CONCERNING A HANDKERCHIEF
“If you be the Earl, as I think you be,
Sit down and drink the red wine with me;
But I rede ye, when ye shall rise from the board,
Ye commend your soul to the saints, my lord!”
At noon they came into the square at Mamers. Louis was in wild
spirits; amused with the country people who thronged the wide
market-place—it was market-day—and wanting to buy all kinds of useless
objects at the stalls as they picked their way through the crowd
looking for an inn. The Hôtel d’Espagne appeared so full that they
chose an eating-house instead, and hence, after a modest repast,
Gilbert sallied forth to enquire for a conveyance. He came back with
the disconcerting intelligence that the diligence for Fresnay and
Sillé-le-Guillaume had already started, and that there would not be
another till the late afternoon.
“We must walk it,” he said to Louis, adding in a lower tone: “It would
be unwise to wait about here so long for the diligence.”
“How many miles is Sillé?” asked Louis, who was finishing his coffee.
He made a slight grimace when he heard. “And we have already walked
about a hundred!”
“We can always stop at Fresnay, which is about fifteen, instead of
going further,” said his cousin.
“I suspect we shall,” returned the Vicomte. He got up with a little
sigh. “Well, needs must when the devil drives! I beg your pardon,
Gilbert; I did not mean to be personal. I should enjoy this walking
tour better if it were not so hot.”
At that instant the Marquis became aware of two young peasant women
who were looking at them with interest and whispering together. The
elder of them suddenly approached him. “Messieurs,” she said, with the
trace of a blush, “if you want to get to Fresnay, my sister and I are
starting back for Saint-Ouen, which is almost on the way . . .” And
she looked from one to the other of the travellers, the tint deepening
on her round, fresh visage.
“Madame, we should inconvenience you,” said the Marquis, hesitating.
“_Nenni_,” replied the damsel, and she pointed through the open door
to a large market cart which reclined on its shafts near the church.
“You see, Monsieur, that it would hold a great many.”
And thus it was settled, and in a few moments they were following the
sisters across the sunlit market-place to the vehicle in question,
Louis carrying a large basket full of their purchases. His spirits
were by no means lowered by this turn of affairs.
“We may feel particularly safe in the hands of these nymphs,” he
observed _sotto voce_ to Gilbert, “for they did not, as you may have
noticed, treat us to the eternal ‘citizen’ which I am getting so sick
of.”
Amid laughter they helped to put in the stout Percheron horse. The
baskets and a good-sized roll of Mamers cloth were stowed away under
the seats, together with a vociferous duck which had not been sold;
and, with the eldest sister and Château-Foix seated in front, and
Louis with the younger behind, also facing the horse, the equipage
rattled out of the market-place. It attracted little attention. A
swain, somewhat the worse for drink, who stood in a by-street, and
requested the fair charioteer to tell him with whom she had taken up
now, narrowly escaped destruction, the shaft catching him with some
force and sending him into the gutter, wherein he sat, still repeating
his query to the world in general.
“That was my second cousin, Michel,” observed the younger sister to
Louis. And she added, somewhat unnecessarily: “He was drunk.”
The Percheron horse did not exert himself unduly up hills, and the
miles rolled past but slowly. The sun was very hot, but the vehicle
contained a large faded green umbrella, which the cousins held in turn
over the heads of their respective partners. The heat, the hard seat,
and the jogging made Gilbert feel tired and sleepy, but Louis kept up
an animated conversation with both damsels at once. Occasionally he
declared that the captive duck was biting large pieces out of his
legs, a witticism which had enormous success. But in the end, despite
the hilly road and the horse-flies, they reached the turning to
Saint-Ouen. Great were the leave-takings; but the white caps, with
many a backward turn, dwindled at last along the side road.
“Goddesses with the machine!” yawned Louis. “Good heavens! how thirsty
I am!”
“No wonder,” retorted the Marquis. “And yet you complain of my talking
too much to M. Maillard, a really intelligent man.”
“I was paying our fare,” said Louis, yawning again. “One had to do
something. Would you rather have kissed them? Let’s get into the wood;
this sun makes one damned sleepy.” He thrust his arm into Gilbert’s,
and pulled him into the shade.
The road to Sillé-le-Guillaume lay through the heart of the forest—a
matter of some four miles, so they had been told. It was now six
o’clock; there was more than enough time to get to Sillé by dusk—time
enough, in fact, to push on to Evron some eight miles beyond, had
either of them had the inclination to do so. But, as Louis pointed out
with some eloquence, the most sensible thing to do would be to lie
down and rest in the wood. He was obviously tired, and Gilbert himself
confessed to feeling weary. So they left the main road and plunged
along a by-path until, finding a suitable tree, they threw themselves
down beneath it.
The green coolness, after the hot hilly road and the day’s persistent
sun, was delicious. In five minutes Louis was asleep. Gilbert studied
him for a little, flung at his ease on the moss; yes, he looked too
serenely unconscious for treachery. And how had he dared to put the
letters of that terrible word near those of Lucienne’s name . . . how
had he dared to! But the fatigue which, in quickening his mental
vision, had begun to bring a hundred pictures of her, finally
overpowered its own work, and he fell fast asleep.
He woke with a start, to find their late positions reversed, for
Louis, wide awake, was sitting with his hands clasped round his knees
regarding him with an air of amusement.
“I wouldn’t wake you,” he observed, “but do you know how long we’ve
slept? We have been here nearly two hours.”
The long July day was dying rapidly now, was dead rather, and the two
walked along under the trees agreeably enough, until they came to an
unexpected and perplexing fork in the road. After due discussion they
took the left-hand turning instead of keeping straight on, found after
a time that they had strayed into a by-way, but persevered, and
emerged, a little before nine o’clock, on another high-road. Along
this, a few hundred yards to the right of them, shone the lights of a
tiny village, which was obviously not Sillé. A passing rustic informed
them that the hamlet was Pézé-le-Robert, and the road the highway from
Beaumont-sur-Sarthe to Sillé-le-Guillaume.
Louis sighed. “Couldn’t we at least have supper here?” he asked
pathetically. “It’s heart-rending to think how long it is since we had
our last meal.”
The Marquis laughed. “Now that you remind me, I feel very hungry too,”
he admitted. “Let us sup here, then, if we can; we might possibly get
a bed as well.”
As it happened, the first house to which they came, a tiny low-browed
inn, displayed a faded but recognisable wheatsheaf with the legend, “A
la Gerbe d’Or.” A slatternly-looking woman with a dirty cloth in her
hand appeared in response to their knock. In her wake the travellers
exchanged the peculiar close smell of the passage for the hardly more
agreeable though varied odours of the kitchen of the hostelry, which
appeared to be its dining-room also. A couple of rough-looking men
were playing cards at a table in the middle of the room. The woman
ushered the cousins to a small oblong table nearer to the window, at
the end of which sat an individual who was making great play with his
soup. His liberal exhibition of the method of suction came, however,
to an end about a moment after the two had sat down, when, leaning
back in his chair, he pulled out a toothpick and used it vigorously.
While engaged in the performance of this merely ceremonial act—for
there was no meat in the soup—he subjected the newcomers to a steady
scrutiny, not diverted until the advent of a plate of meat, to which
he transferred his attention.
The thin soup was hot, at any rate, the stewed meat passable. The
cousins were half-way through the latter before the man at the end of
the table pushed away his empty plate.
“Pas mal, la mère,” he remarked. “A trifle overdone, perhaps. But it
is something to get meat at all. Some never taste it from week’s end
to week’s end. That’s true, isn’t it, citizen?” he added, leaning
forward and pointedly addressing his query to the Marquis, who sat
opposite at the other end of the little table.
“Perfectly,” responded Gilbert without enthusiasm.
“But you’ve never had to go without it, eh? You’ve never known a day
when you haven’t eaten good, satisfying meat? Come now, confess it!”
And he cackled with a rather unpleasant laughter.
The Marquis was taken aback, and he was also angry at the impertinence.
He was about to reply in no very conciliatory spirit when Louis
suddenly struck in.
“Do you think that we seem too fat and well-liking, citizen?” he asked
gaily. “Our looks belie us if you do. For my part, it’s a long day
since I have tasted meat like this.” Which was true.
“Come from far?” asked the other, producing the toothpick again.
“Far enough to be tired,” replied the Vicomte casually. “From Mamers,
if it interests you to know.”
“Tired!” exclaimed the questioner with a sneer. “Gentry like you
didn’t walk all the way from Mamers, I’ll wager.”
His tone was extremely offensive. From where he sat Louis could see
the table in the middle of the room, and was aware that the two men
sitting at it had stopped their card-playing to listen.
“Quite true,” he said, as he helped himself to wine. “Two charming
_citoyennes_ were so kind as to give us a lift in their cart part of
the way.”
“And shall you stop here to-night?”
“No,” said Gilbert curtly, tired of the insolent and significant
interrogatory.
“Beds not good enough for you, I suppose,” riposted their fellow-guest.
Château-Foix took no notice, but saying to Louis in a low voice, “We
had best begone as soon as we can,” he finished his plateful of meat
in silence, and the Vicomte followed his example. At the end Gilbert
knocked on the table with the handle of his knife to summon the
landlady. “The reckoning, if you please,” he called out.
As if the word had been a preconcerted signal the little man at the
other end of the table sprang to his feet. “There is another reckoning
to be settled first!” he screamed. “You shall pay it before you leave
this place. Citizens, I appeal to you to do your duty! These men are
_ci-devants_—they are aristocrats from Paris—escaping, most probably,
from the just doom the nation imposes on them—aristocrats who have
ground us down for a thousand years, and boast even now of seducing
our wives and daughters. . . .”
The two other men were on their feet. The Marquis, conscious of
unknown perils behind him, had also risen, but Louis, having a clear
view of the whole room, was still sitting coolly in his chair against
the wall. In spite of the extreme seriousness of the situation the
orator’s interpretation of their ride in the market cart was too much
for his gravity, and he was openly laughing. His sangfroid still
further maddened the denunciator.
“I tell you that it is true!” cried the latter, his voice breaking on
a high note of rage. “I denounce them—I spit on them—enemies of the
nation—aristocrats——”
“Prove it!” said Gilbert sternly, grasping the back of his chair as a
possible weapon. “You cannot!”
A positive yell of triumph and malice escaped the little man, and
plucking something white from his breast he turned it about for a
second feverishly, and then held out to his allies a fine lawn
handkerchief with a tiny coronet in the corner.
“It is his!” he cried, pointing to Louis. “He cannot deny it. It was
under the table by his foot . . . and look at it, my friends!”
The taller man snatched it from him. “It is true!” he cried with an
oath. “No one but a _ci-devant_ carries a handkerchief like that!”
Louis got leisurely up, his eyes dancing. “Ah, my friend,” he said
softly, “there are so many _ci-devants_ nowadays. You no doubt are a
_ci-devant_ scavenger or something of the sort, and the gentleman at
the end of the table——”
His voice was drowned in the hubbub that ensued, as the individual in
question, screaming “Arrest them!” flung himself towards Louis. There
was the table between them, but the young man’s fist, shooting out
like lightning, caught him between the eyes, and he staggered back, to
subside upon the hearthstone. Ere he reached it the shorter of the two
card-players was wrestling bodily with the Marquis, who had not space
to use his chair. The other was crouching in the dusky corner near the
window with the evident intention of taking Gilbert in the rear.
Suddenly Château-Foix forced his vociferating foe downwards and
backwards over the table, and at this the man in the corner sprang
forward.
“Take care! he’s coming on you from behind!” shouted Louis, and he
leapt from his own entrenched position between the table and the wall
and rushed between them. In a second he was sent spinning out of the
way, to be brought up by the centre table, over which he fell with a
crash. But he had defeated the enemy’s design. Hurling his beaten
opponent on to the ground the Marquis snatched up the scarcely-tasted
bottle of wine by his plate and broke it fair and full across the head
of his new assailant. The man collapsed groaning at his feet, and with
his fall the coast was clear. The woman had fled long ago.
“Come on, Louis!” shouted Gilbert to his cousin, who was rather
dizzily picking himself up from the debris of cards and shattered
plates. “No—not by the door—the window!”
He had the casement open in an instant; the drop was barely five feet.
Louis scrambled after him, and the Marquis, guided by instinct rather
than by sight, hurried through a little orchard, a paddock, over a
brook, through a meagre hedge, and, bearing always to the left, and
away from Sillé-le-Guillaume, was forced at last to emerge into the
high-road.
Assuring himself that Saint-Ermay was close at his heels, he started
to run down the starlit road. His own footfalls filled his ears with a
horrid sense of their betraying loudness, and it was not for a minute
or so that he realised the growing faintness of those behind. When he
did so he looked over his shoulder, and then stopped in astonishment.
Louis, now some ten yards behind, had dropped to a walk, and a
leisurely one at that. He went quickly back towards him.
“I thought you were a good runner,” was on his lips, instead of which
he cried sharply: “What’s the matter?”
“Go on without me,” said the Vicomte breathlessly. “I—I really can
come no further.” He staggered a little as he spoke; one hand was
clutching at his left breast.
A quick fear shot into the Marquis’ mind. “Are you hurt, my dear boy?”
he asked anxiously, taking a step towards him, for he looked as though
he would fall.
“He had a knife . . .” said Louis faintly but succinctly, and with the
words reeled sideways into his cousin’s arms.