Thomas the Rhymer.
CHAPTER VIII
Some Results of listening to Poetry
(1)
Mathieu Pourcelles had now definitely become a nuisance to the habitués of that old-established house of entertainment, the Hôtel du Faisan et de la Constitution at Abbeville. To the patron indeed he was more than a nuisance; he was a source of frenzy. But since Mathieu's elder brother, the notary, was the patron's creditor to the extent of some two thousand francs, the patron had to suffer him, and all the clients of the Faisan had to suffer him too—unless they removed their custom to another hostelry. And this, to be exact, was what they were gradually doing, for there are limits even to the patience of a decent citizen who has for years played his nightly little game of draughts at the same tavern and does not favour changes.
It shall briefly be revealed what was the matter with Mathieu Pourcelles. He was a poet. Nor was he a good poet; nay, not even an indifferent poet. But his muse was both prolific and patriotic, giving birth to some abortion at almost every public event, and though all good citizens of Abbeville were properly interested in such occurrences as, say, the repeal of the Law of the Maximum, they preferred a plain newspaper account of it to Mathieu's rhythmical rendering. Yet if they showed undue restiveness under the poet's outpourings it was just conceivable that, seeing the subject of his verse, they might be suspected of 'incivisme.' And thus there was little help for them.
On a certain evening, then, in April 1795, Mathieu entered the Faisan a little earlier than usual. In his hand was a fresh, untumbled manuscript. Several citizens incontinently rose, paid their scores, and went out. The patron cast an agonised look at their retreating backs, and one full of venom at Mathieu's. The poet, a lanky personage, sat down, gave the smallest possible order for refreshments, and, after scandalously few preliminaries and a marked absence of any kind of encouragement, unrolled his manuscript.
"I have here, fellow-citizens, some verses which I should like to submit to your valued judgment." Such was Mathieu's formula to-night. "These verses deal with the present situation of the arms of our beloved country, being, in fact, an 'Ode on the Peace recently concluded between the glorious Republic and Prussia.'"
All present resigned themselves, except one man who ostentatiously buried himself in a news-sheet. Mathieu, than whom was no happier mortal at that moment between the English Channel and the Pyrenees, began joyfully to roll forth his periods and his execrable rhymes. And, weedy though he was of aspect, his own outpourings soon began increasingly to inflate his not inconsiderable voice, so that presently the room rang with his bellowings, and the table before him jumped as he pounded it.
Among all his unwilling listeners he had none a tenth part as interested as a small, tired-looking boy who sat, a spoon in his hand, at a table some distance away. With him was a neat man of forty who, in the midst of his own repast, attended to his small companion's wants. Since the opening of Mathieu's performance the child had more or less neglected his meal to listen with an attention distinctly strained, his eyes anxiously fixed on the orator. Nor did Mathieu fail, after a while, to observe the flattering behaviour of his youngest auditor, and at last broke off and apostrophised him, trusting, he said, that his young friend would profit by these lessons, and remember them in years to come.
The young friend, on whom all eyes were immediately turned, shrank back, looking terrified. But Mathieu lost no time in continuing his reading. He was approaching a favourite passage, a purple patch directed against "crowned tyrants," "perfidious Albion," and "those vipers, the émigrés," and so he unleashed fully the voice which was so much at variance with his physique. A man yawned, another banged approval—and the small boy, overcome by emotion or fatigue, hid his face in his hands and burst into tears. His companion tried to quiet him, but the child drew away from him, and the man, evidently annoyed, and muttering, "He is overtired; excuse him, my friends!" picked him up, and carried him out of the room.
Mathieu was not unaccustomed to exits during his performances, but this retreat was rather flattering than otherwise, since it could only be attributed to his power of moving the heart. He paused a moment, smirked, and proceeded.
(2)
Half an hour later, however, he had succeeded in clearing the room in earnest. Yet did he not himself depart, having regard to the possible advent of other guests, but remained awhile, running his hand through his dank hair, and casting up his eyes to the ceiling whenever the patron, scowling, looked in at the door.
His patience was duly rewarded when, at about five minutes to eight, the host ushered in a tall man in a cloak, evidently a traveller. The newcomer ordered a meal, and went to sit at a table in a far corner. Mathieu took stock of him, and finally arose and approached him.
"You are travelling, citizen?"
La Vireville looked carefully at the speaker. He himself desired rather to ask than to answer questions, but the poet appeared harmless. Moreover, having traced Anne-Hilarion and his companion as far as Abbeville, and having already drawn blank at two inns in that town, he was glad of the chance of information. So he said quietly, "Yes, citizen. And you?"
"Ah no; I inhabit Abbeville. You will not have heard of me, citizen, but I am not quite unknown, even in Paris. My name is Pourcelles—Mathieu Pourcelles. I write a little—verse. I wonder if I might presume? . . . You have the look of a lover of letters" (the phrase with which Mathieu was wont to approach any victim not absolutely bucolic). "I may?" And out came the manuscript of the Ode.
La Vireville endured it, eating his omelette, and thinking fast. He was beginning to feel a little baffled. Anne and his escort had certainly come to Abbeville; the point was, had they already left it? It appeared, from the cautious inquiries which he had made along the road from Calais, that the travellers were but little ahead of him—a fact which, in spite of the nearly incredible haste which he had made, seemed almost too good to be true, and which, considering their twenty-four hours' start, he found it difficult to account for. It was risky to ask direct questions, yet he would shortly be driven to that course. But he had not reckoned for the vanity of an author.
"I now come," said the gifted poet, simpering, "to a passage which, as recently as three-quarters of an hour ago, inspired tears in a member of my little audience. It is true that he was very young, but who shall say whether the pure heart of childhood——"
"A child, eh?" interrupted his hearer, continuing to eat, but fixing Mathieu with a very keen gaze. "An infant prodigy, I suppose?"
"No; just a little boy with his father or uncle. But he was overcome, and had to be taken away. His companion has indeed left his own meal unfinished, no doubt in order to soothe the terror which my description of tyranny had awaked in the childish breast."
"Is this susceptible infant staying in the inn?" inquired La Vireville carelessly.
"I believe so," replied the poet, who had already lost interest in his young hearer, and was itching to declaim the purple passage in question, of which he again stood on the brink. La Vireville made a gesture to intimate that he should do so, and diplomatically neglected his meal to listen.
"Bravo!" he exclaimed at the end. "Magnificent, citizen! You have the foes of our beloved country on the hip, indeed. Those lines about the émigrés, now!"
Mathieu smirked. Then he glowed. "I declare to you, citizen, that if I were to meet one of those scorpions—those vipers, as I have termed them—I would not hesitate a moment to——"
"To denounce him, of course," said La Vireville, helping himself to wine.
"No, citizen, to kill him with these hands!"
"Ma foi," said La Vireville gravely, "if you ply the sword, citizen, as ably as the pen, France may well be proud of you."
Mathieu, much flattered, was beginning an answer, when the door opened and the little boy's guardian reappeared. The poet turned round.
"I trust your charge is recovered!" said he ingratiatingly. "A most interesting child!"
"Thank you," replied the other rather coldly, as he returned to his place; "my nephew was merely overtired." And he ordered coffee, while La Vireville secretly studied him. He looked, thought the Chouan, a person who could neither be bullied nor flustered, a man in whose veins ran some unusually cold liquid. How was he to get him out of the way? Besides, was it certain that the little boy with him was Anne-Hilarion? That he must know.
Absorbed in these speculations he paid scant attention to the conclusion of the Ode, which its author had the obligingness to read again for his benefit and for that of the returned guest, who drank his coffee very slowly, but appeared to be interested in neither of his companions. And before very long the Citizen Pourcelles, seeing no fresh worlds to conquer, drifted out, followed, after a moment's hesitation, by La Vireville, who buttonholed him at the door of the hostelry, to say that he could not let him go without thanking him for the pleasure which he had afforded him.
A very little of this balm, dexterously applied, sufficed to get out of the poet a description of the little boy upstairs sufficiently detailed to satisfy La Vireville that he was indeed Anne-Hilarion.
And then, Mathieu having at last taken his departure, La Vireville was left at the door of the inn, revolving plans. It was tempting to go upstairs now, while the man was below, and (if he could find the right room) slip out of the place with the child. But he would be tracked at once. No plan was sound which did not provide, somehow, for the disposal of Anne's captor. La Vireville was not in the least inclined to boggle at the idea of putting a knife into that gentleman if an opportunity occurred; the difficulty was less to provide that opportunity than to get rid of the ensuing corpse. To go in and quarrel with the man would only lead to tumult and imprisonment. Yet if he delayed and followed the two to-morrow, waiting for fortune to smile upon him, they would all three, with every hour, be nearing Paris and leaving the coast farther behind them, and adding thereby to the length and risk of the return journey.
At any rate he would, he decided, stay at the inn for the night, that is, unless Anne and his 'uncle' were proceeding.
"I want a quiet room," he said to the patron. "You can give me one at the back if you choose." And, the apartment in question being shown to him, he further expressed a hope that there was no one near who would come late to bed and disturb him.
"There is no other guest in the Hôtel du Faisan," replied the landlord, "but the citizen downstairs and his little nephew, and they sleep in Number Nine, which is at the other end of the corridor, as you see. And probably the citizen will retire to bed early, because of the child."
"Tiresome," commented the émigré, "to share a room with a child, and to have to regulate your hours of repose accordingly."
"That," said the landlord, with a slightly offended air, "is not really necessary in this case. Number Nine has an inner room opening out of it."
(3)
The fruits of the reflections to which, after this colloquy, the Chevalier de la Vireville abandoned himself in his bedroom were manifested between one and two in the morning, when he stood outside the door which the patron had pointed out at the end of the passage. He had groped his way thither in the darkness, not venturing to bring a candle. At this door he now knocked with extreme gentleness, then again a little louder, and, still receiving no answer, he tried the handle. To his surprise it turned, and the door opened.
"Odd!" thought the intruder. "Mme. de Chaulnes' emissary is of a singularly trustful nature." And he slipped in with great caution.
The room was absolutely dark, but not silent. A heavy snoring proceeded from the bed, and was, indeed, the only evidence of its whereabouts. "I had not somehow thought him a snorer," reflected La Vireville. "At any rate one knows that he sleeps. Now I wonder whereabouts is that inner room?" Very softly he breathed Anne's name in the close darkness. Nothing but snores answered him.
It was obvious that by feeling round the walls he would arrive in time at the door, shut or open, of the other room, for whose presence the landlord had vouched. La Vireville began this circumnavigation (so he discovered) in the neighbourhood of the washstand; proceeded a little—going very slowly and quietly, and feeling carefully with his hands—passed a hanging press, the fireplace, and began to be conscious that he was approaching the bed. He stopped, not wishing to collide with it, and at that moment found his hands resting on something thrown over the back of a chair. And that something was—yes, there could be no doubt—a pair of corsets.
"Ciel!" exclaimed the petrified émigré below his breath. Wild ideas scurried instantly through his brain, as that Anne's companion was really of the corset-wearing sex, or that he had a woman with him, or—— Then a simpler explanation visited him; he had, in the darkness without, mistaken the room, and his present business was to get out of this apartment, whoever were its tenant, as quickly and as quietly as possible. If the snoring fair one should wake! . . . It was a very long minute before he found himself outside the door again.
He set forth the second time with a candle, and found that he had, indeed, mistaken the number. Number Nine was two doors farther on. He could only hope that the snorer would continue the sound sleep in which he had left her, since what he contemplated doing in Number Nine might cause some noise.
He knocked gently at the door of that apartment.
There was instantly a movement within, followed by a sound as of someone getting out of or off the bed. He knocked again, and then the door was unlocked, and opened a foot or two by the man whom La Vireville sought. He was half-dressed, and had a pistol in his hand. There was a lamp burning in the room.
"May I come in, citizen?" asked La Vireville mildly, facing the barrel with all the appearance of innocent intent. "I wish to speak with you on important business."
The occupant of Number Nine looked at him straight and searchingly with his strange light eyes. Then, still keeping his visitor covered, he moved aside for him to enter, and closed the door behind him, locking it.
La Vireville's immediate dread, on entering, was of finding Anne-Hilarion there, or at least awake in the inner room,—whose door he saw ajar in front of him,—to recognise him, as he surely would, with a cry, and spoil everything. "Shall I close this door?" he suggested, and, turning his back on the pistol, he shut the door which faced him. "We do not want to wake the boy, and it is about him that I have come to speak to you."
"You choose a very strange time for the errand, citizen," observed M. Duchâtel, but he lowered the pistol.
"Yet you were expecting me, were you not?" queried La Vireville, glancing at the bed and the book lying open on it. "She told you, of course, that she might send me? On the whole it seemed best, though to be sure he—you know whom I mean—will suffer by it." Anne's gaoler was, he trusted, gravelled by this pronouncement, which was devoid of meaning even to himself; but it was impossible to tell. The man with the goat's eyes merely said curtly:
"I saw you downstairs with that fool of a versifier. Why did you not speak to me then?"
"Juste ciel!" exclaimed the émigré, putting down his candle. "What imprudence! You know her recommendation!"
"I don't know your business—or your credentials!" snapped the other.
"I will show you both," quoth La Vireville sweetly; and, opening his coat, he pulled out the thin leather case in which he had put the passports. From this he carefully drew forth Anne-Hilarion's, and spread enough of it before his adversary's vision to show him the boy's name.
"Why, what have you there?" exclaimed M. Duchâtel, shaken out of his self-possession. And he added something under his breath about a trick and an old vixen, while, eager for a fuller sight or complete possession of the document, he hastily laid down the pistol on the mantelpiece.
It was the moment for which the Chouan had been waiting. He gave the passport bodily into those incautious hands, and a second later smote their owner with exceeding force on the point of the jaw. M. Duchâtel staggered back, his arms going wide, and the passport flew half across the room as La Vireville followed up with a smashing blow over the heart. The tall mahogany bedpost, which the kidnapper's head next violently encountered, finished La Vireville's work for him with much completeness, but before the inanimate body could slide to the floor La Vireville had grabbed at it and pulled it on to the bed.
"If I have killed him!" he thought, as he bent over his victim, for it looked rather like it. "No; that kind does not die of a good honest blow." With luck, however, he might be unconscious for hours, but it was as well to be on the safe side; so, since it repelled him to cut the throat of a senseless man, he tied his feet with the bell-pull, which he hacked down for the purpose, his hands with the curtain cords. Then he stuffed a towel into his mouth, tied it in position with another, and flung the quilt entirely over him.
He had already possessed himself of M. Duchâtel's papers, reserving their perusal, however, for a more favourable opportunity, and now, picking up Anne-Hilarion's passport, he tiptoed to the door of the inner room, and listened for a moment. Singularly little noise, on the whole, had attended his assault on Anne's guardian, and there was complete silence the other side of the door, yet La Vireville's heart was nearer his mouth than it had yet been, for a child's shrill scream either of joy or terror—and Anne must be thoroughly unnerved by this time—might bring the house about them. However, the possibility had to be faced, so he opened the door a little and called the boy's name softly. There was no answer, and as the room was in darkness the rescuer had perforce to take the lamp from the larger apartment, and to enter, shading it with one hand.
The Comte de Flavigny was fast asleep in the wide bed, which looked large in the little room, and in which he himself appeared very small, lonely, and pathetic, with one hand under a flushed cheek and the other clutching fast the edge of the patchwork quilt. "The poor baby!" thought La Vireville, but had no time to spend upon sentiment. The main thing, for both their sakes, was to wake him without startling him.
"If I were really the nurse whose duties I now seem to be taking upon myself," thought the Chouan, "I should know better what to do."
He put down the lamp and stooped over the child, shaking the small shoulder very gently, and calling him by name, a hand ready to clap over his mouth if he should scream. At the third or fourth repetition of his name Anne-Hilarion stirred.
"It is not time, Elspeth," he murmured rather crossly, and buried his face in the pillow. "It is not time to get up, I tell you!"
"But it is," asserted La Vireville; "high time. Anne, my little one. . . ." He put his arms under him and lifted him up a trifle.
Anne gave a great sigh and opened his eyes. "Is it thou, Papa? I dreamed—I had such a horrible dream. . . ." Then he returned more fully to waking life. "Who is it?" he said shrilly, beginning to struggle in the strong arms like a captured bird.
"It is I, my child—your friend the Chevalier," said La Vireville, kissing him. "Don't make a noise, little cabbage! See, I am going to take you back to England. But you must be quiet, above all things!"
Anne-Hilarion looked up into his face, the fear in his eyes changed to an almost incredulous joy. "Oh, M. le Chevalier!" he exclaimed. Then he threw his arms round his friend's neck and held him very tight. "Oh, how glad I am! how good of you to come!" he whispered fervently. "But the—that other man in there?"
"He will not trouble us—not, at least, if we are quick. Get into your clothes, Anne, faster than you have ever done in your life. Can you get into them?" asked the Chouan a little doubtfully, setting the half-clothed figure down upon the bed, and looking round in the lamplight for more garments.
"Already it is many weeks since I can dress myself," announced the Comte de Flavigny proudly. "But this is my shirt that I have on. I have no nightshirt. He said it did not matter, but I have never before gone to bed in——"
"Never mind," said La Vireville, pitching a few garments on to the bed. They seemed to him ridiculously minute. "How does this go on?"
"That is the wrong way round!" observed Anne, so hilariously that the émigré glanced at the open door and put his finger to his lip. Evidently Anne's faith in him was so great that his mere presence was to him the equivalent of safety.
"Now wait here a moment in the dark," said La Vireville when, between them, a rapid toilet had been effected. "It is only for an instant." He returned with the lamp to the outer room, satisfied himself that Mme. de Chaulnes's emissary was still soundly unconscious under the counterpane, and, unlocking the door, stole out into the passage and listened. There was neither sound nor light anywhere. He went back to Anne-Hilarion.
And, five minutes later, by the simple expedient of letting themselves out of its back door, the Chevalier de la Vireville and his small charge found themselves free of the Hôtel du Faisan et de la Constitution, and standing, under the April stars, between high walls in an unsavoury back lane of Abbeville. It was not, indeed, a propitious hour for the walks abroad of a reputable citizen, still less for those of a boy of tender years, but there was now excellent reason why the open air should appeal strongly to them both. Wherefore La Vireville prayed that fate and the darkness should so favour him, that by six or seven o'clock he should find himself at the little port of St. Valéry-sur-Somme, thirteen miles or so down the river, and that there a still further indulgence of the gods would enable him to hire a boat to return across the Channel. For to go back to Boulogne or Calais would be madness, and the chief recommendation of St. Valéry, besides the fact of its being a harbour, was that it lay off all the main roads between those greater ports and Paris. Even then it would be hard enough to get a boat without exciting suspicion. But the Fates had been hitherto so kind that he must go on trusting them.
"I shall have to carry you most of the way, child, so I had best begin now," he whispered, and picked up his half-sleepy, half-excited charge.
CHAPTER IX
The Trois Frères of Caen
But Fortune, after whom Fortuné de la Vireville had been somewhat ironically named, had all his life taken away with one hand what she had given him with the other. So now she granted to him to get clear of the town of Abbeville, to find unmolested the way to St. Valéry, to meet thereon none to question or stay him, to arrive there a little before six, when the life of the small port was already bustling, to perceive, lounging on the quayside, a seafaring individual whose countenance seemed to promise accessibility to a bribe . . . and to overhear, at that very moment, a piece of news which made all attempt at bribing him useless. For it was quite clear, from a conversation going on, within easy earshot, between two master mariners, one of whom had evidently just come into harbour, that the greater part of the Brest squadron had come up in the night, and was even now cruising between Dieppe and Boulogne.
"Nine sail of the line, and I don't know how many frigates." Was ever such ill-luck! The fugitives were clean cut off, that way, from the shores of England, while on the road behind them were hastening, or would shortly hasten, the justly-incensed officials of the town of Abbeville. La Vireville knew an instant's real despair, and his fingers tightened involuntarily on the small hand in his. They must get back to England. But they could not—at least not by the way of his choice, the most direct and obvious way, the Channel. That path was barred before them. Of course there was another road. If they could only reach that outpost of England, Jersey! But it was the deuce of a long journey, and since the sea was now denied them, they must go by land till they reached the coast of the Cotentin, a far more hazardous route, armed though La Vireville now was with the fairly extensive powers conveyed to him by M. Duchâtel's papers. . . . Well, they must make the best of a bad business, and the first step was to remove themselves from the harbour, where curious glances were already beginning to be cast at him and his small companion. He must leave as few traces as possible for the inquirers from Abbeville when they came.
La Vireville was, in fact, actually turning away from the shed by which they were standing, when his eyes fell on a vessel at the quayside which he had not previously noticed, a schooner-rigged barque of some three hundred tons burthen, on whose broad stern, surrounded by flourishes, could be read her name and port of origin—the Trois Frères of Caen. It was this legend which caused him suddenly to stay his steps and to give vent to a murmured exclamation. What if the fleet of the Republic were cruising along the coast from Dieppe to Boulogne! With his face set, not for England, but for a more westerly French port, and the tricolour floating over him, he could pass unscathed through that fleet even if it were encountered. They would go to Caen—if the barque were shortly putting to sea and if the captain would take them. And from Caen, ten or twelve hours' posting would bring them to the shore of the Cotentin, to Granville, or to Carteret, the nearest port of all France to Jersey. It was an excellent scheme, could it be put in practice, and one possessing an advantage of its own, that by taking to the water at once they would have a very good chance of breaking the scent.
La Vireville looked carefully at what he could see of the Trois Frères. A certain subdued bustle among her small crew seemed to indicate an early departure, which was good. The next problem was the mind of the captain. If that were he, red-faced, blue-eyed, standing near the rail with a pipe in his mouth and occasionally issuing an order, he looked as if he might be open to persuasion. At least the attempt should be made.
All this while Anne-Hilarion had stood patiently, his hand in his rescuer's, asking no questions, and evidently little disposed, after his unwonted night, to take an interest even in the shipping. The émigré bent down to him.
"Anne," he said in a low voice, "I am going to ask the man on that ship to take us to Caen. We cannot go straight to England, as I had hoped. Now you must be sure to bear me out in what you hear me say, even if it is not exactly true. I shall have, I think, to pretend that you are my nephew, so you must remember to call me uncle—never anything else. Very likely I shall pretend also that we live at Caen. You must not say anything about England. You understand, little one?"
"Yes," replied Anne-Hilarion, lifting a rather grimy and pallid face. Then he gave a little sigh, as one who makes a reluctant sacrifice of truth to necessity. And indeed he was a very truthful child; yet La Vireville more correctly interpreted his emotion.
"You want your breakfast, mon petit, do you not? Never mind, you shall soon have it. Only help me to soften the heart of this sea-captain."
And, approaching the Trois Frères, the émigré hailed the smoker.
"Are you the master of this ship, citizen?"
The sailor removed his pipe. "Mate," he replied laconically. "Master just coming aboard." He indicated with the stem of his pipe another mariner, also red-faced and blue-eyed, who was making his way round a pile of timber towards the gang-plank. Him La Vireville intercepted, hastily filling up in his own mind the gaps in the story designed for his edification, since here Duchâtel's papers were not likely to be of much avail.
"Captain," he began enthusiastically, taking off his hat, "the Supreme Being has surely sent you to a fellow-creature in need!"
The master of the Trois Frères grunted. "Le bon Dieu is good enough for a plain sailor like me," he responded, and the émigré perceived that he had overshot the mark. "What do you want?"
"I want to go to Caen," returned La Vireville simply. "I and my little nephew here. Can you give us a passage?"
The master of the Trois Frères regarded La Vireville and his nephew. "No," he replied, with equal simplicity. "Why should I? I'm a trading vessel, not a packet."
The petitioner came nearer and dropped his voice. "If you will grant me the favour of a word or two in private," he said, "I will tell you why I ask. It is for a most pressing family matter—an affair, I may say, almost of life and death . . . and an affair of haste."
"Come on board then," said the master-mariner briefly, and led the way over the gang-plank to the cabin.
It was that neat little cabin with its shining brass fittings, therefore, which witnessed the apotheosis of the Chevalier de la Vireville as a liar. Even at the time a part of himself was watching the other, the speaking half, with an amused wonder, as he unfolded his tale, recounting how he was hastening, or wished to hasten, to Caen on this most pressing family matter. He had sent Anne-Hilarion to the other end of the cabin, and himself sat, with the captain, at the table in the middle.
"The fact is," he said in lowered tones, after a short exordium, "that my brother's wife has run away from him, and we have reason to believe that she has gone to Caen."
"With her lover, I suppose," finished the sailor bluntly.
"No," said La Vireville; "that is the whole point. My brother believes that he has not yet joined her, though on the way to do so. Hence, citizen, my need of haste. I want to arrive at Caen before it is too late, and to that end I am taking my brother's little son with me to plead his father's cause, and to see if he cannot persuade his unfortunate mother to return."
It was only because he felt sure that Anne, however willing he might be, would inevitably make a slip if required constantly to address him as Papa, that La Vireville had cast himself for the part of uncle in this speedily-imagined drama. Otherwise he might have played the part of the stricken husband rather than that of the sympathetic brother. Indeed, there would have been an advantage in the former rôle, for it would have spared him the captain's next and very natural question:
"Why the deuce does not your brother go after his wife himself?"
La Vireville made a gesture, and throwing his brother from a restive horse some seven days ago, remorselessly broke his leg.
"Where does he live, did you say?"
The émigré domiciled him distantly at Lyons, creating him at the same time a lawyer.
"I know Lyons well," observed the mariner unexpectedly. "You are an affectionate brother, citizen, and you have certainly made extraordinary speed if you have come from Lyons since that leg was broken a week ago."
This was unfortunately true, and La Vireville was forced to assign a date a little more remote to the accident, and to say he had made a slip of the tongue, proceeding afterwards to lay stress on the speed which the lover also might be presumed to be using.
"Well, my friend," remarked the sailor, "speed was never a characteristic of the Trois Frères. Moreover, I have a port or two of call, Dieppe among them. I cannot for the life of me see why you should not go to Caen by land, if you want to get there quickly. If you could post from Lyons to St. Valéry in—how many days did you say?—you ought to make Caen by nightfall!"
"Citizen captain," responded the harassed romancer earnestly, "speed, after all, is not everything in this case! Secrecy is even more important—let me explain to you how important, at this juncture." And he developed this theme, investing his brother's wife's lover with much money and influence, all of which he would use without scruple to circumvent the would-be rescuer, did he know his route. And, acutely conscious all the while of the improbability of his story, La Vireville concluded with a moving reference to the innocent child, about, perhaps, to lose his mother for ever, to the sanctity of the domestic hearth in danger of violation, and to the purity of moral principles inculcated by the glorious Republic. But the rhetoric which, a couple of years ago, would not have failed to move a demagogue who sent a daily score of heads to the guillotine, appeared to be without power over a peaceable and straightforward mariner. The orator indeed, feeling that he was wasting his time, and preparing in addition a net which would probably trip up his own feet, ceased at last disheartened.
His surprise was, therefore, all the greater when the master of the Trois Frères said slowly, "Very well, I will give you a passage to Caen." He fingered his chin in a dubious sort of way, looking, however, at his guest with a blue directness of gaze which was anything but undecided, and which the latter could only hope that he was supporting with sufficient firmness. "I suppose your papers are all in order?" he added.
The crucial moment had arrived, for neither Duchâtel's papers nor his own could very well be made to bear out the Chevalier de la Vireville's story. But the latter laughed cheerfully. "For what do you take me, captain?" he replied. "Do you want to see them?" He began to thrust a hand into his breast.
"No, no! It's the business of the port officer, not mine. Too many papers and nonsense of that kind nowadays," said the sailor, who appeared to have conservative tendencies. "And, by the way, the port officer has already been aboard. Well, if there is any trouble later on, you must represent yourselves as stowaways. Down in the afterhold, you understand, and did not come out till we had cleared the river, and I was not going to delay by putting back to land you."
Nothing would have suited the voyager better than to live the life of a stowaway the whole time, especially if they were going to put into Dieppe, so he received this suggestion warmly. The captain then named his terms, and said he had a spare cabin which would do for his passenger and the boy; after which he slewed round in his chair and stared at Anne, who, kneeling on a locker, had his nose pressed to one of the small stern windows.
"Tell the child to come here," he said. "What is his name?"
"An . . . Annibal," replied La Vireville brilliantly, feeling that "Anne" savoured too much of the old régime, but not equal himself to calling him consistently by a name too dissimilar. "You will not, captain, out of humanity, mention his mother to him, nor why we are going to Caen? Annibal!"
Anne-Hilarion looked round, startled, at this unusual appellation, but seeing his friend's outstretched hand, understood and came. The captain studied his tired, sleepy, dirty little face, his tangled curls, his good but hastily put on clothes . . . and La Vireville had the sudden wonder whether those small kerseymere breeches that reached so nearly to his armpits bore inside the name of an English maker, or whether they were the work of Elspeth's fingers. Anyhow, the sailor was not likely to investigate the point.
"A little sea-air will do the child good," remarked the latter. "And a meal, I think, as soon as we are out of harbour, as we shall be before long. Don't you agree with me, my boy?"
("Why did I not tell Anne on no account to let fall a word of English?" thought La Vireville to himself. "But I do not suppose he will.")
No; for the Comte de Flavigny naturally responded to a query in French by an answer in the same tongue. And he said simply and politely:
"If you please, Monsieur."
"Eh?" ejaculated the seaman, and a gleam of speculation shot suddenly into his blue eyes. La Vireville felt as if he were sitting on a red-hot chair. He and the child between them had been a little unfortunate, with the Supreme Being on the one hand and that forbidden term of social address on the other—returning to use though it was among the upper classes.
The captain, however, merely shook his head.
"You seem old-fashioned, my boy," he remarked drily, and, rising, went to the door and called to the mate.
Some three-quarters of an hour later the Trois Frères was warping slowly out of the basin, and La Vireville, immense relief in his heart, and the hungry Anne-Hilarion on his knee, was giving the child, as they awaited breakfast, a further lesson in the things that he was not to say.
CHAPTER X
Happenings in a Postchaise
(1)
Anne-Hilarion was sorry to say good-bye to the Trois Frères at Caen, and all the way up the river from the little port at Ouistreham he sat quietly on deck with a pensive expression. That the vessel's speed at sea had not been very noticeably greater than that with which she now approached the spires of the town distressed him not at all. Everything about her had been delightful, from her dolphin figurehead to her old-fashioned poop, and he only regretted that M. le Chevalier had not allowed him to chatter to her crew as much as he desired.
La Vireville too owed the old barque gratitude. Whether her master really believed his story or no, he had kept to his contract, and asked few supplementary questions. It had been a fine breezy morning when the émigré stood on her deck as she lumbered along the coast towards Dieppe, and looked up at the tricolour beating at the mizen, reflecting that it was the first time he had ever sailed beneath this parvenu flag of his country. Two or three miles out at sea a couple of frigates were visible, the rearguard of the Brest fleet. Against those vessels that flag was their talisman. But he had not looked at it with love for all that.
The alluring prospect of a long ride in a postchaise had been purposely held out to the Comte de Flavigny as he regretfully left the Trois Frères, clutching the striped and polished foreign shell which the captain had given him at parting. It was true that there were some rather unpleasant formalities to be gone through first, in a place which he was told was M. le Maire's office, where a man with a red, white, and blue scarf tied in a great bow—a man whom he instinctively disliked—asked M. le Chevalier a great many questions, and looked at him, Anne-Hilarion, very suspiciously. At last, however, he wrote something on the papers which M. le Chevalier had produced, and then they went to a little hôtel and had a meal, and presently Anne was being assisted into a two-horsed postchaise not quite like those he had seen in England.
"All's well that ends well!" said M. le Chevalier, his mouth relaxing, as with great crackings of the postilion's whip they rolled through the streets of Caen. "They were suspicious of thy good uncle, Anne . . . Annibal, I should say. Imagine, they were disinclined to believe what he said—he who has always been noted for his veracity. But the papers of thy other uncle—the one we left behind at Abbeville, in . . . in bed—convinced them at last."
"You had, perhaps, to invent some more histories about us," suggested his fellow-traveller.
"My nephew, I had. However, they need not concern you. Our kinship still continues."
"Of that," remarked the Comte de Flavigny earnestly, "I am glad." He slipped his hand under his friend's arm. "That other, I did not like him. Could you be my uncle in England also, do you think?"
"Yes, little cabbage," said the Chouan, pulling a curl. "I shall be delighted, once in England again, to assume any relationship you please. At present I feel something like an inexperienced grandmother."
Anne-Hilarion gave a squeak of laughter and hugged his arm. "You are so amusing," he said, looking up at La Vireville with appreciative eyes. "How long before we get to England, M. le Chevalier?"
"That I am afraid I cannot tell you. Only a few days, I trust. But this is how we hope to get there. We shall arrive to-night at a place called Vire, and tomorrow we shall go on to Granville, which, as perhaps you know, Anne, is the nearest port, but one, of all France to Jersey. I think, however, that we shall not enter Granville itself, but that somewhere on the coast we will hire a fisherman's boat to take us to Jersey. And Jersey, you know, is English, and from there it is easy to go to England. Also, after we have left Vire, we shall be on the edge of the country of the Chouans of Normandy, and so we may find friends. And thus I have hopes that there will be no difficulty in procuring a boat, provided that nothing disagreeable happens to us in the town of Vire; for in towns, my dear Anne, they have not that entire faith in the candour of your uncle that we could wish."
"Another boat!" exclaimed Anne. "I shall like that, if the sea is not rough. And then another after that! For Jersey is an island, is it not?"
"You are singularly well informed, nephew. Jersey is an island, and one, moreover, which is a good deal nearer to France than to England. Very probably, you will go home in an English man-of-war. I think you are enjoying your tour in France, are you not, nephew Annibal?"
"Yes, since you came, M. le Chevalier," replied the child. "But I do want to see Papa soon, and Grandpapa, and Elspeth, and——" He checked himself with a sigh. "I suppose I shall never see it again. M. le Chevalier, do you think the grey cat will have eaten it?"
"Eaten what, my child?" asked the émigré, looking down into the dark eyes, clouded with a sudden apprehension. "Ah, you mean your goldfish?"
Anne nodded, the tiniest little droop at the corners of his mouth.
"I think," said the Chevalier de la Vireville, taking his hand, "that we shall find, when we get to Cavendish Square, that Elspeth has contrived to bring away the goldfish from the house of the old ladies, and that it will be swimming round and round on Grandpapa's table in the library."
A gleam of hope passed over the Comte de Flavigny's grave face, and died away as he said dolefully, "I do not see how Elspeth could find it, and perhaps the old ladies would not let her in. And . . . and . . . where is Elspeth?"
"I am sure that she is quite safe," answered La Vireville in a consoling tone. "She will be in London, you may be certain, before we are. . . . My child, what is the matter?"
For Anne-Hilarion, overtaken by a sudden whirlwind of sobs, had buried his head in the corner of the chaise.
(2)
It was the inevitable breakdown come at last. Had La Vireville reflected a moment, he need not have been so startled; rather would he have felt surprise that it had not happened earlier. For a child of Anne-Hilarion's tender years to have been through so much without the occurrence of something of the sort would have been phenomenal, had his companion paused to think of it. But the little boy was so sedate in his ways that he gave the impression of being older than he was, and La Vireville was not experienced as a nurse. However, some explanation of this seizure did dawn upon him after a moment.
"My poor little rabbit!" he exclaimed, putting his arm round him. "There, don't cry so—it is all right! You will soon see Elspeth again; and meanwhile, here is your uncle to look after you."
But the little rabbit did not, apparently, want even his adoptive uncle. He burrowed yet farther into the cushions of the carriage, his whole body convulsed with weeping. Fragmentary ejaculations of "Papa! Papa!" mingled with appeals for his grandfather and for Elspeth emerged from his sobs, which now started to partake of the character of screams. His grief was getting beyond his control, and La Vireville began to be alarmed. Not only did he think that such abandonment of distress must be bad for the child, to whose nature it seemed so foreign, but it also occurred to him that a passer-by, or even possibly the postilion, hearing such testimony of affliction, and becoming curious as to what was going forward in the chaise, might institute an investigation which could hardly fail of being disastrous. Anne in this state would certainly give the impression that he was being kidnapped—by his rescuer. The émigré pulled up the window nearest to him, which was open, and redoubled his efforts to quiet the boy.
"I want to go home!" screamed Anne. "I want Papa! I want Papa! I want my goldfish!" He beat with his fists against the dingy cushions, and even repulsed his dear Chevalier's attempts at consolation. Fortuné hardly knew him for the same child.
And meanwhile they were slowing down at the entrance to Villers-Bocage, a small place which would not have called for this attention but for the fact that the whole infant population appeared to be at play upon the road, thereby causing their pace to slacken.
"Anne, you must be quiet!" said his 'uncle,' giving him a little shake, and speaking with a severity which he had never thought to employ towards him.
He might as well have tried to restrain a thunderstorm; he had better have been dealing with a refractory Chouan. Anne was now physically incapable of obeying him, nor were the narrow confines of the chaise sufficient to enclose the torrents of his woe.
La Vireville's heart sank as the vehicle came to a standstill, and in another moment the head of the postilion, a Norman youth with a flaming crop of hair, appeared like a setting sun at the window. La Vireville instantly motioned to him to proceed. The youth continued to make signs outside the glass, while other heads, of a rustic type, began to gather behind him. At last, rapidly losing his temper, La Vireville let down the glass.
"What the devil have you pulled up for?" he demanded. "Go on, confound you! We don't want to stop here!"
"I thought something was wrong," responded the youth, though how he could have heard anything through the beat of his horses' hoofs was hard to say. But by now Anne's lamentations, flowing through the opened window, were convincing the inhabitants of the little town that the postilion's surmise was just.
"There is nothing whatever wrong," asserted La Vireville shortly, and, on the surface, mendaciously. "Drive on at once!" And he began to pull up the window.
Ere he could fulfil his intention a large, knotted hand was laid upon it, and its frame became the setting for another study in genre—a large, solemn, be-whiskered old face surmounted by a hat of ancient fashion decorated with a tricolour cockade. The sight of this emblem, and still more of the parti-coloured sash crossing its wearer's breast, caused in the Chouan an outburst of silent blasphemy. From absurd the situation had become dangerous. The worst had come upon them—the intervention of officialdom—and that in a place where they need never have encountered it but for Anne-Hilarion's unfortunate access of woe.
"Well, citizen, and why have you stopped here?" demanded this apparition.
"Parbleu, citizen, that is just what I want to know!" ejaculated the émigré, a trifle taken aback. "The postilion took it into his head to pull up without orders, because he said he heard my little nephew crying—as you perceive."
"In truth, I do perceive it," returned the ancient drily, with his hand to his ear to catch La Vireville's reply through the all-pervading sound of sobbing. "And what is he crying for?"
Since La Vireville could hardly reply, "Because he is suddenly overcome with longing for his émigré father and his English grandfather in London, whither I am taking him," he said, much more tamely, "Because, citizen, he is tired, and perhaps a little hungry."
The old man bent his gaze upon Anne, who, looking up at that moment, suspended a howl to return the compliment. "Poor child!" he said unexpectedly. "You are in haste, citizen?"
"Oh, so-so," replied La Vireville. It did not seem altogether desirable to admit that he was, very much in haste.
"You have come from far?"
"Only from Caen this morning. Do you wish to see my papers, citizen procureur-syndic?" For the Chouan guessed that he spoke with that official—in less Republican phrase, the mayor.
"Presently," said the other. "For the moment I was going to suggest that as my daughter is, I know, preparing some excellent soup for déjeuner, and since the little boy is crying because he is hungry . . ."
"You are too kind, citizen," said La Vireville, at once touched, astonished, and full of a wish that he had not ascribed Anne's tears to a quite problematical appetite. "But I fear that, though not unduly pressed, we can hardly spare the time to get out. And indeed we have some food with us."
"But not good hot soup, I feel sure," said this benevolent old mayor. "See, I will send for a bowl of it while you show me your papers. One of my grandchildren here shall go for it. Here, Toinette, run off to your mother and tell her——" The rest was lost as he turned away from the window.
"I don't want any soup," immediately said (like a later famous character) Anne-Hilarion. He spoke peevishly, and, what was much worse, in English. The apparition of the unknown official had distinctly sobered him, but he was still intermittently heaving with sobs.
"My child," interposed La Vireville in the same tongue, since he dared not say it in French, "I have told you before that you must not talk English!" And he went on quickly in his own language, "Take the bowl of soup when it comes, to please this kind old man, and then we shall be able to go on again."
"But I don't want it!" repeated Anne—reverting, however, to French. Then he added, just as the procureur-syndic was turning back to the window again, "Why must I not talk English, M. le Chevalier?"
"Oh, untamable tongue of childhood!" thought the luckless Chouan. Anne had called him by his title too! The situation hung on the mayor's deafness. La Vireville frowned at Anne, said meaningly in a low tone, "Thy uncle wishes thee to drink the soup, Annibal!" and immediately after, in a loud one to the old man, "Will the citizen procureur-syndic see my papers now? He will find them in good order." For on that score at least, since his interview at Caen, he was happy.
As the citizen expressed his desire and readiness to do so without any demur, it seemed clear that he had not caught the child's remarks, so that Fortuné was not called upon to put into practice the wild expedients which had scurried through his fertile brain—as, to assert that his proper name was Chevalier (which would not be borne out by those papers in the name of Duchâtel) or (on the chance that the sound of English was unfamiliar to the procureur-syndic) that Anne-Hilarion had been pedantically brought up to speak Latin on occasions. He began to pull out his papers and was preparing to leave the chaise, when the mayor suggested that he should enter instead, and since the traveller could find no good reason against this, he gathered the now tearless Anne-Hilarion out of the way—for there were only two seats—and set him on his knee, while the old man got out his spectacles and wetted his thumb for the proper perusal of the documents.
Then the soup came, borne by an elderly, responsible person of about ten. Neither she, however, nor the train of smaller fry who accompanied her were exempt from curiosity, and clambered up on both steps of the chaise to witness its consumption. Anne received the refreshment with resignation. It was all very kind and homely and unexpected, this gift from the enemy, but if anybody ever realised the discomfort caused by coals of fire on the head, it was M. de la Vireville. Nor was he unaware of the ludicrousness of his position, conscious that possible pursuers on the road from Caen might overtake them because their postchaise, instead of hastening towards the coast, was stationary in the place of Villers-Bocage, while a little boy unwillingly drank soup in the company of the official who ought to be arresting them.
The old mayor, who was taken with Anne because, as he explained, his numerous grandchildren were mostly girls, would plainly have liked to talk to him—a proceeding which, in the child's present unnerved state, would surely have resulted in some disastrous revelation or other. But Anne, for once, was not inclined to converse, and also there was the soup to be disposed of. Never, to La Vireville's knowledge, had soup been so hot in this world; it seemed to him that it must have been specially heated by demons in a lower, so long did it take to consume.
At last—at long last—the ordeal was over, the nearly empty bowl handed back to Toinette, her train ejected from the steps, the postilion on his horse, the charitable old procureur-syndic back, smiling, on the stones of the place. The horses jerked forward . . .
"Well, nephew Annibal," began La Vireville, "of all the uncomfortable quarters of an hour——" But nephew Annibal, worn out by emotion and full of good soup, had fallen instantly asleep like a puppy, his head against the Chouan's breast.
(3)
Fortuné shifted the child so that he should lie more comfortably. Tear-stains were on Anne-Hilarion's cheeks, and round his mouth traces of the refreshment which his harassed uncle had forced upon his appetite. "Pauvre mioche!" thought 'Monsieur Augustin,' looking down at the head now resting on his arm. And he thought also, "I never knew he had it in him to be so troublesome!"
For himself, he fell into reflection over recent events—the first opportunity, so it seemed to him, that he had had to review them in quiet, for on board the Trois Frères, a peaceable enough refuge in itself, he felt always on the point of having to talk to the captain or to fend off awkward inquiries. Yet it was in the captain's cabin, after breakfast that first morning, that Anne had given him a more or less detailed account of happenings at Rose Cottage; how M. Duchâtel had taken him to the Cathedral and had been very friendly and talkative, and of the particularly sound sleep which had come upon him, Anne-Hilarion, that evening. It had needed questioning to bring out the story of Mlle. Angèle's nasty-tasting posset, for he was too innocent to connect that draught with his slumbers. No details, however, could be furnished of the departure from Dover, anxious as Fortuné was to obtain them, for the simple reason that the small traveller had not wakened till midway between England and France, in what he had reported to be "a little ship, not so big as this." From what he could gather La Vireville thought it must have been a lugger, Heaven knew how procured.
On arrival at Calais, M. Duchâtel appeared to have conveyed Anne, frightened, as he admitted, but still somewhat stupefied, to a private house—unidentifiable from the child's description—to have put him to bed and left him behind a locked door, lest, as he put it, his father's enemies should break in and steal him away. For he had told Anne that he was taking him to France by his father's wish, expressed through the old ladies, his father's friends, and the child had believed him. So Anne thought he was going to Verona, and at first was not ill-pleased.
It had been, he thought, afternoon when he had been imprisoned in this way at Calais, and yet they had not left that town till next day; of that Anne was positive. He could give no reason for the delay. La Vireville was driven to suppose that Duchâtel had some secret service business of his own in Calais—possibly unknown to Mme. de Chaulnes, who had spoken so exultantly about the twenty-four hours' start. Moreover, he probably little expected to be pursued so soon. But the delay in Calais had been providential from Fortuné's point of view. He could not help wondering now, or a second or two, whether, supposing the pursued to be at present hunting the pursuer, the soup episode might not prove as providential from Duchâtel's.
That was all the conversation which he and Anne had had on the point at the time, owing to the advent of a sailor into the cabin; but later, that evening in fact, as Anne was looking over the side at the water, tinged with sunset, which heaved slowly past, he suddenly said:
"The ship I came from England in moved about more than this, M. le Chevalier."
"Mon oncle," corrected La Vireville, looking round to see if anyone was in earshot. "Did it, Annibal? Were you frightened?"
"I was down in a cabin," said Anne. "I could not see the sea then. But I knew I was in a ship. And I thought"—he paused, and then went on—"I thought you were drowned, mon oncle, and that it was my fault."
"Thought I was drowned, child? How could that be—and why should it be your fault?"
"Like my dream," said the little boy, staring hard over the bulwark at the sea. "You were drowned because . . . because I . . . I told them things about you." His face was scarlet.
"Well, my child," said the émigré, putting his arm round him, "it does not matter so much if you did." And, seeing signs of still greater emotional discomfort, he embellished this questionable statement. "It does not matter the scratch of a pin. I like to be talked about, Anne—it's a failing of mine! . . . But everybody doesn't, you know, little one. Did you tell them much about anybody else?"
Anne had put his knuckles into his eyes, and in a small and faltering voice had confessed that he had talked about M. de Soucy and a little about M. l'Abbé, because 'they,' the old ladies, were Papa's friends, and he did not know . . .
La Vireville took him on to his knee, and after waiting to see that the captain was not really coming right up to them, whispered to him not to cry. "You are not to blame, child," he went on. "Those old ladies cheated you, as they have cheated older and wiser folk. But there is one thing—a place, not a person . . . I wonder if you told them the name of the place where the expedition is going to land? Can you remember if you did?"
His tone was very gentle as he put the question through Anne's rather tangled curls into his ear, but there was a lively anxiety in his eyes.
"I could not remember," sighed the little boy almost apologetically. "I tried. They said they would give me a crown piece for my money-box if I could. I cannot remember it now."
"Don't try!" said La Vireville hastily, thanking his Maker, though not doubting that the name would eventually be known through some other agency.
"And I said," proceeded Anne, "that if I could remember it I would not tell them—no, that part came in my dream, where the Queen of Elfland was in the boat," he corrected conscientiously. "I said, really, that I often forgot names and remembered them, sometimes, afterwards."
"And did they ask you afterwards? Did M. Duchâtel ask you?"
It appeared that the old ladies had asked him afterwards, and that M. Duchâtel's solicitude on the point, though vain, had been extreme all the way from Calais to Abbeville. But M. Duchâtel had never, it seemed, been actually unkind (it would not have suited his book, thought La Vireville) and it was not till the episode of the Citizen Pourcelles' declamation that the Verona idea had lost its hold on Anne's mind. But then, child though he was, he had gathered from the turgid but unequivocal statements of the Ode that he was not in the company of those who could in any way be described as 'Papa's friends.'
Yet, except for that final shower of tears at Abbeville, it did not appear that the kidnapper had ever had any trouble with the little boy. The rescuer, now, could not say so much.
CHAPTER XI
"Fifty Fathoms deep"
(1)
"We shall never make Jersey with this wind," said the young fisherman.
"We must!" replied La Vireville firmly. "We could run for Gorey if St. Helier is impossible."
The Norman shrugged his shoulders under his faded guernsey. "Much more likely to be blown into St. Malo! She makes a great deal of leeway."
The subject of their conversation lay before them at that moment on the beach, an open sixteen-foot fisherman's boat, broad in the beam, ballasted with stones, and lug-rigged. The unlucky north-east wind, strong and steady, whipped La Vireville's cloak about him, and caused him to put a hasty hand to his hat. It was about nine of the spring evening and very dusk. The lights of the upper town of Granville showed about three miles to the left, along the crest of the high rock that jutted out into the sea, and a scrap of an undesired moon served to emphasise the rate at which the clouds were driving over the sky.
"At any rate we must put to sea," said the émigré, determined to waste no more words. "Get the boat ready, and I will fetch the child, and then help you down with her. Wherever the wind may drive us to, we cannot remain here."
He spoke no less than the truth. There had been a very unpleasant little scene on leaving Vire that morning, from which the Chouan had managed to extricate Anne and himself only by the liberal distribution of bribes. He had been driven to employ the same unsatisfactory method with regard also to their postilion, dismissing him in unusual and suspicious fashion outside Granville. Although the youth (plied in addition by his fare with much strong drink) had promised not to take the empty postchaise into the town, but to return with sealed lips on the road whence he had come, and though his start on that road had actually been witnessed, it was more than probable that he was, at the very moment, back in Granville, if not laying information against his late passengers, at least babbling about them over his cups. Hasty departure was therefore imperative, but the situation of St. Valéry-sur-Somme seemed to be reproduced, with a difference. This time fate (or, in this particular, La Vireville's knowledge) had brought the travellers to a maison de confiance—one of the chain of secret Royalist refuges which stretched along the roads from the coast—had given them a well-disposed fisherman, its master, and a convenient boat, but had denied the wind necessary to the thirty miles that lay between them and Jersey.
François, the fisherman in question, shrugged his shoulders again. "Very well, if you insist. You know the risks you are running. If we weather Chausey, we may be blown on to the Minquiers."
"My friend," retorted La Vireville, "they are nothing to the risks we run by remaining. I prefer the hospitality of the plateau des Minquiers to that of Granville prison. Shall I give you a hand with the boat?"
In the little cottage on the shore the fisherman's young wife was sitting with Anne-Hilarion, very drowsy, on her knee.
"Monsieur," she said, as her husband and the émigré came in, "it is wicked to take this baby to sea on such a night!"
"For that, Madame," replied La Vireville, "you must blame the women who sent him over to France."
The young woman kissed the sleepy little boy and rose with him in her arms.
"I will carry him down to the boat," she said. "You will have your hands full. There is the water-keg, François, and a basket of provisions. If you get within sight of Jersey this time to-morrow you will be lucky. You have the compass—and the nets?"
"Nets!" exclaimed La Vireville. "Ah, I understand." It was as well to have some ostensible reason for being at sea.
They went down the beach, all laden in their way, for even Anne, half asleep though he was, clutched in one hand the foreign shell which the master of the Trois Frères had given him. In spite of the strong wind there were no breakers of sufficient force to make launching difficult. The fisherman's wife deposited her burden and helped to run the boat down. Then she went back, picked up the child, and gave him into the arms of La Vireville, where he stood knee-deep in the swirling water, with François holding on to the boat on the other side.
"Madame, I thank you for lending me your husband," said the Chouan, as he took the boy from her.
"It is only because of this," she answered, indicating the child.
"I know that, but I do not thank you any the less." He put Anne-Hilarion over the side and scrambled on board himself. François followed his example, and began to push off.
"Take the tiller, Monsieur," he said, "and I will hoist the sail. Au revoir, la femme!"
The wind carried away his wife's farewell. Rocking violently at first on the swell, the boat gradually steadied and gathered way as the lug-sail shot up, and at last, close-hauled, she was making her way out of the bay, and La Vireville and his charge were really leaving their native shores.
"Enfin!" exclaimed the former, and as François was now at liberty to steer, he relinquished the tiller and took Anne-Hilarion in his arms.
Once out of the lee of the land the full force of the wind was apparent. The Marie-François—in such manner did the fishing-boat combine the names of her owner and his wife—lay over to it; in the gloom the water rushed white past the gunwale (there was no coaming), and La Vireville had some ado to keep himself and the child in place on the weather side.
"You see!" shouted François, and he eased her a point or two.
He was laying the usual course for Jersey, to the northward of Granville, by the Passage de la Déroute. But the wind was strongly against them, and on their lee, to the left, as they both knew, lay the miles and miles of shoals and broken, half-submerged rocks and islets of the Iles Chausey and the Minquiers, so treacherous a network of reefs that for thirty miles out from the French coast in their direction there was no water more than ten fathoms deep, and few channels that were safe. It was true that this was not the direction which the voyagers wished to take, but it was, unfortunately, the direction of the steadily-increasing wind.
From time to time La Vireville struck a light, looked at the compass and reported, and François would take measures accordingly. On the other tack, however, the Marie-François did not sail so well. After some couple of hours spent in these unprofitable manœuvres, during which they had only progressed a very few miles, La Vireville permitted himself to remark on this fact, and to say resignedly that he supposed they must make up their minds between being driven on to the rocks of Chausey or revisiting the Norman mainland. For himself he preferred Chausey.
"I told you that she made much leeway," replied the owner of the Marie-François rather sulkily. "If she were a bigger boat we might change our course and ride out under the Iles Chausey till morning, when the wind will probably abate, but she is too small for that. Or, if the tide were making, we could find our way inside to the natural harbour that there is by the Grande Ile (always supposing there were no vessels of the Blues doing the same). But the ebb has already begun, and if we got in there we could not get out again, for the channels would be dry."
La Vireville, with Anne huddled up in his arms, reflected. He had sailed too often in just such a small craft between Brittany and Jersey not to know its limitations.
"Then I am afraid we must give up the idea of making Jersey and run for the coast of Brittany," he said at last. "I know it very well between Cap Fréhel and St. Brieuc. In fact"—he hesitated a moment—"I have a command thereabouts. With this wind we could make that part of the coast easily—provided that we are not sighted in the morning by the Blues, either at sea or ashore."
"Very well," agreed the Norman. "Our best plan will be to go between Chausey and the Minquiers. It is dangerous."
"It is better than returning," insisted Fortuné. "I suppose you know the channels well? And we should get some shelter from the lee of the islands of Chausey."
So they went about, and presently the little boat was engaged, in the darkness and the high wind, among that archipelago of dreary and dangerous reefs, of which some rose like needles out of the sea, and some, more deadly still, were only visible at low water. Of such were the most perilous of all, Les Ardentes, which lay in wait at the entry of the passage. And the moon would put aside the flying clouds for a moment, to show them the surf boiling white round some evil splinter of rock standing up in the channel like a warning finger, or the water sucking greedily over an unseen slab of granite. Only François' consummate steering, his steady nerves, and, perhaps, the luck which sometimes attends those who challenge risks, got them safely through. La Vireville kept Anne's eyes covered the whole time.
Even when they were through conditions were not agreeable. When François had set the course fairly for the coast of Brittany they felt the full violence of the wind again, this time, it was true, no longer in their teeth. The sorely-buffeted Marie-François, obliged unceasingly to tack to avoid being driven on to the St. Malo coast, shipped every few minutes a little water, flung half-contemptuously into her by a snarling wave. About two in the morning it became bitingly cold. La Vireville had long ago taken off his cloak to wrap round Anne, and finally he made a kind of bundle of him and put him right in the bows, where, in spite of the lobster-pots and the smell of fish and tarred rope, he thought the child would get more shelter than in the stern. Frightened and sea-sick, the little boy did, however, fall now and again into slumber of a sort, when La Vireville could turn an undivided attention to the management of the sails or to baling.