‘BY THESE PRESENTS, I COMMAND AND EMPOWERGILLES DE BERAULT, SIER DE BERAULT, TOSEEK FOR, HOLD, AND ARREST, AND DELIVERTO THE GOVERNOR OF THE BASTILLE THE BODYOF HENRI DE COCHEFORET, AND TO DO ALLACTS AND THINGS AS SHALL BE NECESSARYTO EFFECT SUCH ARREST AND DELIVERY, FORWHICH THESE SHALL BE HIS WARRANT.(Signed) THE CARDINAL DE RICHELIEU.’
When he had done—he read the signature with a peculiar intonation—someone said softly, ‘VIVE LE ROI!’ and there was a moment’s silence. The sergeant lowered his lanthorn. ‘Is it enough?’ I said hoarsely, glaring from face to face.
The Lieutenant bowed stiffly.
‘For me?’ he said. ‘Quite, Monsieur. I beg your pardon again. I find that my first impressions were the correct ones. Sergeant! give the gentleman his papers!’ and, turning his shoulder rudely, he tossed the commission to the sergeant, who gave it to me, grinning.
I knew that the clown would not fight, and he had his men round him; and I had no choice but to swallow the insult. I put the paper in my breast, with as much indifference as I could assume; and as I did so, he gave a sharp order. The troopers began to form on the edge above; the men who had descended to climb the bank again.
As the group behind him began to open and melt away, I caught sight of a white robe in the middle of it. The next moment, appearing with a suddenness which was like a blow on the cheek to me, Mademoiselle de Cocheforet glided forward towards me. She had a hood on her head, drawn low; and for a moment I could not see her face, I forgot her brother’s presence at my elbow, I forgot other things, and, from habit and impulse rather than calculation, I took a step forward to meet her; though my tongue cleaved to the roof of my mouth, and I was dumb and trembling.
But she recoiled with such a look of white hate, of staring, frozen-eyed abhorrence, that I stepped back as if she had indeed struck me. It did not need the words which accompanied the look—the ‘DO NOT TOUCH ME!’ which she hissed at me as she drew her skirts together—to drive me to the farther edge of the hollow; where I stood with clenched teeth, and nails driven into the flesh, while she hung, sobbing tearless sobs, on her brother’s neck.
I remember hearing Marshal Bassompierre, who, of all the men within my knowledge, had the widest experience, say that not dangers but discomforts prove a man and show what he is; and that the worst sores in life are caused by crumpled rose-leaves and not by thorns.
I am inclined to think him right, for I remember that when I came from my room on the morning after the arrest, and found hall and parlour and passage empty, and all the common rooms of the house deserted, and no meal laid; and when I divined anew from this discovery the feeling of the house towards me—however natural and to be expected—I remember that I felt as sharp a pang as when, the night before, I had had to face discovery and open rage and scorn. I stood in the silent, empty parlour, and looked on the familiar things with a sense of desolation, of something lost and gone, which I could not understand. The morning was grey and cloudy, the air sharp, a shower was falling. The rose-bushes outside swayed in the wind, and inside, where I could remember the hot sunshine lying on floor and table, the rain beat in and stained the boards. The inner door flapped and creaked on its hinges. I thought of other days and of meals I had taken there, and of the scent of flowers; and I fled to the hall in despair.
But here, too, were no signs of life or company, no comfort, no attendance. The ashes of the logs, by whose blaze Mademoiselle had told me the secret, lay on the hearth white and cold fit emblem of the change that had taken place; and now and then a drop of moisture, sliding down the great chimney, pattered among them. The main door stood open, as if the house had no longer anything to guard. The only living thing to be seen was a hound which roamed about restlessly, now gazing at the empty hearth now lying down with pricked cars and watchful eyes. Some leaves, which had been blown in by the wind, rustled in a corner.
I went out moodily into the garden and wandered down one path and up another, looking at the dripping woods, and remembering things, until I came to the stone seat. On it, against the wall, trickling with raindrops, and with a dead leaf half filling its narrow neck, stood the pitcher of food. I thought how much had happened since Mademoiselle took her hand from it and the sergeant’s lanthorn disclosed it to me; and, sighing grimly, I went in again through the parlour door.
A woman was on her knees, on the hearth kindling the belated fire. She had her back to me, and I stood a moment looking at her doubtfully, wondering how she would bear herself and what she would say to me. Then she turned, and I started back, crying out her name in horror—for it was Madame! Madame de Cocheforet!
She was plainly dressed, and her childish face was wan and piteous with weeping; but either the night had worn out her passion and drained her tears, or some great exigency had given her temporary calmness, for she was perfectly composed. She shivered as her eyes met mine, and she blinked as if a bright light had been suddenly thrust before her; but that was all, and she turned again to her task without speaking.
‘Madame! Madame!’ I cried in a frenzy of distress. ‘What is this?’
‘The servants would not do it,’ she answered in a low but steady voice. ‘You are still our guest, Monsieur.’
‘But I cannot suffer it!’ I cried. ‘Madame de Cocheforet, I will not—’
She raised her hand with a strange patient expression in her face.
‘Hush! please,’ she said. ‘Hush! you trouble me.’
The fire blazed up as she spoke, and she rose slowly from it, and with a lingering look at it went out, leaving me to stand and stare and listen in the middle of the floor. Presently I heard her coming back along the passage, and she entered bearing a tray with wine and meat and bread. She set it down on the table, and with the same wan face, trembling always on the verge of tears, she began to lay out the things. The glasses clinked fitfully against the plates as she handled them; the knives jarred with one another. And I stood by, trembling myself; and endured this strange kind of penance.
She signed to me at last to sit down; and she went herself, and stood in the garden doorway with her back to me. I obeyed. I sat down. But though I had eaten nothing since the afternoon of the day before, I could not swallow. I fumbled with my knife, and drank; and grew hot and angry at this farce; and then looked through the window at the dripping bushes, and the rain and the distant sundial—and grew cold again.
Suddenly she turned round and came to my side. ‘You do not eat,’ she said.
I threw down my knife, and sprang up in a frenzy of passion. ‘MON DIEU! Madame,’ I cried, ‘do you think that I have NO heart?’
And then in a moment I knew what I had done, what a folly I had committed. For in a moment she was on her knees on the floor, clasping my knees, pressing her wet cheeks to my rough clothes, crying to me for mercy—for life! life! his life! Oh, it was horrible! It was horrible to hear her gasping voice, to see her fair hair falling over my mud-stained boots, to mark her slender little form convulsed with sobs, to feel that it was a woman, a gentlewoman, who thus abased herself at my feet!
‘Oh, Madame! Madame!’ I cried in my pain, ‘I beg you to rise. Rise, or I must go!’
‘His life! only his life!’ she moaned passionately. ‘What had he done to you—that you should hunt him down? what have we done to you that you should slay us? Oh! have mercy! Have mercy! Let him go, and we will pray for you, I and my sister will pray for you, every morning and night of our lives.’
I was in terror lest someone should come and see her lying there, and I stooped and tried to raise her. But she only sank the lower, until her tender little hands touched the rowels of my spurs. I dared not move, At last I took a sudden resolution.
‘Listen, then, Madame!’ I said almost sternly, ‘if you will not rise. You forget everything, both how I stand, and how small my power is! You forget that if I were to release your husband to-day he would be seized within the hour by those who are still in the village and who are watching every road—who have not ceased to suspect my movements and my intentions. You forget, I say my circumstances—’
She cut me short on that word. She sprang to her feet and faced me. One moment more and I should have said something to the purpose. But at that word she stood before me, white, breathless, dishevelled, struggling for speech.
‘Oh, yes, yes!’ she panted eagerly. ‘I know—I know!’ And she thrust her hand into her bosom and plucked something out and gave it to me—forced it upon me. ‘I know—I know!’ she said again. ‘Take it, and God reward you, Monsieur! God reward you! We give it freely—freely and thankfully!’
I stood and looked at her and it; and slowly I froze. She had given me the packet—the packet I had restored to Mademoiselle—the parcel of jewels. I weighed it in my hands, and my heart grew hard again, for I knew that this was Mademoiselle’s doing; that it was she who, mistrusting the effect of Madame’s tears and prayers, had armed her with this last weapon—this dirty bribe. I flung it down on the table among the plates.
‘Madame!’ I cried ruthlessly, all my pity changed to anger, ‘you mistake me altogether! I have heard hard words enough in the last twenty-four hours, and I know what you think of me! But you have yet to learn that I have never done one thing. I have never turned traitor to the hand that employed me, nor sold my own side! When I do so for a treasure ten times the worth of that, may my hand rot off!’
She sank on a seat with a moan of despair; and precisely at that moment M. de Cocheforet opened the door and came in. Over his shoulder I had a glimpse of Mademoiselle’s proud face, a little whiter than of yore, with dark marks under the eyes, but like Satan’s for coldness.
‘What is this?’ he said, frowning, as his eyes lighted on Madame.
‘It is—that we start at eleven o’clock, Monsieur,’ I answered, bowing curtly. And I went out by the other door.
. . . . .
That I might not be present at their parting I remained in the garden until the hour I had appointed was well past; and then, without entering the house, I went to the stable entrance. Here I found all in readiness, the two troopers whose company I had requisitioned as far as Auch, already in the saddle, my own two knaves waiting with my sorrel and M. de Cocheforet’s chestnut. Another horse was being led up and down by Louis, and, alas! my heart moved at the sight, for it bore a lady’s saddle. We were to have company then. Was it Madame who meant to come with us, or Mademoiselle? And how far? To Auch?
I suppose that they had set some kind of a watch on me, for as I walked up M. de Cocheforet and his sister came out of the house; he with a pale face and bright eyes, and a twitching visible in his cheek—though he still affected a jaunty bearing; she wearing a black mask.
‘Mademoiselle accompanies us?’ I said formally.
‘With your permission, Monsieur,’ he answered with bitter politeness. But I saw that he was choking with emotion; he had just parted from his wife, and I turned away.
When we were all mounted he looked at me.
‘Perhaps—as you have my parole, you will permit me to ride alone?’ he said with a little hesitation. ‘And—’
‘Without me!’ I rejoined keenly. ‘Assuredly, so far as is possible.’
Accordingly I directed the troopers to ride before him, keeping out of earshot, while my two men followed him at a little distance with their carbines on their knees. Last of all, I rode myself with my eyes open and a pistol loose in my holster. M. de Cocheforet muttered a sneer at so many precautions and the mountain made of his request; but I had not done so much and come so far, I had not faced scorn and insults to be cheated of my prize at last; and aware that until we were beyond Auch there must be hourly and pressing danger of a rescue, I was determined that he who should wrest my prisoner from me should pay dearly for it. Only pride, and, perhaps, in a degree also, appetite for a fight, had prevented me borrowing ten troopers instead of two.
As was wont I looked with a lingering eye and many memories at the little bridge, the narrow woodland path, the first roofs of the village; all now familiar, all seen for the last time. Up the brook a party of soldiers were dragging for the captain’s body. A furlong farther on, a cottage, burned by some carelessness in the night, lay a heap of black ashes. Louis ran beside us weeping; the last brown leaves fluttered down in showers. And between my eyes and all, the slow steady rain fell and fell. And so I left Cocheforet.
Louis went with us to a point a mile beyond the village, and there stood and saw us go, cursing me furiously as I passed. Looking back when we had ridden on, I still saw him standing, and after a moment’s hesitation I rode back to him.
‘Listen, fool!’ I said, cutting him short in the midst of his mowing and snarling, ‘and give this message to your mistress. Tell her from me that it will be with her husband as it was with M. de Regnier, when he fell into the hands of his enemy—no better and no worse.’
‘You want to kill her, too, I suppose?’ he answered glowering at me.
‘No, fool, I want to save her,’ I retorted wrathfully. ‘Tell her that, just that and no more, and you will see the result.’
‘I shall not,’ he said sullenly. ‘A message from you indeed!’ And he spat on the ground.
‘Then on your head be it,’ I answered solemnly, And I turned my horse’s head and galloped fast after the others. But I felt sure that he would report what I had said, if it were only out of curiosity; and it would be strange if Madame, a gentlewoman of the south, bred among old family traditions, did not understand the reference.
And so we began our journey; sadly, under dripping trees and a leaden sky. The country we had to traverse was the same I had trodden on the last day of my march southwards, but the passage of a month had changed the face of everything. Green dells, where springs welling out of the chalk had once made of the leafy bottom a fairies’ home, strewn with delicate ferns and hung with mosses, were now swamps into which our horses sank to the fetlock. Sunny brews, whence I had viewed the champaign and traced my forward path, had become bare, wind-swept ridges. The beech woods that had glowed with ruddy light were naked now; mere black trunks and rigid arms pointing to heaven. An earthy smell filled the air; a hundred paces away a wall of mist closed the view. We plodded on sadly up hill and down hill, now fording brooks, already stained with flood-water, now crossing barren heaths. But up hill or down hill, whatever the outlook, I was never permitted to forget that I was the jailor, the ogre, the villain; that I, riding behind in my loneliness, was the blight on all—the death-spot. True, I was behind the others—I escaped their eyes. But there was not a line of Mademoiselle’s figure that did not speak scorn to me; not a turn of head that did not seem to say, ‘Oh, God, that such a thing should breathe.’
I had only speech with her once during the day, and that was on the last ridge before we went down into the valley to climb up again to Auch. The rain had ceased; the sun, near its setting, shone faintly; for a few moments we stood on the brow and looked southwards while we breathed the horses. The mist lay like a pall on the country we had traversed; but beyond and above it, gleaming pearl-like in the level rays, the line of the mountains stood up like a land of enchantment, soft, radiant, wonderful!—or like one of those castles on the Hill of Glass of which the old romances tell us. I forgot for an instant how we were placed, and I cried to my neighbour that it was the fairest pageant I had ever seen.
She—it was Mademoiselle, and she had taken off her mask—cast one look at me in answer; only one, but it conveyed disgust and loathing so unspeakable that scorn beside them would have been a gift. I reined in my horse as if she had struck me, and felt myself go first hot and then cold under her eyes. Then she looked another way.
But I did not forget the lesson; and after that I avoided her more sedulously than before. We lay that night at Auch, and I gave M. de Cocheforet the utmost liberty, even permitting him to go out and return at his will. In the morning, believing that on the farther side of Auch we ran little risk of attack, I dismissed the two dragoons, and an hour after sunrise we set out again. The day was dry and cold, the weather more promising. I proposed to go by way of Lectoure, crossing the Garonne at Agen; and I thought that, with roads continually improving as we moved northwards, we should be able to make good progress before night. My two men rode first, I came last by myself.
Our way lay down the valley of the Gers, under poplars and by long rows of willows, and presently the sun came out and warmed us. Unfortunately the rain of the day before had swollen the brooks which crossed our path, and we more than once had a difficulty in fording them. Noon found us little more than half way to Lectoure, and I was growing each minute more impatient when our road, which had for a little while left the river bank, dropped down to it again, and I saw before us another crossing, half ford half slough. My men tried it gingerly and gave back and tried it again in another place; and finally, just as Mademoiselle and her brother came up to them, floundered through and sprang slantwise up the farther bank.
The delay had been long enough to bring me, with no good will of my own, close upon the Cocheforets. Mademoiselle’s horse made a little business of the place, and in the result we entered the water almost together; and I crossed close on her heels. The bank on either side was steep; while crossing we could see neither before nor behind. But at the moment I thought nothing of this nor of her delay; and I was following her quite at my leisure and picking my way, when the sudden report of a carbine, a second report, and a yell of alarm in front thrilled me through.
On the instant, while the sound was still in my ears, I saw it all. Like a hot iron piercing my brain the truth flashed into my mind. We were attacked! We were attacked, and I was here helpless in this pit, this trap! The loss of a second while I fumbled here, Mademoiselle’s horse barring the way, might be fatal.
There was but one way. I turned my horse straight at the steep bank, and he breasted it. One moment he hung as if he must fall back. Then, with a snort of terror and a desperate bound, he topped it, and gained the level, trembling and snorting.
Seventy paces away on the road lay one of my men. He had fallen, horse and man, and lay still. Near him, with his back against a bank, stood his fellow, on foot, pressed by four horsemen, and shouting. As my eye lighted on the scene he let fly with a carbine, and dropped one. I clutched a pistol from my holster and seized my horse by the head. I might save the man yet, I shouted to him to encourage him, and was driving in my spurs to second my voice, when a sudden vicious blow, swift and unexpected, struck the pistol from my hand.
I made a snatch at it as it fell, but missed it, and before I could recover myself, Mademoiselle thrust her horse furiously against mine, and with her riding-whip lashed the sorrel across the ears. As the horse reared up madly, I had a glimpse of her eyes flashing hate through her mask; of her hand again uplifted; the next moment, I was down in the road, ingloriously unhorsed, the sorrel was galloping away, and her horse, scared in its turn, was plunging unmanageably a score of paces from me.
But for that I think that she would have trampled on me. As it was, I was free to rise, and draw, and in a twinkling was running towards the fighters. All had happened in a few seconds. My man was still defending himself, the smoke of the carbine had scarcely risen. I sprang across a fallen tree that intervened, and at the same moment two of the men detached themselves and rode to meet me. One, whom I took to be the leader, was masked. He came furiously at me to ride me down, but I leaped aside nimbly, and, evading him, rushed at the other, and scaring his horse, so that he dropped his point, cut him across the shoulder, before he could guard himself. He plunged away, cursing and trying to hold in his horse, and I turned to meet the masked man.
‘You villain!’ he cried, riding at me again. This time he manoeuvred his horse so skilfully that I was hard put to it to prevent him knocking me down; while I could not with all my efforts reach him to hurt him. ‘Surrender, will you?’ he cried, ‘you bloodhound!’
I wounded him slightly in the knee for answer; before I could do more his companion came back, and the two set upon me, slashing at my head so furiously and towering above me with so great an advantage that it was all I could do to guard it. I was soon glad to fall back against the bank. In this sort of conflict my rapier would have been of little use, but fortunately I had armed myself before I left Paris with a cut-and-thrust sword for the road; and though my mastery of the weapon was not on a par with my rapier play, I was able to fend off their cuts, and by an occasional prick keep the horses at a distance. Still, they swore and cut at me; and it was trying work. A little delay might enable the other man to come to their help, or Mademoiselle, for all I knew, might shoot me with my own pistol. I was unfeignedly glad when a lucky parade sent the masked man’s sword flying across the road. On that he pushed his horse recklessly at me, spurring it without mercy; but the animal, which I had several times touched, reared up instead, and threw him at the very moment that I wounded his companion a second time in the arm, and made him give back.
The scene was now changed. The man in the mask staggered to his feet, and felt stupidly for a pistol. But he could not find one, and he was in no state to use it if he had. He reeled helplessly to the bank and leaned against it. The man I had wounded was in scarcely better condition. He retreated before me, but in a moment, losing courage, let drop his sword, and, wheeling round, cantered off, clinging to his pommel. There remained only the fellow engaged with my man, and I turned to see how they were getting on. They were standing to take breath, so I ran towards them; but on seeing me coming, this rascal, too, whipped round his horse and disappeared in the wood, and left us victors.
The first thing I did—and I remember it to this day with pleasure—was to plunge my hand into my pocket, take out half of all the money I had in the world, and press it on the man who had fought for me so stoutly. In my joy I could have kissed him! It was not only that I had escaped defeat by the skin of my teeth—and his good sword; but I knew, and felt, and thrilled with the knowledge, that the fight had, in a sense, redeemed my character. He was wounded in two places, and I had a scratch or two, and had lost my horse; and my other poor fellow was dead as a herring. But, speaking for myself, I would have spent half the blood in my body to purchase the feeling with which I turned back to speak to M. de Cocheforet and his sister. Mademoiselle had dismounted, and with her face averted and her mask pushed on one side, was openly weeping. Her brother, who had faithfully kept his place by the ford from the beginning of the fight to the end, met me with raised eyebrows and a peculiar smile.
‘Acknowledge my virtue,’ he said airily. ‘I am here, M. de Berault; which is more than can be said of the two gentlemen who have just ridden off.’
‘Yes,’ I answered with a touch of bitterness. ‘I wish that they had not shot my poor man before they went.’
He shrugged his shoulders.
‘They were my friends,’ he said. ‘You must not expect me to blame them. But that is not all, M. de Berault.’
‘No,’ I said, wiping my sword. ‘There is this gentleman in the mask.’ And I turned to go towards him.
‘M. de Berault!’ Cocheforet called after me, his tone strained and abrupt.
I stood. ‘Pardon?’ I said, turning.
‘That gentleman?’ he said, hesitating and looking at me doubtfully. ‘Have you considered what will happen to him if you give him up to the authorities?’
‘Who is he?’ I asked sharply.
‘That is rather a delicate question,’ he answered frowning.
‘Not for me,’ I replied brutally, ‘since he is in my power. If he will take off his mask I shall know better what I intend to do with him.’
The stranger had lost his hat in his fall, and his fair hair, stained with dust, hung in curls on his shoulders. He was a tall man, of a slender, handsome presence, and, though his dress was plain and almost rough, I espied a splendid jewel on his hand, and fancied that I detected other signs of high quality. He still lay against the bank in a half-swooning condition, and seemed unconscious of my scrutiny.
‘Should I know him if he unmasked?’ I said suddenly, a new idea in my head.
‘You would,’ M. de Cocheforet answered.
‘And?’
‘It would be bad for everyone.’
‘Ho! ho!’ I replied softly, looking hard first at my old prisoner, and then at my new one. ‘Then—what do you wish me to do?’
‘Leave him here!’ M. de Cocheforet answered, his face flushed, the pulse in his cheek beating.
I had known him for a man of perfect honour before, and trusted him. But this evident earnest anxiety on behalf of his friend touched me not a little. Besides, I knew that I was treading on slippery ground: that it behoved me to be careful.
‘I will do it,’ I said after a moment’s reflection. ‘He will play me no tricks, I suppose? A letter of—’
‘MON DIEU, no! He will understand,’ Cocheforet answered eagerly. ‘You will not repent it. Let us be going.’
‘Well, but my horse?’ I said, somewhat taken aback by this extreme haste. ‘How am I to—’
‘We shall overtake it,’ he assured me. ‘It will have kept the road. Lectoure is no more than a league from here, and we can give orders there to have these two fetched and buried.’
I had nothing to gain by demurring, and so, after another word or two, it was arranged. We picked up what we had dropped, M. de Cocheforet helped his sister to mount, and within five minutes we were gone. Casting a glance back from the skirts of the wood I fancied that I saw the masked man straighten himself and turn to look after us, but the leaves were beginning to intervene, the distance may have cheated me. And yet I was not indisposed to think the unknown a trifle more observant, and a little less seriously hurt, than he seemed.
Through all, it will have been noticed, Mademoiselle had not spoken to me, nor said one word, good or bad. She had played her part grimly, had taken defeat in silence if with tears, had tried neither prayer nor defence nor apology. And the fact that the fight was now over, and the scene left behind, made no difference in her conduct. She kept her face studiously turned from me, and affected to ignore my presence. I caught my horse feeding by the roadside, a furlong forward, and mounted and fell into place behind the two, as in the morning. And just as we had plodded on then in silence we plodded on now; almost as if nothing had happened; while I wondered at the unfathomable ways of women, and marvelled that she could take part in such an incident and remain unchanged.
Yet, though she strove to hide it, it had made a change in her. Though her mask served her well it could not entirely hide her emotions; and by-and-by I marked that her head drooped, that she rode listlessly, that the lines of her figure were altered. I noticed that she had flung away, or furtively dropped, her riding-whip; and I began to understand that, far from the fight having set me in my former place, to the old hatred of me were now added shame and vexation on her own account; shame that she had so lowered herself, even to save her brother, vexation that defeat had been her only reward.
Of this I saw a sign at Lectoure, where the inn had but one common room and we must all dine in company. I secured for them a table by the fire, and leaving them standing by it, retired myself to a smaller one near the door. There were no other guests; which made the separation between us more marked. M. de Cocheforet seemed to feel this. He shrugged his shoulders and looked across the room at me with a smile half sad half comical. But Mademoiselle was implacable. She had taken off her mask, and her face was like stone. Once, only once during the meal, I saw a change come over her. She coloured, I suppose at her thoughts, until her face flamed from brow to chin. I watched the blush spread and spread; and then she slowly and proudly turned her shoulder to me and looked through the window at the shabby street.
I suppose that she and her brother had both built on this attempt, which must have been arranged at Auch. For when we went on in the afternoon, I marked a change in them. They rode like people resigned to the worst. The grey realities of the position, the dreary future began to hang like a mist before their eyes, began to tinge the landscape with sadness, robbed even the sunset of its colours. With each hour Monsieur’s spirits flagged and his speech became less frequent; until presently when the light was nearly gone and the dusk was round us the brother and sister rode hand in hand, silent, gloomy, one at least of them weeping. The cold shadow of the Cardinal, of Paris, of the scaffold fell on them, and chilled them. As the mountains which they had known all their lives sank and faded behind us, and we entered on the wide, low valley of the Garonne, their hopes sank and faded also—sank to the dead level of despair. Surrounded by guards, a mark for curious glances, with pride for a companion, M. de Cocheforet could have borne himself bravely; doubtless would bear himself bravely still when the end came. But almost alone, moving forward through the grey evening to a prison, with so many measured days before him, and nothing to exhilarate or anger—in this condition it was little wonder if he felt, and betrayed that he felt, the blood run slow in his veins; if he thought more of the weeping wife and ruined home which he had left behind him than of the cause in which he had spent himself.
But God knows, they had no monopoly of gloom. I felt almost as sad myself. Long before sunset the flush of triumph, the heat of battle, which had warmed my heart at noon, were gone, giving place to a chill dissatisfaction, a nausea, a despondency such as I have known follow a long night at the tables. Hitherto there had been difficulties to be overcome, risks to be run, doubts about the end. Now the end was certain and very near; so near that it filled all the prospect. One hour of triumph I might have, and would have, and I hugged the thought of it as a gambler hugs his last stake, planning the place and time and mode, and trying to occupy myself wholly with it. But the price? Alas! that too would intrude itself, and more frequently as the evening waned; so that as I marked this or that thing by the road, which I could recall passing on my journey south with thoughts so different, with plans that now seemed so very, very old, I asked myself grimly if this were really I; if this were Gil de Berault, known at Zaton’s, PREMIER JOUEUR, or some Don Quichotte from Castille, tilting at windmills and taking barbers’ bowls for gold.
We reached Agen very late that evening, after groping our way through a by-road near the river, set with holes and willow-stools and frog-spawn—a place no better than a slough; so that after it the great fires and lights at the Blue Maid seemed like a glimpse of a new world, and in a twinkling put something of life and spirits into two at least of us. There was queer talk round the hearth here, of doings in Paris, of a stir against the Cardinal with the Queen-mother at bottom, and of grounded expectations that something might this time come of it. But the landlord pooh-poohed the idea; and I more than agreed with him. Even M. de Cocheforet, who was at first inclined to build on it, gave up hope when he heard that it came only by way of Montauban; whence—since its reduction the year before—all sort of CANARDS against the Cardinal were always on the wing.
‘They kill him about once a month,’ our host said with a grin. ‘Sometimes it is MONSIEUR is to prove a match for him, sometimes CESAR MONSIEUR—the Duke of Vendome, you understand—and sometimes the Queen-mother. But since M. de Chalais and the Marshal made a mess of it and paid forfeit, I pin my faith to his Eminence—that is his new title, they tell me.’
‘Things are quiet round here?’ I asked.
‘Perfectly. Since the Languedoc business came to an end, all goes well,’ he answered.
Mademoiselle had retired on our arrival, so that her brother and I were for an hour or two this evening thrown together. I left him at liberty to separate himself from me if he pleased, but he did not use the opportunity. A kind of comradeship, rendered piquant by our peculiar relations, had begun to spring up between us. He seemed to take an odd pleasure in my company, more than once rallied me on my post of jailor, would ask humorously if he might do this or that; and once even inquired what I should do if he broke his parole.
‘Or take it this way,’ he continued flippantly, ‘Suppose I had struck you in the back this evening in that cursed swamp by the river, M. de Berault? What then! PARDIEU, I am astonished at myself that I did not do it. I could have been in Montauban within twenty-four hours, and found fifty hiding-places and no one the wiser.’
‘Except your sister,’ I said quietly.
He made a wry face. ‘Yes,’ he said, ‘I am afraid that I must have stabbed her too, to preserve my self-respect. You are right.’ And he fell into a reverie which held him for a few minutes. Then I found him looking at me with a kind of frank perplexity that invited question.
‘What is it?’ I said.
‘You have fought a great many duels?’
‘Yes,’ I said.
‘Did you ever strike a foul blow in one?’
‘Never,’ I answered. ‘Why do you ask?’
‘Well, because I—wanted to confirm an impression. To be frank, M. de Berault, I seem to see in you two men.
‘Two men?’
‘Yes, two men. One, the man who captured me; the other, the man who let my friend go free to-day.’
‘It surprised you that I let him go? That was prudence, M. de Cocheforet,’ I replied. ‘I am an old gambler. I know when the stakes are too high for me. The man who caught a lion in his wolf-pit had no great catch.’
‘No, that is true,’ he answered smiling, ‘And yet—I find two men in your skin.’
‘I daresay that there are two in most men’s skins,’ I answered with a sigh. ‘But not always together. Sometimes one is there, and sometimes the other.’
‘How does the one like taking up the other’s work?’ he asked keenly.
I shrugged my shoulders. ‘That is as may be,’ I said. ‘You do not take an estate without the debts.’
He did not answer for a moment, and I fancied that his thoughts had reverted to his own case. But on a sudden he looked at me again. ‘Will you answer a question, M. de Berault?’ he said winningly.
‘Perhaps,’ I replied.
‘Then tell me—it is a tale I am sure worth the telling. What was it that, in a very evil hour for me, sent you in search of me?’
‘My Lord Cardinal,’ I answered
‘I did not ask who,’ he replied drily. ‘I asked, what. You had no grudge against me?’
‘No.’
‘No knowledge of me?’
‘No.’
‘Then what on earth induced you to do it? Heavens! man,’ he continued bluntly, and speaking with greater freedom than he had before used, ‘Nature never intended you for a tipstaff. What was it then?’
I rose. It was very late, and the room was empty, the fire low.
‘I will tell you—to-morrow,’ I said. ‘I shall have something to say to you then, of which that will be part.’
He looked at me in great astonishment, and with a little suspicion. But I called for a light, and by going at once to bed, cut short his questions. In the morning we did not meet until it was time to start.
Those who know the south road to Agen, and how the vineyards rise in terraces north of the town, one level of red earth above another, green in summer, but in late autumn bare and stony, may remember a particular place where the road, two leagues from the town, runs up a steep hill. At the top of the hill four roads meet; and there, plain to be seen against the sky, is a finger-post indicating which way leads to Bordeaux, and which to old tiled Montauban, and which to Perigueux.
This hill had impressed me greatly on my journey south; perhaps because I had enjoyed from it my first extended view of the Garonne Valley, and had there felt myself on the verge of the south country where my mission lay. It had taken root in my memory, so that I had come to look upon its bare rounded head, with the guide-post and the four roads, as the first outpost of Paris, as the first sign of return to the old life.
Now for two days I had been looking forward to seeing it again, That long stretch of road would do admirably for something I had in my mind. That sign-post, with the roads pointing north, south, east, and west—could there be a better place for meetings and partings?
We came to the bottom of the ascent about an hour before noon, M. de Cocheforet, Mademoiselle, and I. We had reversed the order of yesterday, and I rode ahead; they came after at their leisure. Now, at the foot of the hill I stopped, and letting Mademoiselle pass on, detained M. de Cocheforet by a gesture.
‘Pardon me, one moment,’ I said. ‘I want to ask a favour.’
He looked at me somewhat fretfully; with a gleam of wildness in his eyes that betrayed how the iron was, little by little, eating into his heart. He had started after breakfast as gaily as a bridegroom, but gradually he had sunk below himself; and now he had much ado to curb his impatience.
‘Of me?’ he said bitterly. ‘What is it?’
‘I wish to have a few words with Mademoiselle—alone,’ I said.
‘Alone?’ he exclaimed in astonishment.
‘Yes,’ I replied, without blenching, though his face grew dark. ‘For the matter of that, you can be within call all the time, if you please. But I have a reason for wishing to ride a little way with her.’
‘To tell her something?’
‘Yes.’
‘Then you can tell it to me,’ he retorted suspiciously. ‘Mademoiselle, I will answer for it, has no desire to—’
‘See me or speak to me? No,’ I said. ‘I can understand that. Yet I want to speak to her.’
‘Very well, you can speak in my presence,’ he answered rudely. ‘If that be all, let us ride on and join her.’ And he made a movement as if to do so.
‘That will not do, M. de Cocheforet,’ I said firmly, stopping him with my hand. ‘Let me beg you to be more complaisant. It is a small thing I ask, a very small thing; but I swear to you that if Mademoiselle does not grant it, she will repent it all her life.’
He looked at me, his face growing darker and darker.
‘Fine words,’ he said, with a sneer. ‘Yet I fancy I understand them.’ And then with a passionate oath he broke out. ‘But I will not have it! I have not been blind, M. de Berault, and I understand. But I will not have it. I will have no such Judas bargain made. PARDIEU! do you think I could suffer it and show my face again?’
‘I don’t know what you mean,’ I said, restraining myself with difficulty. I could have struck the fool.
‘But I know what you mean,’ he replied, in a tone of suppressed rage. ‘You would have her sell herself; sell herself to you to save me. And you would have me stand by and see the thing done. No, sir, never; never, though I go to the wheel. I will die a gentleman, if I have lived a fool.’
‘I think that you will do the one as certainly as you have done the other,’ I retorted in my exasperation. And yet I admired him.
‘Oh, I am not quite a fool!’ he cried, scowling at me. ‘I have used my eyes.’
‘Then be good enough to favour me with your ears!’ I answered drily. ‘For just a moment. And listen when I say that no such bargain has ever crossed my mind. You were kind enough to think well of me last night, M. de Cocheforet. Why should the mention of Mademoiselle in a moment change your opinion? I wish simply to speak to her. I have nothing to ask from her, nothing to expect from her, either favour or anything else. What I say she will doubtless tell you. CIEL man! what harm can I do to her, in the road in your sight?’
He looked at me sullenly, his face still flushed, his eyes suspicious.
‘What do you want to say to her?’ he asked jealously. He was quite unlike himself. His airy nonchalance, his careless gaiety were gone.
‘You know what I do not want to say to her, M. de Cocheforet,’ I answered. ‘That should be enough.’
He glowered at me a moment, still ill content. Then, without a word, he made me a gesture to go to her.
She had halted a score of paces away; wondering, doubtless, what was on foot. I rode towards her. She wore her mask, so that I missed the expression of her face as I approached; but the manner in which she turned her horse’s head uncompromisingly towards her brother and looked past me was full of meaning. I felt the ground suddenly cut from under me. I saluted her, trembling.
‘Mademoiselle,’ I said, ‘will you grant me the privilege of your company for a few minutes as we ride?’
‘To what purpose?’ she answered; surely, in the coldest voice in which a woman ever spoke to a man.
‘That I may explain to you a great many things you do not understand,’ I murmured.
‘I prefer to be in the dark,’ she replied. And her manner was more cruel than her words.
‘But, Mademoiselle,’ I pleaded—I would not be discouraged—‘you told me one day, not so long ago, that you would never judge me hastily again.’
‘Facts judge you, not I,’ she answered icily. ‘I am not sufficiently on a level with you to be able to judge you—I thank God.’
I shivered though the sun was on me, and the hollow where we stood was warm.
‘Still, once before you thought the same,’ I exclaimed after a pause, ‘and afterwards you found that you had been wrong. It may be so again, Mademoiselle.’
‘Impossible,’ she said.
That stung me.
‘No,’ I cried. ‘It is not impossible. It is you who are impossible. It is you who are heartless, Mademoiselle. I have done much in the last three days to make things lighter for you, much to make things more easy; now I ask you to do something in return which can cost you nothing.’
‘Nothing?’ she answered slowly—and she looked at me; and her eyes and her voice cut me as if they had been knives. ‘Nothing? Do you think, Monsieur, it costs me nothing to lose my self-respect, as I do with every word I speak to you? Do you think it costs me nothing to be here when I feel every look you cast upon me an insult, every breath I take in your presence a contamination? Nothing, Monsieur?’ she continued with bitter irony. ‘Nay, something! But something which I could not hope to make clear to you.’
I sat for a moment confounded, quivering with pain. It had been one thing to feel that she hated and scorned me, to know that the trust and confidence which she had begun to place in me were transformed to loathing. It was another to listen to her hard, pitiless words, to change colour under the lash of her gibing tongue. For a moment I could not find voice to answer her. Then I pointed to M. de Cocheforet.
‘Do you love him?’ I said hoarsely, roughly. The gibing tone had passed from her voice to mine.
She did not answer.
‘Because if you do you will let me tell my tale. Say no, but once more, Mademoiselle—I am only human—and I go. And you will repent it all your life.’
I had done better had I taken that tone from the beginning. She winced, her head dropped, she seemed to grow smaller. All in a moment, as it were, her pride collapsed.
‘I will hear you,’ she murmured.
‘Then we will ride on, if you please,’ I said keeping the advantage I had gained. ‘You need not fear. Your brother will follow.’
I caught hold of her rein and turned her horse, and she suffered it without demur; and in a moment we were pacing side by side, with the long straight road before us. At the end where it topped the hill, I could see the finger-post, two faint black lines against the sky. When we reached that—involuntarily I checked my horse and made it move more slowly.
‘Well, sir?’ she said impatiently. And her figure shook as with cold.
‘It is a tale I desire to tell you, Mademoiselle,’ I answered. ‘Perhaps I may seem to begin a long way off, but before I end I promise to interest you. Two months ago there was living in Paris a man—perhaps a bad man—at any rate, by common report a hard man; a man with a peculiar reputation.’
She turned on me suddenly, her eyes gleaming through her mask.
‘Oh, Monsieur, spare me this!’ she said, quietly scornful. ‘I will take it for granted.’
‘Very well,’ I replied steadfastly. ‘Good or bad, he one day, in defiance of the Cardinal’s edict against duelling, fought with a young Englishman behind St Jacques’ Church. The Englishman had influence, the person of whom I speak had none, and an indifferent name; he was arrested, thrown into the Chatelet, cast for death, left for days to face death. At last an offer was made to him. If he would seek out and deliver up another man, an outlaw with a price upon his head, he should himself go free.’
I paused and drew a deep breath. Then I continued, looking not at her, but into the distance, and speaking slowly.
‘Mademoiselle, it seems easy now to say what course he should have chosen. It seems hard now to find excuses for him. But there was one thing which I plead for him. The task he was asked to undertake was a dangerous one. He risked, he knew that he must risk, and the event proved him to be right, his life against the life of this unknown man. And one thing more; time was before him. The outlaw might be taken by another, might be killed, might die, might—But there, Mademoiselle, we know what answer this person made. He took the baser course, and on his honour, on his parole, with money supplied to him, he went free; free on the condition that he delivered up this other man.’
I paused again, but I did not dare to look at her; and after a moment of silence I resumed.
‘Some portion of the second half of the story you know, Mademoiselle; but not all. Suffice it that this man came down to a remote village, and there at risk, but, Heaven knows, basely enough, found his way into his victim’s home. Once there, however, his heart began to fail him. Had he found the house garrisoned by men, he might have pressed to his end with little remorse. But he found there only two helpless loyal women; and I say again that from the first hour of his entrance he sickened at the work which he had in hand, the work which ill-fortune had laid upon him. Still he pursued it. He had given his word; and if there was one tradition of his race which this man had never broken, it was that of fidelity to his side—to the man who paid him. But he pursued it with only half his mind, in great misery, if you will believe me; sometimes in agonies of shame. Gradually, however, almost against his will, the drama worked itself out before him, until he needed only one thing.
I looked at Mademoiselle, trembling. But her head was averted: I could gather nothing from the outlines of her form; and I went on.
‘Do not misunderstand me,’ I said in a lower voice. ‘Do not misunderstand what I am going to say next. This is no love-story; and can have no ending such as romancers love to set to their tales. But I am bound to mention, Mademoiselle, that this man who had lived almost all his life about inns and eating-houses and at the gaming-tables met here for the first time for years a good woman, and learned by the light of her loyalty and devotion to see what his life had been, and what was the real nature of the work he was doing. I think—nay, I know,’ I continued, ‘that it added a hundredfold to his misery that when he learned at last the secret he had come to surprise, he learned it from her lips, and in such a way that, had he felt no shame, Hell could have been no place for him. But in one thing I hope she misjudged him. She thought, and had reason to think, that the moment he knew her secret he went out, not even closing the door, and used it. But the truth was that while her words were still in his ears news came to him that others had the secret; and had he not gone out on the instant and done what he did, and forestalled them, M. de Cocheforet would have been taken, but by others.’
Mademoiselle broke her long silence so suddenly that her horse sprang forward.
‘Would to Heaven he had!’ she wailed.
‘Been taken by others?’ I exclaimed, startled out of my false composure.
‘Oh, yes, yes!’ she answered with a passionate gesture. ‘Why did you not tell me? Why did you not confess to me, sir, even at the last moment? But, no more! No more!’ she continued in a piteous voice; and she tried to urge her horse forward. ‘I have heard enough. You are racking my heart, M. de Berault. Some day I will ask God to give me strength to forgive you.’
‘But you have not heard me out,’ I said.
‘I will hear no more,’ she answered in a voice she vainly strove to render steady. ‘To what end? Can I say more than I have said? Or did you think that I could forgive you now—with him behind us going to his death? Oh, no, no!’ she continued. ‘Leave me! I implore you to leave me, sir. I am not well.’
She drooped over her horse’s neck as she spoke, and began to weep so passionately that the tears ran down her cheeks under her mask, and fell and sparkled like dew on the mane; while her sobs shook her so that I thought she must fall. I stretched out my hand instinctively to give her help, but she shrank from me. ‘No!’ she gasped, between her sobs. ‘Do not touch me. There is too much between us.’
‘Yet there must be one thing more between us,’ I answered firmly. ‘You must listen to me a little longer whether you will or no, Mademoiselle: for the love you bear to your brother. There is one course still open to me by which I may redeem my honour; and it has been in my mind for some time back to take that course. ‘To-day, I am thankful to say, I can take it cheerfully, if not without regret; with a steadfast heart, if no light one. Mademoiselle,’ I continued earnestly, feeling none of the triumph, none of the vanity, none of the elation I had foreseen, but only simple joy in the joy I could give her, ‘I thank God that it IS still in my power to undo what I have done: that it is still in my power to go back to him who sent me, and telling him that I have changed my mind, and will bear my own burdens, to pay the penalty.’
We were within a hundred paces of the top and the finger-post. She cried out wildly that she did not understand. ‘What is it you—you—have just said?’ she murmured. ‘I cannot hear.’ And she began to fumble with the ribbon of her mask.
‘Only this, Mademoiselle,’ I answered gently. ‘I give your brother back his word, his parole. From this moment he is free to go whither he pleases. Here, where we stand, four roads meet. That to the right goes to Montauban, where you have doubtless friends, and can lie hid for a time. Or that to the left leads to Bordeaux, where you can take ship if you please. And in a word, Mademoiselle,’ I continued, ending a little feebly, ‘I hope that your troubles are now over.’
She turned her face to me—we had both come to a standstill—and plucked at the fastenings of her mask. But her trembling fingers had knotted the string, and in a moment she dropped her hand with a cry of despair. ‘But you? You?’ she wailed in a voice so changed that I should not have known it for hers. ‘What will you do? I do not understand, Monsieur.’
‘There is a third road,’ I answered. ‘It leads to Paris. That is my road, Mademoiselle. We part here.’
‘But why?’ she cried wildly.
‘Because from to-day I would fain begin to be honourable,’ I answered in a low voice. ‘Because I dare not be generous at another’s cost. I must go back whence I came.’
‘To the Chatelet?’ she muttered.
‘Yes, Mademoiselle, to the Chatelet.’
She tried feverishly to raise her mask with her hand.
‘I am not well,’ she stammered. ‘I cannot breathe.’
And she began to sway so violently in her saddle that I sprang down, and, running round her horse’s head, was just in time to catch her as she fell. She was not quite unconscious then, for as I supported her, she cried out,—
‘Do not touch me! Do not touch me! You kill me with shame!’
But as she spoke she clung to me; and I made no mistake. Those words made me happy. I carried her to the bank, my heart on fire, and laid her against it just as M. de Cocheforet rode up. He sprang from his horse, his eyes blazing, ‘What is this?’ he cried. ‘What have you been saying to her, man?’
‘She will tell you,’ I answered drily, my composure returning under his eye. ‘Amongst other things, that you are free. From this moment, M. de Cocheforet, I give you back your parole, and I take my own honour. Farewell.’
He cried out something as I mounted, but I did not stay to heed or answer. I dashed the spurs into my horse, and rode away past the cross-roads, past the finger-post; away with the level upland stretching before me, dry, bare, almost treeless; and behind me, all I loved. Once, when I had gone a hundred yards, I looked back and saw him standing upright against the sky, staring after me across her body. And again a minute later I looked back. This time saw only the slender wooden cross, and below it a dark blurred mass.