the maister, d'ye ken?" she asked of the polisher.
"I tink he go again to the ministère, I do not know," responded Baptiste, sighing.
"Tae the meenister!" retorted Elspeth. "What wad be the sense in that noo? Gif prayin' could bring the wean back, A reckon he'd been here these mony days!" (Had not she herself, descendant of the Covenanters, taken the incredible step of removing Our Lady of Pontmain from the back of the drawer where, immediately upon the Marquis's departure, she had been stowed away, and putting her in the very centre of the mantelpiece in the lost child's room—a deed for which she nightly besought forgiveness?)
"That is ver' true," agreed the Frenchman, "but it is not that which I mean, Madame Saundair. I mean he go to the—how do you call it?—there where are the State Secretaries."
"Why for canna ye say what ye mean, then?" snapped the lady. "That mebbe will dae gude. At least they arena French there. A've had eno' o' yer Frenchies tae last ma life!"
Baptiste withered.
"Those . . . those weemen at Canterbury!" proceeded Elspeth. "And then—what d'ye call him, the Chevaleer . . . what gar'd Glenauchtie sendhimafter the bairn instead o' an Englishman? Him that jockeyed the wean oot o' his bed at nicht! Belike 'tis he's spirited him awa the noo!"
Baptiste made no effort to defend his compatriot. He had long ago realised that to live in peace with Mrs. Saunders required a policy of thoroughgoing self-effacement, and had decided that on the whole it was worth it. Otherwise he might have retorted that she, pure of any Gallic strain though she was, had not proved singularly successful in her guardianship. Instead, he feebly used his wash-leather on a ladle.
"There's ane gude thing," resumed Elspeth, "that the Marquis doesna ken yet awhile."
"But when he return!" exclaimed the old man, lifting eyes and hands to heaven.
He was still in this attitude when there came a rousing rat-tat at the hall-door.
"Mebbe that's the Marquis the noo!" ejaculated Mrs. Saunders. And, though it was not her place to do so, she flung off her apron and rushed to answer it.
Lieutenant Francis Tollemache, therefore, standing on the steps, received one of the most painful shocks of his life when a gaunt Scottish female, darting forth, caught his small companion from the ground and almost stifled him with kisses, and then showed a decided disposition to cast herself on his breast also. He prepared to defend himself, backing hurriedly to the limits of the portico, and saying disjointedly, "My good woman, my good woman . . ." And then in a moment there was some old man actually trying to kiss his hand, and from the back of the hall there was even advancing a salaaming native in a turban, while more and more female servants came flocking towards the doorstep. It was intolerable! In a minute or two there would be a crowd outside, and already Mr. Tollemache was conscious of the enraptured gaze of the hackney coachman who had brought them there.
"Good God!" he exclaimed, very red. "For Heaven's sake let's get inside!" But even within the hall the whirl of greetings and emotion continued, and Anne-Hilarion kept disappearing from view in successive avalanches of embraces, till at last his voice was upraised, asking, "Grandpapa! Where is Grandpapa? Has Papa come back?"
"Yes, where is the master of the house?" demanded Mr. Tollemache, with some indignation, and was most unseasonably answered in French by the old man. Meanwhile, one of the younger domestics in the background was threatened with a fit of hysterics, and had to be removed. During this episode Anne skipped about the hall, and ran into the library and the dining-room in turn. "Oh, I wish Grandpapa were in! When will he be back?" he queried, and mixed with his inquiries the unfortunate young officer heard the remark, "There, you see, it's no foreigner as has brought him back,"—to which the cook, who had an affinity on the lower deck of H.M.S.Thunderer, responded with pride, "No, it's a Navy gentleman!"