Madame Veuve Geffroi possessed to a singular degree the faculty of knowing her own mind, and also, commonly, that of expressing with accuracy and point the resolutions at which, from time to time, she arrived by the assistance of this quality. When, therefore, she took her way between seven and eight that evening to her hay-loft, with the intent of presenting an ultimatum to its temporary inhabitants, the clearness of her mental vision was momentarily obscured by the sight of one of them seated on her chopping-log in the shed, near the foot of the ladder, with his head buried in his hands. In the failing light this figure startled and almost disconcerted her, and she gave vent to a little exclamation. The Marquis raised a ghastly face and looked at her dizzily.
“Bon Dieu! what is the matter with you?” ejaculated Madame Geffroi.
Gilbert rose mechanically.
“Are you ill too?” queried his visitor, peering at him. The Marquis shook his head, murmuring he knew not what, and turned away to escape her eyes. Madame Geffroi scanned what she could see of him sceptically; then she shrugged her shoulders. “Very well then, listen to me. How is the other up there?”
“I don’t know,” said Gilbert rather wildly. “I have been down here . . . my God . . . how long!”
“You don’t know!” repeated Madame Geffroi with some scorn. “But he must be either better or worse. Which is it?”
“Worse, then,” replied Château-Foix almost inaudibly.
“He has more fever?” pursued the inquisitrix. “He is perhaps light-headed—he talks nonsense?”
“That is it,” said the Marquis, and broke—to his own infinite surprise—into unmirthful laughter.
The note of hysteria did not escape his shrewd companion, though she assigned it to a wrong cause. “Come,” she said, more kindly, patting him on the arm; “you have a good heart, you suffer because your friend is ill—or is he your brother? Never mind, but listen to me! I have come to tell you something that will ease your anxiety. I have made up my mind to take your brother into my house until he is better. What have you to say to that, my young man?”
“I—but how can you?” stammered the Marquis. The twilight interview with this insistent female was like a nightmare, from which he more and more earnestly desired to escape, that he might be alone.
“How can I?” demanded the woman of resolution. “But as easily as walking. You, my fine fellow, if you got him up this ladder you can get him down again—isn’t it so?—and you can carry him to the house, a strong man like you! I shall put him in the room I keep for my niece—a small room, but comfortable. Then there will be no more fever—or at least he will have some one not quite ignorant to look after him, and he will be as snug there as a bird in its nest.”
“But, Madame,” began Gilbert, “the danger to yourself——”
“Bah!” said Madame Geffroi, “I snap my fingers at it! Besides, where would it come from? Do you imagine that any one from there”—she indicated Pézé over her shoulder—“would venture to come poking into my house? Holy Virgin of virgins, no! But what would inconvenience me would be a corpse in my loft; that would compromise me! No, the young man must be brought in. Come, up with you, my good man!” And, feeling that he was in the hands of some higher intelligence, Gilbert suffered himself to be waved in front of her up the ladder.
In the loft it was dimmer still. Gilbert stood like a statue when he got there, deprived of all volition; he only felt stupidly that he could never go near that prone, silent figure again. And yet he knew that he was there for the express purpose of doing so. Behind him Madame Geffroi scrambled on to the floor; he never turned his head nor offered to help her. She walked past him, and he saw her bend over Louis. But his own eyes were fixed on the little circular window, and his thoughts followed them, racing round and round its circumference like a squirrel in a cage. Then he perceived his hostess beckoning to him. His feet carried him over to her.
“He is quite quiet now,” she said in a whisper. “See, I will help you carry him to the top of the ladder. But you will have to take him down it alone, only I will stand at the bottom.”
It was a real surprise to Gilbert to find that not very long afterwards he was standing in the midst of a little, very tidy room with a diamond paned casement, where a small white bed, ready prepared, lay along the wall.
“That’s right,” said Madame Geffroi approvingly, as Château-Foix deposited his unconscious kinsman upon it. She set down the candle, with which she had lighted him up the stairs, upon a table bearing a neat pile of bandages, a basin, a sponge, and other appliances. “Now I shall manage better alone. I am sorry that I have not a bed for you too.”
Gilbert, with relief, murmured something about the comfort of his former quarters. Not to be under the same roof would be something.
Madame Geffroi nodded. “You will find some food put out downstairs; take what you want. I will come to you in the morning.”
“You are very kind indeed, Madame,” said Château-Foix. “I do not know why you should do this.”
The lifeless tone of his thanks appeared to reawaken his hostess’s suspicions. She caught up the candle and held it to the level of his face. “You are sure that you are not ill, you?” she asked sharply. The fancy crossed Gilbert’s mind that she was more apprehensive than solicitous about his state of health, and he answered with a grim feeling approaching amusement that he was perfectly well, and turned to go. But at the doorway he stopped and bent a long look on the candle-lit bed, drawn by the very attraction of what his survey cost him. Then he went down the stairs and out of the farmhouse, to carry his agony back to the place where it had its birth.
Very early next morning Madame Geffroi’s voice floated up the ladder. Gilbert raised himself from where he lay face downwards in the hay and descended into the shed below.
“Your brother is better,” said the lady. “He is sleeping quietly. But no—you shall not see him yet. Later in the day, perhaps. And see that you do not show yourself to-day; it is possible that they may search for you.”
“Then, Madame,” broke in the Marquis hastily, “we must go. I cannot think of exposing you——”
“Bah!” returned his hostess with infinite scorn. “Do you think I shall let that young man out of his bed? He could not stand if I did. And I should like to see those gentry try to search my house! But they may come prowling round, so be careful. If they should come here you can hide in the hay—or, wait a moment, there is a place up in the rafters where no one will ever think of looking. Here is plenty of food—you did not take any last night.”
With this somewhat casual recital of precautions she tendered him a basket and made off. The inadequacy of the former scarcely struck the Marquis, so little did the idea of being taken seen to matter. He climbed back to the loft and threw himself down in his former position.
As hour succeeded hour, the stupor which, in spite of the most active suffering, had held his brain all through the sleepless night began to dissolve. “He trusts us! he trusts us!” Yes, he had trusted them indeed, and with a trust so profound as to be unconscious of its own existence. “He trusts us!” Which of them had said that to the other? It was round these words that the stupor, losing its hold, crystallised into a fierce and absorbing resolution. By no word or deed of his should Louis know that he was aware of his treachery—until the day that he chose. Louis, too, in his turn, should be tricked, gulled, befooled. It should be a part—a small part—of his revenge; though indeed there was in his resolve less of the lust of vengeance than of the instinctive self-defence of his own unspeakably lacerated pride.
And Lucienne . . . O God, Lucienne! image of all that was pure and untouched! . . . Yet even now he blamed her little. She was so young. She did not know. Hers was innocency wronged, lured into an attachment which was surely no more than a young girl’s fancy, a passing light entanglement from which he must protect her, which he must make her forget. Had she not written in her distress, pleading to be shielded from it—for so, in memory, he read her letter now. She would forget. . . . But Louis! That was different. It might be that it was with him, too, a passing affair, like so many others. The supposition seemed rather to aggravate than to lessen his guilt. And there was much to support the idea. How, if he really cared for her, could he have been so light-hearted these last few days since he parted from her? Damn him! he was equally a scoundrel either way!
The Marquis raised himself and sat up, brushing the hair off his forehead with a sudden gesture. He had at that moment a very distinct vision of a certain copse at Chantemerle where there was a clearing, convenient and remote. There, among the saplings his father had planted, he saw himself and Louis facing each other, sword in hand. . . .
But the solacing dream of steel was gone as quickly as it had come, and Gilbert flung himself down again, engulfed once more in the full tide of his anguish—an anguish all the bitterer, though he did not know it, for the self-condemnation which he had recently been meting out to himself.
Between five and six in the afternoon he again heard the voice of his hostess and went down.
“You can see your cousin,” said Madame Geffroi, with the air of one acceding to a pressing request, “since it appears that that is his relationship. He has been asking for you. And since they have been to search the house”—Gilbert gave an exclamation—“and gone away satisfied, it is quite safe. Come.”
“Searched the house!” said Gilbert, stupefied. “But they have not been near me.”
“I did not say they searched the house,” corrected the lady tartly. “I said they came to do so. They did not remain.”
“Oh!” was all Château-Foix found to say, wondering how the representatives of the nation had been routed, but not in the least doubting the fact.
“Don’t talk too much!” Madame Geffroi warned him, as she opened the bedroom door and pushed Gilbert in alone.
The late afternoon sun was striking through the closed shutters in thin shafts full of dancing motes, yet the room seemed dark, and the Marquis stood a moment dazzled by the contrast.
“Come here,” said Louis in a weak little voice from the bed. “Mon Dieu, how glad I am to see you!”
Grown accustomed to the atmospheric effects, Gilbert stood looking down on this new Louis as he lay flat on his back—for in the short time since his mishap he seemed unaccountably altered.
“Sit down,” went on the Vicomte, “and tell me what you have been doing while I have been in the hands of this tyrannical lady.”
The Marquis complied. After all, it was quite easy to talk to him. “I have been doing . . . absolutely nothing, but staying in the loft awaiting developments. And, by the way, the good woman tells me that she has had a domiciliary visit.”
Louis went off into a fit of rather feeble laughter. “It is quite true. . . . But she routed them with great slaughter. It must have been extraordinarily funny.”
“They did not come into the house, then?”
“No, I believe not. But she had made preparations to receive them. Conceive what she thought of passing me off for?” He began to laugh again. “Do you remember, Gilbert, my joking the other night about you and this dame, and saying that she would probably hide you in her bedroom? My utterances must have had a spice of prophecy about them. It was about three o’clock, I believe, when these individuals came; I was still dozing, when the tyrant entered hastily, and said with great directness, ‘They are coming to look for you, my fine young man. I do not fancy that they will set foot inside the house, but, if they do, remember that you are my niece Annette, ill of a fever.’ I protested against the libel on Mademoiselle Annette, whose chin, I am sure, does not stand in need of a razor, but what could I do?”
“And what happened?” asked Château-Foix.
“Nothing, fortunately—or unfortunately,” said Louis, sighing rather regretfully. “I was not called upon to play this beau rôle to an audience. But the good lady took some pains with the staging. She arranged the bedclothes over me in some way that nearly suffocated me, and took away my clothes, which were hanging upon a chair, substituting, I believe, some of her own. I was too modest to look at them. I fancy that they are gone now, and, moreover, that my own have not come back, so that I can’t get up.”
“I should imagine,” observed the Marquis drily, “that you could not do that in any case.”
“Well, perhaps not,” conceded the invalid. “But, Gilbert, we must be getting on. Couldn’t you—couldn’t you leave me to follow?”
“That is not very likely, is it?” asked his cousin. “I thought we settled that before. You had better not talk any more and exhaust yourself. To-morrow will be time enough to talk of getting up, and as this visit is over I presume we are the safer for it. How is your shoulder, by the way?”
Louis made a little grimace by way of reply. “You do not look over flourishing yourself, my good Gilbert,” he said, scanning him from the pillow. “I should say that you did not sleep well last night.”
“No, I did not,” answered the Marquis in a fairly natural tone.
Louis murmured that he was sorry, and there was a pause, Gilbert feeling that he had nothing more to say. Glancing at his cousin he saw that he was lying with his eyes shut, and also that he looked rather spent. He got up, and Louis immediately opened his eyes.
“Are you going? . . . There is one thing that I wanted to ask you—did I talk any nonsense when I was off my head up in that place?”
Gilbert felt a second’s spasm at his heart. It had not occurred to him that Louis would ask such a question. . . . His answer should be the first step along the road which he had mapped out for immediate travelling.
“I don’t know what you mean by nonsense,” he said, fidgeting with a spoon on the table. “You were a trifle delirious, of course. Ah, I see what you mean. No, you were much too rambling for me to learn any secrets.” He felt that to carry off his part with conviction he must look his cousin in the face at this point, and did so. Was it fancy that Louis had turned whiter than he already was? He could not pause to consider, but went on with a geniality which astonished and disgusted himself: “My dear boy, you can be easy on that score. You did not tell me anything . . . which I did not know before.”
“That’s a relief,” said Louis in a jocular tone, but so faintly that Château-Foix was aware in an instant of the strain that he had been through, and saw, indeed, the next moment, that he had fainted in good earnest.
The Marquis looked down at him for a minute with a smile which was not very pleasant, then he went to the door and called for Madame Geffroi. Amid the torrent of reproaches and lamentations which ensued he made his escape.
And as he went back an abhorrent thought leapt suddenly into his mind, out of nowhere—not so much a thought as a picture—of the inn-kitchen at Pézé, and of Louis throwing himself between him and the man who “had a knife.” It had vivid colouring, and was only a little blurred in outline. If it were a true image he owed his life to the kinsman who had betrayed him. It was the last intolerable drop in the cup.
“Dear Madame,” said Louis politely but firmly, “if you do not cause my cousin to come here, I shall have to go out to find him!”
He was sitting, partially dressed, in an armchair by the open window, with a flowered shawl over his shoulders. Not far from him his hostess and nurse, her hands on her hips, stood regarding him.
“That is easy to say,” she remarked. “But there is a key to the door.”
“And a vine, I observe, outside the window,” retorted her captive, craning his neck to make sure. “Directly your back is turned I shall go down it. And since you have deprived me of the use of one arm I shall most probably break the other.”
“What use is it to bring your cousin? tell me that,” demanded Madame Geffroi stubbornly. “And what happened the last time that he was here? tell me that also!”
“That was two days ago,” returned the Vicomte, “and I was tired. It shall not happen again, I promise you. . . . Madame, do not be so stony-hearted!”
“What do you want to see him for?”
Louis looked at her for a moment quizzically. “I don’t want to see him at all,” he said. “It will merely mean making arrangements for leaving you, and you cannot think that I desire to make those, can you, Madame? But consider, this cousin of mine has an adoring mother who is anxiously awaiting him at this very moment—not to speak of a whole tenantry to whom he is a sort of deity. You would not have me set my own poor happiness, which undoubtedly consists in remaining where I am, against maternal affection and feudal feeling!”
Madame Geffroi sniffed. “Huh! And is there no one who expects you back with anxiety, my young man?”
Two patches of colour flared for an instant in Saint-Ermay’s pale cheeks as he responded: “Alas, no, Madame, nobody.—I am wrong; there is an old man who will be very glad to see me. But come now——”
“As if you were fit to think of going away,” grumbled his jailor. “You shall see your cousin to-morrow.”
Louis shook his head. “Like all your sex, you must be convinced, I see, by ocular demonstration. How can you say that I am not fit for anything?” He got up suddenly from the chair, and the shawl which adorned his shoulders slipped to the ground, revealing the fact that his left arm was not only supported in a sling but was bound to his side, a precaution of his nurse’s to prevent his using his shoulder. He advanced laughing on her, a slim boyish figure in shirt and breeches. “I swear I’ll kiss you if you don’t fetch my cousin!” said he.
Madame Geffroi put up her hands with a squeal, and backed rapidly from the reach of the one effective arm. “You are a graceless young scamp!” she said from the door, but she was laughing too. “You shall have your cousin, then!”
Louis sauntered back to his chair and flung himself down in it, smiling, but the look of amusement faded rapidly off his face. Madame Geffroi’s question had set his heart aching. More than once in the past, when he had gone down to Chantemerle, Lucienne had been there awaiting him with the rest on the terrace—a child, it is true, much younger, scarcely noticed, and yet the same Lucienne. Those had been happy days; all the happier that they were not poisoned by a passion which had no right to existence, when he was a thoughtless boy and she a child playmate, nothing more. Now she would never wait for him anywhere, for if ever the Fates sent her back to live in security at Chantemerle, the old house could never see him there again. . . . Why had he not gone with her to England as Gilbert had suggested? Why had he acted the virtuous friend at his parting with her the other day? Why, in God’s name, had he of all people taken up that always ridiculous rôle? . . . Since that farewell he had known that she loved him distractedly, but the knowledge, with all that it contained of solace, only served to make his own conduct the more bitter in the mouth. With such a proof of her love as she had then given him, what might their life have been had their lots fallen otherwise—yes, even if he had but plucked his hour when it blossomed to his hand! . . . It was the most sickening folly. He had wrecked his happiness and hers, forsooth, for Gilbert’s—for the cold-blooded Gilbert, who regarded her, most probably, as honoured by her betrothal, and him as a worthless trifler. And he had taken this senseless, unnatural path, in the first place, because Gilbert trusted him. “I wish to the devil he did not!” he muttered fiercely—and knew not that his wish was already granted. “The whole thing is too damnable!” He was kicking angrily at the fallen shawl when Gilbert came in, and could not, or did not try, to conceal his mood, but merely looked up and nodded at his cousin.
“So you are out of bed?” remarked the latter.
“Yes,” said Louis shortly. “I sent for you that we might make plans for to-morrow.”
“For to-morrow! Do you think that you——”
“Confound you!” broke out Louis irritably. “You are as bad as the old lady. I don’t say that I could walk far, but I can certainly ride. It is merely a question of getting horses.”
The Marquis shrugged his shoulders. “I perceive that you are really convalescent,” he observed. “Very well. But we shall have to obtain Madame Geffroi’s assistance; I don’t think it would be wise for one of us to go about them.”
“No, of course not,” agreed Louis. And going to the door he called for his hostess.
Madame Geffroi thought that horses of some kind could be procured, though they would probably not be good ones. But then the travellers would not want to make long stages at first, she added, looking warningly on Louis and almost threateningly on the Marquis. Resigning herself with her accustomed decision to the inevitable, she presumed that if they really meant to start early next morning, she had better take steps about the horses at once, upon which Louis called her an angel, and she left the room shaking her head.
“I hope this good woman will not pay for her kindness,” said Gilbert.
“I trust not,” returned Louis rather absently. “But I can scarcely imagine any one bold enough to call her to account.”
Château-Foix, who was gazing out of the window, turned round and took a good look at him. The bandages visible through his thin and now much-mended shirt, the sling above it, and indeed his whole appearance, thrust again on Gilbert that possibility which he so profoundly wished had never occurred to him.
“How much do you remember of what happened at the Gerbe d’Or?” he asked suddenly.
Louis, who was apparently lost in contemplation of an exceedingly well-shaped leg, looked up in surprise. “What is the Gerbe d’Or? Oh, I recollect. Why, I suppose I remember as much as you do.”
“Then that is not very much,” said his cousin. “Which was the man that stabbed you?”
“Are you vowing vengeance?” asked Louis lazily. “Why, the tall one, of course. The other had no chance; you were taking up too much of his time. My friend had the knife in his waistbelt, I suppose; I never saw him draw it. But, if it is any satisfaction to you, I think you knocked him down yourself afterwards. In fact you must have done, for I certainly didn’t; I was lying on top of their horrible dirty plates.”
“He was behind me, was he not?”
“I don’t know,” said the Vicomte. “Are you going to write an account of this dastardly outrage for the newspapers? because, as an aristocrat, you will not get any sympathy.”
“I am sure he was behind me,” pursued Gilbert. “He was behind me, but you called out to me to turn, and then he stabbed you.”
“Did I? Very likely. After all, you do seem to remember more than I. I am sorry to be such a bad witness, but I really know nothing more about that particular episode.”
Evidently Louis had not the faintest idea that he had any claim on Gilbert’s gratitude, or else, for some reason, he had chosen to forget it. At any rate, there was no more to be got out of him, and Château-Foix abandoned the attempt.
“I shall not stay with you any longer,” said he. “You had better lie down and rest, had you not, if we are to start early to-morrow?”
Louis assented, and bent to pick up the shawl. “I am sorry,” he remarked in a casual tone, “that I was so uncivil just now. It is you who have a better right to be annoyed. You must have been horribly bored these last few days.”
“Oh no,” said the Marquis, “not bored!”
Château-Foix, riding close beside his cousin, and uneasily watching his set mouth, suddenly put out a hand and gripped him by the arm as he lurched forward in the saddle. “We will stop at the first house we see,” he said briefly; and Louis, recovering himself, nodded without speaking.
It was the afternoon of the next day. All morning, under a hot sun, the travellers had ridden through the green, rolling, wooded Maine country at a pace regulated alike by the capabilities of their steeds and by Saint-Ermay’s ebbing strength. It was an hour or more now since that pace had dropped to a walk; several hours since Louis had ceased from converse, and had jogged on silently with eyes fixed ahead. Latterly he had been devoting his energies to the bare task of keeping in the saddle—and all this with amazing pluck and good temper. But he was beaten at last. Gilbert recognised it for a curious phenomenon that he could feel for the young man beside him, in the same flash of thought, so real an admiration, so sharp an anxiety, and so horrible a hatred. . . .
They moved forward another hundred yards, the Marquis steadying him as they went, and in a bend of the road came on a cottage. Château-Foix checked both horses at the door. “I am going to ask for shelter,” he said in his cousin’s ear. “Can you manage to stay where you are—no, I had better help you to dismount.”
Louis made a motion of the head to be taken for assent, and in another moment or two Gilbert had dragged his swaying form out of the saddle, and, with his arm round him, was knocking vigorously at the cottage door.
Hasty and feeble steps were heard to approach it, and after some fumbling with bolts and bars a wrinkled old woman looked out. “You cannot come in,” she said, before the Marquis had time to formulate his request.
“We only want to rest a little,” said Château-Foix. “I can pay——”
“No! no!” reiterated the old woman, and it seemed to Gilbert that there was an unaccountable anxiety in her tone. “I tell you that you cannot come in!” And she made to shut the door, which she had opened but a little way.
But the Marquis was not in a mood to be easily rebuffed, and he planted his foot on the threshold in such a manner as to make the closing of the door impossible, and threw a hasty look within. As the inner darkness cleared from under the low, black beams he made out the figure of a man sitting, with his back to the door, on a stool by the hearth. The sight of this back, in a brown redingote, gave him pause; he did not wish to encounter a possible municipal officer from Laval. As he hesitated, the old woman, trying to shut the door, gave vent to an impatient exclamation, and the man by the fire looked round.
“Do not be so inhospitable, Barbette,” he said, in pleasant and noticeably well-bred tones.
Gilbert would have drawn back, but, with Louis clinging blindly to his shoulder, the thing could not be done quickly enough, and the stranger was on his feet and coming towards them. He was a man about forty.
“Your friend is ill, sir? Barbette, open the door! Permit me to assist you,” said the easy, commanding voice.
The sound of it roused the Vicomte for a second. “I am merely tired,” he murmured, trying to stand clear of Gilbert’s encircling arm.
“He had a fall from his horse some days ago and injured his shoulder,” explained the Marquis carefully, seeing the stranger’s swift glance at Louis’ arm as he moved to the other side to help him. Between them they steered the young man’s stumbling steps to the settle by the hearth, into the corner of which Saint-Ermay subsided, his head against the high back.
The other bent quickly over him. “He has fainted, I think,” he observed. “And with some cause. The fall must have been a deuced awkward one!” And holding out his own hand, smeared with red where he had held Louis by the elbow, he looked Château-Foix full in the face.
The Marquis bit his lip and silently cursed his incriminating lie. No use to deny a knife-wound now. Without a word he turned away and began to unfasten the ancient garment by which Madame Geffroi had replaced his cousin’s coat, too stained and slashed to wear.
“Barbette,” said the stranger sharply, “bring a bowl of water! Would you not find it easier, Monsieur, if you got him at full length on the settle?” And thus he was helping Gilbert almost before the latter was aware of it. “How long since this broke out afresh, I wonder?” he said half to himself, and Gilbert could only reply with truth that he did not know. The fiction of a fall was not referred to again, and the stranger having called on Barbette for fresh linen, bound up the Vicomte’s shoulder with even more skilful fingers than Madame Geffroi’s.
“He must stay here, of course, for the present,” he said, drying his hands on his handkerchief. “When he comes to we will give him some brandy. And, parbleu, he is rather long about it.” He knelt down again by the still insensible Louis, and laid his ear to his heart.
All this while the old woman, with wringings of the hands and muttered protestations, had hovered round the group like a flustered hen. The stranger who so coolly placed her dwelling at the travellers’ disposal took no notice of her, but the Marquis was puzzled by her behaviour. At this juncture, suddenly remembering that he had a flask of brandy in his holsters, he looked towards the door—now shut—and made a movement as if to go to fetch it. The old woman, following the direction of his gaze, instantly cried out in accents of dismay: “Mon Dieu, Monsieur le Marquis, the horses!” She stopped as suddenly, with a sharp guilty intake of the breath.
Gilbert turned in astonishment, conceiving himself addressed, and startled by the use of his title. But the other man too lifted his head sharply from Louis’ breast and glanced up with a frown at the speaker. Then he flashed a look on Gilbert, saw his start of self-betrayal, raised his eyebrows—and the next moment burst out laughing.
“There’s but one title between the two of us!” he exclaimed, getting to his feet. “To which of us does it belong?—I fear, Monsieur, that you have not long relinquished yours!”
Gilbert looked steadily at the thin, vivid face, with its dark eyes and slender arching brows under chestnut hair, its cleft chin and delicate aquiline nose. Something of charm caught him, something of instinct cried out that this was no spy nor informer, nor even a republican of any kind. And moved by something that was rather chivalry than defiance he said simply: “I have the honour to claim it.”
The other instantly capped his avowal by one far more foolhardy. “And I too,” he said, “I am Armand de la Rouërie, at your service.”
The old woman gave a stifled scream, and Gilbert gasped, no less with astonishment than at the magnitude of the confidence.
“You have paid me the greatest compliment of my life,” he exclaimed, holding out his hand. “My own name is Château-Foix; I am returning from Paris to my home near Chantonnay, and my cousin here—to give you the real truth—was stabbed some days ago in an affray.”
The Marquis de la Rouërie wrung his hand warmly. “You are sent by Heaven,” he declared. “Be quiet, Barbette! Monsieur de Château-Foix, half an hour’s talk with you—that is, if you are willing . . . if your views——”
“My views,” said Gilbert rather sombrely, “have something changed of late.”
“God be praised for that!” broke in a faint voice, and both men, starting, looked down at the quiet and momentarily forgotten figure on the settle. Louis’ eyes were shut, but his own mischievous smile played for an instant about his white lips. La Rouërie bent over him.
“My cousin may be an apothecary,” continued the Vicomte, opening his eyes, “but you are a better surgeon, Monsieur . . . le Marquis. Permit me to thank you with all my heart.”
“You heard?” ejaculated Gilbert.
“Indistinctly,” replied his cousin. “I am prepared not to have heard if Monsieur wishes.”
“Not in the least,” said La Rouërie quickly. “Yes, you may sit up if you wish. Do not try to stand yet. Barbette, where is my flask of brandy?”
“I will get mine,” said Gilbert, hastening to the door.
La Rouërie quitted Louis and came after him. “Barbette shall show you where to put the horses,” he said in a low voice. “You cannot possibly go on to-night.”
“But we cannot stay here,” protested Gilbert.
“On the contrary, you can perfectly well do so. You will probably kill that young man if you take him on to-night. Besides, I want a talk with you.”
“But you—your own danger——” stammered Gilbert.
The prescript shrugged his shoulders. “I am only ‘Monsieur Milet’, a merchant of Bordeaux, staying at the château of Launay-Villiers. The person I am here to meet may not come to-night; if he does, so much the better. Barbette would let herself be cut in pieces for me.”
“But not for us,” thought Château-Foix, and hesitated.
“That is settled, then,” said the Breton easily. “Barbette, show Monsieur where to put the horses, and make us a bed ready at once.” He took the flask from Gilbert’s half unwilling hand and went back to his patient.
When Gilbert returned he found Louis propped in the corner of the settle, talking with rather feverish animation to their new acquaintance. And suddenly Gilbert realised how nothing, apparently, could more than a little dim his cousin’s charm—neither illness, nor fatigue, nor an ill-fitting coat, nor an uneasy conscience. But had he a conscience at all?
Undoubtedly the Marquis de la Rouërie had a way with him. It seemed but a short time after Gilbert’s re-entry that the owner of the house had been reduced to mute if not to acquiescent submission; that Louis, in spite of his expostulations, had been ensconced in the bed by which, after local custom, the corner of the living-room was adorned; and that Gilbert was sitting on the settle by the side of “Monsieur Milet,” talking as if he had known him all his life.
Armand de la Rouërie’s turbulent past was indeed common property, and Vendée no less than his native Brittany had heard of his light loves, his follies and his duels, as well as of his sojourn in the Bastille on a point of provincial independence and his service in America under Lafayette. Gilbert knew also, vaguely, that this firebrand had made himself the head of a secret Royalist organisation in Brittany, that his château near Antrain was its focus, and that since the end of the previous May he had disappeared, no research having revealed the retreat whence he still continued the direction of his schemes. But what he had heard of the Marquis had not particularly disposed him in his favour, and of his plans he knew no more than rumour whispered. And here, in a little Maine cottage, the man himself, impetuous and magnetic, and infinitely more capable than Gilbert had ever dreamt, was laying before him the details of an organisation astoundingly complete, ramified throughout Brittany and awaiting only the signal from Coblentz to put itself in motion. When the army of the Princes, said La Rouërie, entering France by Thionville and Verdun, had got as far as Chalons, he should give the word, and march on Paris with his nucleus of ten thousand men.
The man himself, of a character so diametrically opposed to his own, attracted Gilbert strangely; the organisation which his fiery brain had conceived and carried out in less than a year amazed him by its efficiency, but with its immediate object he could not sympathise, and he remained silent when La Rouërie had finished.
“You don’t approve?” said the Breton, flashing a quick glance at him.
“Not of invasion,” answered Gilbert.
“Not of the return of voluntary exiles, with our banished Princes at their head?”
“Perhaps,” said Château-Foix, “if they came back unsupported by Prussian or Austrian levies. But they will not.”
The Marquis de la Rouërie shrugged his shoulders. “Then, were you in my place, Monsieur, you would not, if you could, march on Paris to deliver the King?”
“I would do it to-morrow if I were sure that I should not meet Ferdinand of Brunswick under the walls!”
La Rouërie sprang to his feet. “M. de Château-Foix, men have called me reckless and unpractical, but you! . . . I will strike a bargain with you. Organise Vendée as I have organised Brittany, and in six months we will march together on Paris with never a Prussian to help us!”
So electric was his enthusiasm, as he stood there with sparkling eyes and outstretched hand, that the soldier’s dreams which Château-Foix had long relinquished glowed hot for a moment before him, and he stared up at La Rouërie fascinated, gripping the edge of the settle with his hands. The Breton laid hold of the heavy oaken table and dragged it nearer.
“See,” he said, taking out a knife and scoring the wood, “here is the Loire; here is your coast-line. I began by creating a council in the chef-lieu of every department. Now here are yours—Fontenay for your own department of Vendée proper,” he stabbed the point into the table, “Niort for Deux-Sèvres, Angers——”
Gilbert got up and interrupted the draughtsman. “Tell me as much as you will of your own plans, M. de la Rouërie,” he said gravely, “and be assured of my sympathy and admiration, but do not hope to see the like succeed on the left bank of the Loire. If our people ever rise——”
“You will wish that you had organised them beforehand,” said La Rouërie like a flash. He had left the knife still stabbed into the table. “You do concede, then, that there is a chance of their rising?”
“I do not know what to think,” replied Gilbert. “But if ever they do, I am assured of this, that they will never be organised from above, nor will political considerations have much power to sway them. If ever it comes, the uprising will be a purely spontaneous movement from below, due to the religious persecution which has pressed so heavily on Vendée for the past two years and more.”
“And who will lead them?” cried the Breton. “Their priests? M. de Château-Foix, pardon me for saying so, but you are a true Liberal—you are refusing to look facts in the face. I will grant you, since you are so convinced of it, that your tenantry, if ever they take up arms, will do so of their own volition; but to whom will they come when they have got together the obsolete fowling-pieces and the pitchforks which will be their arms—in place of the muskets with which you might have furnished them? Why, to you, to their natural leader! And what will you do then? Let them go alone to be mown down by the regulars because the Prussians——” He checked himself. “I sincerely beg your pardon, Monsieur le Marquis, for I believe that I was on the verge of insulting you, which was not my intention, since I know that you would not let them go alone.”
Gilbert put his elbows on the table and his head between his hands. “You speak nothing but the truth,” he said dejectedly. “God knows what will happen; I don’t.”
La Rouërie studied him for a moment as he sat there, and then, casting a sudden glance towards the bed in the corner, crossed the room towards it. “Can’t you get to sleep?” he asked. “I am afraid we are doing a devilish amount of talking.”
“Oh, I find it rather soothing than otherwise,” was the Vicomte’s reply, and La Rouërie, coming back, observed in a low tone to Gilbert: “I like that cousin of yours, M. de Château-Foix. He has the pluck of twenty.” To which Gilbert replied rather stiffly that the Marquis was very good. . . .
It was in truth their conversation which had kept Louis awake, for he was deadly weary, and had already dozed off only to reawaken, after a more or less troubled period of slumber, to hear the sound of voices, and to see, through the faded green serge curtains of the bed, a close-framed, ill-lit picture of his cousin, seated by the table, his chin propped on his hands, listening, while La Rouërie, all animation, passed in and out of the canvas. And once—or was he dreaming?—they were both standing up, and with them was a man in the dress of a peasant, talking as eagerly as they.
These snatches of oblivion deprived him of all sense of time, and when he closed his eyes on the last occasion it might have been midnight, or ten o’clock, or the small hours. It was consequently a surprise to him when he was awakened by a hand on his shoulder, and, looking up, found Gilbert standing over him and the room full of daylight.
“Is it morning?” he exclaimed. “Where is M. de la Rouërie?”
“Gone,” said Gilbert briefly. “It is half-past six. Are you well enough to go on, do you think? We ought to get to Entrammes or beyond to-day.”
“I am sorry not to have said farewell to ‘Monsieur Milet,’ that excellent surgeon,” remarked Louis later, as they moved off, with their unwilling hostess scowling at them from the doorstep. “And, by the way, hadn’t you a third person participating in your interminable conversation last night, or was I dreaming?”
“No, you were not dreaming,” returned his cousin. “It was the man whom M. de la Rouërie came here to meet—a salt-smuggler named Jean Cottereau or Chouan.”