from the expansion their wealth permitted them. If it might be said of
Andre-Louis that he had that day lighted the torch of the Revolution in
Nantes, it might with even greater truth be said that the torch itself was
supplied by the opulent bourgeoisie.
I need not dwell at any length upon the sequel. It is a matter of
history how that oath which Omnes Omnibus administered to the citizens of
Nantes formed the backbone of the formal protest which they drew up and
signed in their thousands. Nor were the results of that powerful protest -
which, after all, might already be said to harmonize with the expressed will
of the sovereign himself - long delayed. Who shall say how far it may have
strengthened the hand of Necker, when on the 27th of that same month of
November he compelled the Council to adopt the most significant and
comprehensive of all those measures to which clergy and nobility had refused
their consent? On that date was published the royal decree ordaining that
the deputies to be elected to the States General should number at least one
thousand, and that the deputies of the Third Estate should be fully
representative by numbering as many as the deputies of clergy and nobility
together.
Dusk of the following day was falling when the homing Andre-Louis
approached Gavrillac. Realizing fully what a hue and cry there would
presently be for the apostle of revolution who had summoned the people of
Nantes to arms, he desired as far as possible to conceal the fact that he
had been in that maritime city. Therefore he made a wide detour, crossing
the river at Bruz, and recrossing it a little above Chavagne, so as to
approach Gavrillac from the north, and create the impression that he was
returning from Rennes, whither he was known to have gone two days ago.
Within a mile or so of the village he caught in the fading light his
first glimpse of a figure on horseback pacing slowly towards him. But it was
not until they had come within a few yards of each other, and he observed
that this cloaked figure was leaning forward to peer at him, that he took
much notice of it. And then he found himself challenged almost at once by a
woman's voice.
"It is you, Andre - at last!"
He drew rein, mildly surprised, to be assailed by another question,
impatiently, anxiously asked.
"Where have you been?"
"Where have I been, Cousin Aline? Oh... seeing the world."
"I have been patrolling this road since noon to-day waiting for you."
She spoke breathlessly, in haste to explain. "A troop of the marechaussee
from Rennes descended upon Gavrillac this morning in quest of you. They
turned the chateau and the village inside out, and at last discovered that
you were due to return with a horse hired from the Breton arme. So they have
taken up their quarters at the inn to wait for you. I have been here all the
afternoon on the lookout to warn you against walking into that trap."
"My dear Aline! That I should have been the cause of so much concern
and trouble!"
"Never mind that. It is not important."
"On the contrary; it is the most important part of what you tell me. It
is the rest that is unimportant."
"Do you realize that they have come to arrest you?" she asked him, with
increasing impatience. "You are wanted for sedition, and upon a warrant from
M. de Lesdiguieres."
"Sedition?" quoth he, and his thoughts flew to that business at Nantes.
It was impossible they could have had news of it in Rennes and acted upon it
in so short a time.
"Yes, sedition. The sedition of that wicked speech of yours at Rennes
on Wednesday."
"Oh, that!" said he. "Pooh!" His note of relief might have told her,
had she been more attentive, that he had to fear the consequences of a
greater wickedness committed since. "Why, that was nothing."
"Nothing?"
"I almost suspect that the real intentions of these gentlemen of the
marechaussee have been misunderstood. Most probably they have come to thank
me on M. de Lesdiguieres' behalf. I restrained the people when they would
have burnt the Palais and himself inside it."
"After you had first incited them to do it. I suppose you were afraid
of your work. You drew back at the last moment. But you said things of M. de
Lesdiguieres, if you are correctly reported, which he will never forgive."
"I see," said Andre-Louis, and he fell into thought.
But Mlle. de Kercadiou had already done what thinking was necessary,
and her alert young mind had settled all that was to be done.
"You must not go into Gavrillac," she told him, "and you must get down
from your horse, and let me take it. I will stable it at the chateau
to-night. And sometime to morrow afternoon, by when you should be well away,
I will return it to the Breton arme."
"Oh, but that is impossible."
"Impossible? Why?"
"For several reasons. One of them is that you haven't considered what
will happen to you if you do such a thing."
"To me? Do you suppose I am afraid of that pack of oafs sent by M.
Lesdiguieres? I have committed no sedition."
"But it is almost as bad to give aid to one who is wanted for the
crime. That is the law."
"What do I care for the law? Do you imagine that the law will presume
to touch me?"
"Of course there is that. You are sheltered by one of the abuses I
complained of at Rennes. I was forgetting."
"Complain of it as much as you please, but meanwhile profit by it.
Come, Andre, do as I tell you. Get down from your horse." And then, as he
still hesitated, she stretched out and caught him by the arm. Her voice was
vibrant with earnestness. "Andre, you don't realize how serious is your
position. If these people take you, it is almost certain that you will be
hanged. Don't you realize it? You must not go to Gavrillac. You must go away
at once, and lie completely lost for a time until this blows over. Indeed,
until my uncle can bring influence to bear to obtain your pardon, you must
keep in hiding."
"That will be a long time, then," said Andre-Louis. M. de Kercadiou has
never cultivated friends at court."
"There is M. de La Tour d'Azyr," she reminded him, to his astonishment.
"That man!" he cried, and then he laughed. "But it was chiefly against
him that I aroused the resentment of the people of Rennes. I should have
known that all my speech was not reported to you.
"It was, and that part of it among the rest."
"Ah! And yet you are concerned to save me, the man who seeks the life
of your future husband at the hands either of the law or of the people? Or
is it, perhaps, that since you have seen his true nature revealed in the
murder of poor Philippe, you have changed your views on the subject of
becoming Marquise de La Tour d'Azyr?"
"You often show yourself without any faculty of deductive reasoning."
"Perhaps. But hardly to the extent of imagining that M. de La Tour
d'Azyr will ever lift a finger to do as you suggest."
"In which, as usual, you are wrong. He will certainly do so if I ask
him."
"If you ask him?" Sheer horror rang in his voice.
"Why, yes. You see, I have not yet said that I will be Marquise de La
Tour d'Azyr. I am still considering. It is a position that has its
advantages. One of them is that it ensures a suitor's complete obedience."
"So, so. I see the crooked logic of your mind. You might go so far as
to say to him: 'Refuse me this, and I shall refuse to be your marquise.' You
would go so far as that?"
"At need, I might."
"And do you not see the converse implication? Do you not see that your
hands would then be tied, that you would be wanting in honour if afterwards
you refused him? And do you think that I would consent to anything that
could so tie your hands? Do you think I want to see you damned, Aline?"
Her hand fell away from his arm.
"Oh, you are mad!" she exclaimed, quite out of patience.
"Possibly. But I like my madness. There is a thrill in it unknown to
such sanity as yours. By your leave, Aline, I think I will ride on to
Gavrillac."
"Andre, you must not! It is death to you!" In her alarm she backed her
horse, and pulled it across the road to bar his way.
It was almost completely night by now; but from behind the wrack of
clouds overhead a crescent moon sailed out to alleviate the darkness.
"Come, now," she enjoined him. "Be reasonable. Do as I bid you. See,
there is a carriage coming up behind you. Do not let us be found here
together thus."
He made up his mind quickly. He was not the man to be actuated by false
heroics about dying, and he had no fancy whatever for the gallows of M. de
Lesdiguieres' providing. The immediate task that he had set himself might be
accomplished. He had made heard - and ringingly - the voice that M. de La
Tour d'Azyr imagined he had silenced. But he was very far from having done
with life.
"Aline, on one condition only."
"And that?"
"That you swear to me you will never seek the aid of M. de La Tour
d'Azyr on my behalf."
"Since you insist, and as time presses, I consent. And now ride on with
me as far as the lane. There is that carriage coming up."
The lane to which she referred was one that branched off the road some
three hundred yards nearer the village and led straight up the hill to the
chateau itself. In silence they rode together towards it, and together they
turned into that thickly hedged and narrow bypath. At a depth of fifty yards
she halted him.
"Now!" she bade him.
Obediently he swung down from his horse, and surrendered the reins to
her.
"Aline," he said, "I haven't words in which to thank you."
"It isn't necessary," said she.
"But I shall hope to repay you some day."
"Nor is that necessary. Could I do less than I am doing? I do not want
to hear of you hanged, Andre; nor does my uncle, though he is very angry
with you.
"I suppose he is.
"And you can hardly be surprised. You were his delegate, his
representative. He depended upon you, and you have turned your coat. He is
rightly indignant, calls you a traitor, and swears that he will never speak
to you again. But he doesn't want you hanged, Andre."
"Then we are agreed on that at least, for I don't want it myself."
"I'll make your peace with him. And now - good-bye, Andre. Send me a
word when you are safe."
She held out a hand that looked ghostly in the faint light. He took it
and bore it to his lips.
"God bless you, Aline."
She was gone, and he stood listening to the receding clopper-clop of
hooves until it grew faint in the distance. Then slowly, with shoulders
hunched and head sunk on his breast, he retraced his steps to the main road,
cogitating whither he should go. Quite suddenly he checked, remembering with
dismay that he was almost entirely without money. In Brittany itself he knew
of no dependable hiding-place, and as long as he was in Brittany his peril
must remain imminent. Yet to leave the province, and to leave it as quickly
as prudence dictated, horses would be necessary. And how was he to procure
horses, having no money beyond a single louis d'or and a few pieces of
silver?
There was also the fact that he was very weary. He had had little sleep
since Tuesday night, and not very much then; and much of the time had been
spent in the saddle, a wearing thing to one so little accustomed to long
rides. Worn as he was, it was unthinkable that he should go far to-night. He
might get as far as Chavagne, perhaps. But there he must sup and sleep; and
what, then, of to-morrow?
Had he but thought of it before, perhaps Aline might have been able to
assist him with the loan of a few louis. His first impulse now was to follow
her to the chateau. But prudence dismissed the notion. Before he could reach
her, he must be seen by servants, and word of his presence would go forth.
There was no choice for him; he must tramp as far as Chavagne, find a
bed there, and leave to-morrow until it dawned. On the resolve he set his
face in the direction whence he had come. But again he paused. Chavagne lay
on the road to Rennes. To go that way was to plunge further into danger. He
would strike south again. At the foot of some meadows on this side of the
village there was a ferry that would put him across the river. Thus he would
avoid the village; and by placing the river between himself and the
immediate danger, he would obtain an added sense of security.
A lane, turning out of the highroad, a quarter of a mile this side of
Gavrillac, led down to that ferry. By this lane some twenty minutes later
came Andre-Louis with dragging feet. He avoided the little cottage of the
ferryman, whose window was alight, and in the dark crept down to the boat,
intending if possible to put himself across. He felt for the chain by which
the boat was moored, and ran his fingers along this to the point where it
was fastened. Here to his dismay he found a padlock.
He stood up in the gloom and laughed silently. Of course he might have
known it. The ferry was the property of M. de La Tour d'Azyr, and not likely
to be left unfastened so that poor devils might cheat him of seigneurial
dues.
There being no possible alternative, he walked back to the cottage, and
rapped on the door. When it opened, he stood well back, and aside, out of
the shaft of light that issued thence.
"Ferry!" he rapped out, laconically.
The ferryman, a burly scoundrel well known to him, turned aside to pick
up a lantern, and came forth as he was bidden. As he stepped from the little
porch, he levelled the lantern so that its light fell on the face of this
traveller.
"My God!" he ejaculated.
"You realize, I see, that I am pressed," said Andre-Louis, his eyes on
the fellow's startled countenance.
"And well you may be with the gallows waiting for you at Rennes,"
growled the ferryman. "Since you've been so foolish as to come back to
Gavrillac, you had better go again as quickly as you can. I will say nothing
of having seen you."
"I thank you, Fresnel. Your advice accords with my intention. That is
why I need the boat."
"Ah, that, no," said Fresnel, with determination. "I'll hold my peace,
but it's as much as my skin is worth to help you.
"You need not have seen my face. Forget that you have seen it."
"I'll do that, monsieur. But that is all I will do. I cannot put you
across the river."
"Then give me the key of the boat, and I will put myself across."
"That is the same thing. I cannot. I'll hold my tongue, but I will not
- I dare not - help you."
Andre-Louis looked a moment into that sullen, resolute face, and
understood. This man, living under the shadow of La Tour d'Azyr, dared
exercise no will that might he in conflict with the will of his dread lord.
"Fresnel," he said, quietly, "if, as you say, the gallows claim me, the
thing that has brought me to this extremity arises out of the shooting of
Mabey. Had not Mabey been murdered there would have been no need for me to
have raised my voice as I have done. Mabey was your friend, I think. Will
you for his sake lend me the little help I need to save my neck?"
The man kept his glance averted, and the cloud of sullenness deepened
on his face.
"I would if I dared, but I dare not." Then, quite suddenly he became
angry. It was as if in anger he sought support. "Don't you understand that I
dare not? Would you have a poor man risk his life for you? What have you or
yours ever done for me that you should ask that? You do not cross to-night
in my ferry. Understand that, monsieur, and go at once - go before I
remember that it may be dangerous even to have talked to you and not give
information. Go!"
He turned on his heel to reenter his cottage, and a wave of
hopelessness swept over Andre-Louis.
But in a second it was gone. The man must be compelled, and he had the
means. He bethought him of a pistol pressed upon him by Le Chapelier at the
moment of his leaving Rennes, a gift which at the time he had almost
disdained. True, it was not loaded, and he had no ammunition. But how was
Fresnel to know that?
He acted quickly. As with his right hand he pulled it from his pocket,
with his left he caught the ferryman by the shoulder, and swung him round.
"What do you want now?" Fresnel demanded angrily. "Haven't I told you
that I... "
He broke off short. The muzzle of the pistol was within a foot of his
eyes.
"I want the key of the boat. That is all, Fresnel. And you can either
give it me at once, or I'll take it after I have burnt your brains. I should
regret to kill you, but I shall not hesitate. It is your life against mine,
Fresnel; and you'll not find it strange that if one of us must die I prefer
that it shall be you."
Fresnel dipped a hand into his pocket, and fetched thence a key. He
held it out to Andre-Louis in fingers that shook - more in anger than in
fear.
"I yield to violence," he said, showing his teeth like a snarling dog.
"But don't imagine that it will greatly profit you."
Andre-Louis took the key. His pistol remained levelled.
"You threaten me, I think," he said. "It is not difficult to read your
threat. The moment I am gone, you will run to inform against me. You will
set the marechaussee on my heels to overtake me."
"No, no!" cried the other. He perceived his peril. He read his doom in
the cold, sinister note on which Andre-Louis addressed him, and grew afraid.
"I swear to you, monsieur, that I have no such intention."
"I think I had better make quite sure of you."
"0 my God! Have mercy, monsieur!" The knave was in a palsy of terror.
"I mean you no harm - I swear to Heaven I mean you no harm. I will not say a
word. I will not... "
"I would rather depend upon your silence than your assurances. Still,
you shall have your chance. I am a fool, perhaps, but I have a reluctance to
shed blood. Go into the house, Fresnel. Go, man. I follow you."
In the shabby main room of that dwelling, Andre-Louis halted him again.
"Get me a length of rope," he commanded, and was readily obeyed.
Five minutes later Fresnel was securely bound to a chair, and
effectively silenced by a very uncomfortable gag improvised out of a block
of wood and a muffler.
On the threshold the departing Andre-Louis turned.
"Good-night, Fresnel," he said. Fierce eyes glared mute hatred at him.
"It is unlikely that your ferry will be required again to-night. But some
one is sure to come to your relief quite early in the morning. Until then
bear your discomfort with what fortitude you can, remembering that you have
brought it entirely upon yourself by your uncharitableness. If you spend the
night considering that, the lesson should not be lost upon you. By morning
you may even have grown so charitable as not to know who it was that tied
you up. Good-night."
He stepped out and closed the door.
To unlock the ferry, and pull himself across the swift-running waters,
on which the faint moonlight was making a silver ripple, were matters that
engaged not more than six or seven minutes. He drove the nose of the boat
through the decaying sedges that fringed the southern bank of the stream,
sprang ashore, and made the little craft secure. Then, missing the footpath
in the dark, he struck out across a sodden meadow in quest of the road.
Coming presently upon the Redon road, Andre-Louis, obeying instinct
rather than reason, turned his face to the south, and plodded wearily and
mechanically forward. He had no clear idea of whither he was going, or of
whither he should go. All that imported at the moment was to put as great a
distance as possible between Gavrillac and himself.
He had a vague, half-formed notion of returning to Nantes; and there,
by employing the newly found weapon of his oratory, excite the people into
sheltering him as the first victim of the persecution he had foreseen, and
against which he had sworn them to take up arms. But the idea was one which
he entertained merely as an indefinite possibility upon which he felt no
real impulse to act.
Meanwhile he chuckled at the thought of Fresnel as he had last seen
him, with his muffled face and glaring eyeballs. "For one who was anything
but a man of action," he writes, "I felt that I had acquitted myself none so
badly." It is a phrase that recurs at intervals in his sketchy
"Confessions." Constantly is he reminding you that he is a man of mental and
not physical activities, and apologizing when dire neccessity drives him
into acts of violence. I suspect this insistence upon his philosophic
detachment - for which I confess he had justification enough - to betray his
besetting vanity.
With increasing fatigue came depression and self-criticism. He had
stupidly overshot his mark in insultingly denouncing M. de Lesdiguieres. "It
is much better," he says somewhere, "to be wicked than to be stupid. Most of
this world's misery is the fruit not as priests tell us of wickedness, but
of stupidity." And we know that of all stupidities he considered anger the
most deplorable. Yet he had permitted himself to be angry with a creature
like M. de Lesdiguieres - a lackey, a fribble, a nothing, despite his
potentialities for evil. He could perfectly have discharged his self-imposed
mission without arousing the vindictive resentment of the King's Lieutenant.
He beheld himself vaguely launched upon life with the riding-suit in
which he stood, a single louis d'or and a few pieces of silver for all
capital, and a knowledge of law which had been inadequate to preserve him
from the consequences of infringing it.
He had, in addition - but these things that were to be the real
salvation of him he did not reckon - his gift of laughter, sadly repressed
of late, and the philosophic outlook and mercurial temperament which are the
stock-in-trade of your adventurer in all ages.
Meanwhile he tramped mechanically on through the night, until he felt
that he could tramp no more. He had skirted the little township of Guichen,
and now within a half-mile of Guignen, and with Gavrillac a good seven miles
behind him, his legs refused to carry him any farther.
He was midway across the vast common to the north of Guignen when he
came to a halt. He had left the road, and taken heedlessly to the footpath
that struck across the waste of indifferent pasture interspersed with clumps
of gorse. A stone's throw away on his right the common was bordered by a
thorn hedge. Beyond this loomed a tall building which he knew to be an open
barn, standing on the edge of a long stretch of meadowland. That dark,
silent shadow it may have been that had brought him to a standstill,
suggesting shelter to his subconsciousness. A moment he hesitated; then he
struck across towards a spot where a gap in the hedge was closed by a
five-barred gate. He pushed the gate open, went through the gap, and stood
now before the barn. It was as big as a house, yet consisted of no more than
a roof carried upon half a dozen tall, brick pillars. But densely packed
under that roof was a great stack of hay that promised a warm couch on so
cold a night. Stout timbers had been built into the brick pillars, with
projecting ends to serve as ladders by which the labourer might climb to
pack or withdraw hay. With what little strength remained him, Andre-Louis
climbed by one of these and landed safely at the top, where he was forced to
kneel, for lack of room to stand upright. Arrived there, he removed his coat
and neckcloth, his sodden boots and stockings. Next he cleared a trough for
his body, and lying down in it, covered himself to the neck with the hay he
had removed. Within five minutes he was lost to all worldly cares and
soundly asleep.
When next he awakened, the sun was already high in the heavens, from
which he concluded that the morning was well advanced; and this before he
realized quite where he was or how he came there. Then to his awakening
senses came a drone of voices close at hand, to which at first he paid
little heed. He was deliciously refreshed, luxuriously drowsy and
luxuriously warm.
But as consciousness and memory grew more full, he raised his head
clear of the hay that he might free both ears to listen, his pulses faintly
quickened by the nascent fear that those voices might bode him no good. Then
he caught the reassuring accents of a woman, musical and silvery, though
laden with alarm.
"Ah, mon Dieu, Leandre, let us separate at once. If it should be my
father... "
And upon this a man's voice broke in, calm and reassuring:
"No, no, Climene; you are mistaken. There is no one coming. We are
quite safe. Why do you start at shadows?"
"Ah, Leandre, if he should find us here together! I tremble at the very
thought."
More was not needed to reassure Andre-Louis. He had overheard enough to
know that this was but the case of a pair of lovers who, with less to fear
of life, were yet - after the manner of their kind - more timid of heart
than he. Curiosity drew him from his warm trough to the edge of the hay.
Lying prone, he advanced his head and peered down.
In the space of cropped meadow between the barn and the hedge stood a
man and a woman, both young. The man was a well-set-up, comely fellow, with
a fine head of chestnut hair tied in a queue by a broad bow of black satin.
He was dressed with certain tawdry attempts at ostentatious embellishments,
which did not prepossess one at first glance in his favour. His coat of a
fashionable cut was of faded plum-coloured velvet edged with silver lace,
whose glory had long since departed. He affected ruffles, but for want of
starch they hung like weeping willows over hands that were fine and
delicate. His breeches were of plain black cloth, and his black stockings
were of cotton - matters entirely out of harmony with his magnificent coat.
His shoes, stout and serviceable, were decked with buckles of cheap,
lack-lustre paste. But for his engaging and ingenuous countenance,
Andre-Louis must have set him down as a knight of that order which lives
dishonestly by its wits. As it was, he suspended judgment whilst pushing
investigation further by a study of the girl. At the outset, be it confessed
that it was a study that attracted him prodigiously. And this
notwithstanding the fact that, bookish and studious as were his ways, and in
despite of his years, it was far from his habit to waste consideration on
femininity.
The child - she was no more than that, perhaps twenty at the most
- possessed, in addition to the allurements of face and shape that went
very near perfection, a sparkling vivacity and a grace of movement the like
of which Andre-Louis did not remember ever before to have beheld assembled
in one person. And her voice too - that musical, silvery voice that had
awakened him - possessed in its exquisite modulations an allurement of its
own that must have been irresistible, he thought, in the ugliest of her sex.
She wore a hooded mantle of green cloth, and the hood being thrown back, her
dainty head was all revealed to him. There were glints of gold struck by the
morning sun from her light nut-brown hair that hung in a cluster of curls
about her oval face. Her complexion was of a delicacy that he could compare
only with a rose petal. He could not at that distance discern the colour of
her eyes, but he guessed them blue, as he admired the sparkle of them under
the fine, dark line of eyebrows.
He could not have told you why, but he was conscious that it aggrieved
him to find her so intimate with this pretty young fellow, who was partly
clad, as it appeared, in the cast-offs of a nobleman. He could not guess her
station, but the speech that reached him was cultured in tone and word. He
strained to listen.
"I shall know no peace, Leandre, until we are safely wedded," she was
saying. "Not until then shall I count myself beyond his reach. And yet if we
marry without his consent, we but make trouble for ourselves, and of gaining
his consent I almost despair."
Evidently, thought Andre-Louis, her father was a man of sense, who saw
through the shabby finery of M. Leandre, and was not to be dazzled by cheap
paste buckles.
"My dear Climene," the young man was answering her, standing squarely
before her, and holding both her hands, "you are wrong to despond. If I do
not reveal to you all the stratagem that I have prepared to win the consent
of your unnatural parent, it is because I am loath to rob you of the
pleasure of the surprise that is in store. But place your faith in me, and
in that ingenious friend of whom I have spoken, and who should be here at
any moment."
The stilted ass! Had he learnt that speech by heart in advance, or was
he by nature a pedantic idiot who expressed himself in this set and formal
manner? How came so sweet a blossom to waste her perfumes on such a prig?
And what a ridiculous name the creature owned!
Thus Andre-Louis to himself from his observatory. Meanwhile, she was
speaking.
"That is what my heart desires, Leandre, but I am beset by fears lest
your stratagem should be too late. I am to marry this horrible Marquis of
Sbrufadelli this very day. He arrives by noon. He comes to sign the contract
- to make me the Marchioness of Sbrufadelli. Oh!" It was a cry of pain from
that tender young heart. "The very name burns my lips. If it were mine I
could never utter it - never! The man is so detestable. Save me, Leandre.
Save me! You are my only hope."
Andre-Louis was conscious of a pang of disappointment. She failed to
soar to the heights he had expected of her. She was evidently infected by
the stilted manner of her ridiculous lover. There was an atrocious lack of
sincerity about her words. They touched his mind, but left his heart
unmoved. Perhaps this was because of his antipathy to M. Leandre and to the
issue involved.
So her father was marrying her to a marquis! That implied birth on her
side. And yet she was content to pair off with this dull young adventurer in
the tarnished lace! It was, he supposed, the sort of thing to be expected of
a sex that all philosophy had taught him to regard as the maddest part of a
mad species.
"It shall never be!" M. Leandre was storming passionately. "Never! I
swear it!" And he shook his puny fist at the blue vault of heaven
- Ajax defying Jupiter. "Ah, but here comes our subtle friend... "
(Andre-Louis did not catch the name, M. Leandre having at that moment turned
to face the gap in the hedge.) "He will bring us news, I know."
Andre-Louis looked also in the direction of the gap. Through it emerged
a lean, slight man in a rusty cloak and a three-cornered hat worn well down
over his nose so as to shade his face. And when presently he doffed this hat
and made a sweeping bow to the young lovers, Andre-Louis confessed to
himself that had he been cursed with such a hangdog countenance he would
have worn his hat in precisely such a manner, so as to conceal as much of it
as possible. If M. Leandre appeared to be wearing, in part at least, the
cast-offs of nobleman, the newcomer appeared to be wearing the cast-offs of
M. Leandre. Yet despite his vile clothes and viler face, with its three
days' growth of beard, the fellow carried himself with a certain air; he
positively strutted as he advanced, and he made a leg in a manner that was
courtly and practised.
"Monsieur," said he, with the air of a conspirator, "the time for
action has arrived, and so has the Marquis... That is why."
The young lovers sprang apart in consternation; Climene with clasped
hands, parted lips, and a bosom that raced distractingly under its white
fichu-menteur; M. Leandre agape, the very picture of foolishness and dismay.
Meanwhile the newcomer rattled on. "I was at the inn an hour ago when
he descended there, and I studied him attentively whilst he was at
breakfast. Having done so, not a single doubt remains me of our success. As
for what he looks like, I could entertain you at length upon the fashion in
which nature has designed his gross fatuity. But that is no matter. We are
concerned with what he is, with the wit of him. And I tell you confidently
that I find him so dull and stupid that you may be confident he will tumble
headlong into each and all of the traps I have so cunningly prepared for
him."
"Tell me, tell me! Speak!" Climene implored him, holding out her hands
in a supplication no man of sensibility could have resisted. And then on the
instant she caught her breath on a faint scream. "My father!" she exclaimed,
turning distractedly from one to the other of those two. "He is coming! We
are lost!"
"You must fly, Climene!" said M. Leandre.
"Too late!" she sobbed. "Too late! He is here."
"Calm, mademoiselle, calm!" the subtle friend was urging her. "Keep
calm and trust to me. I promise you that all shall be well."
"Oh!" cried M. Leandre, limply. "Say what you will, my friend, this is
ruin - the end of all our hopes. Your wits will never extricate us from
this. Never!"
Through the gap strode now an enormous man with an inflamed moon face
and a great nose, decently dressed after the fashion of a solid bourgeois.
There was no mistaking his anger, but the expression that it found was an
amazement to Andre-Louis.
"Leandre, you're an imbecile! Too much phlegm, too much phlegm! Your
words wouldn't convince a ploughboy! Have you considered what they mean at
all? Thus," he cried, and casting his round hat from him in a broad gesture,
he took his stand at M. Leandre's side, and repeated the very words that
Leandre had lately uttered, what time the three observed him coolly and
attentively.
"Oh, say what you will, my friend, this is ruin - the end of all our
hopes. Your wits will never extricate us from this. Never!"
A frenzy of despair vibrated in his accents. He swung again to face M.
Leandre. "Thus," he bade him contemptuously. "Let the passion of your
hopelessness express itself in your voice. Consider that you are not asking
Scaramouche here whether he has put a patch in your breeches. You are a
despairing lover expressing... "
He checked abruptly, startled. Andre-Louis, suddenly realizing what was
afoot, and how duped he had been, had loosed his laughter. The sound of it
pealing and booming uncannily under the great roof that so immediately
confined him was startling to those below.
The fat man was the first to recover, and he announced it after his own
fashion in one of the ready sarcasms in which he habitually dealt.
"Hark!" he cried, "the very gods laugh at you, Leandre." Then he
addressed the roof of the barn and its invisible tenant. "Hi! You there!"
Andre-Louis revealed himself by a further protrusion of his tousled
head.
"Good-morning," said he, pleasantly. Rising now on his knees, his
horizon was suddenly extended to include the broad common beyond the hedge.
He beheld there an enormous and very battered travelling chaise, a cart
piled up with timbers partly visible under the sheet of oiled canvas that
covered them, and a sort of house on wheels equipped with a tin chimney,
from which the smoke was slowly curling. Three heavy Flemish horses and a
couple of donkeys - all of them hobbled - were contentedly cropping the
grass in the neighbourhood of these vehicles. These, had he perceived them
sooner, must have given him the clue to the queer scene that had been played
under his eyes. Beyond the hedge other figures were moving. Three at that
moment came crowding into the gap - a saucy-faced girl with a tip-tilted
nose, whom he supposed to be Columbine, the soubrette; a lean, active
youngster, who must be the lackey Harlequin;, and another rather loutish
youth who might be a zany or an apothecary.
All this he took in at a comprehensive glance that consumed no more
time than it had taken him to say good-morning. To that good-morning
Pantaloon replied in a bellow:
"What the devil are you doing up there?"
"Precisely the same thing that you are doing down there," was the
answer. "I am trespassing."
"Eh?" said Pantaloon, and looked at his companions, some of the
assurance beaten out of his big red face. Although the thing was one that
they did habitually, to hear it called by its proper name was disconcerting.
"Whose land is this?" he asked, with diminishing assurance.
Andre-Louis answered, whilst drawing on his stockings. "I believe it to
be the property of the Marquis de La Tour d'Azyr."
"That's a high-sounding name. Is the gentleman severe?"
"The gentleman," said Andre-Louis, "is the devil; or rather, I should
prefer to say upon reflection, that the devil is a gentleman by comparison.
"And yet," interposed the villainous-looking fellow who played
Scaramouche, "by your own confessing you don't hesitate, yourself, to
trespass upon his property."
"Ah, but then, you see, I am a lawyer. And lawyers are notoriously
unable to observe the law, just as actors are notoriously unable to act.
Moreover, sir, Nature imposes her limits upon us, and Nature conquers
respect for law as she conquers all else. Nature conquered me last night
when I had got as far as this. And so I slept here without regard for the
very high and puissant Marquis de La Tour d'Azyr. At the same time, M.
Scaramouche, you'll observe that I did not flaunt my trespass quite as
openly as you and your companions.
Having donned his boots, Andre-Louis came nimbly to the ground in his
shirt-sleeves, his riding-coat over his arm. As he stood there to don it,
the little cunning eyes of the heavy father conned him in detail. Observing
that his clothes, if plain, were of a good fashion, that his shirt was of
fine cambric, and that he expressed himself like a man of culture, such as
he claimed to be, M. Pantaloon was disposed to be civil.
"I am very grateful to you for the warning, sir... " he was beginning.
"Act upon it, my friend. The gardes-champetres of M. d'Azyr have orders
to fire on trespassers. Imitate me, and decamp."
They followed him upon the instant through that gap in the hedge to the
encampment on the common. There Andre-Louis took his leave of them. But as
he was turning away he perceived a young man of the company performing his
morning toilet at a bucket placed upon one of the wooden steps at the tail
of the house on wheels. A moment he hesitated, then he turned frankly to M.
Pantaloon, who was still at his elbow.
"If it were not unconscionable to encroach so far upon your
hospitality, monsieur," said he, "I would beg leave to imitate that very
excellent young gentleman before I leave you."
"But, my dear sir!" Good-nature oozed out of every pore of the fat body
of the master player. "It is nothing at all. But, by all means. Rhodomont
will provide what you require. He is the dandy of the company in real life,
though a fire-eater on the stage. Hi, Rhodomont!"
The young ablutionist straightened his long body from the right angle
in which it had been bent over the bucket, and looked out through a foam of
soapsuds. Pantaloon issued an order, and Rhodomont, who was indeed as gentle
and amiable off the stage as he was formidable and terrible upon it, made
the stranger free of the bucket in the friendliest manner.
So Andre-Louis once more removed his neckcloth and his coat, and rolled
up the sleeves of his fine shirt, whilst Rhodomont procured him soap, a
towel, and presently a broken comb, and even a greasy hair-ribbon, in case
the gentleman should have lost his own. This last Andre-Louis declined, but
the comb he gratefully accepted, and having presently washed himself clean,
stood, with the towel flung over his left shoulder, restoring order to his
dishevelled locks before a broken piece of mirror affixed to the door of the
travelling house.
He was standing thus, what time the gentle Rhodomont babbled aimlessly
at his side when his ears caught the sound of hooves. He looked over his
shoulder carelessly, and then stood frozen, with uplifted comb and loosened
mouth. Away across the common, on the road that bordered it, he beheld a
party of seven horsemen in the blue coats with red facings of the
marechaussee.
Not for a moment did he doubt what was the quarry of this prowling
gendarmerie. It was as if the chill shadow of the gallows had fallen
suddenly upon him.
And then the troop halted, abreast with them, and the sergeant leading
it sent his bawling voice across the common.
"Hi, there! Hi!" His tone rang with menace.
Every member of the company - and there were some twelve in all
- stood at gaze. Pantaloon advanced a step or two, stalking, his head
thrown back, his manner that of a King's Lieutenant.
"Now, what the devil's this?" quoth he, but whether of Fate or Heaven
or the sergeant, was not clear.
There was a brief colloquy among the horsemen, then they came trotting
across the common straight towards the players' encampment.
Andre-Louis had remained standing at the tail of the travelling house.
He was still passing the comb through his straggling hair, but mechanically
and unconsciously. His mind was all intent upon the advancing troop, his
wits alert and gathered together for a leap in whatever direction should be
indicated.
Still in the distance, but evidently impatient, the sergeant bawled a
question.
"Who gave you leave to encamp here?"
It was a question that reassured Andre-Louis not at all. He was not
deceived by it into supposing or even hoping that the business of these men
was merely to round up vagrants and trespassers. That was no part of their
real duty; it was something done in passing
- done, perhaps, in the hope of levying a tax of their own. It was very
long odds that they were from Rennes, and that their real business was the
hunting down of a young lawyer charged with sedition. Meanwhile Pantaloon
was shouting back.
"Who gave us leave, do you say? What leave? This is communal land, free
to all."
The sergeant laughed unpleasantly, and came on, his troop following.
"There is," said a voice at Pantaloon's elbow, "no such thing as
communal land in the proper sense in all M. de La Tour d'Azyr's vast domain.
This is a terre censive, and his bailiffs collect his dues from all who send
their beasts to graze here."
Pantaloon turned to behold at his side Andre-Louis in his
shirt-sleeves, and without a neckcloth, the towel still trailing over his
left shoulder, a comb in his hand, his hair half dressed.
"God of God!" swore Pantaloon. "But it is an ogre, this Marquis de La
Tour d'Azyr!"
"I have told you already what I think of him," said Andre-Louis. "As
for these fellows you had better let me deal with them. I have experience of
their kind." And without waiting for Pantaloon's consent, Andre-Louis
stepped forward to meet the advancing men of the marechaussee. He had
realized that here boldness alone could save him.
When a moment later the sergeant pulled up his horse alongside of this
half-dressed young man, Andre-Louis combed his hair what time he looked up
with a half smile, intended to be friendly, ingenuous, and disarming.
In spite of it the sergeant hailed him gruffly: "Are you the leader of
this troop of vagabonds?"
"Yes... that is to say, my father, there, is really the leader." And he
jerked a thumb in the direction of M. Pantaloon, who stood at gaze out of
earshot in the background. "What is your pleasure, captain?"
"My pleasure is to tell you that you are very likely to be gaoled for
this, all the pack of you." His voice was loud and bullying. It carried
across the common to the ears of every member of the company, and brought
them all to stricken attention where they stood. The lot of strolling
players was hard enough without the addition of gaolings.
"But how so, my captain? This is communal land free to all."
"It is nothing of the kind."
"Where are the fences?" quoth Andre-Louis, waving the hand that held
the comb, as if to indicate the openness of the place.
"Fences!" snorted the sergeant. "What have fences to do with the
matter? This is terre censive. There is no grazing here save by payment of
dues to the Marquis de La Tour d'Azyr."
"But we are not grazing," quoth the innocent Andre-Louis.
"To the devil with you, zany! You are not grazing! But your beasts are
Andre-Louis that he had that day lighted the torch of the Revolution in
Nantes, it might with even greater truth be said that the torch itself was
supplied by the opulent bourgeoisie.
I need not dwell at any length upon the sequel. It is a matter of
history how that oath which Omnes Omnibus administered to the citizens of
Nantes formed the backbone of the formal protest which they drew up and
signed in their thousands. Nor were the results of that powerful protest -
which, after all, might already be said to harmonize with the expressed will
of the sovereign himself - long delayed. Who shall say how far it may have
strengthened the hand of Necker, when on the 27th of that same month of
November he compelled the Council to adopt the most significant and
comprehensive of all those measures to which clergy and nobility had refused
their consent? On that date was published the royal decree ordaining that
the deputies to be elected to the States General should number at least one
thousand, and that the deputies of the Third Estate should be fully
representative by numbering as many as the deputies of clergy and nobility
together.
Dusk of the following day was falling when the homing Andre-Louis
approached Gavrillac. Realizing fully what a hue and cry there would
presently be for the apostle of revolution who had summoned the people of
Nantes to arms, he desired as far as possible to conceal the fact that he
had been in that maritime city. Therefore he made a wide detour, crossing
the river at Bruz, and recrossing it a little above Chavagne, so as to
approach Gavrillac from the north, and create the impression that he was
returning from Rennes, whither he was known to have gone two days ago.
Within a mile or so of the village he caught in the fading light his
first glimpse of a figure on horseback pacing slowly towards him. But it was
not until they had come within a few yards of each other, and he observed
that this cloaked figure was leaning forward to peer at him, that he took
much notice of it. And then he found himself challenged almost at once by a
woman's voice.
"It is you, Andre - at last!"
He drew rein, mildly surprised, to be assailed by another question,
impatiently, anxiously asked.
"Where have you been?"
"Where have I been, Cousin Aline? Oh... seeing the world."
"I have been patrolling this road since noon to-day waiting for you."
She spoke breathlessly, in haste to explain. "A troop of the marechaussee
from Rennes descended upon Gavrillac this morning in quest of you. They
turned the chateau and the village inside out, and at last discovered that
you were due to return with a horse hired from the Breton arme. So they have
taken up their quarters at the inn to wait for you. I have been here all the
afternoon on the lookout to warn you against walking into that trap."
"My dear Aline! That I should have been the cause of so much concern
and trouble!"
"Never mind that. It is not important."
"On the contrary; it is the most important part of what you tell me. It
is the rest that is unimportant."
"Do you realize that they have come to arrest you?" she asked him, with
increasing impatience. "You are wanted for sedition, and upon a warrant from
M. de Lesdiguieres."
"Sedition?" quoth he, and his thoughts flew to that business at Nantes.
It was impossible they could have had news of it in Rennes and acted upon it
in so short a time.
"Yes, sedition. The sedition of that wicked speech of yours at Rennes
on Wednesday."
"Oh, that!" said he. "Pooh!" His note of relief might have told her,
had she been more attentive, that he had to fear the consequences of a
greater wickedness committed since. "Why, that was nothing."
"Nothing?"
"I almost suspect that the real intentions of these gentlemen of the
marechaussee have been misunderstood. Most probably they have come to thank
me on M. de Lesdiguieres' behalf. I restrained the people when they would
have burnt the Palais and himself inside it."
"After you had first incited them to do it. I suppose you were afraid
of your work. You drew back at the last moment. But you said things of M. de
Lesdiguieres, if you are correctly reported, which he will never forgive."
"I see," said Andre-Louis, and he fell into thought.
But Mlle. de Kercadiou had already done what thinking was necessary,
and her alert young mind had settled all that was to be done.
"You must not go into Gavrillac," she told him, "and you must get down
from your horse, and let me take it. I will stable it at the chateau
to-night. And sometime to morrow afternoon, by when you should be well away,
I will return it to the Breton arme."
"Oh, but that is impossible."
"Impossible? Why?"
"For several reasons. One of them is that you haven't considered what
will happen to you if you do such a thing."
"To me? Do you suppose I am afraid of that pack of oafs sent by M.
Lesdiguieres? I have committed no sedition."
"But it is almost as bad to give aid to one who is wanted for the
crime. That is the law."
"What do I care for the law? Do you imagine that the law will presume
to touch me?"
"Of course there is that. You are sheltered by one of the abuses I
complained of at Rennes. I was forgetting."
"Complain of it as much as you please, but meanwhile profit by it.
Come, Andre, do as I tell you. Get down from your horse." And then, as he
still hesitated, she stretched out and caught him by the arm. Her voice was
vibrant with earnestness. "Andre, you don't realize how serious is your
position. If these people take you, it is almost certain that you will be
hanged. Don't you realize it? You must not go to Gavrillac. You must go away
at once, and lie completely lost for a time until this blows over. Indeed,
until my uncle can bring influence to bear to obtain your pardon, you must
keep in hiding."
"That will be a long time, then," said Andre-Louis. M. de Kercadiou has
never cultivated friends at court."
"There is M. de La Tour d'Azyr," she reminded him, to his astonishment.
"That man!" he cried, and then he laughed. "But it was chiefly against
him that I aroused the resentment of the people of Rennes. I should have
known that all my speech was not reported to you.
"It was, and that part of it among the rest."
"Ah! And yet you are concerned to save me, the man who seeks the life
of your future husband at the hands either of the law or of the people? Or
is it, perhaps, that since you have seen his true nature revealed in the
murder of poor Philippe, you have changed your views on the subject of
becoming Marquise de La Tour d'Azyr?"
"You often show yourself without any faculty of deductive reasoning."
"Perhaps. But hardly to the extent of imagining that M. de La Tour
d'Azyr will ever lift a finger to do as you suggest."
"In which, as usual, you are wrong. He will certainly do so if I ask
him."
"If you ask him?" Sheer horror rang in his voice.
"Why, yes. You see, I have not yet said that I will be Marquise de La
Tour d'Azyr. I am still considering. It is a position that has its
advantages. One of them is that it ensures a suitor's complete obedience."
"So, so. I see the crooked logic of your mind. You might go so far as
to say to him: 'Refuse me this, and I shall refuse to be your marquise.' You
would go so far as that?"
"At need, I might."
"And do you not see the converse implication? Do you not see that your
hands would then be tied, that you would be wanting in honour if afterwards
you refused him? And do you think that I would consent to anything that
could so tie your hands? Do you think I want to see you damned, Aline?"
Her hand fell away from his arm.
"Oh, you are mad!" she exclaimed, quite out of patience.
"Possibly. But I like my madness. There is a thrill in it unknown to
such sanity as yours. By your leave, Aline, I think I will ride on to
Gavrillac."
"Andre, you must not! It is death to you!" In her alarm she backed her
horse, and pulled it across the road to bar his way.
It was almost completely night by now; but from behind the wrack of
clouds overhead a crescent moon sailed out to alleviate the darkness.
"Come, now," she enjoined him. "Be reasonable. Do as I bid you. See,
there is a carriage coming up behind you. Do not let us be found here
together thus."
He made up his mind quickly. He was not the man to be actuated by false
heroics about dying, and he had no fancy whatever for the gallows of M. de
Lesdiguieres' providing. The immediate task that he had set himself might be
accomplished. He had made heard - and ringingly - the voice that M. de La
Tour d'Azyr imagined he had silenced. But he was very far from having done
with life.
"Aline, on one condition only."
"And that?"
"That you swear to me you will never seek the aid of M. de La Tour
d'Azyr on my behalf."
"Since you insist, and as time presses, I consent. And now ride on with
me as far as the lane. There is that carriage coming up."
The lane to which she referred was one that branched off the road some
three hundred yards nearer the village and led straight up the hill to the
chateau itself. In silence they rode together towards it, and together they
turned into that thickly hedged and narrow bypath. At a depth of fifty yards
she halted him.
"Now!" she bade him.
Obediently he swung down from his horse, and surrendered the reins to
her.
"Aline," he said, "I haven't words in which to thank you."
"It isn't necessary," said she.
"But I shall hope to repay you some day."
"Nor is that necessary. Could I do less than I am doing? I do not want
to hear of you hanged, Andre; nor does my uncle, though he is very angry
with you.
"I suppose he is.
"And you can hardly be surprised. You were his delegate, his
representative. He depended upon you, and you have turned your coat. He is
rightly indignant, calls you a traitor, and swears that he will never speak
to you again. But he doesn't want you hanged, Andre."
"Then we are agreed on that at least, for I don't want it myself."
"I'll make your peace with him. And now - good-bye, Andre. Send me a
word when you are safe."
She held out a hand that looked ghostly in the faint light. He took it
and bore it to his lips.
"God bless you, Aline."
She was gone, and he stood listening to the receding clopper-clop of
hooves until it grew faint in the distance. Then slowly, with shoulders
hunched and head sunk on his breast, he retraced his steps to the main road,
cogitating whither he should go. Quite suddenly he checked, remembering with
dismay that he was almost entirely without money. In Brittany itself he knew
of no dependable hiding-place, and as long as he was in Brittany his peril
must remain imminent. Yet to leave the province, and to leave it as quickly
as prudence dictated, horses would be necessary. And how was he to procure
horses, having no money beyond a single louis d'or and a few pieces of
silver?
There was also the fact that he was very weary. He had had little sleep
since Tuesday night, and not very much then; and much of the time had been
spent in the saddle, a wearing thing to one so little accustomed to long
rides. Worn as he was, it was unthinkable that he should go far to-night. He
might get as far as Chavagne, perhaps. But there he must sup and sleep; and
what, then, of to-morrow?
Had he but thought of it before, perhaps Aline might have been able to
assist him with the loan of a few louis. His first impulse now was to follow
her to the chateau. But prudence dismissed the notion. Before he could reach
her, he must be seen by servants, and word of his presence would go forth.
There was no choice for him; he must tramp as far as Chavagne, find a
bed there, and leave to-morrow until it dawned. On the resolve he set his
face in the direction whence he had come. But again he paused. Chavagne lay
on the road to Rennes. To go that way was to plunge further into danger. He
would strike south again. At the foot of some meadows on this side of the
village there was a ferry that would put him across the river. Thus he would
avoid the village; and by placing the river between himself and the
immediate danger, he would obtain an added sense of security.
A lane, turning out of the highroad, a quarter of a mile this side of
Gavrillac, led down to that ferry. By this lane some twenty minutes later
came Andre-Louis with dragging feet. He avoided the little cottage of the
ferryman, whose window was alight, and in the dark crept down to the boat,
intending if possible to put himself across. He felt for the chain by which
the boat was moored, and ran his fingers along this to the point where it
was fastened. Here to his dismay he found a padlock.
He stood up in the gloom and laughed silently. Of course he might have
known it. The ferry was the property of M. de La Tour d'Azyr, and not likely
to be left unfastened so that poor devils might cheat him of seigneurial
dues.
There being no possible alternative, he walked back to the cottage, and
rapped on the door. When it opened, he stood well back, and aside, out of
the shaft of light that issued thence.
"Ferry!" he rapped out, laconically.
The ferryman, a burly scoundrel well known to him, turned aside to pick
up a lantern, and came forth as he was bidden. As he stepped from the little
porch, he levelled the lantern so that its light fell on the face of this
traveller.
"My God!" he ejaculated.
"You realize, I see, that I am pressed," said Andre-Louis, his eyes on
the fellow's startled countenance.
"And well you may be with the gallows waiting for you at Rennes,"
growled the ferryman. "Since you've been so foolish as to come back to
Gavrillac, you had better go again as quickly as you can. I will say nothing
of having seen you."
"I thank you, Fresnel. Your advice accords with my intention. That is
why I need the boat."
"Ah, that, no," said Fresnel, with determination. "I'll hold my peace,
but it's as much as my skin is worth to help you.
"You need not have seen my face. Forget that you have seen it."
"I'll do that, monsieur. But that is all I will do. I cannot put you
across the river."
"Then give me the key of the boat, and I will put myself across."
"That is the same thing. I cannot. I'll hold my tongue, but I will not
- I dare not - help you."
Andre-Louis looked a moment into that sullen, resolute face, and
understood. This man, living under the shadow of La Tour d'Azyr, dared
exercise no will that might he in conflict with the will of his dread lord.
"Fresnel," he said, quietly, "if, as you say, the gallows claim me, the
thing that has brought me to this extremity arises out of the shooting of
Mabey. Had not Mabey been murdered there would have been no need for me to
have raised my voice as I have done. Mabey was your friend, I think. Will
you for his sake lend me the little help I need to save my neck?"
The man kept his glance averted, and the cloud of sullenness deepened
on his face.
"I would if I dared, but I dare not." Then, quite suddenly he became
angry. It was as if in anger he sought support. "Don't you understand that I
dare not? Would you have a poor man risk his life for you? What have you or
yours ever done for me that you should ask that? You do not cross to-night
in my ferry. Understand that, monsieur, and go at once - go before I
remember that it may be dangerous even to have talked to you and not give
information. Go!"
He turned on his heel to reenter his cottage, and a wave of
hopelessness swept over Andre-Louis.
But in a second it was gone. The man must be compelled, and he had the
means. He bethought him of a pistol pressed upon him by Le Chapelier at the
moment of his leaving Rennes, a gift which at the time he had almost
disdained. True, it was not loaded, and he had no ammunition. But how was
Fresnel to know that?
He acted quickly. As with his right hand he pulled it from his pocket,
with his left he caught the ferryman by the shoulder, and swung him round.
"What do you want now?" Fresnel demanded angrily. "Haven't I told you
that I... "
He broke off short. The muzzle of the pistol was within a foot of his
eyes.
"I want the key of the boat. That is all, Fresnel. And you can either
give it me at once, or I'll take it after I have burnt your brains. I should
regret to kill you, but I shall not hesitate. It is your life against mine,
Fresnel; and you'll not find it strange that if one of us must die I prefer
that it shall be you."
Fresnel dipped a hand into his pocket, and fetched thence a key. He
held it out to Andre-Louis in fingers that shook - more in anger than in
fear.
"I yield to violence," he said, showing his teeth like a snarling dog.
"But don't imagine that it will greatly profit you."
Andre-Louis took the key. His pistol remained levelled.
"You threaten me, I think," he said. "It is not difficult to read your
threat. The moment I am gone, you will run to inform against me. You will
set the marechaussee on my heels to overtake me."
"No, no!" cried the other. He perceived his peril. He read his doom in
the cold, sinister note on which Andre-Louis addressed him, and grew afraid.
"I swear to you, monsieur, that I have no such intention."
"I think I had better make quite sure of you."
"0 my God! Have mercy, monsieur!" The knave was in a palsy of terror.
"I mean you no harm - I swear to Heaven I mean you no harm. I will not say a
word. I will not... "
"I would rather depend upon your silence than your assurances. Still,
you shall have your chance. I am a fool, perhaps, but I have a reluctance to
shed blood. Go into the house, Fresnel. Go, man. I follow you."
In the shabby main room of that dwelling, Andre-Louis halted him again.
"Get me a length of rope," he commanded, and was readily obeyed.
Five minutes later Fresnel was securely bound to a chair, and
effectively silenced by a very uncomfortable gag improvised out of a block
of wood and a muffler.
On the threshold the departing Andre-Louis turned.
"Good-night, Fresnel," he said. Fierce eyes glared mute hatred at him.
"It is unlikely that your ferry will be required again to-night. But some
one is sure to come to your relief quite early in the morning. Until then
bear your discomfort with what fortitude you can, remembering that you have
brought it entirely upon yourself by your uncharitableness. If you spend the
night considering that, the lesson should not be lost upon you. By morning
you may even have grown so charitable as not to know who it was that tied
you up. Good-night."
He stepped out and closed the door.
To unlock the ferry, and pull himself across the swift-running waters,
on which the faint moonlight was making a silver ripple, were matters that
engaged not more than six or seven minutes. He drove the nose of the boat
through the decaying sedges that fringed the southern bank of the stream,
sprang ashore, and made the little craft secure. Then, missing the footpath
in the dark, he struck out across a sodden meadow in quest of the road.
Coming presently upon the Redon road, Andre-Louis, obeying instinct
rather than reason, turned his face to the south, and plodded wearily and
mechanically forward. He had no clear idea of whither he was going, or of
whither he should go. All that imported at the moment was to put as great a
distance as possible between Gavrillac and himself.
He had a vague, half-formed notion of returning to Nantes; and there,
by employing the newly found weapon of his oratory, excite the people into
sheltering him as the first victim of the persecution he had foreseen, and
against which he had sworn them to take up arms. But the idea was one which
he entertained merely as an indefinite possibility upon which he felt no
real impulse to act.
Meanwhile he chuckled at the thought of Fresnel as he had last seen
him, with his muffled face and glaring eyeballs. "For one who was anything
but a man of action," he writes, "I felt that I had acquitted myself none so
badly." It is a phrase that recurs at intervals in his sketchy
"Confessions." Constantly is he reminding you that he is a man of mental and
not physical activities, and apologizing when dire neccessity drives him
into acts of violence. I suspect this insistence upon his philosophic
detachment - for which I confess he had justification enough - to betray his
besetting vanity.
With increasing fatigue came depression and self-criticism. He had
stupidly overshot his mark in insultingly denouncing M. de Lesdiguieres. "It
is much better," he says somewhere, "to be wicked than to be stupid. Most of
this world's misery is the fruit not as priests tell us of wickedness, but
of stupidity." And we know that of all stupidities he considered anger the
most deplorable. Yet he had permitted himself to be angry with a creature
like M. de Lesdiguieres - a lackey, a fribble, a nothing, despite his
potentialities for evil. He could perfectly have discharged his self-imposed
mission without arousing the vindictive resentment of the King's Lieutenant.
He beheld himself vaguely launched upon life with the riding-suit in
which he stood, a single louis d'or and a few pieces of silver for all
capital, and a knowledge of law which had been inadequate to preserve him
from the consequences of infringing it.
He had, in addition - but these things that were to be the real
salvation of him he did not reckon - his gift of laughter, sadly repressed
of late, and the philosophic outlook and mercurial temperament which are the
stock-in-trade of your adventurer in all ages.
Meanwhile he tramped mechanically on through the night, until he felt
that he could tramp no more. He had skirted the little township of Guichen,
and now within a half-mile of Guignen, and with Gavrillac a good seven miles
behind him, his legs refused to carry him any farther.
He was midway across the vast common to the north of Guignen when he
came to a halt. He had left the road, and taken heedlessly to the footpath
that struck across the waste of indifferent pasture interspersed with clumps
of gorse. A stone's throw away on his right the common was bordered by a
thorn hedge. Beyond this loomed a tall building which he knew to be an open
barn, standing on the edge of a long stretch of meadowland. That dark,
silent shadow it may have been that had brought him to a standstill,
suggesting shelter to his subconsciousness. A moment he hesitated; then he
struck across towards a spot where a gap in the hedge was closed by a
five-barred gate. He pushed the gate open, went through the gap, and stood
now before the barn. It was as big as a house, yet consisted of no more than
a roof carried upon half a dozen tall, brick pillars. But densely packed
under that roof was a great stack of hay that promised a warm couch on so
cold a night. Stout timbers had been built into the brick pillars, with
projecting ends to serve as ladders by which the labourer might climb to
pack or withdraw hay. With what little strength remained him, Andre-Louis
climbed by one of these and landed safely at the top, where he was forced to
kneel, for lack of room to stand upright. Arrived there, he removed his coat
and neckcloth, his sodden boots and stockings. Next he cleared a trough for
his body, and lying down in it, covered himself to the neck with the hay he
had removed. Within five minutes he was lost to all worldly cares and
soundly asleep.
When next he awakened, the sun was already high in the heavens, from
which he concluded that the morning was well advanced; and this before he
realized quite where he was or how he came there. Then to his awakening
senses came a drone of voices close at hand, to which at first he paid
little heed. He was deliciously refreshed, luxuriously drowsy and
luxuriously warm.
But as consciousness and memory grew more full, he raised his head
clear of the hay that he might free both ears to listen, his pulses faintly
quickened by the nascent fear that those voices might bode him no good. Then
he caught the reassuring accents of a woman, musical and silvery, though
laden with alarm.
"Ah, mon Dieu, Leandre, let us separate at once. If it should be my
father... "
And upon this a man's voice broke in, calm and reassuring:
"No, no, Climene; you are mistaken. There is no one coming. We are
quite safe. Why do you start at shadows?"
"Ah, Leandre, if he should find us here together! I tremble at the very
thought."
More was not needed to reassure Andre-Louis. He had overheard enough to
know that this was but the case of a pair of lovers who, with less to fear
of life, were yet - after the manner of their kind - more timid of heart
than he. Curiosity drew him from his warm trough to the edge of the hay.
Lying prone, he advanced his head and peered down.
In the space of cropped meadow between the barn and the hedge stood a
man and a woman, both young. The man was a well-set-up, comely fellow, with
a fine head of chestnut hair tied in a queue by a broad bow of black satin.
He was dressed with certain tawdry attempts at ostentatious embellishments,
which did not prepossess one at first glance in his favour. His coat of a
fashionable cut was of faded plum-coloured velvet edged with silver lace,
whose glory had long since departed. He affected ruffles, but for want of
starch they hung like weeping willows over hands that were fine and
delicate. His breeches were of plain black cloth, and his black stockings
were of cotton - matters entirely out of harmony with his magnificent coat.
His shoes, stout and serviceable, were decked with buckles of cheap,
lack-lustre paste. But for his engaging and ingenuous countenance,
Andre-Louis must have set him down as a knight of that order which lives
dishonestly by its wits. As it was, he suspended judgment whilst pushing
investigation further by a study of the girl. At the outset, be it confessed
that it was a study that attracted him prodigiously. And this
notwithstanding the fact that, bookish and studious as were his ways, and in
despite of his years, it was far from his habit to waste consideration on
femininity.
The child - she was no more than that, perhaps twenty at the most
- possessed, in addition to the allurements of face and shape that went
very near perfection, a sparkling vivacity and a grace of movement the like
of which Andre-Louis did not remember ever before to have beheld assembled
in one person. And her voice too - that musical, silvery voice that had
awakened him - possessed in its exquisite modulations an allurement of its
own that must have been irresistible, he thought, in the ugliest of her sex.
She wore a hooded mantle of green cloth, and the hood being thrown back, her
dainty head was all revealed to him. There were glints of gold struck by the
morning sun from her light nut-brown hair that hung in a cluster of curls
about her oval face. Her complexion was of a delicacy that he could compare
only with a rose petal. He could not at that distance discern the colour of
her eyes, but he guessed them blue, as he admired the sparkle of them under
the fine, dark line of eyebrows.
He could not have told you why, but he was conscious that it aggrieved
him to find her so intimate with this pretty young fellow, who was partly
clad, as it appeared, in the cast-offs of a nobleman. He could not guess her
station, but the speech that reached him was cultured in tone and word. He
strained to listen.
"I shall know no peace, Leandre, until we are safely wedded," she was
saying. "Not until then shall I count myself beyond his reach. And yet if we
marry without his consent, we but make trouble for ourselves, and of gaining
his consent I almost despair."
Evidently, thought Andre-Louis, her father was a man of sense, who saw
through the shabby finery of M. Leandre, and was not to be dazzled by cheap
paste buckles.
"My dear Climene," the young man was answering her, standing squarely
before her, and holding both her hands, "you are wrong to despond. If I do
not reveal to you all the stratagem that I have prepared to win the consent
of your unnatural parent, it is because I am loath to rob you of the
pleasure of the surprise that is in store. But place your faith in me, and
in that ingenious friend of whom I have spoken, and who should be here at
any moment."
The stilted ass! Had he learnt that speech by heart in advance, or was
he by nature a pedantic idiot who expressed himself in this set and formal
manner? How came so sweet a blossom to waste her perfumes on such a prig?
And what a ridiculous name the creature owned!
Thus Andre-Louis to himself from his observatory. Meanwhile, she was
speaking.
"That is what my heart desires, Leandre, but I am beset by fears lest
your stratagem should be too late. I am to marry this horrible Marquis of
Sbrufadelli this very day. He arrives by noon. He comes to sign the contract
- to make me the Marchioness of Sbrufadelli. Oh!" It was a cry of pain from
that tender young heart. "The very name burns my lips. If it were mine I
could never utter it - never! The man is so detestable. Save me, Leandre.
Save me! You are my only hope."
Andre-Louis was conscious of a pang of disappointment. She failed to
soar to the heights he had expected of her. She was evidently infected by
the stilted manner of her ridiculous lover. There was an atrocious lack of
sincerity about her words. They touched his mind, but left his heart
unmoved. Perhaps this was because of his antipathy to M. Leandre and to the
issue involved.
So her father was marrying her to a marquis! That implied birth on her
side. And yet she was content to pair off with this dull young adventurer in
the tarnished lace! It was, he supposed, the sort of thing to be expected of
a sex that all philosophy had taught him to regard as the maddest part of a
mad species.
"It shall never be!" M. Leandre was storming passionately. "Never! I
swear it!" And he shook his puny fist at the blue vault of heaven
- Ajax defying Jupiter. "Ah, but here comes our subtle friend... "
(Andre-Louis did not catch the name, M. Leandre having at that moment turned
to face the gap in the hedge.) "He will bring us news, I know."
Andre-Louis looked also in the direction of the gap. Through it emerged
a lean, slight man in a rusty cloak and a three-cornered hat worn well down
over his nose so as to shade his face. And when presently he doffed this hat
and made a sweeping bow to the young lovers, Andre-Louis confessed to
himself that had he been cursed with such a hangdog countenance he would
have worn his hat in precisely such a manner, so as to conceal as much of it
as possible. If M. Leandre appeared to be wearing, in part at least, the
cast-offs of nobleman, the newcomer appeared to be wearing the cast-offs of
M. Leandre. Yet despite his vile clothes and viler face, with its three
days' growth of beard, the fellow carried himself with a certain air; he
positively strutted as he advanced, and he made a leg in a manner that was
courtly and practised.
"Monsieur," said he, with the air of a conspirator, "the time for
action has arrived, and so has the Marquis... That is why."
The young lovers sprang apart in consternation; Climene with clasped
hands, parted lips, and a bosom that raced distractingly under its white
fichu-menteur; M. Leandre agape, the very picture of foolishness and dismay.
Meanwhile the newcomer rattled on. "I was at the inn an hour ago when
he descended there, and I studied him attentively whilst he was at
breakfast. Having done so, not a single doubt remains me of our success. As
for what he looks like, I could entertain you at length upon the fashion in
which nature has designed his gross fatuity. But that is no matter. We are
concerned with what he is, with the wit of him. And I tell you confidently
that I find him so dull and stupid that you may be confident he will tumble
headlong into each and all of the traps I have so cunningly prepared for
him."
"Tell me, tell me! Speak!" Climene implored him, holding out her hands
in a supplication no man of sensibility could have resisted. And then on the
instant she caught her breath on a faint scream. "My father!" she exclaimed,
turning distractedly from one to the other of those two. "He is coming! We
are lost!"
"You must fly, Climene!" said M. Leandre.
"Too late!" she sobbed. "Too late! He is here."
"Calm, mademoiselle, calm!" the subtle friend was urging her. "Keep
calm and trust to me. I promise you that all shall be well."
"Oh!" cried M. Leandre, limply. "Say what you will, my friend, this is
ruin - the end of all our hopes. Your wits will never extricate us from
this. Never!"
Through the gap strode now an enormous man with an inflamed moon face
and a great nose, decently dressed after the fashion of a solid bourgeois.
There was no mistaking his anger, but the expression that it found was an
amazement to Andre-Louis.
"Leandre, you're an imbecile! Too much phlegm, too much phlegm! Your
words wouldn't convince a ploughboy! Have you considered what they mean at
all? Thus," he cried, and casting his round hat from him in a broad gesture,
he took his stand at M. Leandre's side, and repeated the very words that
Leandre had lately uttered, what time the three observed him coolly and
attentively.
"Oh, say what you will, my friend, this is ruin - the end of all our
hopes. Your wits will never extricate us from this. Never!"
A frenzy of despair vibrated in his accents. He swung again to face M.
Leandre. "Thus," he bade him contemptuously. "Let the passion of your
hopelessness express itself in your voice. Consider that you are not asking
Scaramouche here whether he has put a patch in your breeches. You are a
despairing lover expressing... "
He checked abruptly, startled. Andre-Louis, suddenly realizing what was
afoot, and how duped he had been, had loosed his laughter. The sound of it
pealing and booming uncannily under the great roof that so immediately
confined him was startling to those below.
The fat man was the first to recover, and he announced it after his own
fashion in one of the ready sarcasms in which he habitually dealt.
"Hark!" he cried, "the very gods laugh at you, Leandre." Then he
addressed the roof of the barn and its invisible tenant. "Hi! You there!"
Andre-Louis revealed himself by a further protrusion of his tousled
head.
"Good-morning," said he, pleasantly. Rising now on his knees, his
horizon was suddenly extended to include the broad common beyond the hedge.
He beheld there an enormous and very battered travelling chaise, a cart
piled up with timbers partly visible under the sheet of oiled canvas that
covered them, and a sort of house on wheels equipped with a tin chimney,
from which the smoke was slowly curling. Three heavy Flemish horses and a
couple of donkeys - all of them hobbled - were contentedly cropping the
grass in the neighbourhood of these vehicles. These, had he perceived them
sooner, must have given him the clue to the queer scene that had been played
under his eyes. Beyond the hedge other figures were moving. Three at that
moment came crowding into the gap - a saucy-faced girl with a tip-tilted
nose, whom he supposed to be Columbine, the soubrette; a lean, active
youngster, who must be the lackey Harlequin;, and another rather loutish
youth who might be a zany or an apothecary.
All this he took in at a comprehensive glance that consumed no more
time than it had taken him to say good-morning. To that good-morning
Pantaloon replied in a bellow:
"What the devil are you doing up there?"
"Precisely the same thing that you are doing down there," was the
answer. "I am trespassing."
"Eh?" said Pantaloon, and looked at his companions, some of the
assurance beaten out of his big red face. Although the thing was one that
they did habitually, to hear it called by its proper name was disconcerting.
"Whose land is this?" he asked, with diminishing assurance.
Andre-Louis answered, whilst drawing on his stockings. "I believe it to
be the property of the Marquis de La Tour d'Azyr."
"That's a high-sounding name. Is the gentleman severe?"
"The gentleman," said Andre-Louis, "is the devil; or rather, I should
prefer to say upon reflection, that the devil is a gentleman by comparison.
"And yet," interposed the villainous-looking fellow who played
Scaramouche, "by your own confessing you don't hesitate, yourself, to
trespass upon his property."
"Ah, but then, you see, I am a lawyer. And lawyers are notoriously
unable to observe the law, just as actors are notoriously unable to act.
Moreover, sir, Nature imposes her limits upon us, and Nature conquers
respect for law as she conquers all else. Nature conquered me last night
when I had got as far as this. And so I slept here without regard for the
very high and puissant Marquis de La Tour d'Azyr. At the same time, M.
Scaramouche, you'll observe that I did not flaunt my trespass quite as
openly as you and your companions.
Having donned his boots, Andre-Louis came nimbly to the ground in his
shirt-sleeves, his riding-coat over his arm. As he stood there to don it,
the little cunning eyes of the heavy father conned him in detail. Observing
that his clothes, if plain, were of a good fashion, that his shirt was of
fine cambric, and that he expressed himself like a man of culture, such as
he claimed to be, M. Pantaloon was disposed to be civil.
"I am very grateful to you for the warning, sir... " he was beginning.
"Act upon it, my friend. The gardes-champetres of M. d'Azyr have orders
to fire on trespassers. Imitate me, and decamp."
They followed him upon the instant through that gap in the hedge to the
encampment on the common. There Andre-Louis took his leave of them. But as
he was turning away he perceived a young man of the company performing his
morning toilet at a bucket placed upon one of the wooden steps at the tail
of the house on wheels. A moment he hesitated, then he turned frankly to M.
Pantaloon, who was still at his elbow.
"If it were not unconscionable to encroach so far upon your
hospitality, monsieur," said he, "I would beg leave to imitate that very
excellent young gentleman before I leave you."
"But, my dear sir!" Good-nature oozed out of every pore of the fat body
of the master player. "It is nothing at all. But, by all means. Rhodomont
will provide what you require. He is the dandy of the company in real life,
though a fire-eater on the stage. Hi, Rhodomont!"
The young ablutionist straightened his long body from the right angle
in which it had been bent over the bucket, and looked out through a foam of
soapsuds. Pantaloon issued an order, and Rhodomont, who was indeed as gentle
and amiable off the stage as he was formidable and terrible upon it, made
the stranger free of the bucket in the friendliest manner.
So Andre-Louis once more removed his neckcloth and his coat, and rolled
up the sleeves of his fine shirt, whilst Rhodomont procured him soap, a
towel, and presently a broken comb, and even a greasy hair-ribbon, in case
the gentleman should have lost his own. This last Andre-Louis declined, but
the comb he gratefully accepted, and having presently washed himself clean,
stood, with the towel flung over his left shoulder, restoring order to his
dishevelled locks before a broken piece of mirror affixed to the door of the
travelling house.
He was standing thus, what time the gentle Rhodomont babbled aimlessly
at his side when his ears caught the sound of hooves. He looked over his
shoulder carelessly, and then stood frozen, with uplifted comb and loosened
mouth. Away across the common, on the road that bordered it, he beheld a
party of seven horsemen in the blue coats with red facings of the
marechaussee.
Not for a moment did he doubt what was the quarry of this prowling
gendarmerie. It was as if the chill shadow of the gallows had fallen
suddenly upon him.
And then the troop halted, abreast with them, and the sergeant leading
it sent his bawling voice across the common.
"Hi, there! Hi!" His tone rang with menace.
Every member of the company - and there were some twelve in all
- stood at gaze. Pantaloon advanced a step or two, stalking, his head
thrown back, his manner that of a King's Lieutenant.
"Now, what the devil's this?" quoth he, but whether of Fate or Heaven
or the sergeant, was not clear.
There was a brief colloquy among the horsemen, then they came trotting
across the common straight towards the players' encampment.
Andre-Louis had remained standing at the tail of the travelling house.
He was still passing the comb through his straggling hair, but mechanically
and unconsciously. His mind was all intent upon the advancing troop, his
wits alert and gathered together for a leap in whatever direction should be
indicated.
Still in the distance, but evidently impatient, the sergeant bawled a
question.
"Who gave you leave to encamp here?"
It was a question that reassured Andre-Louis not at all. He was not
deceived by it into supposing or even hoping that the business of these men
was merely to round up vagrants and trespassers. That was no part of their
real duty; it was something done in passing
- done, perhaps, in the hope of levying a tax of their own. It was very
long odds that they were from Rennes, and that their real business was the
hunting down of a young lawyer charged with sedition. Meanwhile Pantaloon
was shouting back.
"Who gave us leave, do you say? What leave? This is communal land, free
to all."
The sergeant laughed unpleasantly, and came on, his troop following.
"There is," said a voice at Pantaloon's elbow, "no such thing as
communal land in the proper sense in all M. de La Tour d'Azyr's vast domain.
This is a terre censive, and his bailiffs collect his dues from all who send
their beasts to graze here."
Pantaloon turned to behold at his side Andre-Louis in his
shirt-sleeves, and without a neckcloth, the towel still trailing over his
left shoulder, a comb in his hand, his hair half dressed.
"God of God!" swore Pantaloon. "But it is an ogre, this Marquis de La
Tour d'Azyr!"
"I have told you already what I think of him," said Andre-Louis. "As
for these fellows you had better let me deal with them. I have experience of
their kind." And without waiting for Pantaloon's consent, Andre-Louis
stepped forward to meet the advancing men of the marechaussee. He had
realized that here boldness alone could save him.
When a moment later the sergeant pulled up his horse alongside of this
half-dressed young man, Andre-Louis combed his hair what time he looked up
with a half smile, intended to be friendly, ingenuous, and disarming.
In spite of it the sergeant hailed him gruffly: "Are you the leader of
this troop of vagabonds?"
"Yes... that is to say, my father, there, is really the leader." And he
jerked a thumb in the direction of M. Pantaloon, who stood at gaze out of
earshot in the background. "What is your pleasure, captain?"
"My pleasure is to tell you that you are very likely to be gaoled for
this, all the pack of you." His voice was loud and bullying. It carried
across the common to the ears of every member of the company, and brought
them all to stricken attention where they stood. The lot of strolling
players was hard enough without the addition of gaolings.
"But how so, my captain? This is communal land free to all."
"It is nothing of the kind."
"Where are the fences?" quoth Andre-Louis, waving the hand that held
the comb, as if to indicate the openness of the place.
"Fences!" snorted the sergeant. "What have fences to do with the
matter? This is terre censive. There is no grazing here save by payment of
dues to the Marquis de La Tour d'Azyr."
"But we are not grazing," quoth the innocent Andre-Louis.
"To the devil with you, zany! You are not grazing! But your beasts are