I met with many strange things on that journey. I found it strange to see, as I went, armed peasants in the fields; to light in each village on men drilling; to enter inns and find half a dozen rustics seated round a table with glasses and wine, and perhaps an inkpot before them, and to learn that they called themselves a Committee. But towards evening of the third day I saw a stranger thing than any of these. I was beginning to mount the valley of the Tarn which runs up into the Cevennes at Milhau; a north wind was blowing, the sky was overcast, the landscape grey and bare; a league before me masses of mountain stood up gloomily blue. On a sudden, as I walked wearily beside my horse, I heard voices singing in chorus; and looked about me. The sound, clear and sweet as fairy's music, seemed to rise from the earth at my feet.
A few yards farther, and the mystery explained itself. I found myself on the verge of a little dip in the ground, and saw below me the roofs of a hamlet, and on the hither side of it a crowd of a hundred or more, men and women. They were dancing and singing round a great tree, leafless, but decked with flags: a few old people sat about the roots inside the circle, and but for the cold weather and the bleak outlook, I might have thought that I had come on a May-day festival.
My appearance checked the singing for a moment; then two elderly peasants made their way through the ring and came to meet me, walking hand in hand. "Welcome to Vlais and Giron!" cried one. "Welcome to Giron and Vlais!" cried the other. And then, before I could answer, "You come on a happy day," cried both together.
I could not help smiling. "I am glad of that," I said. "May I ask what is the reason of your meeting?"
"The Communes of Giron and Vlais, of Vlais and Giron," they answered, speaking alternately, "are today one. To-day, Monsieur, old boundaries disappear; old feuds die. The noble heart of Giron, the noble heart of Vlais, beat as one."
I could scarcely refrain from laughing at their simplicity; fortunately, at that moment, the circle round the tree resumed their song and dance, which had even in that weather a pretty effect, as of a Watteaufête. I congratulated the two peasants on the sight.
"But, Monsieur, this is nothing," one of them answered with perfect gravity. "It is not only that the boundaries of communes are disappearing; those of provinces are of the past also. At Valence, beyond the mountains, the two banks of the Rhone have clasped hands and sworn eternal amity. Henceforth all Frenchmen are brothers; all Frenchmen are of all provinces!"
"That is a fine idea," I said.
"No son of France will again shed French blood!" he continued.
"So be it."
"Catholic and Protestant, Protestant and Catholic will live at peace! There will be no law-suits. Grain will circulate freely, unchecked by toils or dues. All will be free, Monsieur. All will be rich."
They said more in the same sanguine simple tone, and with the same naïve confidence; but my thoughts strayed from them, attracted by a man, who, seated among the peasants at the foot of the tree, seemed to my eyes to be of another class. Tall and lean, with lank black hair, and features of a stern, sour cast, he had nothing of outward show to distinguish him from those round him. His dress, a rough hunting suit, was old and patched; the spurs on his brown, mud-stained boots were rusty and bent. Yet his carriage possessed an ease the others lacked; and in the way he watched the circling rustics I read a quiet scorn.
I did not notice that he heeded or returned my gaze, but I had not gone on my way a hundred paces, after taking leave of the two mayors and the revellers, before I heard a step, and looking round, saw the stranger coming after me. He beckoned, and I waited until he overtook me.
"You are going to Milhau?" he said, speaking abruptly, and with a strong country accent; yet in the tone of one addressing an equal.
"Yes, Monsieur," I said. "But I doubt if I shall reach the town to-night."
"I am going also," he answered. "My horse is in the village."
And without saying more he walked beside me until we reached the hamlet. There--the place was deserted--he brought from an outhouse a sorry mare, and mounted. "What do you think of that rubbish?" he said suddenly as we took the road again. I had watched his proceedings in silence.
"I fear that they expect too much," I answered guardedly.
He laughed; a horse-laugh full of scorn. "They think that the millennium has come," he said. "And in a month they will find their barns burned and their throats cut."
"I hope not," I said.
"Oh, I hope not," he answered cynically. "I hope not, of course. But even soVive la Nation! Vive la Revolution!"
"What? If that be its fruit?" I asked.
"Ay, why not?" he answered, his gloomy eyes fixed on me. "It is every one for himself, and what has the old rule done for me that I should fear to try the new? Left me to starve on an old rock and a dovecot; sheltered by bare stones, and eating out of a black pot! While women and bankers, scented fops and lazy priests prick it before the King! And why? Because I remain, sir, what half the nation once were."
"A Protestant?" I hazarded.
"Yes, Monsieur. And a poor noble," he answered bitterly. "The Baron de Géol, at your service."
I gave him my name in return.
"You wear the tricolour," he said; "yet you think me extreme? I answer, that that is all very well for you; but we are different people. You are doubtless a family man, M. le Vicomte, with a wife----"
"On the contrary, M. le Baron."
"Then a mother, a sister?"
"No," I said, smiling. "I have neither. I am quite alone."
"At least with a home," he persisted, "means, friends, employment, or the chance of employment?"
"Yes," I said, "that is so."
"Whereas I--I," he answered, growing guttural in his excitement, "have none of these things. I cannot enter the army--I am a Protestant! I am shut off from the service of the State--I am a Protestant! I cannot be a lawyer or a judge--I am a Protestant! The King's schools are closed to me--I am a Protestant! I cannot appear at Court--I am a Protestant! I--in the eyes of the law I do not exist! I--I, Monsieur," he continued more slowly, and with an air not devoid of dignity, "whose ancestors stood before Kings, and whose grandfather's great-grandfather saved the fourth Henry's life at Coutras--I do not exist!"
"But now?" I said, startled by his tone of passion.
"Ay, now," he answered grimly, "it is going to be different. Now, it is going to be otherwise, unless these black crows of priests put the clock back again. That is why I am on the road."
"You are going to Milhau?"
"I live near Milhau," he answered. "And I have been from home. But I am not going home now. I am going farther--to Nîmes."
"To Nîmes?" I said in surprise.
"Yes," he said. And he looked at me askance and a trifle grimly, and did not say any more. By this time it was growing dark; the valley of the Tarn, along which our road lay, though fertile and pleasant to the eye in summer, wore at this season, and in the half-light, a savage and rugged aspect. Mountains towered on either side; and sometimes, where the road drew near the river, the rushing of the water as it swirled and eddied among the rocks below us, added its note of melancholy to the scene. I shivered. The uncertainty of my quest, the uncertainty of everything, the gloom of my companion, pressed upon me. I was glad when he roused himself from his brooding, and pointed to the lights of Milhau glimmering here and there on a little plain, where the mountains recede from the river.
"You are doubtless going to the inn?" he said, as we entered the outskirts. I assented. "Then we part here," he continued. "To-morrow, if you are going to Nîmes---- But you may prefer to travel alone."
"Far from it," I said.
"Well, I shall be leaving the east gate--about eight o'clock," he answered grudgingly. "Good-night, Monsieur."
I bade him good-night, and leaving him there, rode into the town: passing through narrow, mean streets, and under dark archways and hanging lanterns, that swung and creaked in the wind, and did everything but light the squalid obscurity. Though night had fallen, people were moving briskly to and fro, or standing at their doors; the place, after the solitude through which I had ridden, had the air of a city; and presently I became aware that a little crowd was following my horse. Before I reached the inn, which stood in a dimly-lit square, the crowd had grown into a great one, and was beginning to press upon me; some who marched nearest to me staring up inquisitively into my face, while others, farther off, called to their neighbours, or to dim forms seen at basement windows, that it was he!
I found this somewhat alarming. Still they did not molest me; but when I halted they halted too, and I was forced to dismount almost in their arms. "Is this the inn?" I said to those nearest tome; striving to appear at my ease.
"Yes! yes!" they cried with one voice, "that is the inn!"
"My horse----"
"We will take the horse! Enter! Enter!"
I had little choice, they flocked so closely round me; and, affecting carelessness, I complied, thinking that they would not follow, and that inside I should learn the meaning of their conduct. But the moment my back was turned they pressed in after me and beside me, and, almost sweeping me off my feet, urged me along the narrow passage of the house, whether I would or no. I tried to turn and remonstrate; but the foremost drowned my words in loud cries for "M. Flandre! M. Flandre!"
Fortunately the person addressed was not far off. A door towards which I was being urged opened, and he appeared. He proved to be an immensely stout man, with a face to match his body; and he gazed at us for a moment, astounded by the invasion. Then he asked angrily what was the matter. "Ventre de Ciel!" he cried. "Is this my house or yours, rascals? Who is this?"
"The Capuchin! The Capuchin!" cried a dozen voices.
"Ho! ho!" he answered, before I could speak. "Bring a light."
Two or three bare-armed women whom the noise had brought to the door of the kitchen fetched candles, and raising them above their heads gazed at me curiously. "Ho! ho!" he said again. "The Capuchin is it? So you have got him."
"Do I look like one?" I cried angrily, thrusting back those who pressed on me most closely. "Nom de Dieu!Is this the way you receive guests, Monsieur? Or is the town gone mad?"
"You are not the Capuchin monk?" he said, somewhat taken aback, I could see, by my boldness.
"Have I not said that I am not? Do monks in your country travel in boots and spurs?" I retorted.
"Then your papers!" he answered curtly. "Your papers! I would have you to know," he continued, puffing out his cheeks, "that I am Mayor here as well as host, and I keep the jail as well as the inn. Your papers, Monsieur, if you prefer the one to the other."
"Before your friends here?" I said contemptuously.
"They are good citizens," he answered.
I had some fear, now I had come to the pinch, that the commission I carried might fail to produce all the effects with which I had credited it. But I had no choice, and ultimately nothing to dread; and after a momentary hesitation I produced it. Fortunately it was drawn in complimentary terms and gave the Mayor, I know not how, the idea that I was actually bound at the moment on an errand of state. When he had read it, therefore, he broke into a hundred apologies, craved leave to salute me, and announced to the listening crowd that they had made a mistake.
It struck me at the time as strange, that they, the crowd, were not at all embarrassed by their error. On the contrary, they hastened to congratulate me on my acquittal, and even patted me on the shoulder in their good humour; some went to see that my horse was brought in, or to give orders on my behalf, and the rest presently dispersed, leaving me fain to believe that they would have hung me to the nearestlanternewith the same stolid complaisance.
When only two or three remained, I asked the Mayor for whom they had taken me.
"A disguised monk, M. le Vicomte," he said. "A very dangerous fellow, who is known to be travelling with two ladies--all to Nîmes; and orders have been sent from a high quarter to arrest him."
"But I am alone!" I protested. "I have no ladies with me."
He shrugged his shoulders. "Just so, M. le Vicomte," he answered. "But we have got the two ladies. They were arrested this morning, while attempting to pass through the town in a carriage. We know, therefore, that he is now alone."
"Oh," I said. "So now you only want him? And what is the charge against him?" I continued, remembering with a languid stirring of the pulses that a Capuchin monk had visited Father Benôit before his departure. It seemed to be strange that I should come upon the traces of another here.
"He is charged," M. Flandre answered pompously, "with high treason against the nation, Monsieur. He has been seen here, there, and everywhere, at Montpellier, and Cette, and Albi, and as far away as Auch; and always preaching war and superstition, and corrupting the people."
"And the ladies?" I said smiling. "Have they too been corrupting----"
"No, M. le Vicomte. But it is believed that wishing to return to Nîmes, and learning that the roads were watched, he disguised himself and joined himself to them. Doubtless they aredévotes."
"Poor things!" I said, with a shudder of compassion; every one seemed to be so good-tempered, and yet so hard. "What will you do with them?"
"I shall send for orders," he answered. "In his case," he continued airily, "I should not need them. But here is your supper. Pardon me, M. le Vicomte, if I do not attend on you myself. As Mayor I have to take care that I do not compromise--but you understand?"
I said civilly that I did; and supper being laid, as was then the custom in the smaller inns, in my bedroom, I asked him to take a glass of wine with me, and over the meal learned much of the state of the country, and the fermentation that was at work along the southern seaboard, the priests stirring up the people with processions and sermons. He waxed especially eloquent upon the excitement at Nîmes, where the masses were bigoted Romanists, while the Protestants had a following, too, with the hardy peasants of the mountains behind them. "There will be trouble, M. le Vicomte, there will be trouble there," he said with meaning. "Things are going too well for the peoplela bas. They will stop them if they can."
"And this man?"
"Is one of their missionaries."
I thought of Father Benôit, and sighed. "By the way," the Mayor said abruptly, gazing at me in moony thoughtfulness, "that is curious now!"
"What?" I said.
"You come from Cahors, M. le Vicomte?"
"Well?"
"So do these women; or they say they do. The prisoners."
"From Cahors?"
"Yes. It is odd now," he continued, rubbing his chin, "but when I read your commission I did not think of that."
I shrugged my shoulders impatiently. "It does not follow that I am in the plot," I said. "For goodness sake, M. le Maire, do not let us open the case again. You have seen my papers, and----"
"Tut! tut!" he said. "That is not my meaning. But you may know these persons."
"Oh!" I said; and then I sat a moment, staring at him between the candles, my hand raised, a morsel on my fork. A wild extravagant thought had flashed into my mind. Two ladies from Cahors? From Cahors, of all places? "How do they call themselves?" I asked.
"Corvas," he answered.
"Oh! Corvas," I said, falling to eating again, and putting the morsel into my mouth. And I went on with my supper.
"Yes. A merchant's wife, she says she is. But you shall see her."
"I don't remember the name," I answered.
"Still, you may know them," he rejoined, with the dull persistence of a man of few ideas. "It is just possible that we have made a mistake, for we found no papers in the carriage, and only one thing that seemed suspicious."
"What was that?"
"A red cockade."
"Aredcockade?"
"Yes," he answered. "The badge of the old Leaguers, you know."
"But," I said, "I have not heard of any party adopting that."
He rubbed his bald head a little doubtfully. "No," he said, "that is true. Still, it is a colour we don't like here. And two ladies travelling alone--alone, Monsieur! Then their driver, a half-witted fellow, who said that they had engaged him at Rodez, though he denied stoutly that he had seen the Capuchin, told two or three tales. However, if you will eat no more, M. le Vicomte, I will take you to see them. You may be able to speak for or against them."
"If you do not think that it is too late?" I said, shrinking somewhat from the interview.
"Prisoners must not be choosers," he answered, with an unpleasant chuckle. And he called from the door for a lantern and his cloak.
"The ladies are not here, then?" I said.
"No," he answered, with a wink. "Safe bind, safe find! But they have nothing to cry about. There are one or two rough fellows in the clink, so Babet, the jailer, has given them room in his house."
At this moment the lantern came, and the Mayor having wrapped his portly person in a cloak, we passed out of the house. The square outside was utterly dark, such lights as had been burning when I arrived had been extinguished, perhaps by the wind, which was rising, and now blew keenly across the open space. The yellow glare of the lantern was necessary, but though it showed us a few feet of the roadway, and enabled us to pick our steps, it redoubled the darkness beyond; I could not see even the line of the roofs, and had no idea in what direction we had gone or how far, when M. Flandre halted abruptly, and, raising the lantern, threw its light on a greasy stone wall, from which, set deep in the stone-work, a low iron-studded door frowned on us. About the middle of the door hung a huge knocker, and above it was a smallgrille.
"Safe bind, safe find!" the Mayor said again with a fat chuckle; but, instead of raising the knocker, he drew his stick sharply across the bars of thegrille.
The summons was understood and quickly answered. A face peered a moment through the grating; then the door opened to us. The Mayor took the lead, and we passed in, out of the night, into a close, warm air reeking of onions and foul tobacco, and a hundred like odours. The jailer silently locked the door behind us, and, taking the Mayor's lantern from him, led the way down a grimy, low-roofed passage barely wide enough for one man. He halted at the first door on the left of the passage, and threw it open.
M. Flandre entered first, and, standing while he removed his hat, for an instant filled the doorway. I had time to hear and note a burst of obscene singing, which came from a room farther down the passage; and the frequent baying of a prison-dog, that, hearing us, flung itself against its chain, somewhere in the same direction. I noted, too, that the walls of the passage in which I stood were dingy and trickling with moisture, and then a voice, speaking in answer to M. Flandre's salutation, caught my ear and held me motionless.
The voice was Madame's--Madame de St. Alais'!
It was fortunate that I had entertained, though but a second, the wild, extravagant thought that had occurred to me at supper; for in a measure it had prepared me. And I had little time for other preparation, for thought, or decision. Luckily the room was thick with vile tobacco smoke, and the steam from linen drying by the fire; and I took advantage of a fit of coughing, partly assumed, to linger an instant on the threshold after M. Flandre had gone in. Then I followed him.
There were four people in the room besides the Mayor, but I had no eyes for the frowsy man and woman who sat playing with a filthy pack of cards at a table in the middle of the floor. I had only eyes for Madame and Mademoiselle, and them I devoured. They sat on two stools on the farther side of the hearth; the girl with her head laid wearily back against the wall, and her eyes half-closed; the mother, erect and watchful, meeting the Mayor's look with a smile of contempt. Neither the prison-house, nor danger, nor the companionship of this squalid hole had had power to reduce her fine spirit; but as her eyes passed from the Mayor and encountered mine, she started to her feet with a gasping cry, and stood staring at me.
It was not wonderful that for a second, peering through the reek, she doubted. But one there was there who did not doubt. Mademoiselle had sprung up in alarm at the sound of her mother's cry, and for the briefest moment we looked at one another. Then she sank back on her stool, and I heard her break into violent crying.
"Hallo!" said the Mayor. "What is this?"
"A mistake, I fear," I said hoarsely, in words I had already composed. "I am thankful, Madame," I continued, bowing to her with distant ceremony, and as much indifference as I could assume, "that I am so fortunate as to be here."
She muttered something and leaned against the wall. She had not yet recovered herself.
"You know the ladies?" the Mayor said, turning to me and speaking roughly; even with a tinge of suspicion in his voice. And he looked from one to the other of us sharply.
"Perfectly," I said.
"They are from Cahors?"
"From that neighbourhood."
"But," he said, "I told you their names, and you said that you did not know them, M. le Vicomte?"
For a moment I held my breath; gazing into Madame's face and reading there anxiety, and something more--a sudden terror. I took the leap--I could do nothing else. "You told me Corvas--that the lady's name was Corvas," I muttered.
"Yes," he said.
"But Madame's name is Corréas."
"Corréas?" he repeated, his jaw falling.
"Yes, Corréas. I dare say that the ladies," I continued with assumed politeness, "did not in their fright speak very clearly."
"And their name is Corréas?"
"I told you that it was," Madame answered, speaking for the first time, "and also that I knew nothing of your Capuchin monk. And this last," she continued earnestly, her eyes fixed on mine in passionate appeal--in appeal that this time could not be mistaken--"I say again, on my honour!"
I knew that she meant this for me; and I responded to the cry. "Yes, M. le Maire," I said, "I am afraid that you have made a mistake. I can answer for Madame as for myself."
The Mayor rubbed his head.
"Of course, if Madame--if Madame knows nothing of the monk," he said, looking vacantly about the dirty room, "it is clear that--it seems clear that there has been a mistake."
"And only one thing remains to be done," I suggested.
"But--but," he continued, with a resumption of his former importance, "there is still one point unexplained--that of the red cockade, Monsieur? What of that, M. le Vicomte?"
"The red cockade?" I said.
"Ay, what of that?" he asked briskly.
I had not expected this, and I looked desperately at Madame. Surely her woman's wit would find a way, whatever the cockade meant. "Have you asked Madame Corréas?" I said at last, feebly shifting the burden. "Have you asked her to explain it?"
"No," he answered.
"Then I would ask her," I said.
"Nay, do not ask me; ask M. le Vicomte," she answered lightly. "Ask him of what colour are the facings of the National Guards of Quercy?"
"Red!" I cried, in a burst of relief. "Red!" I knew, for had I not seen Buton's coat lying by the forge? But how Madame de St. Alais knew I have no idea.
"Ah!" M. Flandre said, with the air of one still a little doubtful. "And Madame wears the cockade for that reason?"
"No, M. le Maire," she answered, with a roguish smile; I saw that it was her plan to humour him. "I do not--my daughter does. If you wish to ask further, or the reason, you must ask her."
M. Flandre had the curiosity of the true bourgeois, and the love of the sex. He simpered. "If Mademoiselle would be so good," he said.
Denise had remained up to this point hidden behind her mother, but at the word she crept out, and reluctantly and like a prisoner brought to the bar, stood before us. It was only when she spoke, however, nay, it was not until she had spoken some words that I understood the full change that I saw in her; or why, instead of the picture of pallid weariness which she had presented a few minutes before, she now showed, as she stood forward, a face covered with blushes, and eyes shining and suffused.
"It is simple, Monsieur," she said in a low voice. "Myfiancé, M. le Maire, is in that regiment."
"And you wear it for that reason?" the Mayor cried, delighted.
"I love him," she said softly. And for a moment--for a moment her eyes met mine.
Then I know not which was the redder, she or I; or which found that vile and filthy room more like a palace, its tobacco-laden air more sweet! I had not dreamed what she was going to say, least of all had I dreamed what her eyes said, as for that instant they met mine and turned my blood to fire! I lost the Mayor's blunt answer and his chuckling laugh; and only returned to a sense of the present when Mademoiselle slipped back to hide her burning face behind her mother, and I saw in her place Madame, facing me, with her finger to her lip, and a glance of warning in her eyes.
It was a warning not superfluous, for in the flush of my first enthusiasm I might have said anything. And the Mayor was in better hands than mine. The little touch of romance and sentiment which Mademoiselle's avowal had imported into the matter, had removed his last suspicion and won his heart. He ogled Madame, he beamed on the girl with fatherly gallantry. He made a jest of the monk.
"A mistake, and yet one I cannot deplore, Madame," he protested, with clumsy civility. "For it has given me the pleasure of seeing you."
"Oh, M. le Maire!" Madame simpered.
"But the state of the country is really such," he continued, "that for the beautiful sex to be travelling alone is not safe. It exposes them----"
"To worserencontresthan this, I fear," Madame said, darting a look from her fine eyes. "If this were the worst we poor women had to fear!" And she looked at him again.
"Ah, Madame!" he said, delighted.
"But, alas, we have no escort."
The fat Mayor sighed, I think that he was going to offer himself. Then a thought struck him. "Perhaps this gentleman," and he turned to me. "You go to Nîmes, M. le Vicomte?"
"Yes," I said. "And, of course, if Madame Corréas----"
"Oh, it would be troubling M. le Vicomte," Madame said; and she went a step farther from me and a step nearer to M. Flandre, as if he must understand her hesitation.
"I am sure it could be no trouble to any one!" he answered stoutly. "But for the matter of that, if M. le Vicomte perceives any difficulty," and he laid his hand on his heart, "I will find some one----"
"Some one?" Madame said archly.
"Myself," the Mayor answered.
"Ah!" she cried, "if you----"
But I thought that now I might safely step in. "No, no," I said. "M. le Maire is taking all against me. I can assure you, Madame, I shall be glad to be of service to you. And our roads lie together. If, therefore----"
"I shall be grateful," Madame answered with a delightful little courtesy. "That is, if M. le Maire will let out his poor prisoners. Who, as he now knows, have done nothing worse than sympathise with National Guards."
"I will take it on myself, Madame," M. Flandre said, with vast importance. He had been brought to the desired point. "The case is quite clear. But----" he paused and coughed slightly, "to avoid complications, you had better leave early. When you are gone, I shall know what explanations to give. And if you would not object to spending the night here," he continued, looking round him, with a touch of sheepishness, "I think that----"
"We shall mind it less than before," Madame said, with a look and a sigh. "I feel safe since you have been to see us." And she held out a hand that was still white and plump.
The Mayor kissed it.
* * * * *
As I walked, a few minutes later, across the square, picking my steps by the yellow light of M. Flandre's lantern, and at times enveloped in the flying skirt of his cloak--for the good man had his own visions and for a hundred yards together forgot his company--I could have thought all that had passed a dream; so unreal seemed the squalid prison-lodging I had just left, so marvellous the ladies' presence in it, so incredible Mademoiselle's blushing avowal made to my face. But a wheezing clock overhead struck the hour before midnight, and I counted the strokes; a watchman, not far from me, cried, after the old fashion, that it was eleven o'clock and a fine night; and I stumbled over a stone. No, I was not dreaming.
But if I had to stumble then, to persuade myself that I was awake, how was it with me next morning, when, with the first glimmer of light, I walked beside the carriage from the inn to the prison, and saw, before I reached the gloomy door, Madame and Mademoiselle standing shivering under the wall beside it? How was it with me when I held Mademoiselle's hand in mine, as I helped her in, and then followed her in and sat opposite to her--sat opposite to her with the knowledge that I was so to sit for days, that I was to be her fellow-traveller, that we were to go to Nîmes together?
Ah, how was it, indeed? But there is nothing quite perfect; there is no hour in which a man says that he is quite happy; and a shadow of fear and stealth darkened my bliss that morning. The Mayor was there to see us start, and I fancy that it was his face of apprehension that lay at the bottom of this feeling. A moment, however, and the face was gone from the window; another, and the carriage began to roll quickly through the dim streets, while we lay back, each in a corner, hidden by the darkness even from one another. Still, we had the gates to pass, and the guard; or the watch might stop us, or some early-rising townsman, or any one of a hundred accidents. My heart beat fast.
But all went well. Within five minutes we had passed the gates and left them behind us, and were rolling in safety along the road. The dawn was no more than grey, the trees showed black against the sky, as we crossed the Tarn by the great bridge, and began to climb the valley of the Dourbie.
I have said that we could not see one another. But on a sudden Madame laughed out of the darkness of her corner. "O Richard, Omon Roi!" she hummed. Then "The fat fool!" she cried; and she laughed again.
I thought her cruel, and almost an ingrate; but she was Mademoiselle's mother, and I said nothing. Mademoiselle was opposite to me, and I was happy. I was happy, thinking what she would say to me, and how she would look at me, when the day came and she could no longer escape my eyes; when the day came and the dainty, half-shrouded face that already began to glimmer in the roomy corner of the old berlin should be mine to look on, to feast my eyes on, to question and read through long days and hours of a journey, a journey through heaven!
Already it was growing light; I had but a little longer to wait. A rosy flush began to tinge one half the sky; the other half, pale blue and flecked with golden clouds, lay behind us. A few seconds, and the mountain tips caught the first rays of the sun, and floated far over us, in golden ether. I cast one greedy glance at Mademoiselle's face, saw there the dawn out-blushed, I met for one second her eyes and saw the glory of the ether outshone--and then I looked away, trembling. It seemed sacrilege to look longer.
Suddenly Madame laughed again, out of her corner; a laugh that made me wince, and grow hot. "She is not made for a nun, M. le Vicomte, is she?" she said.
I bounced in my seat. The speaker's tone, gay, insulting, flicked, not me, but the girl, like a whip.
"You really, Denise, must have had practice," Madame continued smoothly. "I love, you love, we love--you are quite perfect. Did you practise with M. le Directeur? Or with the big boys over the wall?"
"Madame!" I cried. The girl had drawn her hood over her face, but I could fancy her shame.
But Madame was inexorable. "Really, Denise, I do not know that I ever told even your father 'I love you,'" she said. "At any rate, until he had kissed me on the lips. But I suppose that you reverse the order----"
"Madame," I stammered. "This is infamous!"
"What, Monsieur?" she answered, this time heeding me. "May I not punish my daughter in my own way?"
"Not before me," I retorted, full of wrath. "It is cruel! It is----"
"Oh, before you, M. le Vicomte?" Madame answered, mocking me. "And why not before you? I cannot degrade her lower than she has herself stooped!"
"It is false!" I cried, in hot rage. "It is a cruel falsehood!"
"Oh, I can? Then if I please, I shall!" Madame answered, with ruthless pleasantry. "And you, Monsieur, will sit by and listen, if I please. Though, make no mistake, M. le Vicomte," she continued, leaning forward, and gazing keenly into my face. "Because I punish her before you, do not think that you are, or ever shall be, of the family. Or that this unmaidenly, immodest----"
Mademoiselle uttered a cry of pain, and shrank lower in her corner.
"Little fool," Madame continued coolly, "who, when she was primed with a cock-and-bull story about the cockade, must needs add, 'I love him'--I love him, and she a maiden!--will ever be anything to you! That link was broken long ago. It was broken when your friends burned our house at St. Alais; it was broken when they sacked our house in Cahors; it was broken when they made our king a prisoner, when they murdered our friends, when they dragged our Church a slave at the chariot wheels of their triumph; ay, and broken once for all, beyond mending by mock heroics! Understand that fully, M. le Vicomte," Madame continued pitilessly. "But as you saw her stoop, you shall see her punished. She is the first St. Alais that ever wooed a lover!"
I knew that of the family which would have given the lie to that statement; but it was not a tale for Mademoiselle's ears, and instead I rose. "At least, Madame," I said, bowing, "I can free Mademoiselle from the embarrassment of my presence. And I shall do so."
"No, you will not do even that," Madame answered unmoved. "If you will sit down, I will tell you why."
I sat down, compelled by her tone.
"You will not do it," Madame continued, looking me coolly in the face, "because I am bound to admit, though I no longer like you, that you are a gentleman."
"And therefore should leave you."
"On the contrary, for that reason you will continue to travel with us."
"Outside," I said.
"No, inside," she answered quietly. "We have no passport nor papers; without your company we should be stopped in each town through which we pass. It is unfortunate," Madame continued, shrugging her shoulders; "--I did not know that the country was in so bad a state, or I would have taken precautions--it is unfortunate. But as it is we must put up with it and travel together."
I felt a warm rush of joy, of triumph, of coming vengeance. "Thank you, Madame," I said, and I bowed to her, "for telling me that. It seems, then, that you are in my power."
"Ah?"
"And that to requite you for the pain you have just caused Mademoiselle, I have only to leave you."
"Well?"
"I see even now a little town before us; in three minutes we shall enter it. Very well, Madame. If you say another word to your daughter, if you insult her again in my presence by so much as a syllable, I leave you and go my way."
To my surprise Madame St. Alais broke into a silvery laugh. "You will not, Monsieur," she said. "And yet I shall treat my daughter as I please."
"I shall do so!"
"You will not."
"Why, then? Why shall I not?" I cried.
"Because," she answered, laughing softly, "you are a gentleman, M. le Vicomte, and can neither leave us nor endanger us. That is all."
I sank back in my seat, and glared at her in speechless indignation; seeing in a flash my impotence and her power. The cushions burned me; but I could not leave them.
She laughed again, well pleased. "There, I have told you what you will not do," she said. "Now I am going to tell you what you will do. In front, I am told, they are very suspicious. The story of Madame Corvas, even if backed by your word, may not suffice. You will say, therefore, that I am your mother, and that Mademoiselle is your sister. She would prefer, I daresay," Madame continued, with a cutting glance at her daughter, "to pass for your wife. But that does not suit me."
I breathed hard; but I was helpless as any prisoner, closely bound to obedience as any slave. I could not denounce them, and I could not leave them; honour and love were alike concerned. Yet I foresaw that I must listen, hour by hour, and mile by mile, to gibes at the girl's expense, to sneers at her modesty, to words that cut like whip-lashes. That was Madame's plan. The girl must travel with me, must breathe the same air with me, must sit for hours with the hem of her skirt touching my boot. It was necessary for the safety of all. But, after this, after what we had both heard, if her eye met mine, it could only fall; if her hand touched mine, she must shrink in shame. Henceforth there was a barrier between us.
As a fact, Mademoiselle's pride came to her aid, and she sat, neither weeping nor protesting, nor seeking to join her forces to mine by a glance; but bearing all with steadfast patience, she looked out of the window when I pretended to sleep, and looked towards her mother when I sat erect. Possibly she found her compensations, and bore her punishment quietly for their sake. But I did not think of that. Possibly, too, she suffered less than I fancied; but I doubt if she would admit that, even to-day.
At any rate she had heard me fight her battle; yet she did not speak to me nor I to her; and under these strange conditions we began and pursued the strangest journey man ever made. We drove through pleasant valleys growing green, over sterile passes, where winter still fringed the rocks with snow, through sunshine, and in the teeth of cold mountain winds; but we scarcely heeded any of these things. Our hearts and thoughts lay inside the carriage, where Madame sat smiling, and we two kept grim silence.
About noon we halted to rest and eat at a little village inn, high up. It seemed to me a place almost at the end of the world, with a chaos of mountains rising tier on tier above it, and slopes of shale below. But the frenzy of the time had reached even this barren nook. Before we had taken two mouthfuls, the Syndic called to see our papers; and--God knows I had no choice--Madame passed for my mother, and Denise for my sister. Then, while the Syndic still stood bowing over my commission, and striving to learn from me what news there was below, a horse halted at the door, and I heard a man's voice, and in a breath M. le Baron de Géol walked in. There was a single decent room in the inn--that in which we sat--and he came into it.
He uncovered, seeing ladies; and recognising me with a start smiled, but a trifle sourly. "You set off early?" he said. "I waited at the east gate, but you did not come, Monsieur."
I coloured, conscience-stricken, and begged a thousand pardons. As a fact, I had clean forgotten him. I had not once thought of the appointment I had made with him at the gate.
"You are not riding?" he said, looking at my companions a little strangely.
"No," I answered. And I could not find another word to say. The Syndic still stood smiling and bowing beside me; and on a sudden I saw the pit on the edge of which I tottered; and my face burned.
"You have met friends?" M. le Baron persisted, looking, hat in hand, at Madame.
"Yes," I muttered. Politeness required that I should introduce him. But I dared not.
However, at that, he at last took the hint; and retired with the Syndic. The moment they were over the threshold Madame flashed out at me, in a passion of anger. "Fool!" she said, without ceremony, "why did you not present him? Don't you know that that is the way to arouse suspicion, and ruin us? A child could see that you had something to hide. If you had presented him at once to your mother----"
"Yes, Madame?"
"He would have gone away satisfied."
"I doubt it, Madame, and for a very good reason," I answered cynically. "Seeing that yesterday I told him, with the utmost particularity, that I had neither mother nor sister."
That afforded me a little revenge. Madame St. Alais went white and red in the same instant, and sat a moment with her lips pressed together, and her eyes on the table. "Who is he? What do you know of him?" she said at last.
"He is a poor gentleman and a bigoted Protestant," I answered drily.
She bit her lip. "Bon Dieu!" she muttered. "Who could have foreseen such an accident? Do you think that he suspects anything?"
"Doubtless. To begin, I left early this morning, in breach of an agreement to travel with him. When he learns, in addition, that I am travelling with my mother and sister, whom yesterday I did not possess----"
Madame looked at me, as if she would strike me. "What will you do?" she cried.
"It is for my mother to say," I answered politely. And I helped myself very indifferently to cheese. "She dictated this policy."
She was white with rage, and perhaps alarm; I chuckled secretly, seeing her condition. But rage availed her little; she had to humble herself. "What do you advise?" she said at last.
"There is only one course open," I answered. "We must brazen it out."
She agreed. But this, though a very easy course to advise, was one anything but easy to pursue. I discovered that, a few minutes later, when I went out to see if the carriage was ready, and found De Géol in the doorway with a face as hard as his own hills. "You are starting?" he said.
I muttered that I was.
"I find that I have to congratulate you," he continued, with a smile of unpleasant meaning.
"On what, Monsieur?"
"On finding your family," he answered, looking at me with a bitter sort of humour. "To discover both a mother and a sister in twenty-four hours must be great happiness. But--may I give you a hint, M. le Vicomte?"
"If you please," I said, with desperate coolness.
"Then if--being so happy in making discoveries--you happen to light next on M. Froment--on M. Froment, the firebrand of Nîmes, false Capuchin, and false traitor!--do not adopt him also! That is all."
"I am not acquainted with him," I said coldly. He had spoken with passion and fire.
"Do not become so," he answered.
I shrugged my shoulders, and he said no more; and in a moment Madame and Mademoiselle came out, and took their seats, and I set out to walk up the hill beside the horses.
The ascent was steep and long and toilsome, and a dozen times as we climbed out of the valley we had to halt to breathe the cattle; a dozen times I looked back at the grey mountain inn lying on the desolate grey plateau at our feet. Always I found the Baron looking up at us, stern and gaunt and motionless as the house before which he stood. And I shivered.