THE LIGHTED WINDOWS OF LANCILLY
There was no way out of it, without telling all. Fortunately Joseph knew
that his secrets were safe with these two, whose hearts were absolutely
Royalist, though circumstances held them bound to inactivity. Presently
Anne rose and left the room.
"Thank God! that is over," Joseph said, half to himself. "I must be
going. Monsieur le Curé, I leave her to you. Do not let her be too
anxious. D'Ombré is rough, but a good fellow; he will take care of our
Angelot."
The old Curé was plunged in gloom. Tall and slight in his long black
garment, he stood under the high chimneypiece, and leaned forward
shivering, to warm his fingers at the blaze.
"Ah, monsieur!" he murmured. "Have you thought what you are doing? Can
you expect good to come out of evil? Your brother, who has done
everything for us all, how are you treating him? If madame does not see
it, I do. You are taking Ange, making him a conspirator and a Chouan. If
you save him from one danger, you plunge him into a greater, for if he
and Monsieur d'Ombré are caught on this mission, they will certainly
pay for it with their lives. You are doing all this without his father's
knowledge--"
"Ah, my dear Curé, I know the police better than you do," Monsieur
Joseph said hastily. "These young fellows will not be the first who have
escaped to England; and Ange cannot stay here with their eyes and claws
upon him. Even his father would not wish that. Leave it to me. What is
it, Anne? what are you thinking of?"
His sister-in-law had come back into the room, wrapped in a cloak, with
a hood drawn over her face.
"I am going with you to see Ange," she said.
The wind was howling, the rain was pattering outside. But Monsieur
Joseph had all the trouble in the world to make her give up this idea.
At last, after many arguments and prayers, he persuaded her that she
must not come to Les Chouettes but must absolutely trust Ange to him. He
promised solemnly that the young man should not start without her
knowing it, that, if possible, she should see her boy again.
"And if Urbain comes back before they are gone?" she said, looking
whitely into his face. "I tell you positively, Joseph, I shall not
dare--"
"My dear friend, owing to Monsieur le Curé's unfortunate second-sight,
your son's life is in your hands. If Urbain comes back, tell him all, if
you will. His presence did not save Ange from being arrested before, it
will not save him from being retaken. My fault, perhaps, as Urbain
said--all my fault--" He struck his breast as if in church, with his
fine smile. "But then it is my place to save him, and I will do it, if
you will let me--in my own way."
They were both trembling, and large tears ran down the old Curé's thin
cheeks. Joseph, still smiling, bent to kiss her hand. He held it for a
moment, then looked up with dark imploring eyes.
"Adieu, chère Anne! and think of me with all your charity!" he said.
A minute later he had slipped noiselessly out, and plunged alone into
the wet, howling darkness.
Through those days of suspense, while Angelot was hidden at Les
Chouettes, while master and servants alike acted on the supposition that
the house was watched by gendarmes with all the power of the Ministry of
Police behind them--through these days, one person alone was happy; it
was Henriette. She adored her cousin; it was joy to watch over him, to
scold him, to amuse him, to keep him, a difficult matter, within the
bounds prescribed by his uncle. Every day Angelot said it was
impossible; he must be ill, he must die, if he could not stretch his
legs and breathe the open air. Every day Henriette, when her father was
out, allowed him to race up and down the stairs, played at hide-and-seek
with him in the passages, let him dance her round and round the lower
rooms. Or else she played games with him, cards, chess, tric-trac; or
he lay and listened to her while she told him fairy tales; listened with
a dreamy half-understanding, with a certainty, underlying all his
impatience, that there was nothing to live for now. What did it matter,
after all? One moment, life and hope and youth made him thrill and
tremble in every limb; the next, his fate weighed upon him like a
millstone; he laid his head down on the broad pillow of the sofa, and
while Henriette chattered his eyelashes were sometimes wet. All was
settled now. He must be banished to England, to Germany, banished in a
cause he did not care for, in which he was involved against his will.
Never again should he walk with his gun and Négo, light-hearted, over
his own old country. Never again, more certainly, should he see Hélène,
feel the maddening sweetness of her touch, her kiss. There was to be a
ball. Henriette told him all about it; he heard of his cousin Hervé's
visit, and was half amused, half miserable. Hélène would dance; white
and slender, her eyes full of sadness. She would dance with other men,
thinking, he knew, of her lost friend, her Angelot. In time, one of them
would be presented to her as her husband. Not Ratoneau; Angelot had her
father's word for that, and he drew a long breath when he thought of it.
But some one else; that was inevitable. Ah! as life must pass, why
cannot it pass more quickly? Why must every day have such an endless
number of hours and minutes? What torture is there greater than this of
waiting, stifled and idle, for a fate arranged in spite of one's self?
Henriette flitted in and out, eager and earnest like her father. After
Monsieur Joseph's visit to La Marinière, he sent her there one day with
Marie, and she was embraced by her aunt Anne with a quite new passion of
tenderness, and trusted with a letter and a huge parcel of necessaries
for Angelot's journey. Monsieur Joseph laughed a little angrily over
these.
"Tiens, mon petit! your mother thinks you are going to drive to the
coast in a chaise and four," he said; but Angelot bent his head very
gravely over the coats and the shirts that those little thin hands had
folded together for him.
"You must give me fair notice, Uncle Joseph," he said. "Police or no
police, I do not go without wishing her good-bye."
Everything came at once, as fate would have it. It was after dark, a
wild, windy evening, stars looking through the hurrying clouds, no
moonrise till early morning. With every precaution, Monsieur Joseph
now allowed his nephew to dine in the dining-room, taking care to place
him where he could not be seen from outside when Gigot came in through
the shutters from the kitchen. Angelot had now been kept in hiding for
ten days, and the police seemed to have disappeared from the woods, so
that Monsieur Joseph's mind was easier.
Suddenly, as they sat at dinner that evening, all the dogs began to
bark.
"Go into your den!" said the little uncle, starting up.
"No, dear uncle, this game pie is too good," Angelot said coolly. "I
heard a horse coming down the lane. It is Monsieur d'Ombré's messenger."
"If it is--very true, you had better eat your dinner," said his uncle.
And to be sure, in a few minutes, Gigot came in with a letter, Angelot's
marching orders. At five o'clock the next morning César d'Ombré would
wait for him at the Étang des Morts, a lonely, legend-haunted pool in
the woods where four roads met, about two leagues beyond the _landes_ by
way of La Joubardière.
"Very well; you will start at three o'clock," said Monsieur Joseph.
"Give the man something to eat and send him back, Gigot, to meet his
master."
"Three o'clock! I shall be asleep!" said Angelot. "Surely an hour will
be enough to take me to the Étang des Morts--a cheerful rendezvous!"
He laughed and looked at Riette. She was very pale and grave, her dark
eyes wide open.
"The good dead--they will watch over you, mon petit!" she murmured. "We
must not be afraid of them."
"This is not a time for talking nonsense, children," said Monsieur
Joseph; he looked at them severely, his mouth trembling. "Half-past
three at latest; the boy might lose his way in the dark."
Riette got up suddenly and flung her arms round Angelot's neck.
"Mon petit, mon petit!" she repeated, burying her face on his shoulder.
"What are you doing?" he cried. "How am I to finish my dinner? You come
between me and the best pie that Marie ever made! Get along with you,
little good-for-nothing!"
He laughed; then Marie's pie seemed to choke him; he pushed back his
chair, lifted Riette lightly and carried her out of the room.
"Now I am in prison no longer," he said. "I am going to run across to La
Marinière; will you come too, little cousin?"
But Monsieur Joseph had something to say to that. He would not let
Angelot go without sermons so long that the boy could hardly listen to
them, on the care he was to take that no servant or dog at La Marinière
saw him, on the things he might and might not say to his mother.
At last Angelot said aside to Henriette: "There is only one thing I
regret--that I did not go straight home at first to my father and
mother. That will bring misfortune on us all, if anything does--my uncle
is absolutely too much of a conspirator."
"Hush, you are ungrateful," said Riette, gravely.
"Ah! It seems to me that I am nothing good or fortunate--everything bad
and unlucky! My relations and their politics toss me like a ball,"
Angelot sighed impatiently. "I wish this night were over and we were on
our way, I and that excellent grumpy César. And the farther I go, the
more I shall want to come back. Tiens! Riette, I am miserable!"
The child gazed at him with her great eyes, full of the love and
understanding of a woman.
"Courage!" she said. "You will come back--with the King."
"The King!" Angelot repeated bitterly. "Ask Martin Joubard about that.
Hear him talk of the Emperor."
"A peasant! a common soldier! What does he know?" said the girl,
scornfully. "I think my papa knows better."
"Ah, well! Believe in him; you are right," said Angelot.
They talked as they stood outside the house in the dim starlight,
waiting a few moments for Monsieur Joseph: he chose to go part of the
way with Angelot, and consented unwillingly to take Riette with him. The
dead silence of the woods and fields was only broken by the moan of the
wind; a sadness that struck to the heart brooded over the depths of
lonely land; far down in the valley cold mists were creeping, and even
on the lower slopes of Monsieur Joseph's meadow a chilly damp rose from
the undrained ground. As far as one could tell, not a human being moved
in the woods; the feet of Monsieur d'Ombré's messenger had passed up the
lane out of hearing; all was solitary and silent about the quaint
turreted house with its many shuttered windows and dark guards lying
silent, stretched on the sand. Only one of these rose and shook himself
and followed his master.
But the loneliness was not so great as it seemed. Behind a large tree to
leeward of the house, Simon was lurking alone. He had sent his men away
for the night, and he ground his teeth with rage when he saw his victim,
out of reach for the time. For he had not the courage, with no law or
right on his side, to face the uncle and nephew, armed and together.
Avoiding the open starlit slope, those three with the dog passed at once
into the shadow of the woods, thus taking the safest, though not the
shortest way to La Marinière. Simon stole after them at a safe distance.
They came presently to a high corner in a lane, where, over the bank on
which the pollard oaks stood in line, they could look across to the
other side of the valley. As a rule, the Château de Lancilly was hardly
to be seen after sunset, facing east, and its own woods shadowing it on
three sides; but to-night its long front shone and glowed and flashed
with light; every window seemed to be open and illuminated; the effect
was so festal, so dazzling, that Riette cried out in admiration.
Monsieur Joseph exclaimed angrily, and Angelot gazed in silence.
"Ah, papa! It is the ball! How beautiful! How I wish I could be there!"
cried the child.
"No doubt!" said Monsieur Joseph. "Exactly! You would like to dance till
to-morrow morning, while Ange is escaping. Well, shall I take you across
there now? One of your pretty cousins would lend you a ball-dress!"
Riette's blushes could not be seen in the dark, but she said no more.
Monsieur Joseph walked on a few paces and stopped.
"Ange will go quicker without us," he said. "Go, my boy, and God bless
and protect you. We have given those rascals of police the slip, I
think, or they have decided that you are not to be caught here. For the
last day or two Tobie has seen nothing of them. But remember you are not
safe; go cautiously and come back quickly. Do not let your mother keep
you long. I believe I am doing very wrong in letting you go to her at
all!"
"As to that, Uncle Joseph, it is certain that I won't leave the country
without seeing her," said Angelot.
"Go, then, and don't be long, don't be rash; remember that I am dying
with impatience. You have the pistols I gave you?"
"Yes."
"Don't shoot a gendarme if you can help it. It might make things more
serious. Away with you! Come, Riette."
As the two walked back along the lane, Simon scrambled out of their way,
like Angelot out of his, into the thick mass of one of the old
_truisses_. The dog looked up at the tree and growled as they passed.
Monsieur Joseph glanced sharply that way, but saw nothing, and called
the dog to follow him, walking on a little more quickly.
"He will go straight to La Marinière," he was saying to Riette, "stay
twenty minutes or so with his mother, and be back at Les Chouettes in
less than an hour"--a piece of information not lost on Simon, who
climbed down carefully from his tree, looked to his carbine, and
chuckled as he walked slowly on towards La Marinière.
"Nothing in the world like patience," he said to himself. "Monsieur le
Général ought to double my reward for this. I was right from the
beginning; that old devil of a Chouan had the boy hidden in that
robber's den of his. The fellows thought I was wasting my time and
theirs. They didn't like being half starved and catching cold in the
woods. I have had all the trouble in the world to hold them down to it.
But what does it matter, so that we catch our game after all! I must
choose a good place to drop on the youngster--lucky for me that he
couldn't live without seeing his mother. Is he armed? Never mind! I must
be fit to die of old age if I can't give an account of a boy like that.
His mother, eh? Why did his father go to Paris, if they knew he was
here? Perhaps they thought it wiser to keep the good news from Monsieur
Urbain; these things divide families. They let him go off on a
wild-goose chase after a pardon or something. Well, so that I catch him,
tie him up out of the General's way, get my money, start off to Paris to
see my father, and--perhaps--never come back--for this affair may make
another department pleasanter--"
So ruminated Simon, as he strolled through the lanes in the starlight,
following, as he supposed, in the footsteps of Angelot, and preparing to
lie in wait for him at some convenient corner on his return.
But when his uncle and cousin left him, disappearing into the shadows,
Angelot leaped up on the bank and stood for a minute or two gazing
across at Lancilly. To watch till her shadow passed by one of those
lighted windows--if not to climb to some point where he might see her,
herself, without breaking his word to her father and attempting to speak
to her--it might cost an extra half-hour and Uncle Joseph's displeasure,
perhaps. But after all, what was leaving all the rest of the world
compared with leaving her, Hélène, and practically for ever? His gentle,
frightened love, to whom he had promised all the strength and protection
he had to give, to whom invisible cords drew him across the valley!
"No, I cannot!" Angelot said to himself. He waited for no second
thoughts, but jumped down into the field beyond the bank, and did not
even trouble himself to keep in the shadow while with long light
strides he ran towards Lancilly.
Two hours later Monsieur Joseph was pacing up and down, wildly
impatient, in front of his house. Over his head, Riette listened behind
closed shutters, and heard nothing but his quick tramp, and an angry
exclamation now and then against Angelot. At last Monsieur Joseph
stopped short and listened. The dogs barked, but he silenced them; then
came a swinging light and two figures hurrying along the shadowy
footpath from La Marinière. Another instant, and Urbain's strong voice
rang through the night that brooded over Les Chouettes.
"Joseph, you incorrigible old Chouan! what have you done with my boy?"