CHAPTER I - RUNNING WATER
"Without a horse, and a dog, and a friend, man would perish. The Gods gave me all three, and there is no gift like friendship. Remember this . . . when you become a young man. For your fate will turn on the first true friend you make."RUDYARD KIPLING,Puck of Pook's Hill("On the Great Wall").
"Without a horse, and a dog, and a friend, man would perish. The Gods gave me all three, and there is no gift like friendship. Remember this . . . when you become a young man. For your fate will turn on the first true friend you make."RUDYARD KIPLING,Puck of Pook's Hill("On the Great Wall").
"Without a horse, and a dog, and a friend, man would perish. The Gods gave me all three, and there is no gift like friendship. Remember this . . . when you become a young man. For your fate will turn on the first true friend you make."
RUDYARD KIPLING,Puck of Pook's Hill("On the Great Wall").
The lady who was writing at the rosewood escritoire near the window paused, and with the feather end of the quill traced along the days of the month on a little calendar headed "1814" which was propped up behind the ink-stand.
"April the twelfth," she murmured, and wrote it at the top of the already finished letter under her hand.
She was not young—forty-five at least—but she was distinctly charming in her very short-waisted, close-fitting gown of lilac sarcenet. The irregular-shaped room, cool and fresh and sunlit, opened by a small bow-window on her left hand on to a garden that could not have been other than English. And she herself looked English, yet she had just signed a French name at the bottom of her letter, while over the mantelpiece hung the portrait of a middle-aged man with a refined and thoughtful face who did not even look English.
The door opened, and a man's voice could be heard speaking to someone outside.
"Laurent, is that you?" asked the lady, without looking up. She was sealing her letter. "Dearest, are you going out? Will you take this note to Mesdames Tantes, if you, are passing?—Whereareyou going, by the way?"
"Fishing," responded the owner of the voice, coming in. "Yes, of course I will take it for you, Maman. But isn't it the anniversary of something or other, so that the Aunts will be plunged in appropriate gloom, and will not approve of my occupation?"
The lady held up her face to his kiss. "No, I do not think it is the anniversary of any calamity to-day, otherwise they would not have agreed to come to supper." Once again she ran her quill along the almanac. "There is nothing now, I think, till Louis XVII's death in June. . . . You will be careful about the river, will you not, chéri? It must be in flood still, after the terribly severe winter we have had."
"Probably the gigantic salmon that I shall hook will pull me in," prophesied the young man teasingly. "Or perhaps I shall be taken with vertigo and fall in . . . or a tidal wave may come up from the sea!" The smile in his clear grey eyes spread to his mouth. "I am so glad that I shall never be a mother!"
"You are a very wicked son!" retorted the lady, laughing, too, and she pulled down his head and kissed the crisp fair hair that, after the fashion of the day, clustered rather thickly on his forehead. "In France, you know, you will have to show me much more respect, from all I hear of the authority of a mother there."
"Respect!" exclaimed Laurent de Courtomer, as he looked at the girlish figure. "How can I respect the authority of a mother who only appears to be about five years older than I am myself? Am I then to respect you more in Paris, and to love you less?"
"Must they run in inverse proportion? Go and fish, Laurent, instead of talking nonsense, and forget that we shall so soon be living in France."
"I rather wish that I could," unpatriotically remarked the young Frenchman, taking up the note from the escritoire. "Is it wrong to be so fond of this country because one was born and brought up in it?" He looked up at the portrait of his father over the mantelpiece. "If only this had come four years ago!" And Mme de Courtomer followed his gaze and sighed.
Although Fate's keys had opened the gate so long shut, and her voice, through the bugles of the advancing Allies, was calling the stout Bourbon, Louis XVIII, from his retreat at Hartwell to the throne of his ancestors,thatexile would never return to his native land. And since his widow was English, and his son had never set foot in France, though both duty and sentiment might call them over the Channel to the young man's patrimony, neither of them could welcome the summons in quite the same spirit as he would have done. For to them it was not "returning."
"The Allies are nearly at Paris and Napoleon's star has set," said Laurent, turning away, "but, wonderful as it is, I do not somehow feel any more exhilarated than you do, Maman, for, after all, it is the bayonets of the foreigner which are bringing back the King. And I don't know my French relatives, and I shall miss my English ones."
Mme de Courtomer, rising, slipped her arm through his.
"Take care, darling, that the Aunts do not hear you talking like this! To them, as you know, it matters little who brings back the King, provided he is brought back—and to regret Devonshire would be the last offence."
"Nevertheless, I shall regret it," persisted Laurent, who did not easily change his affections. "You will, too, I know. Still, we are coming back here every year, are we not? . . . Yes, I must start. And this is an invitation for Mesdames Tantes to sup with us to-night? Do you want an answer?"
"No," said his mother, studying him with a smile. "It is only to confirm an arrangement already made. But I should like a salmon."
"You shall have one," replied her son confidently. "And now permit me to practise taking a Parisian farewell of my respected mother, the Comtesse Henri de Courtomer,néeSeymour." And he kissed her hand with a flourish.
Soon afterwards he mounted into his English gig, with his English groom behind in charge of his rod and tackle, and drove down the village street in one of the most English of counties. But he was thinking, "A few weeks more, and I shall no longer be Mr. Laurent Courtomer of Keynton House, but M. le Comte de Courtomer in the family mansion that I have never seen in the Faubourg St. Germain where Mesdames Tantes, at least, will be in their element."
For Laurent's three great-aunts, "Mesdames Tantes de Roi," so christened by him on the analogy of those daughters of Louis XV who were thus known in the days of Louis XVI, were of a Royalist and Catholic fervour truly overwhelming. And of course, once in France, they would all, in French fashion, live together—as indeed they almost did now, settled in one small Devonshire village. But at least they were not all under one roof, and Laurent was not quite sure that he was longing for that increased proximity.
He soon pulled up before a door in a red brick wall, and in a few seconds was walking up a tiled path to the habitation of Mesdemoiselles de Courtomer. He knew that he must deliver his note in person, for the Aunts would consider it unpardonable if he merely left it without paying his respects.
The countenance of Augustine, their elderly, precise maid, bore signs of excitement.
"Yes, Monsieur le Comte," she said in response to his query at the door. "Mesdames are within. And they are receiving company."
"Really?" said Laurent. "In the morning?"
"A traveller, Monsieur le Comte. An old acquaintance just come over from France—M. le Baron de Vicq."
Laurent, by now in the hall, with an engraving of Louis XVI mounting the scaffold on one side of him and a bust of the Duc d'Enghien wreathed in immortelles on the other, murmured, "This is indeed great news!" For he seemed to remember having heard that in times inconceivably remote M. de Vicq had been a suitor for the hand of Tante Bonne or was it that he had been a flame of Tante Odile's? And, before he bowed respectfully over the hands of his venerable relatives, he beheld a withered but well-preserved old gentleman (yet younger, surely, by a decade than any of them) rise from a chair at a disappointingly equal distance from all of the old ladies . . . from Tante Odile's majestic piety and grey curls, from Tante Clotilde's even greater majesty and even more denuded (and therefore even more imposingly becapped) head, and from the long-faded prettiness of Tante Bonne, the youngest, who wore the smallest cap of any, and the least hideous cameo, and no jet at all, so that Tante Clotilde had more than once been known to accuse this eighty-year-old junior of hers of an ineradicable tendency to levity.
But Tante Clotilde herself had undergone a change since Lady Day, when a fair wind from France had blown so many clouds out of the Royalist sky. Her majesty was not less, her loyalism even more pronounced, but a ribbon of a discreet maroon shade had replaced the black moiré round her cap, and her manner to all and sundry was marked by an unexampled benignancy. So that Laurent, when he had saluted her dry, shrivelled hand with the mourning ring, was almost startled by the sensible favour with which she kissed him on either cheek, for though the greeting was not a novelty, it was often frosty. Tante Clotilde considered that Laurent spoke English too well, and his mother's habit of occasionally calling him Laurence—"a girl's name"—was an abomination to her. But, willy-nilly, her great-nephew would have to be entirely French now.
M. de Vicq, on introduction, made him a bow of another generation, and the young man, having duly delivered his note, was inspired to announce his hope that if the newcomer were staying the night he would give the ladies his escort up to Keynton House; this addition to the party would, he assured him, procure his mother and himself the greatest pleasure. After the proper amount of pressing the old gentleman accepted, and Laurent thereupon began to make efforts to extricate himself from his great-aunts' drawing-room.
But this was not so easy. M. de Vicq, whose fervour appeared to be almost equal to that of the old ladies, had embarked on a rapturous description of the enthusiasm manifested at the entry of the Duc d'Angoulême, the King's nephew, into Bordeaux about three weeks before, the news of which had caused such joyful anticipations in the little court at Hartwell, and since, after all, Laurent was French and on the point of treading French soil, the narration was not devoid of interest. Only it had not the charm of entire novelty, and he would rather have heard it at another time. It must, therefore, have been a rather unfortunate spirit of contradiction which led him to remark that Brittany and Vendée, for all their long and glorious struggle on behalf of monarchy, had not at this particular juncture played much part in the imminent restoration of the royal house.
"Oh, que si, Monsieur!" exclaimed the Baron, shocked; and Tante Clotilde said, "Fie, nephew!" in her deepest voice, and he was assured that under the rule of "the Corsican" more than thirty secondary chiefs had perished in that region for the Cause, and their names began to shower upon him.
"I take back my remark!" cried the young man, laughing. "Besides, after all, mes tantes, you are not mentioning a leader who is alive, which is better. What about that fellow in Brittany—L'Oiseleur, the Fowler, who is always luring the enemy into difficult positions, and who is personally so lucky that he is supposed to possess a charm of some sort? . . . Or is that all a myth, and his defence of the burning mill also?"
M. de Vicq almost started from his chair. "What an extraordinary thing that you should speak of L'Oiseleur to-day, Monsieur!" he exclaimed. "No, indeed, he is no myth! I have seen him—I saw him (though for the time I had forgotten it) no later than yesterday, and on the very packet which brought me from Brest to Plymouth."
"The Plymouth packet! Why, what was he doing there?" ejaculated Laurent and the old ladies in the same moment.
"I do not in the least know, Mesdames," replied the visitor, "and as I spent all the time of the voyage most miserably in the cabin below, I knew nothing of our distinguished passenger till we were disembarking at Plymouth. But then, as we were massed on the deck, eager for the shore, I heard a compatriot say, 'That's he—that's L'Oiseleur!'" And so I saw the personage pointed out—a rather stern, rough-looking man of fifty or so, with thick dark hair, somewhat unshorn, a real Chouan type. Greatly moved, I wished to shake him by his heroic hand, but in the press I could not, and I lost sight of him thereafter."
"Owing to his amulet, perhaps," observed Laurent idly. "But I had a notion that he was quite young, this famous fighter, and that he was a gentleman—titled, in fact. Of course I must have been wrong.—Now, if you will excuse me, mes tantes . . ."
"Yes, I, too, had previously thought that L'Oiseleur was gently born," said M. de Vicq slowly, "for he bears an old and honoured name—that of La Rocheterie; but this man could not have been a gentleman. Yet that does not prevent—"
"No, indeed!" cried the noble dames, generously waiving the claims of their caste to exclusive leadership. "Think of the great, the sublime, the sainted Cathelineau—a mason's son—"
"Think of Stofflet, a gamekeeper—"
"Think of Cadoudal, think of Guillemot—"
"Think of a salmon!" said Laurent irreverently to himself. And, by concentrating his will-power on that object, he did at last succeed in making his escape.
But as he drove between the high hedges, making for a chosen spot some five miles up the river, he found his mind running, despite himself, on the twenty years of struggle in the never-conquered west of France. He had been too young to take part in its earlier manifestations, and it was only in the last eighteen months or so that these had begun again, often with the formation of bands of "réfractaires," conscripts who would not serve Napoleon, led by gentlemen who equally refused. And among these was this well-nigh legendary "L'Oiseleur," audacious, undefeated, almost invisible, so swiftly and mysteriously did he move and strike—"jeune homme du plus brillant courage, adoré par ses hommes," as Laurent had heard him called. The double encomium was certainly borne out by his famous defence of the mill at Penescouët, where he and eighteen men were said to have kept five hundred Imperialists, troops of the line, at bay for more than four hours, till the soldiers were at last obliged to send for reinforcements, and contrived to burn the place over their heads. And even then the little band had operated a retreat almost more wonderful than their defence.
And now, if M. de Vicq were correct, this gallant fighter was in England, a shaggy, middle-aged peasant, not, after all, the young man of Laurent's own class who had seized the opportunity which he had missed. For it must be rather fine to have contributed by something more than prayers and wishes to restore Louis XVIII to that throne of his ancestors which, in a few weeks, he would almost certainly mount.
But these reflections were totally forgotten an hour later, when the young Frenchman was standing, in his high leather boots, the water swirling about his legs, casting hopefully over the particular pool in which it was impossible that there should not be a fish.
Maman was right (though he should not tell her so) about the river. It was running so strongly that, as Laurent moved slowly forward, he used considerable caution before he followed one foot by the other, for though he stood in shallow, broken water, there was enough stream to take him off his legs if he trod on a slippery stone or dropped unexpectedly into even a small hole. Nevertheless, it was not really the strength of the stream which prevented M. de Courtomer from immersing himself even to the fifth button of his waistcoat, which was then accounted the maximum depth, but the fact that, after the severe cold which had once followed this exploit, he had promised his mother never to repeat it. Indeed, in wading at all he was doing more than the majority of fishermen ever thought of attempting.
The long, twenty-foot rod bent; he cast again a little farther over the sliding, deeper water near the opposite bank, which there was flat and pebbly, and sprinkled with low shrubs. Yet the deepest part of the channel was below it. . . . No luck, not the ghost of a rise! Perhaps there was a little too much flood, after all, though the water was perfectly clear. Laurent thought he would try a change of fly. He reeled up and caught the line.
But as he was detaching the fly he had been using (rather clumsily, for his fingers were cold) he heard, somewhat to his annoyance, quick steps on the pebbles of the other side. He did not desire a possibly loquacious spectator. Finding, however, after a moment or two, that the owner of the steps did not address him, he glanced up.
A young man—a gentleman—was standing on the opposite bank looking at him. As Laurent raised his head he lifted his hat and said, in fair but obviously foreign English,
"Can you tell me, sir, where I shall find a bridge across this river? I have deceived myself of the road."
M. de Courtomer recognized in the flavour of the accent and the turn of the idiom an undoubted compatriot though at first glance the speaker did not look French, particularly in colouring. As he stood there bareheaded the April sun struck warmly on hair of an unusual bronze tint—a hue that had no real trace of red in it, and yet that was not brown. He was tall, carefully dressed, and had a noticeably graceful and easy carriage of the head, and indeed of his whole person. So much Laurent took in before he replied pleasantly:
"There is no bridge, I regret to say, Monsieur, within less than two miles of here. The nearest is at Oakford."
At his replying in French the stranger seemed surprised, as Laurent had quite expected that he would be. "Monsieur also is French?" he enquired in that tongue.
"I have that privilege," replied M. de Courtomer, smiling.
"You seem also, Monsieur, to have that of walking on the water, or pretty nearly," observed the newcomer. "Am I right in supposing that you arrived at your present position from the opposite bank—where I desire to find myself? If you would permit me to join you on your Ararat I could thence gain the shore, could I not?" And he advanced right to the water's edge.
"Good Heavens, have a care!" cried Laurent, alarmed. "I am in shallow water here, and have enough ado to keep my feet as it is, but between you and me there is the full force of the current—I don't know how deep the stream is to-day—and all sorts of nasty holes! Don't think of such a thing, I implore you!"
The stranger looked down at the smooth water swirling past his feet at remarkable speed. "The stream—yes, I see that it is excessive. But I do so wish myself on that bank! I am walking from Bidcombe to pick up the Bath coach again at Midhampton; and if I have to go out of my way to this bridge of which you have been kind enough to tell me I shall certainly miss it . . . and my valise which I sent on in it."
"But even that is not worth drowning yourself for," protested Laurent, staggering a little as he spoke. "This river is said to claim a life every year; pray do not be the candidate for 1814. The bridge at—Damnation!" He had dropped his fly.
The stream had it in an instant. Laurent stooped involuntarily to grasp at it as it was whirled out of his reach, lost his balance for a second, had to take a hasty step to recover this, slipped on a stone . . . and the stream had him also.
Not without a battle, however, since before it carried him into deeper water he almost contrived to regain his feet . . . but was pulled down again by the driving weight of it. As its cold fury rolled him over and over, struggling and gasping, he had a distinct (but surely erroneous) impression of a shout and a splash from the other bank, quickly forgotten in the stinging interlude which followed, filled to the brim as it was with confused sensations of choking, of a temperature which took his breath away, of thoughts of Maman, of doubts whether he would ever see France now, of a conviction that he must, of course, go with the stream. . . . But it was so difficult to keep one's head above water, . . . and he wasn't swimming, he was being hurtled. . . . And then, inconceivably, and yet, in a way, expectedly, he was spluttering in the shallows at the bend, his feet touching bottom in that place where the bank was so eaten away—a difficult place to get out at, but where he now most firmly intended to get out, and that instantly. Only the bank was still above his head, and he still had water to his breast, and the bottom was shelving and slippery. . . . But he managed to catch a bit of the old staking with one hand—and just then something clutched him from behind by the shoulder. . . .
Great God, he had jumped in, then! it was no illusion. Yet how, in the name of fortune . . . "There's bottom here!" gasped Laurent, and without loosing his hold of the staking, grabbed in his turn with his other hand, and discovered that he had his compatriot by the collar.
"Have you found your feet?" he asked, not wasting speech over his own amazement. "Try to catch hold of this piece of wood. Then I will get out somehow, and help you out. But we must be careful—the bank is rotten."
"Monsieur, how could you, how could you do such a hazardous thing!" panted Laurent. "I . . . really, words are ridiculous in face of . . . such an obligation. How you are here at all is nothing short of a miracle. You must have jumped . . . straight into the swiftest part of the current!"
They were both on the bank by this, drenched and coughing and rather like landed fishes themselves. But Laurent had no desire to laugh, for though their situation might be absurd now, it had narrowly escaped being tragic.
The water poured off the would-be rescuer as he raised himself and threw back the soaked hair from which the river had dragged the ribbon—hair longer than was usually to be seen in 1814. "I am here, Monsieur," he replied rather breathlessly, "because you pulled me out, that is plain. How could I stand there watching while the river carried you away! And I accomplished nothing at all—I merely made it more difficult for you to extricate yourself. . . . However, I daresay neither of us was really in danger."
"We were in danger," responded Laurent seriously, "and you far more than I. And I had warned you! As to accomplishing nothing, it is the intention which counts in such cases."
His companion was wringing out his sodden locks. "I had the intention of coming across, it is true. Here I am, then; I have saved . . . how much did you say . . . two miles of road?" He suddenly smiled; it was a very attractive smile, too.
"I shall always feel, at any rate, that I owe you the debt," said Laurent rather huskily. "And . . . thank God that you did not pay the price which you might very well have paid!" He held out his hand, wrung the wet hand put into it, and then, jumping to his feet, became very practical.
"We must not stay here a moment longer; we will go to the inn near, have a fire, and get our clothes off at once. Yours, Monsieur"—and as he looked at their deplorable condition he became aware that their owner wore a red ribbon in his buttonhole; he must have the Cross of St. Louis, then, but he was unusually young for such a distinction—"yours will never be dry in time for you to continue your journey to Bath. So you will allow me, will you not, the great pleasure of offering you hospitality for the night at least? I live about five miles from here."
"You are very kind indeed, Monsieur," said the dripping young man, hesitating. Then he looked at him frankly. "I should like it greatly . . . on condition that you will not tell any of your acquaintances of my foolish short cut across your river?"
"Conditions of that kind can be discussed later," responded M. de Courtomer, smiling. "At present I think our joint physical condition is what matters. . . . Excuse me if I lead the way."
Twenty minutes later both adventurers were peeling off their soaked garments before a hastily lit fire in a room of theThree Trouts, and shortly afterwards, wrapped in blankets, were ensconced before it in a couple of large chairs, with two steaming glasses beside them. And Walters the groom, to his own surprise, was riding across country on M. de Courtomer's cob to intercept the Bath coach at Midhampton and bring back the French gentleman's valise which it contained—this neat strategic idea having occurred to his master on his way to the inn, when it was borne in upon him that no clothes of his were likely to fit his guest, taller than himself by nearly a couple of inches.
Laurent had just now had, too, the opportunity of verifying what his first impressions had already told him, that his compatriot was an exceptionally well-built young man, with the lithe strength of steel. He had also seen that he wore round his left arm, just above the elbow, a little strip of some plaited or woven substance, not fine enough to be hair. Laurent had only obtained a momentary glimpse of this object, and his curiosity had not been gratified by another; but he had now the prospect of being able to study at leisure the appearance of this strangely made acquaintance, and he proceeded to do so.
He had the clear pallor and fine skin which often go with hair of warm colouring, and his, as it dried, was gradually resuming its proper shade, the deepest tone of September bracken. Even his eyes, which at a distance looked dark, were seen at closer quarters to be of a deep red-brown. The rest of his features were noticeably straight and delicate and strong; the chin, a little long, curved slightly forward and was squared at the corners, the mouth was firm and sweet—altogether a face of great individuality and charm, without the weakness which sometimes accompanies the latter quality in a man. Laurent took him to be about twenty-six—a couple of years older than himself.
"I do not know," he observed at last, ashamed to scrutinize any longer, "if it is correct to introduce oneself in this unconventional attire. I ought to have done it earlier. My name is Courtomer—Laurent de Courtomer. I have always lived in England."
"And mine," said the other, setting down his glass, "is La Rocheterie—Aymar de la Rocheterie, at your service. For my part, I have always lived in France."
"What!" cried Laurent, nearly bounding out of his blanket. "La . . . La Rocheterie . . . L'Oiseleur! You, Monsieur, are L'Oiseleur! Is it possible!"
In a lesser degree his companion also showed surprise. "My name is then known to you, Monsieur? But this is not Brittany!"
"But I am a Frenchman—and a Royalist!" cried M. de Courtomer. "I have known of you, Monsieur, for some time—no, I assure you that your name is not so unfamiliar over here as your modesty assumes. We have heard of the defence of the Moulin Brûlé! Indeed we were speaking of you only this morning, my great-aunts and I, and a gentleman who thinks he came over with you in the Brest packet. But he said you were . . . It's more than extraordinary! . . . L'Oiseleur, himself, here!"
"Ma foi, but this is to find oneself famous!" said M. de la Rocheterie, laughing. "One had, perhaps, the good—or ill—fortune to be known on the other side of the Channel, but over here, who cares for an obscure brigand, as our foes are so fond of calling us?"
Even in his present unusual attire, or absence of it, a young man who looked less like a brigand could hardly be imagined. And the question of birth could be set at rest for ever by the beautifully shaped if sunburnt hands emerging from the blanket. So Laurent, remembering M. de Vicq's picture of the hairy individual "not a gentleman" whose hand he had longed to shake, and mindful that he and the Aunts were coming to supper that evening, foresaw an amusing encounter. . . . But—to be sitting here tête-à-tête with this young hero, who had known countless days and nights of hazard and discomfort among the gorse and broom, with only a handful of men and his own wits and courage between him and Napoleon's vengeance . . . and he wrapped in a blanket because he had jumped into the Dart after him—it was incredible!
He pulled himself together.
"I believe, Monsieur, that you bear a title, do you not?" he asked, thinking of the introductions he should have to effect.
"A small one—Vicomte. You, Monsieur, perhaps also?"
Laurent named his. "But I do not use it here. When we are in France I suppose I shall have to tack it on again."
"Ah, you are returning, of course?"
"Almost immediately. Yet, since it is not really a return, it will be strange. . . . I was born in England; my father, now dead, married an Englishwoman and settled here in the early days of the Revolution."
"So Madame votre mère is English?" observed the Vicomte de la Rocheterie, with interest. "That then accounts for the perfection of your accent, Monsieur de Courtomer, and also—if as a Frenchman you can forgive me—for an appearance not altogether French. As you stood in the river which has so happily brought us together I had no idea that you were a compatriot."
"You must remember that I have lived all my life in England," said Laurent to this. "That, probably, has even more to do with it. And since we are on the subject of personal appearance, may I say that I never took you for French, either—till you spoke? Your hair . . . you will excuse me, I trust? is of an unusual colour for a Frenchman, is it not?"
The young man good-humouredly took hold of a damp bronze lock. "This tiresome stuff? Yes, I believe it is not often met with. Indeed, I have found it inconvenient at times, for that reason; in a tight corner one usually does not wish to be identified. As a matter of fact, I have some Norse blood in my veins, and the . . . the other member of my family who shares that with me has much the same hair. So no doubt it comes from that strain. . . . I hope that the next time I fall into a river I shall be wearing it short, which is probable, for I only keep it long to be like my Chouans. I wish it would dry." He put up his other hand to his head, and the blanket slipped instantly off his left shoulder and arm.
Before he could replace it Laurent's eyes had involuntarily darted to his elbow—and away again.
"You were looking at my bracelet, Monsieur?" enquired its owner, in his pleasant voice. "Now there, no doubt, is the explanation of my safe navigation of your river. Are you superstitious, Monsieur de Courtomer? No more than I, probably; so I would like you to realize that I wear this ridiculous thing for the sake of other people's superstitions only—I mean, of course, my men's."
And the little half-smile he gave Laurent (he seemed rarely to smile fully) had a tinge of mischief in it.
"I could not help seeing it," confessed the latter, rather red. "And that, then, is the famous charm which makes you invincible! Might I . . .?"
L'Oiseleur thrust out his arm again for his inspection. The mysterious object upon it resolved itself into a band of plaited rushes or coarse grass, about half an inch wide, fitting just tightly enough not to slip down over the elbow.
"I will make you another confession about that, Monsieur," said its wearer, looking down at it. "It is not even the originaljartierwhich is supposed to have been bestowed upon me by the fairy Mélusine or her deputy! In a somewhat rough-and-tumble life a bracelet of rushes will not last for ever, and so I . . . have it renewed from time to time. Still, there is a strand of the original in it somewhere." He smiled again as he made this rather cynical admission, and finished the remains of his punch.
Laurent was examining the talisman with deep interest. "There is no fastening. Then, Monsieur, the . . . the fairy Mélusine plaits it on your arm every time?"
"She does," replied M. de la Rocheterie.
A woman's fingers, of course. Perhaps he was married; but Laurent did not, somehow, think so. He could not pursue further the question of the weaver, and, moreover, the possessor of the rush bracelet was now looking thoughtfully into the fire.
"And nothing has ever touched you, in all the time you have fought, since you wore that?" asked Laurent after a moment.
L'Oiseleur turned his head, and the enquirer had a little shock of surprise. . . . Or had he merely imagined that a profound sadness looked for a moment out of the red-brown eyes? It was gone so quickly that he was not sure—gone by the time his companion answered simply, "Nothing. I have never received a scratch, so I cannot claim the honour of having shed my blood for the King, as so many better men have done."
"Yet," observed Laurent, "the King seems to consider that you have done fully enough for him without that. That ribbon . . ."
"Yes. His Majesty was pleased to send me the Cross last year. Some of my men had better deserved it.Theyhad no talisman."
"You must really need a strong head, Monsieur de la Rocheterie, not to believe, after all, in the efficacy of yours! Tell me, if I am not impertinent, whether there is not some one action which will break its power if you happen to do it? In most fairy tales it is so."
"I believe," said the young leader, wrapping himself up again, "that there is some dark story in the past history of this object or its predecessors, but I do not know what moral it is supposed to point. Apart from that—Morbleu, what an extraordinary thing! It has just happened to me, and I never gave it a thought!"
"What is it?" asked Laurent eagerly.
"I must never cross running water, except by a bridge, or on horseback, or by some means of that sort. I must never go through it in person. And, to do myself justice—and again in deference to those Chouans of mine—I never have . . . until to-day. But you cannot deny that I have crossed it this morning—water of the most running!"
And he looked at his fellow-adventurer in running water with unfeigned amusement.
As Laurent de Courtomer tied his stock that evening in his own bedroom, he was both thoughtful and excited. To fall into the river and narrowly escape drowning, to have a total stranger risk his life for him over it, to discover that the stranger in question was someone he knew about and admired, and, finally, to possess him at the moment as a guest under his own roof—these were sufficient reasons why the stock should be well tied . . . and sufficient excuse for the fact that it was not.
Nor had Laurent quite shaken off the shyness which had unexpectedly descended upon him when he was driving home from theThree Troutswith L'Oiseleur beside him—that sudden hot conviction that he, with nothing to his credit, had been chattering too freely to this young hero. Had or had not M. de la Rocheterie seemed a little remote, a little withdrawn, during that drive?
A knock at the door, interrupting these cogitations, heralded the entrance of Mme de Courtomer, looking charming but pale. Laurent's heart smote him as he turned round from the dressing-table. She kissed him long and closely; she had not yet got over her emotion.
"I am just going down to the drawing-room, my darling," she said. "I hope M. de la Rocheterie may be there; I want to see him alone. When you brought him to me in the garden I was, I fear, rather selfishly absorbed in thoughts of you and your danger."
Laurent nodded. "He tried to make me promise not to mention what he did, but of course—"
"An absolute stranger, Laurent! And such a risk! I cannot get accustomed to the idea!"
Like her son, Mme de Courtomer seemed a firm believer in the theory of "intention." Yet it had already been made perfectly clear to her by M. de la Rocheterie himself that he had in no sense saved Laurent's life.
"Maman," said Laurent, putting his arm round her, "if you can't get some more colour into those cheeks I shall not eat any dinner. Dearest, dearest little mother, I did not do it on purpose!—See now, I am going to kiss them very hard. . . . That's a trifle better! Now go down and thank M. de la Rocheterie for spoiling a very elegant suit of clothes—if he gives you the chance. Unless I have gauged him wrongly, you will not get very far."
"There is one thing that comforts me, Laurent," said Virginia de Courtomer, "and that is, that you would have done just the same in similar circumstances."
"Perhaps," replied her son. "But not so quickly!"
The enlightenment of M. de Vicq and the old ladies that evening was indeed great fun, only it was too soon over, and Laurent was a little afraid of embarrassing his guest, who seemed genuinely averse from anything resembling posing or display. But, probably just because he was so free from self-consciousness and so simply dignified, he took the ensuing adulation lightly, and yet with a fine courtesy as if he were aware that he was a young man receiving the homage of the old. If he found the worshippers a little absurd, he did not betray it. The impression which he had produced on Tante Clotilde, even before she realized whom the "Monsieur le Vicomte de la Rocheterie" of Laurent's introduction cloaked, was marked by her making him the suggestion of a curtsey of fifty years ago, with all Versailles behind it—an honour which no Englishman ever received from her. And M. de la Rocheterie had kissed her hand in a manner which also had tradition behind it. Yet more important to Laurent, really, than the unqualified success of his little coup de théâtre, than the joy of being able to whisper to M. de Vicq, "I expect you think, Monsieur, that L'Oiseleur has shaved since you saw him last? I expect he has—but not to that extent!" was his mother's murmur to him, just before they went in to supper. "Your Chouan has already enslaved me, Laurent, I think he is charming!"
But now supper was going forward, and M. de la Rocheterie was making obvious efforts to efface himself, to avoid being what he had become, the centre of the little festivity. But with everybody determined to make him so, it was impossible to get out of the position. First of all, M. de Vicq's mistake of the packet had to be explained. It appeared that L'Oiseleurhadcome over in it, and that he had heard another passenger being pointed out as himself, "which," as he added with a little smile, "enabled me to escape an attention that I had then no idea I should encounter."
"Ah, Vicomte," interposed Tante Clotilde significantly at this, "you are doubtless in England—am I indiscreet?—on the King's business?"
One felt it almost needed courage to reply, as L'Oiseleur did, "No, Madame; on a purely private matter." However, Tante Clotilde's large face wore the air of one who "knows better."
"I think," said M. de Vicq, then addressing him, "that I once had the pleasure, a few years ago, of meeting a gentleman of your name—a good deal older than you, however. Your father, perhaps?"
The young man's face changed subtly. "My father was guillotined with my mother, during the Terror, Monsieur."
It only needed this avowal to complete his prestige in the eyes of the Aunts. A ripple of emotion went round.
"Where did you meet M. de la Rocheterie, did you say, Laurent?" enquired Tante Clotilde when she had contributed to it.
"In the river, ma tante."
The old lady looked severe, for she did not like being jested with. "Please express yourself more accurately, great-nephew!" So Laurent elaborated, without changing, his statement.
On the heels of the ensuing sensation M. de Vicq asked suddenly whether it was true that the guest possessed, or was popularly supposed to possess, a talisman of some kind.
"Quite true, Monsieur," responded L'Oiseleur soberly. "I really have it—a magic garter, orjartier, as the common folk call it." Then he caught Laurent's eye, and smiled. "But its virtue is, of course, all nonsense."
"The popular voice, in short, ascribes to the possession of a charm what is in reality due solely to your own skill and valour!" observed M. de Vicq rather sententiously, but pointing this remark as a compliment by a bow.
"I did not mean that!" said Aymar de la Rocheterie, looking for the first time a trifle disconcerted. "And I spoke too strongly, for undoubtedly my possession of thejartierhas influenced my men and given them confidence—they are exceedingly superstitious—so in that way the thing has its value. That is, in fact, why I wear it."
"And how did you acquire thisjartier?" enquired Tante Clotilde massively.
"A witch gave it to me, Madame."
"A witch—a real witch!" exclaimed his hostess. "Oh, how, Monsieur de la Rocheterie—and why?"
"The 'why' makes rather a long story, Madame."
"We shall hope to hear it, then, after supper," announced Mlle Clotilde de Courtomer in a tone that seemed to settle the whole matter.
"And, perhaps, the whole story of the Moulin Brûlé too?" hazarded M. de Vicq; but L'Oiseleur shook his head with a little smile.
Mme de Courtomer looked from one to the other. "Whatwasthe Moulin Brûlé?" she enquired of the old gentleman in a low voice.
But it was Tante Clotilde who replied for him. "My dear Virginia—really!—before the hero of Penescouët himself! The details which reached us of that exploit were, I doubt not, inadequate, but surely we all treasure them too securely in our memories to ask 'What was the Moulin Brûlé'?"
Poor Mme de Courtomer, thus brought to book at her own table, before and on account of her guest, flushed, M. de la Rocheterie bit his lip and looked thoroughly uncomfortable, and Laurent's anger was kindled.
"You forget, I think, ma tante," he said as politely as he could, "that my mother, after all, is not French by birth; and it is quite plain that no one can have told her the story, for it is not one which she could ever have forgotten."
"Quite so—very well said!" put in M. de Vicq hastily, and he gallantly monopolized the old lady's attention while the awkward wave in the conversation caused by the boulder she had cast into it spent itself. Indeed Laurent, looking down the table after a moment's silent fight with his annoyance, was relieved to find that the "hero of Penescouët" was smiling delightfully at his hostess, and heard her say, smiling, too, "Will you ever be able to forgive me, Monsieur de la Rocheterie?"
"Madame," replied L'Oiseleur, "you cannot conceive what a relief it is to find that there is one fortunate being in Royalist circles who has not been pestered with the tale of that detestable old windmill! I sometimes wish I had never seen the place!"
When the ladies, following English custom, had left them, M. de Vicq drew in his chair and concentrated his attention on his fellow-guest.
"I remember the Vendée, of course," he remarked, "and the great days of the Chouannerie, Cadoudal's days. You are too young to recall them, Monsieur—but you have relit the sacred fire!"
"No—only fanned the embers," said L'Oiseleur quickly. "The fire is always there. The Breton does not change. Indeed, some of mine are identically the same as those of the great days. And one has the same devotion to rely on, the same obstinacy to combat, the same superstitions to use or respect, and the same kind of warfare."
"That warfare of hedgerows and heather of which one has heard," put in Laurent, his chin on his hands, "and which needs, I imagine, a special aptitude."
"I suppose it does. At any rate, it is the only kind which the Breton really understands. You have to be always on the move; if you have very few men, as I had—at least at the beginning, when I started with twenty-five—that is easy. And if you keep moving you are not only invisible, but the enemy thinks your numbers are much greater than they are. I have never had more than six hundred men, but they were all picked, and if I had told any one of them to go immediately and cut off his hand the only delay would have been the finding of the chopper. . . . Well, that is all over now. I suppose I ought to say, Thank God. I do say it—but one does not like parting from one's comrades."
"You have disbanded them, then?"
"Not yet. But I shall do so directly the King is actually in Paris."
"The King in Paris!" exclaimed the Baron de Vicq in a rapt tone. And he began a loyal reverie on that theme, to which the two young men listened with becoming patience. Then he reverted somewhat abruptly to the question of L'Oiseleur's amulet, and asked so many questions about it, that in the end M. de la Rocheterie, beginning, Laurent fancied, to be slightly bored, offered to show it to him, and, while M. de Vicq murmured delightedly, "Monsieur, you are really too obliging!" took off his coat with an apology to his host and turned up the sleeve of his fine shirt.
Laurent, leaning back on his chair, his hands behind his head, looked on amused. Little exclamations broke from the old Royalist as, spectacles on nose, he bent over the table and scrutinized the circlet closely. "And that is really the fairy garter of the legend—dear, dear, how wonderful! After all these years . . . so fresh and well-preserved . . . there must be something in it, after all! It is indeed to be hoped, Monsieur, that you will never lose that!"
The owner of thejartier, with his bare arm stretched out before him on the mahogany, caught his host's eye over the grey head. "Yes, as you say, Monsieur, remarkably well-preserved!" And Laurent, smiling back, had a delightful sense of complicity with him. He was not going to tell the old fellow what he had told him!
"My last doubts are removed," murmured M. de Vicq, taking off his spectacles. "Now I know that I really have shaken L'Oiseleur and no other by the hand!"
The bearer of that name, who was turning down his shirt-sleeve, stopped, and flushed very slightly.
"Why, Monsieur, did you think I was an impostor?" he demanded. "Was that why you wanted to see the thing?" And he looked at the old gentleman very straight and challengingly.
Poor M. de Vicq, meeting the spark he had so tactlessly struck out, confounded himself in apologies; on which M. de la Rocheterie, evidently quickly penitent, but still with a little air not free from hauteur, begged his pardon for having suspected his motive, and, peace being restored, their young host suggested that they should join the ladies.
"Very interesting, that," he thought as he opened the door. "So he's got a hot temper under that quiet exterior of his! I think that, for all his modesty and charm, I should be sorry to take liberties with M. le Vicomte de la Rocheterie!"
Installed on the sofa in the drawing-room, Tante Clotilde immediately motioned to M. de la Rocheterie to take his place beside her.
"Now, Vicomte, the story you promised us, if you please—the story of thejartier!" she said with heavy graciousness.
"I can recall no such promise, Madame," replied L'Oiseleur. "However, if you conceive that it would interest you . . . and M. le Baron," he added, flashing a glance half malicious, half apologetic on that offender, "I will endeavour not to bore you too much." He stirred his coffee for an instant. "You must know, then, that in the district of Penescouët there is a legend of an enchanted garter given in the Middle Ages by that ubiquitous immortal, the fairy Mélusine, to a knight whom it rendered invincible. This garter was said to be still in existence, in the keeping of an old witch in the forest of Armor—we still have witches in Brittany—whom some held to be the fairy Mélusine herself. I must also tell you, if you will pardon a reference to my personal appearance, that this knight—known to after ages only as L'Oiseleur—seems to have been so unfortunate as to possess hair of the colour of mine.
"Well, I had—I have—a specially devoted follower named Jacques Eveno, who comes from the neighbourhood of my little estate at Sessignes. This man, who not only knew the legend, but the old woman, too, who had thejartier, must have begun by wishing that he could procure the lucky talisman for me, but hesitated to steal it for fear the theft should bring misfortune on me. Then he must have pondered how to trick the witch into giving it me of her own free will, and how therefore to inveigle me—at the time perfectly innocent—into playing the part as it should be played. For it seems (but I only learnt this afterwards) that if a young man with reddish hair came at sunset to her hut with a hawk on his shoulder, and asked for a night's lodging, offering in payment merely a sprig of mistletoe . . . well, he was the dead Fowler come to life again, and she would give him thejartieras of right. Eveno, a simple peasant, successfully contrived that all those coincidences should come about—except indeed the finding of the hawk. One afternoon he got me into the heart of the forest on some pretext or other, and deliberately misled me, so that I lost my way and had to ask for shelter at the witch's hut. Knowing her reputation I made no difficulty about his suggestion that I should offer her the bit of mistletoe which he had plucked for me—one learns to humour superstition in Brittany. But the hawk . . . yes, that was strange."
"How did he procure the hawk, then?" asked Tante Odile as he paused.
"He did not, Madame; chance procured it, turning his fraud, for him, into reality . . . and somewhat frightening him, I think. For, as we went through the wood, I came on a young hawk half stunned on the ground, with a broken wing, and I picked the poor bird up and carried it for a while, and ended by putting it (all innocently) on my shoulder, where it stayed. So it was there, quite correctly, when I knocked at the witch's door." He smiled—that most attractive smile of his.
"And the witch, Monsieur—she gave you the charm?"
"Without demur. I was only afraid that she was going to kiss me! She did kiss my hands. You must remember, Mesdames, that at the moment I was completely in the dark, and had no idea for whom she took me, nor why, with the tears running down her wrinkled face, she brought out with such awe from a box of battered and time-blackened silver this little dried twist of rushes. Then the legend suddenly came back to me; and as she and Eveno were by now in a frenzy of excitement, and my protests had no effect, I . . . accepted the talisman, which was, so the wise woman assured me, the identical magic circlet which Mélusine had bestowed on the original L'Oiseleur of whom I was, somehow, a reincarnation. I retain, naturally, my own ideas on that subject, but afterwards, of course, my men always called me by that name."
"And you have thejartierstill—you wear it perhaps?" asked Mme de Courtomer.
L'Oiseleur bowed. "I always wear it—for my men's sake. But as it was shrunken with age, and had moreover been cut, I could not wear it where a garter should be worn. So the witch fastened it round my left arm, like a bracelet."
The eyes of all the ladies went to his sleeve. But that it would have been out of place they would all, obviously, have dearly loved to invite the young man to remove his coat. Laurent thought it charming of him not to spoil the story for them by confessing that it was not exactly the originaljartierwhich he wore now, and hugged himself to think that he had been the sole recipient of that confidence.
"But what, Monsieur," asked Tante Bonne a little timidly, "was the story of the first owner of thejartier?"
"Alas, Madame, I fear that it was tragic. The legends say that he was betrayed by the woman he loved . . . or else that he gave her the garter in obedience to her whim, and in consequence his enemies fell on him and slew him. I am not sure which; but it comes to the same thing."
"I hope—" began Mme de Courtomer rather rashly; and then, checking herself, blushed like a girl.
"Maman, Maman!" said Laurent to himself—and was surprised to see M. de la Rocheterie look across at her without the shadow of offence, and to hear him say, "Merci, Madame, but of that there is no danger!"
A little enigmatic smile just touched the corners of his firmly cut mouth, and Laurent presumed it meant that he was sure that no woman would ever have sufficient power over him to play Delilah.
At any rate no woman—or man either—had the power to get him to talk any more about himself that evening, and the affair of Penescouët went untold . . . till the guests had driven away in the venerable fly which had brought them.
"And now, Maman," said Laurent with a sigh of relief, "M. de la Rocheterie, as a sign that he has forgiven you for your lamentable ignorance, shall tell us two the true story of the Moulin Brûlé. Will you, Vicomte?"
"To save me from the possibility of being crushed like that again, Monsieur?" pleaded Mme de Courtomer, putting out her hand to him.
L'Oiseleur bent his handsome head and kissed it. "You could extort anything from me with that weapon, Madame," he replied. "Let us get it over then!"
Late that night Laurent, deeper than ever in the toils of hero-worship, stood, candlestick in hand, in his guest's bedroom, and, looking at M. de la Rocheterie as he took the watch from his fob and laid it on the dimity-hung dressing-table, said earnestly, "I hope you will sleep well!"
He himself would dream to-night of those revolving sheets of flame, the sails of the riddled Moulin Brûlé; of the Emperor's soldiers ceasing fire at last, thinking that they were merely wasting ammunition on the holocaust whose heat was too great for them to approach; and of the dozen blackened figures—or, more probably, of one figure in particular—bursting out of that inferno of smoke and blood and, completely surrounded though they were, cutting a way through the stupefied besiegers.
"I suppose you can—sleep in any surroundings," he added, for though he knew that L'Oiseleur must often have spent the night in the open, that reflection was somehow as incongruous as the recital downstairs with this composed and very well-dressed young man now calmly winding up his watch in the best bedroom of Keynton House.
"I much prefer a bed to any other surroundings," replied the Vicomte de la Rocheterie. "Yours, I am sure, is most comfortable." Here, as Laurent afterwards realized, he must have discovered on what a vain employment he was spending his time; but, instead of holding his useless watch to his ear, or otherwise betraying to the man in whose service he had wrecked it, the effect of Dart water upon its interior, he quietly laid it face downwards on the dressing-table, glanced at the mantelpiece to ascertain that there was a clock in the room, and went on, "By the way, Monsieur de Courtomer, I hope my early start to-morrow will not prevent my taking farewell of Mme la Comtesse?"
Laurent reassured him, warning him that, unless he chose to have coffee brought to him in his room, he would have to face an English breakfast. But for this M. de la Rocheterie expressed a preference.
"I trust you have everything you require?" then said Laurent, reluctantly preparing to take his leave. "No, there is one thing that you will need in the morning, Monsieur, and that is a hat. You cannot travel without one, though you can remedy the lack excellently well when you get to Bath. You must really allow me to supply you with one."
"Thank you," said his guest. "Yes, I suppose that to travel so far bareheaded might excite comment."
"Especially in your case," thought Laurent, though by now he admired the hair en queue. "Do you know Bath, Vicomte?" he asked as an excuse to linger a little.
"No, not at all," returned the traveller.
"It is a prodigious fine place," pronounced Laurent. "I hope I am not impertinent in assuming that it is not—fortunately—for the good of your health that you are going there?"
"No," answered L'Oiseleur, "it is certainly not for my health that I am going to Bath."
He was fingering, with bent head, the seals of his watch lying there. Laurent had the impression that his mouth tightened as he spoke, and got an instant conviction that M. de la Rocheterie's visit to Bath was no pleasure to him. He wondered, not for the first time, what the object of his journey could be, he whose Chouans were still under arms, yet who avowed that he was not on the King's business. And his eyes, following the strong, slender hand, noted the crest on the back of the watch, a swan with its neck encircled by a crown; he even distinguished, on the scroll below the proud and laconic motto,Sans tache. Both pleased him.
Then he made a more determined effort, and bade his guest good-night. There would always be the morning.
But the morning was disappointing, as usually on the occasion of an early start. There seemed no time for conversation, no opportunity for learning any more of the visitor. The inspiration which had come to Laurent of begging the latter to spend a day or two at Keynton House on his way back from Bath proved unfruitful, M. de la Rocheterie explaining that he would probably have to return by London and Dover. It was Mme de Courtomer who had most of L'Oiseleur's attention during the English breakfast, and it seemed to her son that it was not till the last stage of all had arrived, and he was walking down the village beside his guest, with Walters behind carrying his valise, that he had the chance of a word with him; and then there seemed nothing to say . . . just because there was so much. He tried, indeed, to thank him anew for yesterday's act, but even that expression of his feelings was debarred him. Aymar de la Rocheterie declared that thanks for a thing which he had not done made him feel as fraudulent as he sometimes did over thejartier. So Laurent, after murmuring stubbornly, "You meant to save me! I only wish I might have a chance of repaying you some day," had to desist. Then the coach came rumbling in.
"You have promised my mother that when you are in Paris you will give us the pleasure of seeing you, Monsieur," Laurent reminded the traveller. "I want the promise made to me, too."
"I do not need to be doubly bound," retorted M. de la Rocheterie, smiling. "And you, Monsieur de Courtomer, when are you coming to Brittany? We have a little river at Sessignes, with indifferent fishing . . . though to be sure I have succeeded in catching excellent trout at Pont-aux-Rochers . . . but that is a good way off."
"I do not need to be tempted by fishing," responded Laurent in his turn. "Some day . . ."
A hearty shake of the hand on both sides, and again that charming smile of L'Oiseleur's, and he was mounting to his place.
"At any rate, he's got my hat!" reflected Laurent, watching the coach roll off. Then he went rather pensively home.