This encounter served neither to raise my spirits nor to remove the apprehensions with which I looked forward to our arrival in places more populous; places where suspicion, once roused, might be less easily allayed. True, Géol had not betrayed me, but he might have his reasons for that; nor did the fact any the more reconcile me to having on our trail this grim stalking-horse in whose person a fanaticism I had deemed dead lurked behind modern doctrines, and sought under the cloak of a new party to avenge old injuries. The barren slopes and rugged peaks that rose above us, as we plodded toilsomely onward, the windswept passes over which the horses scarce dragged the empty carriage, the melancholy fields of snow that lay to right and left, all tended to deepen the impression made on my mind; so that feeling him one with his native hills, I longed to escape from them, I longed to be clear of this desolation and to see before me the sunshine and olive slopes sweep down to the southern sea.
Yet even here there was a counterpoise. The peril which had startled me had not been lost on Madame St. Alais; it had sensibly lowered her tone, and damped the triumph with which she had been disposed to treat me. She was more quiet; and sitting in her place, or walking beside the labouring carriage, as it slowly wound its way round shoulders, or wearily climbed longlacets, she left me to myself. Nay, it did not escape me that distance, far from relieving, seemed to aggravate her anxiety; so that the farther we left the uncouth Baron behind, the more restless she grew, the more keenly she scanned the road behind us, and the less regard she paid to me.
This left me at liberty to use my eyes as I would; and I remember to this day that hour spent under the shoulder of Mont Aigoual. Mademoiselle, worn out by days and nights of exertion, had fallen asleep in her corner, and shaken by the jolting of the coach had let the cloak slip from her face. A faint flush warmed her cheeks, as if even in sleep she felt my eyes upon her; and though a tear presently stole from under her long lashes, a smile almost naïve--a smile that remained while the tear passed--seemed to say that the joys of that strange day surpassed the pains, and that in her sleep Mademoiselle found nothing to regret. God, how I watched that smile! How I hoped that it was for me, how I prayed for her! Never before had it been my happiness to gaze on her uncontrolled, as I did now; to trace the shadow where the first tendrils of her hair stole up from the smooth, white forehead, to learn the soft curves of lips and chin, and the dainty ear half-hidden; to gaze at the blue-veined eyelids half in fear, half in the hope that they might rise and discover me!
Denise, my Denise! I breathed the word softly, in my heart, and was happy. In spite of all--the cold, the journey, Géol, Madame--I was happy. And then in a moment I fell to earth, as I heard a voice say clearly, "Is that he?"
It was Madame's voice, and I turned to her. I was relieved to find that she was not looking my way, but was on her feet, gazing back the way we had come. And in a moment, whether she gave an order or the driver halted on his own motion, the carriage came to a stand; in a mountain pass, where rocks lay huddled on either side.
"What is it?" I said in wonder.
She did not answer, but on the silence of the road and the mountains rose the thin strain of a whistled air. The air was "O Richard,O mon Roi!" In that solitude of rock and fell, it piped high and thin, and had a weird startling effect. I thrust out my head on the other side, and saw a man walking after us at his leisure; as if we had passed him, and then stood to wait for him. He was tall and stout, wore boots and a common-looking cloak; but for all that he had not the air of a man of the country.
"You are going to Ganges?" Madame cried to him, without preface.
"Yes, Madame," he answered, as he came quietly up, and saluted her.
"We can take you on," she said.
"A thousand thanks," he answered, his eyes twinkling. "You are too good. If the gentleman does not object?" And he looked at me, smiling without disguise.
"Oh, no!" Madame said, with a touch of contempt in her voice, "the gentleman will not object."
But that gave me, in the middle of my astonishment, the fillip that I needed. The device of the meeting was so transparent, the appearance of this man, in cloak and boots, on the desolate road far from any habitation, was so clearly a part of an arranged plan, that I could not swallow it; I must either fall in with it, be dupe, and play myrôlewith my eyes open, or act at once. I awoke from my astonishment. "One moment, Madame," I said. "I do not know who this gentleman is."
She had resumed her seat, and the stranger had come up to the window on her side, and was looking in. He had a face of striking power, large-sized and coarse, but not unpleasant; with quick, bright eyes, and mobile lips that smiled easily. The hand he laid on the carriage door was immense.
I think my words took Madame by surprise. She flashed round on me. "Nonsense," she cried imperiously. And to him, "Get in, Monsieur."
"No," I retorted, half-rising. "Stay, if you please. Stay where you are, until----"
Madame turned to me, furious. "This is my carriage," she said.
"Absolutely," I answered.
"Then what do you mean?"
"Only that if this gentleman enters it, I leave it."
For an instant we looked at one another. Then she saw that I was determined, and, knowing my position, she lowered her tone. "Why?" she said, breathing quickly. "Why, because he enters it, should you leave it?"
"Because, Madame," I answered, "I see no reason for taking in a stranger whom we do not know. This gentleman may be everything that is upright----"
"He is no stranger!" she snapped. "I know him. Will that satisfy you?"
"If he will give me his name," I said.
Hitherto he had stood unmoved by the discussion, looking with a smile from one to the other of us; but at this he struck in. "With pleasure, Monsieur," he said. "My name is Alibon, and I am an advocate of Montauban, who last week had the good fortune----"
"No," I said, interrupting him brusquely, and once for all; "I think not. Not Alibon of Montauban. Froment of Nîmes, I think, Monsieur."
A little tract of snow flushed by the sunset lay behind him, and by contrast darkened his face; I could not see how he took my words. And a few seconds elapsed before he answered. When he did, however, he spoke calmly, and I fancied I detected as much vanity as chagrin in his tone. "Well, Monsieur," he said, "and if I am? What then?"
"If you are," I replied resolutely, meeting his eyes, "I decline to travel with you."
"And therefore," he retorted, "Madame, whose carriage this is, must not travel with me!"
"No, since she cannot travel without me," I answered with spirit.
He frowned at that; but in a moment, "And why?" he said with a sneer. "Am I not good enough for your excellency's company?"
"It is not a question of goodness," I said bluntly, "but of a passport, Monsieur. If you ask me, I do not travel with you because I hold a commission under the present Government, and I believe you to be working against that Government. I have lied for Madame St. Alais and her daughter. She was a woman and I had to save her. But I will not lie for you, nor be your cloak. Is that plain, Monsieur?"
"Quite," he said slowly. "Yet I serve the King. Whom do you serve?"
I was silent.
"Whose is this commission, Monsieur, that must not be contaminated?"
I writhed under the sneer, but I was silent.
"Come, M. le Vicomte," he continued frankly, and in a different tone. "Be yourself, I pray. I am Froment, you have guessed it. I am also a fugitive, and were my name spoken in Villeraugues, a league on, I should hang for it. And in Ganges the like. I am at your mercy, therefore, and I ask you to shelter me. Let me pass through Suméne and Ganges as one of your party; thenceforth onwards," he added with a smile and a gesture of conscious pride, "I can shift for myself."
I do not wonder I hesitated, I wonder I resisted. It seemed so small a thing to ask, so great a thing to refuse, that, though half a minute before my mind had been made up, I wavered; wavered miserably. I felt my face burn, I felt the passionate ardour of Madame's eyes as they devoured it, I felt the call of the silence for my answer. And I was near assenting. But as I turned feverishly in my seat to avoid Madame's look, my hand touched the packet which contained the commission, and the contact wrought a revulsion of feeling. I saw the thing as I had seen it before, and, rightly or wrongly, revolted from that which I had nearly done.
"No," I cried angrily. "I will not! I will not!"
"You coward!" Madame cried with sudden passion. And she sprang up as if to strike me, but sat down again trembling.
"It may be," I said. "But I will not do it."
"Why? Why? Why?" she cried.
"Because I carry that commission; and to use it to shelter M. Froment were a thing M. Froment would not do himself. That is all."
He shrugged his shoulders, and magnanimously kept silence. But she was furious. "Quixote!" she cried. "Oh, you are intolerable! But you shall suffer for it.Eh, bien, Monsieur, you shall suffer for it!" she repeated vehemently.
"Nay, Madame, you need not threaten," I retorted.
"For if I would, I could not. You forget that M. de Géol is no more than a league behind us, and bound for Nîmes; he may appear at any moment. At best he is sure to lodge where we do to-night. If he finds," I continued drily, "that I have added a brother to my growing family, I do not think that he will take it lightly."
But this, though she must have seen the sense of it, had no effect upon her. "Oh, you are intolerable!" she cried again. "Let me out! Let me out, Monsieur."
This last to Froment. I did not gainsay her, and he let her out, and the two walked a few paces away, talking rapidly.
I followed them with my eyes; and seeing him now, detached, as it were, and solitary in that dreary landscape--a man alone and in danger--I began to feel some compunction. A moment more, and I might have repented; but a touch fell on my sleeve, and I turned with a start to find Denise leaning towards me, with her face rapt and eager.
"Monsieur," she whispered eagerly; before she could say more I seized the hand with which she had touched me, and kissed it fiercely.
"No, Monsieur, no," she whispered, drawing it from me with her face grown crimson--but her eyes still met mine frankly. "Not now. I want to speak to you, to warn you, to ask you----"
"And I, Mademoiselle," I cried in the same low tone, "want to bless you, to thank you----"
"I want to ask you to take care of yourself," she persisted, shaking her head almost petulantly at me, to silence me. "Listen! Some trap will be laid for you. My mother would not harm you, though she is angry; but that man is desperate, and we are in straits. Be careful, therefore, Monsieur, and----"
"Have no fear," I said.
"Ah, but I have fear," she answered.
And the way in which she said that, and the way in which she looked at me, and looked away again like a startled bird, filled me with happiness--with intense happiness; so that, though Madame came back at that moment, and no more passed between us, not even a look, but we had to sink back in our seats, and affect indifference, I was a different man for it. Perhaps something of this appeared in my face, for Madame, as she came up to the door, shot a suspicious glance at me, a glance almost of hatred; and from me looked keenly at her daughter. However, nothing was said except by Froment, who came up to the door and closed it, after she had entered. He raised his hat to me.
"M. le Vicomte," he said, with a little bitterness, "if a dog came to my door, as I came to you to-day, I would take him in!"
"You would do as I have done," I said.
"No," he said firmly; "I would take him in. Nevertheless, when we meet at Nîmes, I hope to convert you."
"To what?" I said coldly.
"To having a little faith," he answered, with dryness. "To having a little faith in something--and risking somewhat for it, Monsieur. I stand here," he went on, with a gesture that was not without grandeur, "alone and homeless, to-day; I do not know where I shall lie to-night. And why, M. le Vicomte? Because I alone in France have faith! Because I alone believe in anything! Because I alone believe even in myself! Do you think," he continued with rising scorn, "that if you nobles believed in your nobility, you could be unseated? Never! Or that if you, who say 'Long live the King!' believed in your King, he could be unseated? Never! Or that if you who profess to obey the Church believed in her, she could be uprooted? Never! But you believe in nothing, you admire nothing, you reverence nothing--and therefore you are doomed! Yes, doomed; for even the men with whom you have linked yourself have a sort of bastard faith in their theories, their philosophy, their reforms, that are to regenerate the world. But you--you believe in nothing; and you shall pass, as you pass from me now!"
He waved his hand with a gesture of menace, and before I could answer, the carriage rolled on, and left him standing there; the grey landscape, cold and barren, took the place of his face at the door. The light was beginning to fail; we were still a league from Villeraugues. I was glad to feel the carriage moving, and to be free from him; my heart, too, was warm because Denise sat opposite me, and I loved her. But for all that--and though Madame, glowering at me from her corner, troubled me little--the thought that I had deserted him--that, and his words, and one word in particular, hummed in my head, and oppressed me with a sense of coming ill. "Doomed! Doomed!" He had said it as if he meant it. I could no longer question his eloquence. I could no longer be ignorant why they called him the firebrand of Nîmes. The hot breath of the southern city had come from him; the passion of world-old strifes had spoken in his voice. Uneasily I pondered over what he had said, and recalled the words spoken by Father Benôit, even by Géol, to the same effect; and so brooded in my corner, while the carriage jolted on and darkness fell, until presently we stopped in the village street.
I offered Madame St. Alais my arm to descend. "No, Monsieur," she said, repelling me with passion; "I will not touch you."
She meant, I think, to seclude herself and Mademoiselle, and leave me to sup alone. But in the inn there was only one great room for parlour, and kitchen, and all; and a little cupboard, veiled by a dingy curtain, in which the women might sleep if they pleased, but in which they could not possibly eat. The inn was, in fact, the worst in which I had stopped--the maid draggled and dirty, and smelling of the stable; the company three boors; the floor of earth; the windows unglazed. Madame, accustomed to travel, and supported by her anger, took all with the ease of a fine lady; but Denise, fresh from her convent, winced at the brawling and oaths that rose round her, and cowered, pale and frightened, on her stool.
A hundred times I was on the point of interfering to protect her from these outrages; but her eyes, when they made me happy by timidly seeking mine for an instant, seemed to pray me to abstain; and the men, as their senseless tirades showed, were delegates from Castres, who at a word would have raised the cry of "Aristocrats!" I refrained, therefore, and doubtless with wisdom; but even the arrival of Géol would have been a welcome interruption.
I have said that Madame heeded them little; but it presently appeared that I was mistaken. After we had supped, and when the noise was at its height, she came to me, where I sat a little apart, and, throwing into her tone all the anger and disgust which her face so well masked, she cried in my ear that we must start at daybreak.
"At daybreak--or before!" she whispered fiercely. "This is horrible! horrible!" she continued. "This place is killing me! I would start now, cold and dark as it is, if----"
"I will speak to them," I said, taking a step towards the table.
She clutched my sleeve, and pinched me until I winced. "Fool!" she said. "Would you ruin us all? A word, and we are betrayed. No; but at daybreak we go. We shall not sleep; and the moment it is light we go!"
I consented, of course; and, going to the driver, who had taken our place at the table, she whispered him also, and then came back to me, and bade me call him if he did not rise. This settled, she went towards the closet, whither Mademoiselle had already retired; but unfortunately her movements had drawn on her the attention of the clowns at the table, and one of these, rising suddenly as she passed, intercepted her.
"A toast, Madame! a toast!" he cried, with a gross hiccough; and reeling on his feet, he thrust a cup of wine in front of her. "A toast; and one that every man, woman, and child in France must drink, or be d----d! And that is the Tricolour! The Tricolour; and down with Madame Veto! The Tricolour, Madame! Drink to it!"
The drunken wretch pressed the cup on her, while his comrades roared, "Drink! Drink! The Tricolour; and down with Madame Veto!" and added jests and oaths I will not write.
This was too much; I sprang to my feet to chastise the wretches. But Madame, who preserved her presence of mind to a marvel, checked me by a glance. "No," she said, raising her head proudly; "I will not drink!"
"Ah!" he cried with a vile laugh. "An aristocrat, are we? Drink, nevertheless, or we shall show you----"
"I will not drink!" she retorted, facing him with superb courage. "And more, when M. de Géol arrives to-night, you will have to give an account to him."
The man's face fell. "You know the Baron de Géol?" he said in a different tone.
"I left him at the last village, and I expect him here to-night," she answered coolly. "And I would advise you, Monsieur, to drink your own toasts, and let others go! For he is not a man to brook an insult!"
The brawler shrugged his shoulders, to hide his mortification. "Oh! if you are a friend of his," he muttered, preparing to slink back to the table, "I suppose it is all right. He is a good man. No offence. If you are not an aristocrat----"
"I am no more of an aristocrat than is M. de Géol," she answered. And, with a cold bow, she turned, and went to the closet.
The men were a little less noisy after that; for Madame had rightly guessed that Géol's name was known and respected. They presently wrapped themselves in their cloaks, and lay down on the floor; and I did the same, passing the night, in the result, in greater comfort than I expected.
At first, it is true, I did not sleep; but later I fell into an uneasy slumber, and, passing from one troubled dream to another--for which I had, doubtless, to thank the foul air of the room--I awoke at last with a start, to find some one leaning over me. Apparently it was still night, for all was quiet; but the red embers of the fire glowed on the hearth, and dimly lit up the room, enabling me to see that it was Madame St. Alais who had roused me. She pointed to the other men, who still lay snoring.
"Hush!" she whispered, with her finger on her lip. "It is after five. Jules is harnessing the horses. I have paid the woman here, and in five minutes we shall be ready."
"But the sun will not rise for another hour," I answered. This was early starting with a vengeance!
Madame, however, had set her heart upon it. "Do you want to expose us to more of this?" she said, in a furious whisper. "To keep us here until Géol arrives, perhaps?"
"I am ready, Madame," I said.
This satisfied her; she flitted away without any more, and disappeared behind the curtain, and I heard whispering. I put on my boots, and, the room being very cold, stooped a moment over the fire, and drawing the embers together with my foot, warmed myself. Then I put on my cravat and sword, which I had removed, and stood ready to start. It seemed uselessly early; and we had started so early the day before! If Madame wished it, however, it was my place to give way to her.
In a moment she came to me again; and I saw, even by that light, that her face was twitching with eagerness. "Oh!" she said; "will he never come? That man will be all day. Go and hasten him, Monsieur! If Géol comes? Go, for pity's sake, and hasten him!"
I wondered, thinking such haste utterly vain and foolish--it was not likely that Géol would arrive at this hour; but, concluding that Madame's nerves had failed at last, I thought it proper to comply, and, stepping carefully over the sleepers, reached the door. I raised the latch, and in a moment was outside, and had closed the door behind me. The bitter dawn wind, laden with a fine snow, lashed my cheeks, and bit through my cloak, and made me shiver. In the east the daybreak was only faintly apparent; in every other quarter it was still night, and, for all I could see, might be midnight.
Very little in charity with Madame, I picked my way, shivering, to the door of the stable--a mean hovel, in a line with the house, and set in a sea of mud. It was closed, but a dim yellow light, proceeding from a window towards the farther end, showed me where Jules was at work; and I raised the latch, and called him. He did not answer, and I had to go in to him, passing behind three or four wretched nags--some on their legs and some lying down--until I came to our horses, which stood side by side at the end, with the lantern hung on a hook near them.
Still I did not see Jules, and I was standing wondering where he was--for he did not answer--when, with a whish, something black struck me in the face. It blinded me; in a moment I found myself struggling in the folds of a cloak, that completely enveloped my face, while a grip of iron seized my arms and bound them to my sides. Taken completely by surprise, I tried to shout, but the heavy cloak stifled me; when, struggling desperately, I succeeded in uttering a half-choked cry, other hands than those which held me pressed the cloak more tightly over my face. In vain I writhed and twisted, and, half-suffocated, tried to free myself. I felt hands pass deftly over me, and knew that I was being robbed. Then, as I still resisted, the man who held me from behind tripped me up, and I fell, still in his grasp, on my face on the ground.
Fortunately I fell on some litter; but, even so, the shock drove the breath out of me; and what with that and the cloak, which in this new position threatened to strangle me outright, I lay a moment helpless, while the wretches bound my hands behind me, and tied my ankles together. Thus secured, I felt myself taken up, and carried a little way, and flung roughly down on a soft bed--of hay, as I knew by the scent. Then some one threw a truss of hay on me, and more and more hay, until I thought that I should be stifled, and tried frantically to shout. But the cloak was wound two or three times round my head, and, strive as I would, I could only, with all my efforts, force out a dull cry, that died, smothered in its folds.
I did not struggle long. The efforts I had made to free myself from the men, and this last exertion of striving to shout, brought the blood to my head; and so exhausted me that I lay inert, my heart panting as if it would suffocate me, and my lungs craving more air. I was in danger of being stifled in earnest, and knew it; but, fortunately, the horror of this fate, which a minute before had driven me to frantic efforts, now gave me the supreme courage to lie still, and, collecting myself, do all I could to get air.
It was time I did. I was hot as fire, and sweating at every pore; however the dreadful sensation of choking went off somewhat when I had lain a while motionless, and by turning my head and chest a little to the side--which I succeeded in doing, though I could not raise myself--I breathed more freely. Still, my position was horrible. Helpless as I was, with the trusses of hay pressing on me, fresh pains soon rose to take the place of those allayed. The bonds on my wrists began to burn into my flesh, the hilt of my sword forced itself into my side, my back seemed to be breaking under the burden, my shoulders ached intolerably. I was being slowly, slowly pressed to death, in darkness, and when a cry--a single cry, if I could raise my voice--would bring relief and succour!
The thought so maddened me that, fancying after an age of this suffering that I heard a faint sound as of some one moving in the stable, I lost control of myself, and fell to struggling again; while groans broke from me instead of cries, and the bonds cut into my arms. But the paroxysm only added to my misery; the person, whoever he was, did not hear me, and made no further noise; or, if he did, the blood coursing to my head, and swelling the veins of my neck almost to bursting, deafened me to the sound. The horrible weight that I had raised for a moment sank again. I gave up, I despaired; and lay in a kind of swoon, unable to think, unable to remember, no longer hoping for relief, or planning escape, but enduring.
I must have lain thus some time, when a noise loud enough to reach my dulled ears roused me afresh; I listened, at first with half a heart. The noise was repeated; then, without further warning, a sharp pain darted through the calf of my leg. I screamed out; and, though the cloak and the hay over my head choked the cry, I caught a kind of echo of it. Then silence.
Stupid as a in an awakened from sleep, I thought for a moment that I had dreamed both the cry and the pain; and groaned in my misery. The next moment I felt the hay that lay on me move; then the truss that pressed most heavily on me was lifted, and I heard voices and cries, and saw a faint light, and knew I was freed. In a twinkling I felt myself seized and drawn out, amid a murmur of cries and exclamations. The cloak was plucked from my head, and, dazzled and half blind, I found half a dozen faces gaping and staring at me.
"Why,mon Dieu!it is the gentleman who departed this morning!" cried a woman. And she threw up her hands in astonishment.
I looked at her. She was the woman of the house.
My throat was dry and parched, my lips were swollen; but at the second attempt I managed to tell her to untie me.
She complied, amid fresh exclamations of surprise and astonishment; then, as I was so stiff and benumbed as to be powerless, they lifted me to the door of the stable, where one set a stool, and another brought a cup of water. This and the cold air restored me, and in a minute or two I was able to stand. Meanwhile they pressed me with questions; but I was giddy and confused, and could not for a few minutes collect myself. By-and-by, however, a person who came up with an air of importance, and pushed aside the crowd of clowns and stable-helpers that surrounded me, helped me to find my voice.
"What is it?" he said. "What is it, Monsieur? What brought you in the stable?"
The woman who kept the inn answered for me that she did not know; that one of the men going to get hay had struck his fork into my leg, and so found me.
"But who is he?" the new-comer asked imperatively. He was a tall, thin man, with a sour face and small, suspicious eyes.
"I am the Vicomte de Saux," I answered.
"Eh!" he said, prolonging the syllable. "And how came you, M. le Vicomte--if that be your name--in the stable?"
"I have been robbed," I muttered.
"Bobbed!" he answered with a sniff. "Bah! Monsieur; in this commune we have no robbers."
"Still, I have been robbed," I answered stupidly.
For answer, before I knew what he was about, he plunged his hand, without ceremony or leave, into the pocket of my coat, and brought out a purse. He held it up for all to see. "Robbed?" he said in a tone of irony. "I think not, Monsieur; I think not!"
I looked at the purse in astonishment; then, mechanically putting my hand into my pocket, I produced first one thing, and then another, and stared at them. He was right. I had not been robbed. Snuff-box, handkerchief, my watch and seals, my knife, and a little mirror, and book--all were there!
"And now I come to think of it," the woman said, speaking suddenly, "there are a pair of saddle-bags in the house that must belong to the gentleman! I was wondering a while ago whose they were."
"They are mine!" I cried, memory and sense returning. "They are mine! But the ladies who were with me? They have not started?"
"They went these three hours back," the woman answered, staring at me. "And I could have sworn that Monsieur went with them! But, to be sure, it was only just light, and a mistake is soon made."
A thought that should have occurred to me before--a horrible thought--darted its sting into my heart. I plunged my hand into the inner pocket of my coat, and drew it out empty. The commission--the commission to which I had trusted was gone!
I uttered a cry of rage and glared round me. "What is it?" said the sour man, meeting my eyes.
"My papers!" I answered, almost gnashing my teeth, as I thought how I had been tricked and treated. I saw it all now. "My papers!"
"Well?" he said.
"They are gone! I have been robbed of them!"
"Indeed!" he said drily. "That remains to be proved, Monsieur."
I thought that he meant that I might be mistaken, as I had been mistaken before; and, to make certain, I turned out the pocket.
"No," he said, as drily as before. "I see that they are not there. But the point is, Monsieur, were they ever there?"
I looked at him.
"Yes," he said, "that is the point, Monsieur. Where are your papers?"
"I tell you I have been robbed of them!" I cried, in a rage.
"And I say, that remains to be proved," he answered. "And until it is proved, you do not leave here. That is all, Monsieur, and it is simple."
"And who," I said indignantly, "are you, I should like to know, Monsieur, who stop travellers on the highway, and ask for papers?"
"Merely the President of the Local Committee," he replied.
"And do you suppose," I said, fuming at his folly, "that I bound my hands, and stifled myself under that hay, on purpose? On purpose to pass through your wretched village?"
"I suppose nothing, Monsieur," he answered coolly. "But this is the road to Turin, where M. d'Artois is said to be collecting the disaffected; and to Nîmes, where mischievous persons are flaunting the red cockade. And without papers, no one passes."
"But what will you do with me?" I asked, seeing that the clowns, who gaped round us, regarded him as nothing less than a Solomon.
"Detain you, M. le Vicomte, until you procure papers," he answered.
"But,mon Dieu!" I said. "That is not so easily done here. Who is likely to know me?"
He shrugged his shoulders. "Monsieur does not leave without the papers," he said. "That is all."
And he spoke truly, that was all. In vain I laid the facts before him, and asked if any one would voluntarily suffer, merely to hide his lack of papers, what I had undergone; in vain I asked if the state in which I had been found was not itself proof that I had been robbed; if a man could tie his own hands, and pile hay on himself. In vain even that I said I knew who had robbed me; the last statement only made matters worse.
"Indeed!" he said ironically. "Then, pray, who was it?"
"The rogue Froment! Froment of Nîmes!"
"He is not in this country."
"Indeed! I saw him yesterday," I answered.
"Then that settles the matter," the Committee-man answered, with a grim smile; and his little court smiled too. "After that, we certainly cannot lose sight of M. le Vicomte."
And so well did he keep his word, that when, to avoid the cold that began to pierce me, I went into the wretched inn, and sat down on the hearth to think over the position, two of the yokels accompanied me; and when I went out again, and stood looking distrustfully up and down the road, two more were at my elbow, as by magic. Whether I turned this way or that, one was sure to spring up, and, if I walked too far from the house, would touch me on the arm, and gruffly order me back. Mont Aigoual itself, lifting its crest, bleak, and stern, and cold, above the valley, was not more sure than their attendance, or more immovable.
This added to my irritation, and for a time I was like a madman. Deluded by Madame St. Alais, and robbed by Froment--who, I felt sure, had taken my place, and was now rolling at his ease through Suméne and Ganges with my commission in his pocket--I strode up and down the road, the road that was my prison, in a fever of rage and chagrin. Madame's ingratitude, my own easiness, the villagers' stupidity, I execrated all in turn; but most, perhaps, the inaction to which they condemned me. I had escaped with my life, and for that should have been thankful; but no man cares to be duped. And one day, two days, three days passed; it froze and thawed, snowed and was fine; still, while the carriage bowled along the road to Nîmes, and carried my mistress farther and farther from me, I lay a prisoner in this wretched hamlet. I grew to loathe the squalid inn, in which I kicked my heels through the cold hours, the muddy road that ran by it, the mean row of hovels they called the village. All day, and whenever I went abroad, the clowns dogged and flouted me, thinking it sport; each evening the Committee came to stare and question. A house this way, a house that way, were my boundaries, while the world moved beyond the mountains, and France throbbed; and I knew not what might be in hand to separate Denise from me. No wonder that I almost chafed myself into madness.
I had left my horse at Milhau, whence the landlord had undertaken to forward it to Ganges within a couple of days, by the hand of an acquaintance who would be going that way. I expected it every hour, therefore, and my only hope was that its conductor might be able to identify me, since half a hundred at Milhau had seen my commission, or heard it read. But the horse did not arrive, nor any one from Milhau, and fearing that the release of the two ladies had caused trouble there, my heart sank still lower. I could not easily communicate with Cahors, and the Committee, with rustic independence and obstinacy, would neither let me go nor send me to Nîmes, where I could be identified. It was in vain I pressed them.
"No, no," the sour-faced Committee-man answered, the first time I raised the question. "Presently some one who knows you will come by. In the meantime have patience."
"M. le Vicomte is a gentleman many would know," the woman of the house chimed in; looking at me with her arms wrapped up in her apron and her head on one side.
"To be sure! To be sure," the crowd agreed, and, rubbing their calves, the members of the Committee followed her lead, and looked at me with satisfaction, as at something that did them credit.
Their stupid complacency nearly drove me mad; but to what purpose? "After all, you are very well here," the first speaker would say, shrugging his shoulders. "You are very well here."
"Better than under the hay!" the man who had pricked my leg was wont to answer.
And on that--this was a nightly joke--a general laugh would follow, and with another admonition to be patient, the Committee would take its leave.
Or sometimes the argument in the kitchen took a harsher and more dangerous turn; and one and another would recall for my benefit old tales of the dragooning, and Villars, and Berwick; tales, at which the blood crept, of horrible cruelties done and suffered, of stern mountain men and brave women who faced the worst that Kings could do, for the fate that they had chosen; of a great cause crushed but not destroyed, of a whole people trodden down in dust and blood, and yet living and growing strong.
"And do you think that after this," the speaker would cry when he had told me these things with flashing eyes, these things that his grandfathers had done and suffered--"do you think that after this we are not concerned in this business? Do you think that now, Monsieur, when, after all these years, vengeance is in our hand and our persecutors are tottering, we will sit still and see them set up again? Bishops and captains, canons and cardinals, where are they now? Where are the lands they stole from us? Gone from them! Where are the tithes they took with blood? Taken from them! Where is St. Etienne, whose father they persecuted? With his foot on their necks! And, after this, do you think that with all their processions and their idols and their Corpus Christi, they shall defy us and set up their rule again? No, Monsieur, no."
"But there is no question of that!" I said mildly.
"There is great question of that," was the stern answer. "In Nîmes and Montauban, at Avignon, and at Arles! We who live in the mountains have too often heard the storm gathering in the plain to be mistaken. These preachings and processions, and weeping virgins, this cry of Blasphemy--what do they mean, Monsieur? Blood! Blood! Blood! It has been so a score of times, it is so now! But this time blood will not be shed on one side only!"
And I listened and marvelled. I began to understand that the same word meant one thing in one man's mouth, and in another man's mouth another thing; and that that which worked easily and smoothly in the north might in the south roll hideously through fire and blood. In Quercy we had lost two or three châteaux, and a handful of lives, and for a few hours the mob had got out of hand--all with little enthusiasm. But here--here I seemed to stand on the brink of a great furnace under which the fires of persecution still smouldered; I felt the scorching breath of passion on my cheek, and saw through the white-hot scum old enmities seething with new and fiercer ambitions, old factions with new bigotries. I had heard Froment, now I heard these; it remained only to be seen whether Froment had his followers.
In the meantime, pent up in this place, I found little comfort in such predictions; I lived on my heart, and the better part of a fortnight went by. The woman at the inn was well satisfied to keep me; I paid, and guests were rare. And the Committee took pride in me; I was a living, walking token of their powers, and of the importance of their village. Now to the mingled misery and absurdity of my position, the anxiety on Mademoiselle's account, which this news of Nîmes caused me, added the last intolerable touch, and I determined at all risks to escape.
That I had no horse, and that at Suméne or Ganges I should inevitably be detained, had hitherto held me back from the attempt; now I could bear the position no longer, and after weighing all the chances, I determined to slip away some evening at sunset, and make my way on foot to Milhau. The villagers would be sure to pursue me in the direction of Nîmes, whither they knew that I was bound; and even if a party took the other road, I should have many chances of escape in the darkness. I counted on reaching Milhau soon after daybreak, and there, if the Mayor stood my friend, I might regain my horse, and with credentials travel to Nîmes by the same or another road.
It seemed feasible, and that very evening fortune favoured me. The man who should have kept me company, upset a pot of boiling water over his foot, and without giving a thought to me or his duty went off groaning to his house. A moment later the woman of the inn was called out by a neighbour, and at the very hour I would have chosen, I found myself alone. Still I knew that I had not a moment to lose; instantly, therefore, I put on my cloak, and reaching down my pistols from a shelf on which they had been placed, I put a little food in my pocket and sneaked out at the rear of the house. A dog was kennelled there, but it knew me and wagged its tail; and in two minutes, after warily skirting the backs of the houses, I gained the road to Milhau, and stood free and alone.
Night had fallen, but it was not quite dark; and dreading every eye, I hurried on through the dusk, now peering anxiously forward, and now looking and listening for the first sounds of pursuit. For a few minutes the fear of that took up all my thoughts; later, when the one twinkling light that marked the village had set behind me, and night and the silent waste of mountains had swallowed me up, a sense of eeriness, of loneliness, very depressing, took possession of me. Denise was at Nîmes, and I was moving the other way; what accidents might not befall me, how many things might not happen to postpone my return? In the meantime she lay at the mercy of her mother and brothers, with all the traditions of her family, all the prejudices of maidenhood and her education against my suit. To what use in this imbroglio might not her hand be put? Or, if that were not in question, what in that city of strife, in that fierce struggle, of which the peasants had forewarned me, might not be the fate of a young girl?
Spurred by these thoughts, I pressed on feverishly, and had gone, perhaps, a league, when a sharp sound made by a horse's shoe striking a stone, caught my ear. It came from the front, and I drew to the side of the road, and crouched low to let the traveller go by. I fancied that I could distinguish the tramp of three horses, but when the men loomed darkly into sight, I could see only two figures.
Perhaps I rose a little too high in my anxiety to see. At any rate I had not counted on the horses, the nearer of which, as it passed me, swerved violently from me. The rider was almost dismounted by the violence of the movement, but in a twinkling had his horse again in hand, and before I knew what I was doing, was urging it upon me. I dared not move, for to move was to betray my presence, but this did not avail, for in a minute the rider made out the outline of my figure.
"Hola," he cried sharply. "Who are you there, who lie in wait to break men's necks? Speak, man, or----"
But I caught his bridle. "M. de Géol!" I cried, my heart beating against my ribs.
"Stand back!" he cried, peering at me. He did not know my voice. "Who are you? Who is it?"
"It is I, M. de Saux," I answered joyfully.
"Why, man, I thought that you were at Nîmes," he exclaimed in a tone of great astonishment, "these ten days past! We have your horse here."
"Here? My horse?"
"To be sure. Your good friend here has it in charge from Milhau. But where have you been? And what are you doing here?" he continued suspiciously.
"I lost my passport. It was stolen by Froment."
He whistled.
"And at Villeraugues they stopped me," I continued. "I have been there since."
"Ah," he said drily. "That comes of travelling in bad company, M. le Vicomte. And to-night I suppose you were----"
"Going to get away," I answered bluntly. "But you--I thought that you had passed long ago?"
"No," he said. "I was detained. Now we have met, I would advise you to mount and return with me."
"I will," I said briskly, "with the greatest pleasure. And you will be able to tell them who I am."
"I?" he answered. "No, indeed. I do not know. I only know who you told me you were."
I fell to earth again, and for a moment stood staring through the darkness at him. A moment only. For then out of the darkness came a voice. "Have no fear, M. le Vicomte, I will speak for you."
I started and stared. "Mon Dieu!" I said, trembling. "Who spoke?"
"It is I--Buton," came the answer. "I have your horse, M. le Vicomte."
It was Buton, the blacksmith; Captain Buton, of the Committee.
* * * * *
This for the time cut the thread of my difficulties. When we rode into the village ten minutes later, the Committee, awed by the credentials which Buton carried, accepted his explanation at once, and raised no further objection to my journey. So twelve hours afterwards we three, thus strangely thrown together, passed through Suméne. We slept at Sauve, and presently leaving behind us the late winter of the mountains, with its frost and snow, began to descend in sunshine the western slope of the Rhone valley. All day we rode through balmy air, between fields and gardens and olive groves; the white dust, the white houses, the white cliffs eloquent of the south. And a little before sunset we came in sight of Nîmes, and hailed the end of a journey that, for me, had not been without its adventures.