AT THE CHARCOAL-BURNER’S CABIN IN THE WOODS
THE woman led the way into the kitchen which opened off the tiny
passage and André followed her. The two faced each other in silence.
Presently she placed the lantern on the rough table in the centre of
the room and once again looked at him thoughtfully through her mask.
The only other light there was came from the dying embers of a fire,
whose murky shadows flickered on the walls and on the low roof.
André with his fingers on his sword-hilt returned her studied gaze.
He could make out that her hair under her hood was fair; her voice,
her step, were those of a girl, and what he could see of her figure
shrouded in its long cloak bid well to be shapely. Yes, she was young,
this woman, but a pest on that mask!
“You are not the officer I expected,” she remarked at last.
“He was wounded; he could not come, so they sent me in his place,”
André answered at once.
“I understand,” she replied with a quiet nod, “but they said two would
be sent.”
“My companion is outside guarding the horses.” Whereupon she lifted the
lantern and inspected him closely. André, ready for anything, stood
quite still. “If you doubt my word,” he added carelessly, “I will take
you to him now.”
“No,” she answered, replacing the lantern on the table, “your word is
enough; the word of an English officer,” and she turned to cross the
kitchen.
André’s face was calmness itself, but his blood was tingling with
fear, curiosity, revenge. Never in his adventurous life had he been
so thrilled as at this moment in this dim, silent kitchen, alone with
this cold-blooded traitress in a mask. But, mastered as he was by an
overpowering desire to probe her secret to the bottom, he was also
carefully studying every nook and cranny. There was only one way out of
the room--by the door, which was half-open. He carefully moved so that
he might face it, and if a swift rush were necessary not have the table
between him and the road to escape.
“There are the papers,” she said in her passionless tones. She had
taken them from a cupboard in the wall.
He betrayed no eagerness, but his fingers trembled and his heart
thumped wildly as he looked them through by the dim light of the
lantern, one eye all the time watching the masked girl, who quietly
kneeled down by the fire with her back to him and began to blow on the
embers with a bellows.
“They are what you want, are they not?” she remarked over her shoulder.
“I believe so,” he answered as carelessly.
Yes, the _vivandière_ was right. The paper was a complete plan of the
French encampment, marking accurately the positions of each battalion
and each battery, and in the corner was drawn in blood a curious
sign--two crossed daggers with 101 inserted in the gaps:
[Illustration]
It sent an icy shiver through him, this countermark of the traitor’s
success and good faith. God! they were betrayed indeed to those damned
Austrian hounds and English dogs. But he, André de Nérac, had saved the
King and the army of France!
“I thank you,” he said, folding the paper up and putting it
deliberately within his cloak.
“I do not desire your thanks,” she replied as she blew away some ashes.
André stared in dumb bewilderment at her on her knees there in front
of the fire. Should he run her through at once or strangle her for an
execrable traitress? The woman betrayed neither fear nor interest. She
seemed to have forgotten his presence.
“Are you ‘No. 101’?” he asked at last.
“Oh, no.” She was laughing softly. “I am only her--agent.”
“Then the trait--then she is a woman?”
“Yes.” She stood up and shook some cinders from her cloak. “Yes, she
is a woman.” And André knew she was lying. The fingers on his sword
relaxed. Kill her he could not--yet. Depart he could not--yet. For
he was in the grip of a weird fascination--of a secret whose mystery
numbed his senses.
“It is marvellous,” he muttered, “but the English army thanks ‘No. 101’
and you.”
“Yes,” she answered indifferently, “it is marvellous, but the English
army is nothing to her nor to me. For myself I detest the English
officers, but like you, sir, I simply do as I am bid. Give me the gold
and I will wish you good-night.”
The gold; English gold! Pest on it! The _vivandière_ and he had thought
of everything but that. The perspiration swelled on to his forehead. He
grasped his sword and took a step towards the doorway.
“I was given no gold,” he said brusquely and waited with drawn breath.
“No?” She shrugged her shoulders and astonished him by kneeling down
and taking up the bellows. “It is like English officers to buy secrets
and not pay for them.”
“You are unjust to the English,” he protested. Ah! that surely was a
stroke of genius.
“I know them, the English,” she said without looking round.
Dead silence broken only by the wheezy puffs of the bellows. Pity,
fear, astonishment, and a burning curiosity wrestled in André’s breast.
Was this masked girl flesh and blood or a devil in human form?
“Do you want the papers back?” he demanded.
“They are not mine to ask. I was told to give them to you; keep them.”
The icy contempt in her voice stung him. If it had not been for France
he would have flung them at her and then strangled her on the spot.
“Before I wish you good-night,” he said after a pause, “will you do me
the honour to remove your mask?”
“Why?” She wheeled slowly, still on her knees.
“Why does even an English officer ask a woman to do such a thing?”
She rose and came close to him. “I will take off my mask with
pleasure,” she said, “if you, sir, will do me the honour to take off
your cloak and share my supper.”
André could not check a start. Had she guessed the truth or was this
diabolical coquetry?
“Permit me,” she said softly, and before he could move a finger she had
wrenched his cloak asunder. “Ah!” she cried, “I thought so. A hero in
the uniform of a Chevau-léger de la Garde with a naked sword and I--a
woman--defenceless, alone. You an English officer--you--you!”
She had slipped from his side. The table with the smoking lantern was
between them.
“Monsieur le Vicomte de Nérac,” she whispered, “any woman can make a
fool of you.”
André slammed the door behind him. “Traitress,” he swore. “Your last
hour has come.”
She gazed at him calmly. “Listen,” she said, “listen! Monsieur Spy.
To-morrow you will be shot by the English--and the papers”--she
laughed--“will still help towards the ruin of France.”
André halted sharply. What was that outside? Horse hoofs in the
clearing--two horses! The English officers were here and he was
trapped, trapped, as God lived, by a woman who flouted his uniform and
himself.
“You will not escape,” he said with set teeth, “and I have the papers.”
“Pooh!” she flicked her cloak in his face.
A loud rapping on the outer door.
“Enter,” she called. “Enter, Captain Statham, the door is not bolted.”
Captain Statham! They had met again and not in the salon of a woman of
pleasure. André laughed aloud.
The latch was being lifted. It was now or never. Twisting his cloak
round his left arm as the Spaniard does in a duel with knives, in a
trice André, sword in hand, was over the table with the spring of a
cat. When he had punished this traitress he would deal with Captain
Statham. But the woman was too quick for him. The legs of the table met
him in the stomach and sent him staggering back. Through the sickening
pain he could hear her soft laugh of victorious contempt. A crash.
She had hurled the lamp to the floor and was past him, missing his
sword point by just half an inch. The blade quivered in the woodwork.
Half-mad, he grabbed at her mask--it came off--but she was gone.
“We shall meet again,” she called, “your business and mine I hope does
not end here.” A spurt of flame shot into his eyes. The oil of the
exploded lamp had set the dry, rotten timbers ablaze and the kitchen
was alight. Quick as thought André hurled himself after the girl. She
had doubled to the right--there was another door as he guessed leading
to the back--she was through it and he after her, snatching at her
figure in the pitchy darkness. For two seconds he held her cloak--she
twisted out of it--and he fell back with a curse against the wall. She
had escaped.
And now the flame from the kitchen revealed Captain Statham standing in
the front doorway, stupefied, his eyes glaring like a madman’s. With a
cry he flung himself on André. A cold pain in his left arm--André was
stabbed--but this was no moment for vengeance, only for flight, for on
his escape hung the safety and honour of France. He rushed into the
open at the back. To find his horse--to find his horse!
“I have seen her,” he heard Statham cry as he whipped round the cabin.
It would be a race across the clearing now, for Statham’s companion
must be waiting on the other side, and in the roar of flame it would
be as light as day in this grisly thicket. What if his horse were not
there? Two to one then. Bah! should he turn to meet them as it was? No,
the papers--the papers first--vengeance would follow later.
For one second André crouched behind the hut. Ah! there was his
horse--there was the other officer twenty paces off. Could he do it? He
must.
“_Jésu!_” came the words in the voice of George Onslow as André doubled
round the corner, “it is the Vicomte, Statham; we are betrayed. This
way for God’s sake--ha!”
Crack went Onslow’s pistol. André had leaped across the clearing. He
had missed, but the flash almost singed André’s hair.
One slash of his sword and his horse was free.
“Good-night, gentlemen,” he shouted in victorious bravado, “we shall
meet to-morrow. _Mes saluts et au revoir!_”
In went the spurs and his maddened horse was bursting through the wood.
Another pistol-shot and they were after him, but he had a good start
and he knew that no beast alive could overhaul the beautiful blood mare
he had bought in England. A roar of flame behind him--the crack of
the wood--two pistol bullets singing through the swirling raw air--a
ghastly vision of that half-naked man and woman in the horror of the
clotted grass, his horse’s hoofs stamping out the dead woman’s face
as she lay where he had left her--a ride as of devil-tormented goblins
through the pains of hell--that was André’s recollection of his return
until he dropped fainting within his own lines.
* * * * *
Two flickering candles danced in his eyes as he opened them.
“Bravo!” whispered a caressing voice. “Bravo!”
He was lying in a long chair and the little _vivandière_ was kneeling
beside him.
“Bravo!” she repeated, “and now drink--drink!” She forced brandy,
glorious and hot, down his throat.
“Ah!” He sat up. The horror was slowly fading away, though he could
still see floating between her face and his that black cabin roaring
red, and that outcast woman’s face crushed into pulp beneath the iron
of his horse’s shoe. “The papers--the plans,” he muttered.
“They are here,” she waved them softly, they were stained with blood.
“Yes, we are saved--France and the army and the King are saved and
you--you have saved us.”
André smiled, letting his head drop. He was supremely happy. Denise
would hear of this--Denise--ah!
“Come, my friend,” the _vivandière_ whispered, “look at yourself. It is
too droll.”
He took the mirror from her and laughed--laughed loud and long. Here
was, indeed, a picture of a ruffian with a uniform torn and singed,
the paint smeared over his cheeks, one sleeve cut away, and his left
arm bandaged! Pah! that was where Statham had stabbed him. He would pay
for it to-morrow--no, to-day--to-day.
“I found the papers when you fainted,” said the _vivandière_. “I wept
when I found them, for I was sick with fear that you had failed, and
now, _mon ami_, I take them to Monseigneur le Maréchal.”
“Yes, Mademoiselle, they are yours.”
Then André told his story while she listened eagerly. But he did not
tell her all, for instinctively he felt some things he had discovered
that night had better be locked as a secret in his own heart until he
knew more.
“I do not think that was ‘No. 101,’” she remarked thoughtfully. “But
it is a pity you did not see her face. Some day hereafter it might be
useful to be able to recognise that woman.”
“Perhaps so,” he assented, and he added to himself, “I shall see it
before I die. It is written in the stars.” For the curious thought
haunted his mind that if he had seen that woman’s face he would never
have returned. Yet Captain Statham had seen it; suddenly his cry, his
look in that narrow passage, rose before him. Was it what he had seen
which had shot such awful fear and horror into his eyes? Could it be
that the girl in the mask was--ah! he must wait before the question was
answered. And the answer would certainly come. That too was written in
the stars.
“And now sleep, Vicomte,” his companion whispered. “In four hours the
dawn will be here. A battle is at hand, and once more you must fight
for the fair eyes of your mistress, for the honour of France and the
King.”
She half-carried him to the bed. The flame-red pictures of the night
kept shooting through a blackness of pain in his eyes. How tired and
weak he was. From far away a trumpet note rang, a drum throbbed, a
snatch of revelling song bubbled mockingly up:
“Et son amour ridicule,
A fait rire tout Paris, ris, ris.”
“I made a promise,” dropped the soothing words in his ear, “but
Monsieur le Vicomte must never betray the secret to Monseigneur and
the King. Yet remember, I beg, there is nothing--nothing--I will not
do for you if I can serve you, for I am grateful--more grateful than
a woman can say.” A cushion was slipped under his neck. Two soft arms
enfolded him for a brief second. “The lips, Vicomte” came the caressing
chant--“the lips that a king has kissed salute you.” His head rested on
her breast. “Adieu!” She had vanished and his numbed senses ebbed away
into an enchanted oblivion. The Loire floated at his feet, the autumn
trees rustled a perfect pleasantness and peace, and Denise standing
beneath the carved mantelpiece with “_Dieu Le Vengeur_” in a scroll of
gold above her had him in her forgiving arms.
Ha! What was that? Hoarse voices and cries, the rush of feet, of
horses, of waggons, and of guns, the rattle of the drums and the
challenge of trumpets. André leaped up, flung the window wide open.
The dawn was here, and hark, hark! Those are the silver trumpets of
the Chevau-légers de la Garde de la Maison du Roi. The trumpets of the
Guard calling as they called at Steinkirk. To horse! to horse!
And what is that away yonder through the pearly mist of the morning
out there in the enclosures and coppices dripping in the dew of May?
Answering calls and the feverish thud of drums. They are coming--the
white-coated Austrian hounds and the red-coated English dogs! They are
coming! To horse! to horse! For to-day we must fight for the honour of
France--fight that we may have the play promised to the army by the
actresses of the Théâtre Français when Monseigneur the Maréchal de Saxe
has won yet another victory for His Majesty, Well-Beloved. Ah, they
shall see, those English dogs, what lies in the hearts and swords of
the nobles of the Guard. Fontenoy! Neither they nor we will ever forget
Fontenoy.