CHAPTER XIX.
THE FIRST VENTURE.
We turned our faces westward toward the sun, whose last rays were gilding the clouds along the horizon, following the little valley which had been hollowed in the hills by the stream at which we had drunk. As we went on, this valley opened more and more, changing from a rough and precipitous aspect to one smooth and rolling, giving promise of human occupancy. Our most urgent need was food, and I determined to apply for it at the first house we came to, no matter what its appearance,—first with silver, and if that failed, with a loaded pistol as a persuasive.
So I kept a sharp lookout, but for nearly an hour we pressed forward without catching a glimpse of any human habitation save a few shacks long since deserted and falling to decay. Plainly this country had not escaped the blight which had fallen on the rest of France—which swept the peasants into the armies, drove the nobles abroad, and left the fields deserted. Darkness closed in about us as we went; but I still kept my eyes to left and right, in the hope that they might be greeted by a ray of light from some welcome window.
At last my companion, who had kept close at my heels, halted and sank down upon a hummock of earth with a sigh of weariness.
“I fear I must ask a breathing-spell, my friend,” she said.
“Of course,” I answered instantly. “I have been thoughtless;” and I dropped beside her. Even in the darkness I could see by the white face she bent upon me how utterly spent she was, and a sharp twinge of remorse seized me. “I strode along without considering you!”
“You paid me the compliment of thinking me not entirely a weakling,” she corrected, and smiled wearily.
“You turn it skilfully,” I said. “At least, I hope you will discourage any more such compliments.”
“Very well,” she agreed; “I promise. But we must be getting on;” and she attempted to rise.
I caught her arm and held her in her seat.
“We must be doing no such thing!” I retorted. “It is worse than foolish to plunge ahead as we have been doing, half-starved. You are going to remain here and rest. I will make you a bed of grass and leaves in this little hollow, and you will lie here quietly and gaze at the stars, thinking of me as kindly as you can, while I go in search of food. I shall not be long away, and you will be quite safe.”
She sat without answering, watching me while I piled such dry grass as I could find into the little hollow. At last it was ready.
“Now,” I said, turning to her, “if you will rest here——”
“You are very good to me,” she breathed, and took her place upon the couch I had provided, which, I fear, was none too soft.
“Oh, no,” I answered, controlling myself with a mighty effort as I bent above her and assured myself that her cloak was snug about her; “I am not wholly unselfish. I must keep you fresh; I must not permit you to exhaust yourself, or you will be getting ill, and then what should I do?”
“No, I shall not be ill,” she said quite positively. “I am not such a weakling as that!”
“Besides,” I added, “I am frightfully hungry; I must have something to eat, if I commit murder for it.”
“You will not expose yourself?” she asked quickly.
“No; there is no danger,” I assured her.
“I shall pray for you,” she added calmly. “And I fear there is one thing I must ask of you.”
“Ask it,” I said.
“Before I left my room at the château,” she continued, “I chose the heaviest shoes I had——”
There was no need that she should say more. I bent and touched one of the little feet just peeping from beneath the cloak. However heavy the shoes had been, they were certainly far too light for the rough service which had been exacted of them. They were almost in tatters, and I could guess how the sharp stones which had torn the leather had bruised the tender flesh within. Yet she had followed me without a sigh, without a murmur! Impulsively I bent and kissed the instep of the little shoe, then rose unsteadily to my feet.
“I will get you another pair,” I said; “and if I am to have any peace of mind, you must not again permit me to forget your welfare, as I have been doing. With the best intentions in the world, I am only a selfish and obtuse fellow, with a brain not bright enough to think of more than one thing at a time.”
“I saw how your thoughts were occupied,” she protested. “I knew that our safety depended upon you, and I did not wish to disturb you.”
“To disturb me?” I echoed. “Ah, for once, mademoiselle, you were not really kind; for by keeping silent you have done more than that—you have made me suffer. But there!—I am wasting time, and I can guess your hunger by my own. I will go. You are not afraid?”
“No,” she murmured; “and yet I hope that you will not be long.”
“No,” I said; “no;” and not daring to trust myself further, I turned and strode away through the darkness.
Only the biting need for prompt and well-directed action enabled me to master the sweet emotion which those words, so softly uttered, had awakened. But I managed to crush it down, to put it behind me, and to address myself wholly to the task in hand. I must get food at once, and at any price. But food in such a wilderness!
Yet fortune favored me,—or perhaps the country was not such a wilderness as I imagined,—for at the end of ten minutes’ brisk walking I collided with a hedge, and too rejoiced at the discovery to heed the scratches I had sustained, I felt my way along it and came at last to a gate. It was not even latched, so I pushed it open and passed through. Once on the other side of it, I found myself in what seemed an orchard.
Arguing that where there was a hedge, a gate, and an orchard, there must also be a house, I pushed forward among the trees and came out at last into the clear air beyond. At the first glance I perceived a light just ahead of me, and made my way toward it with a deep thankfulness readily imagined. As I drew nearer I saw that the light proceeded from the window of a small house which I was evidently approaching from the rear. I advanced cautiously and looked within. Three men were sitting about a table on which was a bottle of wine and the remains of a meal. They were talking together with great earnestness.
There was no time for hesitation or the weighing of risks, so I waited to see no more, but hastened around the house. It fronted upon a road which seemed wide and well kept—undoubtedly a high-road, and not a mere country lane. A creaking sign proclaimed the place an inn. I raised the latch and entered, and without pausing to look about me sat down at the nearest table and rapped loudly. One of the three men whom I had observed through the window arose and came to me.
“You are the inn-keeper?” I asked.
“Yes,” he answered gruffly, his brows drawn close with annoyance, not in the least in the manner of a man welcoming a customer.
“Well, citizen,” I continued, “I am in great haste—I am on an errand of importance; I must be off at once. Can I have some food to take with me—a fowl, say, and whatever else is at hand; together with two bottles of wine?”
“All that may no doubt be had, citizen,” he answered, relaxing nothing of his sinister expression. “But there are certain difficulties in the way.”
“Money you mean?” and I laughed and threw two silver crowns upon the table. “Well, there it is, and you cannot quarrel with it. I don’t offer you assignats, mind you—and one doesn’t often hear the ring of honest coin nowadays.”
“That is true,” he admitted; and his face relaxed a little as he eyed the money. “But there is yet another difficulty.”
“And what is it?” I demanded.
“The other difficulty,” he answered, watching me keenly, “is that in giving you these provisions I may be succoring an enemy of the Nation.”
I threw myself back in my chair and burst into a roar of laughter. Looking back upon it, there is no moment of my life of which I am more proud than I am of that one.
“An enemy of the Nation!” I repeated, and then fell suddenly silent and affected to study him. “But how am I to know,” I asked at last, “that that description may not really be deserved by you? How am I to know that it is not some villainy against the Nation which you are plotting at that table yonder?”
He started, turned red, shifted under my gaze, and I saw that I had won.
“I swear to you, citizen,” he began; but I cut him short.
“And I also swear to you,” I retorted, “that I am on the Nation’s business, which brooks no delay. If you are a friend of the Nation, give me food; if you are its enemy, refuse it. The Nation knows how to punish, and its hand is heavy. Shall I write your name in my little book, and after it the word ‘suspect’? Come, prove yourself a good citizen, and at the same time get these pieces of silver for your pocket.”
He hesitated yet a moment, going from one foot to the other in perplexity; but the silver, or my arguments, or perhaps both together, carried the day.
“You shall have it,” he said, and went to the farther end of the room, where he opened a cupboard which was at the same time larder and wine-cellar. From it he produced two bottles, a fowl already roasted, and a loaf of bread. As he passed his two companions I fancied that a glance of understanding passed between them. A moment later they pushed back their chairs, bade him a noisy good-night, and left the room.
“How will this do?” asked my host, placing the bottles, the loaf and the fowl on the table before me, his vexation quite vanished.
“Excellently,” I answered, noting with surprise that the fowl had really some flesh upon its bones. “One thing more: this road, I suppose, leads to——”
“Loudun,” he said.
“And from there to Thouars?”
“Undoubtedly.”
“I am on the right track, then,” I said, simulating a sigh of relief. “That is all,” I added; for I saw it was useless, as well as dangerous, to ask for shoes. “The silver is yours;” and while he tested it with his teeth, I placed a bottle in either pocket, and with the loaf under my arm, and the fowl in my hand, opened the door and stepped out into the night.
I had my pistol ready, and looked sharply to right and left, but saw no one. Then, taking care to walk in the middle of the road, I pushed forward at a good pace until I was well away from the inn. I glanced around from time to time, but saw no sign that I was followed nor heard any sound of pursuing footsteps. So telling myself at last that my fears were groundless, I leaped the ditch at the side of the road and retraced my steps, until I came again to the hedge back of the inn. From this I had but to follow the course of the brook, here the merest thread of water, and at the end of ten minutes I was back again at my starting-point. I stopped and bent over the hollow, when a soft hand rose and touched my cheek.
“Is it you, M. de Tavernay?” asked a voice. “Oh, but I am glad! I was beginning to fear for you. What is that in your hand?”
“It is food,” I answered, sitting down beside her and laughing with sheer joy. I drew my knife and severed loaf and fowl alike into two equal portions; then with the point of it drew the corks and placed the bottles carefully in a hollow of the grass, propping them upright with some little stones. “There!” I said, “the meal is served. I think we may dispense with grace, as we must with knives and forks.”
She laughed delightedly as she took the portions I placed in her hands.
“You are a wizard, M. de Tavernay,” she said. “I had expected at most a crust of bread, and you provide a feast.”
“A feast is of value,” I pointed out, “only when it is in one’s stomach.”
“Well, this shall soon be in mine,” she retorted. “Never in my life have I had such an appetite;” and she attacked the food with a vigor which it did me good to see.
Nor was I behind her. Never before or since have I tasted a fowl so tender, bread so sweet, wine so satisfying. It was almost worth the privations we had undergone—it was nature’s compensation for that suffering. And our first hunger past, we took time to pause and chat a little. She had regained all her old spirit, and I am sure that for her, as for me, there was something fascinating and even dangerous in that moment. We forgot past sorrow and future peril; we forgot our present situation and the trials we must still encounter. The moon was rising again over the hills to the east, and revealed, just as it had done the night before, all the subtle delicacy of her beauty. What she was thinking of I know not, but my own thoughts flew back irresistibly to that hour in the garden—that sweet, swift-winged hour!
“But was it only last night?” I murmured, not realizing that I spoke aloud until the words were uttered.
“Indeed, it seems an age away!” she assented absently; and a sudden burst of joy glowed within me.
“So you were thinking of it, too!” I cried, and tried to catch her hand.
“Thinking of what?” she asked, drawing away from me.
“Of the garden—of the few precious moments we passed together there,” I answered eagerly, my eyes on hers.
“On the contrary,” she answered coolly, though I could have sworn she blushed, “I was thinking only that last night I was safe with my friends at the château——”
“Oh!” I said, not waiting to hear more; and I sank back into my seat with a gesture of impatience.
“Though if you had not interrupted my thoughts,” she continued, smiling slyly, “I should doubtless in time have come to the garden scene.”
“In time!” I repeated bitterly. “Of all the hours of my life, that one is ever present with me. It eclipses all the rest.”
“It will fade!” she assured me lightly. “It will fade! As for me, I do not dwell upon it, because I must be careful.”
“Careful?”
“Certainly. Careful not to permit myself to think too tenderly of a man already betrothed. That would be the height of folly. Suppose I should begin to love him!”
“I see you are armed against me,” I said dismally, “and that the poniard of your wit is as sharp as ever.”
“It is the instinctive weapon of our sex,” she explained. “We draw it whenever we scent danger. Once it fails us we are lost.”
“It failed you for a time last night, thank God!” I retorted. “I have that to remember;” and I recalled the sweet face raised to mine, the yielding form——
“Ungenerous!” she cried. “I did not think it of you, M. de Tavernay! Darkness and stress of storm drive a bird to take refuge in your bosom, and at daybreak you wring its neck!”
“No,” I said, with a sudden revulsion of feeling, “I release it; I toss it back into the air; it flies away without a thought of me, glad only to escape; but I—I remember it, and love it, and I thank heaven for the chance which drove it to me.”
Impulsively she reached out her hand and touched my own.
“That is more like yourself,” she said. “Now I know you again. And perhaps, my friend, the bird is not so ungrateful as you think.”
“It may even return to the bosom which sheltered it?” I asked softly, leaning forward. “You think that, mademoiselle?”
“I fancy it would fear to do so.”
“Fear?” I repeated. “Surely—that least of all!”
“Fear that it might not find the bosom empty,” she explained remorselessly; and I saw the old light in her eyes. “Fear that it might blunder upon another occupant with a better right——”
I drew away from her, wounded, stung.
“But whether it returns or not,” she added in a gentler tone, “I am sure it will never forget.”
And with that comfort, cold as it was, I was forced to be content.
“Come,” I said, a sudden impatience of the place seizing me, “we must be getting forward. The moon will light our way.” And then my heart fell suddenly; for I remembered her torn and ragged shoes. “I could not get you shoes,” I said.
“No one can accomplish the impossible. It was foolish of me to ask for them.”
“I will get them,” I said; “but until then I shall have to carry you.”
“Nonsense!” she protested. “You will do nothing of the kind. With that light in the sky I can choose my steps. Besides, my shoes are stronger than you imagine.”
“The road is not far off,” I said. “Once we have gained that, you may perhaps be able to walk alone. But I shall not permit you to torture yourself by limping over this rough ground.”
She was looking at me with defiance in her eyes, and I saw that I should have to use finesse.
“Please do not forget,” I reminded her, “the selfishness of my disposition. One step upon a sharp stone and you will be so lamed that I shall have to carry you, not a matter of a few hundred yards, but all the way to the Bocage. My back aches at thought of it; and so I propose for myself the lighter task, in order to escape the other.”
Her look changed from defiance to amusement.
“You have a wit truly ingenious, M. de Tavernay,” she said. “I yield to it—for the moment.”
“I knew that reason would convince you,” I replied, trembling at the thought that I should have her in my arms again. “Come, there is still a little wine in the bottles. I propose a toast—the toast we drank last night;” and I arose and bared my head. “God and the King!”
But that toast was never to be drunk; for even as I raised the bottle, it was dashed from my lips, and two men hurled themselves upon me out of the darkness.