THE ROAD TO POITOU
When the light, two-wheeled post-chaise, with its pair of horses and
its postilion, was rolling at last along the sunlit quays, Gilbert
forced himself to turn his thoughts from the joy and relief in his own
breast to the contemplation of a matter for the moment more urgent—the
safe conveyance of his cousin from Paris. He glanced at his kinsman,
seated beside him in his unfamiliar dark clothes, and observed with a
sort of amused despair that he did not seem to consider that prudence
required him to refrain from showing his face at the window, for he
had been looking out in silence ever since they started.
“One would think, my dear Louis,” observed the Marquis at length,
“that you had never seen Paris before. Your evident wish to remain
here may soon, perhaps, be gratified.”
“There’s a most extraordinarily pretty woman just going towards the
Allée des Princes,” murmured Louis.—“I beg your pardon, Gilbert. You
were saying that we shan’t get through. Well, if we don’t I shall have
still less faith in any of the La Rochefoucauld. Wasn’t it Liancourt
who helped you to your passport? I suppose that if we have to get out
at the barrier, I must hold the door open for you. And you must curse
me for a clumsy fool. Oh, I forgot! you never swear at your servants.
By the way, have I a name? I’ve forgotten it, at any rate.”
The Marquis handed him in silence the passport, with its emblematic
figures supporting a shield, inscribed with the device, “Vivre libre
ou mourir”—Minerva bearing the cap of liberty on a pike, and a female
typifying the French constitution, seated on a lion. The crown which
the latter held over the shield had been struck through with a pen,
and the same fate had overtaken the crown surmounting the arms of
France which accompanied the mayoral seal in red wax at the bottom.
Louis’s lip curled as he observed it. “L’an 4 de la liberté,” he
muttered scornfully, running his eye up to the date over Pétion’s
signature, and passed on to peruse his own description.
“I don’t know what the original portrait was like,” he remarked,
returning the document, “but I don’t call this amended version very
flattering. I suppose it was jealousy which led you to dock me of an
inch of my height. However, Pierre Jourdain has a very convincing
sound for a valet.”
When the chaise drew up with a jerk at the Barrière de Versailles it
was possibly on account of the hot July sun that no great alacrity
was displayed in demanding credentials. A sleepy-looking official,
followed by a couple of National Guards, did at last present himself
at the left-hand window—Saint-Ermay’s—and to him the Marquis handed
out the passport, throwing a severe glance at Louis, who seemed to be
struggling with a most inopportune desire to laugh. The man read it
yawning, asked a few questions, signed the paper, returned it, and,
suddenly pulling himself together, shut the chaise door with a bang,
and magnificently waved a dirty hand to the postilion. The horses
sprang forward, the gateway slid past—they were out of Paris.
“Why are you travelling under your own name?” asked the Vicomte
abruptly, breaking a silence which was not uneloquent of tension past.
“Why not?” retorted Gilbert. “You observe that there is no title.
Moreover, I once met Terrier de Monciel before he was Minister of the
Interior, and though, as it happened, he did not recognise me when I
went to have the passport countersigned, I thought that the fewer lies
I told him the better.”
“Especially as we shall probably want quite a new stock later on. I
wonder,” observed Louis thoughtfully, looking at the strongly-cut
profile beside him, “what you could best pass yourself off as at a
pinch.”
“Occupy your wits, then, with the question,” said Château-Foix,
folding up the passport. “If you can hope to become yourself something
other than the most hot-headed young fool in the universe, your
reflections will not be wasted.” He gave Louis one of his rare smiles
as he spoke. Lucienne’s letter met his fingers as he replaced the
passport. God! what a cloud was rolled away in the last hour! To him,
who was never troubled with excess of spirits, his heart seemed
preposterously light—though all the while, deep down, throbbed a
remorse which would not easily leave him. The sunshine and the blue
sky—even the cheerful trot of the horses—were one with his rejoicing.
They were safely out of Paris; Louis was rescued—was sitting here at
his side, and once more it was good to have him there. The old feeling
of affection came back with a force all the stronger for its temporary
suspension, and he turned a little and put a hand on his cousin’s arm.
“I wonder what I should have done if I could not have got you out of
La Force!” he said.
* * * * * *
After Versailles Louis gradually ceased from converse, and, alleging
that he was sleepy, settled himself in the corner of the chaise and
closed his eyes. Gilbert, glancing once or twice at him, was struck
with the way in which his face in repose had lost its life and gaiety,
and attributed the extinction, with compassion, to regret for lost
comrades and a ruined cause. For himself, he was composing in his mind
an answer to Lucienne’s letter all the way from Saint Cyr to Trappes.
The miles sped on uneventfully, but for the change of horses every two
leagues. At Houdan, however, there was a long delay, caused by want of
these animals, and it was dark when they got to Dreux.
“I don’t know any of the inns,” said Gilbert. “Tell the postilion to
go to a moderate-priced one; that will probably be safest.”
Louis transmitted the order, and, remembering his part, got out when
the chaise drew up in the courtyard of the Grand-Cerf and held the
door open for his supposed master. But he forgot the baggage, and had
to be sent back for it.
“I feel very uneasy about you,” observed the Marquis, as Saint-Ermay
deposited a valise on the floor of Gilbert’s room. “I know that you
will never be able to keep up this servant role.”
“Shall I not?” asked Louis, with a certain boyish enjoyment. “You will
see, Monsieur le Marquis. I shall soon be asking for higher wages,
especially if your valise gets any heavier. Are we going to have
anything to eat?”
“I shall have some supper served up here,” said Gilbert, looking
worried. “But will it not seem strange if you have yours with me?”
“Very,” said the Vicomte, who was evidently pining to play his part
elsewhere. “I must have mine downstairs. Am I to engage myself a
room?”
“I would rather have you on a truckle-bed in here,” returned his
kinsman apprehensively. “Ask them if they have one.”
“All right,” said Louis cheerfully. “I’ll say that you are subject to
fits, or melancholia, or walk in your sleep. Au revoir!”
He went out, and did not reappear for so long that the Marquis, after
his supper, rang and asked for his valet, only to be told that he had
gone out some time ago, and that there were some strolling players in
the town, whose performance he was no doubt witnessing. When he at
last came back Château-Foix fell upon him.
“For God’s sake, Louis, don’t treat this affair as a jest. You ought
never to have left the inn——”
“And have people suggesting that we have a reason for lying low?
That’s not my idea of prudent conduct,” retorted his cousin,
unabashed. “I have been witnessing that noble play, _Le Patriotisme
recompensé, ou l’Arrivée à Paris des Sauveurs de la Patrie_—in fact, I
am not sure that after heartily applauding the artist who acted Drouet
I did not join in the _Ça ira_. It will be an inconceivable protection
to you, Gilbert, to have a valet of known Republican principles.”
“I dare say it might, if there were the slightest chance of your
remembering them,” said Gilbert gloomily. “Well, there’s no use
arguing with you. Let’s get to bed, for we must start early to-morrow.”
“I shall sleep across your door, like a feudal vassal,” announced the
Vicomte, dragging at the little bed. “This affair fills me with the
spirit of the faithful retainer. I am not sure that it doesn’t make me
feel grey-haired—grown old in your service, Monsieur le Marquis. . . .
For Heaven’s sake, don’t throw that pillow at me; just think if any
one could see in. . . . But I said you were subject to fits.”
“I forbid you to speak another word, then, Pierre,” said Château-Foix,
laughing. “I am going to get into bed and sleep.”
And he did both. But Louis, deprived of the safety-valve of talking
nonsense, lay miserably wide-awake in the darkness. Yet the high
spirits which he had displayed had not been wholly feigned; they were
not altogether summoned up at will to hide his heart from Gilbert’s
eyes. He was young enough to feel a measure of elation at having done
right at great cost, and there had been something too of reaction in
his vivacity. But now that there was no longer need to be gay it was
very different. Swept back, despite his struggles, into the room at
the Hôtel de la Séguinière, every phase of that intolerable parting
tortured him afresh. How she had clung to him—how she had besought
him! . . . it was as though he should always hear that anguished,
pleading voice. . . . He groaned, and flung himself over in the
truckle-bed. He must not, dared not, think of it. . . . Denied those
images his thoughts went off to others, guessed at; to her on her
road. What must she not be suffering now, alone, hourly drawing
further away! But he must not think of that either! . . . What was it
that she had been going to tell him, and had not?—and, tormenting
question, what had she written in the note which Gilbert had so
belatedly received? . . . What use to surmise; he had no right to
know! . . . So, desperately, he tried to cling to the idea of
Gilbert’s goodness to him; that he had come to Paris to warn him, that
he had saved him from almost certain death. And, tossed on this ocean
of pain, he fell asleep at last, to dream of his lost love, but not
with happy dreams.
* * * * * *
The Marquis had resolved to continue posting, and they traversed thus
the next morning the twenty-five miles or so to Verneuil. But Gilbert
soon began to regret his decision. The country seemed strongly
patriot; every village through which they passed had its tree of
liberty crowned with the red cap, and at Tillières some of the
inhabitants ran after the chaise, shouting out abuse of them as
aristocrats. By the time the old fortifications of Verneuil came in
sight Château-Foix had determined to abandon the post chaise for the
humble diligence.
“Of course, as a good Republican, I applaud you,” was Louis’
observation as they entered the town. “This country is certainly too
patriotic for comfortable methods of travelling. Even the saints are
_sans-culottes_—look at that.” And he pointed to a statue of Saint
Anne which adorned a porch of the Church of the Madeleine. A cap of
liberty perched on her stone coif.
“Yes; and I have noticed two or three wayside Calvaries with a
tricolour ribbon tied round the arm of the Christ,” said Gilbert.
“These are unmistakable signs, and I think we shall do well to observe
them.”
At the Hôtel du Saumon, Gilbert therefore paid the postboy and
dismissed him. The diligence for Mortagne, their next objective, did
not start for an hour or more, and it conveniently left the courtyard
of the Saumon itself. The Marquis ordered himself some déjeuner,
leaving Louis to procure himself a meal in the kitchen regions, and to
see to the baggage. A little before the time appointed he went out
into the big yard. The horses were already harnessed, but there was no
sign of Louis.
“I suppose you have my baggage on all right?” asked Gilbert of the
driver, for the two valises were as invisible as Saint-Ermay.
“Baggage?” echoed the man, a bullet-headed Norman. “I have no baggage
from here. There was none to put on.”
“Surely there were two valises out here,” Château-Foix, with a
premonition of disaster. “Where is my servant?—he was in charge of
them.”
The driver grinned. “Looking after another kind of baggage when I saw
him last,” he retorted. “That kind!” and he jerked his thumb at a
pretty chambermaid who at that moment ran across the yard.
“Pierre!” cried the Marquis angrily, “where are you?”
The sound of his voice caused the Vicomte to emerge, without undue
haste, from a doorway. “Is it time to start?” he asked nonchalantly,
and by no means in the tone of a servant addressing his master.
“What have you done with the baggage?” asked his cousin, frowning.
“Take your hands out of your pockets when you speak to me!”
Louis’ mouth twitched as he obeyed the hint.
“I told a man to put it on the diligence . . . Monsieur,” he answered
soberly. “Isn’t it there? Where has the man got to?” He went back into
the hotel, and returning after a moment’s absence beckoned Gilbert
aside. “The fool put it on the Nonancourt diligence, which went
three-quarters of an hour ago. They never said that there were two
diligences starting from here.”
“So that our baggage is now on its way back to Dreux?”
“I’m afraid so. I’m exceedingly sorry. What can we do?”
Gilbert shrugged his shoulders. “Nothing. We must go on without it.
Fortunately I have all my papers and money on me. Come along; they are
waiting for us.”
“Morbleu,” murmured Louis as he followed him, “you are horribly
magnanimous. I could support reproaches better. It was really very
careless of me.”
“You are new to your rôle—except, perhaps, to one part of it,”
returned his cousin impassively. “But remember not to address me as
an equal in public.”
Passing over to the driver, as lightly as he could, the fact that he
intended continuing his journey without his baggage, Gilbert mounted
into the diligence, which contained only a farmer and his wife and an
insignificant-looking man who was probably a small shopkeeper. But in
its progress through Verneuil the vehicle further gathered up, from
the door of a comfortable-looking house in a main street, a cheerful
little old man with apple cheeks and horn-rimmed spectacles, who
skipped in, bearing under one arm a large and rotund object done up in
newspaper. The two pretty girls who were seeing him off handed in to
him two cabbages of great size, a basket which might be presumed to
contain onions, and a bunch of flowers. These the old man, amid the
laughter of the girls and his own brisk apologies, bestowed beside
him. He waved his hand as the diligence lumbered off and then, pulling
a book from his pocket, was instantly immersed.
The shopkeeper got out at a village a mile or two from Verneuil,
the farmer and his wife at a wayside farm, and having nothing
better to do—for he dared not encourage Louis’ possibly unguarded
conversation—the Marquis fell to examining their fellow-passenger. In
spite of his horticultural impedimenta the latter had not in the least
the air of a farmer; the hand which held the book close to his
short-sighted eyes was thin and pale, though the nails and finger-tips
were a little discoloured; and the book itself, as Gilbert could
easily see, was the _Georgics_ of Virgil. Had not the road, after
crossing the Avre, become very bad his curiosity—such as it was—might
have remained unsatisfied, but a violent jolt suddenly causing one of
the cabbages to leap headlong to the floor, the Marquis, who sat
directly opposite, picked it up and returned it to its owner.
The old man hurriedly put down his book. “A thousand thanks, Citizen,”
he murmured, receiving it in careful hands. “You are too kind.” But he
was plainly more concerned with the fact that one of two of the
vegetable’s outer leaves were damaged than that a stranger had been at
the trouble of stooping for it, as, smoothing them as one might the
plumage of a bird, he restored it to its place. Hardly, however, had
he resumed his study of the classics, before the paper-clad object,
falling with a portentous thud, rolled under Gilbert’s legs.
This time there was real commotion, and Louis, who had removed himself
to a further corner, shook with stifled mirth as his cousin and the
old man made simultaneous dives under the seat. Its wrappings having
come off in the transit, it was plainly a large pumpkin with which the
latter finally emerged.
“You are very good, citizen,” he exclaimed, as the Marquis’ head and
his own narrowly escaped collision. “I am deeply ashamed to have
inconvenienced you with my poor pumpkin.” He regarded the erring
vegetable with a mixture of pride and sorrow, for it had suffered in
its fall.
“The citizen is a very successful gardener,” hazarded Gilbert, also
looking at it.
“Gardening is my passion,” returned the old man fervently. And he went
off into a tolerably long panegyric of the occupation, concluding by
saying: “But I weary you, citizen, for you have not the air of one
interested in agricultural pursuits.”
“On the contrary,” replied the Marquis, “I am deeply concerned in
them.” And with guarded allusions to a small estate, he spoke, for the
sake of being agreeable, of English methods, and how far they might be
pursued in France, while Louis gazed from each window in turn at the
distant woods of Le Perche and La Ferté-Vidame.
Gilbert’s neighbour heard him enthralled. “But I am listening to a
master!” he exclaimed, when Gilbert paused, afraid of saying too much.
“Citizen, you are fortunate indeed, in these days of political
turmoil, to know such rural delights! How true to-day is what the
Mantuan writes—I was just reading it when my cabbage fell down.”
He picked up his book and began to declaim—
“‘Fortunatus et ille, Deos qui novit agrestes,
Panaque, Silvanumque senem, Nymphasque sorores!
Illum non populi fasces, non purpura regum
Flexit, et infidos agitans discordia fratres;’—
that line might almost apply to the Princes—
‘Aut conjurato descendens Dacus ab Istro’
—the Austrians to the life!
‘Non res Romano, perituraque regna.’
How extraordinarily apt a passage, citizen!”
It was, had it been true that agricultural delights had really
banished political cares from the mind of his hearer. But the citation
appeared to the Marquis a possible trap, and he preferred not to
comment on it. The old man, however, turned the page and proceeded
along a further stretch of delicate ground.
“Listen to this, citizen. Would you not say that Virgil was writing of
the Assembly and the _émigrés_?
‘Hic stupet attonitus rostris: hunc plausus hiantem
Per cuneos (geminatus enim plebisque patrumque)
Corripuit:’
—Vergniaud, or whom you like—
‘gaudent perfusi sanguine fratrum,’—
may it not come to that! But listen—this is Coblentz:
‘Exilioque demos et dulcia limina mutant,
Atque alio patriam quaerunt sub sole jacentem.’”
The reader looked up, and albeit Gilbert was quite innocent of any
intention of seeking a country lying under another sun after the
manner of the _émigrés_, he was not sure that his kindly-looking
vis-à-vis, with his shrewd spectacled eyes, had not some suspicion of
him. His uneasiness was not shared by Louis, who, as M. des Graves
truly said, had forgotten his Virgil, and who was covertly yawning.
The Marquis endeavoured to show an interest which should not commit
him to any opinion on these interpretations.
“Very remarkable, very,” said the reader, shaking his head. He closed
the _Georgics_, took a long look at Château-Foix, and said: “You would
be doing me a great favour, citizen, if you would tell me again about
that English plan of sowing beans and clover—was it not?—alternately
with wheat.”
Considerably relieved at forsaking so dangerous an exegesis, Gilbert
readily complied with this request. It transpired in the course of a
long conversation that the old man was by profession an apothecary at
Mortagne, but that he had a little country house, with some land, near
Verneuil, to which it was his joy to retreat from time to time, and
where, indeed, he hoped shortly to retire for good. His name was
Maillard; the girls who had seen him off were his sister’s children,
who, with their mother, lived at Verneuil. This information, and much
more on his horticultural successes and failures, he tendered simply
and agreeably; asked no inconvenient questions, and forced Gilbert to
tell no lies—except that, referring once to the bored Louis as “your
friend,” he had to be corrected, and begged Gilbert’s pardon. Thus the
miles of hillier country between Tourouvre and Mortagne passed, and at
about eight in the evening they reached their destination.
“To what inn would you recommend us to go?” asked the Marquis, as,
leaving Louis to bring forth the cabbages, he helped M. Maillard out
with his basket, his pumpkin, and his nosegay.
The apothecary gave him a sudden glance so keen that Gilbert was
startled. “Anywhere but to the Croix Blanche,” he said. “I would not
recommend that. Thank you; my boy, here, will carry these things. Bon
voyage, citizen, and a thousand thanks for your agreeable and
instructive conversation.” He shook hands warmly, and trotted off.
“Good Lord!” exclaimed Louis, stretching himself, “I thought he was
going to bestow the pumpkin on you. I want my supper; don’t you, after
talking so much?”
But supper was not easy to find. Mortagne had been holding one of its
big horse-fairs, and was very full. Two inns in succession refused
them, and they were told that there was but one other—the Croix
Blanche. Towards this the travelers bent their steps, not in very good
humour.
“This comes of my having lost the baggage,” sighed the Vicomte. “They
think we are tramps.”
“There’s one thing you don’t look like,” retorted Gilbert, “and that’s
a servant. You see, it never occurred to that old man that you were
one.”
“It shows his perspicacity,” returned Louis airily. “And for that I
forgive him his boring conversation on potatoes. And—the deuce! isn’t
this his shop?”
They stopped involuntarily and glanced in. The proprietor was behind
the counter, and, chancing to look up, saw them and ran to the door.
“Where are you going, citizen?” he asked. “Not to the Croix Blanche?”
“The other inns are full,” said the Marquis.
M. Maillard pulled at his chin. “You will be very uncomfortable,” he
said slowly. “No, I really could not allow you to go there. You must
give me the pleasure of your company for the night.”
Gilbert protested in vain, and in the end they followed M. Maillard
through his shop, where a lank-haired young assistant was putting away
bottles, to his domicile behind.
“Perhaps,” whispered Louis hopefully in his cousin’s ear, “the old boy
has some more nieces here.”
But he had not, and Gilbert could not help smiling at the Vicomte’s
face of dismay, when the latter, in his capacity of valet, was handed
over to the sour-visaged housekeeper who was sole ruler of M.
Maillard’s establishment. But whatever kind of evening Louis spent—and
Gilbert did not see him again that night—Château-Foix was not
unagreeably occupied with the converse of the good old apothecary. And
never, as they discussed their well-cooked meal, or fingered the books
in the little study, did it occur to Gilbert to wonder why the old man
had been so anxious to keep him, even at this cost, from going to the
Croix Blanche—where, at the same hour, the local Jacobin club was
holding its bi-weekly meeting, and where the landlord, the greatest
patriot in all Mortagne, was concluding a peroration demanding the
head of every aristocrat in Normandy.
Of these things Gilbert was comfortably ignorant, and woke in the
morning to find his cousin standing over him with a steaming jug in
his hand.
“I have brought your shaving water,” said he, shaking the Marquis
vigorously. “Kindly get up at once, and remove me from the roof which
shelters that accursed woman in its kitchen, or I shall denounce you
as an aristocrat!”
Gilbert hit out at him with his free arm, and Louis retreated
laughing. “You have nearly dislocated my shoulder,” complained his
victim, rubbing it. “Stay and help me to dress, as your duty is. Was
the lady, then, so terrible?”
The Marquis’ toilet was nearly completed when a heavy but feminine
tread was heard approaching. Saint-Ermay sprang up from the arm of the
chair on which he was perched.
“Horrors! it’s that old woman!” he exclaimed. “Here, sit down, and
give me your hair-ribbon or something!” He seized the comb from his
cousin’s hand and pushing him into a chair, began upon Gilbert’s black
locks with rather malicious energy as, in response to the Marquis’s
permission, the housekeeper bore in his coffee and rolls. The door had
hardly shut behind her ere Château-Foix snatched at the comb.
“Thank Heaven that I am not usually in your power like this!” he
ejaculated. “I should certainly cut my hair à la Titus to escape
your ministrations. No, thanks, I’ll tie it myself. Have you had
breakfast?”
Louis nodded. “Ages ago—with that charmer. Shall I give you yours?”
And the Marquis, as he tied his hair, looked at the young man pouring
out the coffee in the little prim room. If Louis’ facility for playing
at being boys in a story of adventure, when they were grown men in
real and grave peril, had caused him apprehension, and would probably
cause it again, yet at this moment, in the morning sunshine, he liked
him for it. Perhaps, in some subtle way, he felt that he was offering
his cousin amends for his suspicions.
Three-quarters of an hour later, when, after an almost affectionate
leave-taking of his host, he entered the yard of the principal inn
with Louis, the sense of peril returned upon him vividly, and was not
without its effect on the Vicomte. For two, three, four National
Guards in succession were getting into the Bellême and Mamers
diligence. The travellers’ eyes met.
“It is too risky,” said Gilbert in a low voice. “We must ride or walk,
and get a conveyance further on.” To give countenance to their entry
into the yard he enquired the time of the diligence back to Verneuil,
and also contrived to elicit the fact that by avoiding the high-road
and taking a cross-country route they could shorten their way, and cut
off Bellême altogether. On reflection Gilbert judged it more prudent
not to hire saddle-horses, and they set out on foot along the narrow
road.
“Now you see how providential it was that I lost the baggage,”
observed Louis, as they swung along. “But we are coming down in the
world. First a post-chaise, then the diligence, and now the human
foot. I wonder where we shall sleep to-night—as tramps, in a barn,
I should surmise.”
He little knew how prophetic was his jest.
“If we really looked like tramps,” retorted the Marquis, “I daresay
it might be better for us. I wish our clothes were not so new and
respectable.”
“Roll in the dust, then,” suggested his cousin. “Or slit your coat
with your penknife. We might have pawned these things at Mortagne.
I should love to be disguised as a _sans-culotte_, for I am tired
of being so neat and sober in this raiment of your choice. And
meanwhile—though as your servant it is no concern of mine—as what do
you propose to pass yourself off, supposing some patriot insists on
knowing your station in life? You can’t, with any prospect of being
believed, say you are a bricklayer, or a carter.”
Gilbert replied that he thought the speaker was going to settle the
question for him, and Louis looked at him critically.
“I am afraid it will have to be something very dull. You can’t look
like a brigand or anything really desirable. A lawyer—a doctor—no,
parbleu, I have it, of course—an apothecary, like our late host. It
will be quite a safe profession, for not having any drugs with you,
you cannot be called upon to make up pills on the spur of the moment.
And, as I know to my cost, you can talk by the hour about vegetables.”
Gilbert smiled, but conceded that the plan, if called for, might be
worth trying. “Only do not go about announcing us as druggists without
necessity,” he warned the inventor. “I can bandage a cut, but that is
the extent of my surgical knowledge.”
“Never mind; perhaps you will have a chance of putting even that
accomplishment in practice,” said Louis, switching at a wayside
thistle. And again he did not know that he was invested with the gift
of prophecy.