It was well for La Boulaye that he had tethered his horse to a tree
before approaching the coach. That solitary beast standing by the
roadside in the deepening gloom attracted the attention of his
followers, when--a half-hour or so later--they rode that way, making for
Liege, as La Boulaye had bidden them.
At their approach the animal neighed, and Garin, hearing the sound,
reined in and peered forward into the gloom, to descry the horse's head
and back outlined above the blur of the hedge. His men halted behind him
whilst he approached the riderless beast and made--as well as he could
in the darkness--an examination of the saddle. One holster he found
empty, at which he concluded that the rider, whoever he had been, had
met with trouble; from the other he drew a heavy pistol, which, however,
gave him no clue.
“Get down,” he ordered his men, “and search the roads hereabouts. I'll
wager a horse to a horseshoe that you will find a body somewhere.”
He was obeyed, and presently a cry from one of the searchers announced a
discovery. It was succeeded by another exclamation.
“Sacre nom!” swore the trooper. “It is the Citizen-deputy!”
In an instant Garin had leapt to the ground and with the others crowding
about him, their bridles over their arms and their horses in a bunch
behind them, he was bending under the dripping hedge to examine the body
that lay supine in the sodden road. A vigorous oath escaped him when he
assured himself that it was indeed La Boulaye.
“Is he dead?” cried the men in chorus.
“No--not dead” grumbled the corporal. “But there is a lump on his brow
the size of an egg, and God knows how long he has been lying here in
this bed of mud.”
They had no restoratives, and the only thing was to convey him to the
nearest habitation and demand shelter. They held a short council on the
matter, and in the end Garin bade four of them take him up and carry him
in a cloak. Some two miles back they had passed a house, and thither the
corporal now bade them retrace their steps. They made an odd procession;
first went two mounted troopers leading the horses of the others, then
the four on foot, carrying the Deputy in a cloak, and lastly, Garin
riding in the rear.
In this manner they went back along the dark road, and for close upon a
half-hour--for their progress was slow--they trudged along in silence.
At last there was a short exclamation from one of the riders, as half
a mile away an illuminated window beamed invitingly. Encouraged by it,
they quickened their steps a little. But almost at the same time La
Boulaye stirred on the cloak, and the men who carried him heard him
speak. At first it was an incoherent mutter, then his words came more
distinctly.
“Hold! Where are you carrying me? Who the devil are you?”
It was Garin's voice that came instantly to reassure him. Caron essayed
to sit up, but finding it impracticable, he shortly bade his men set him
down. They halted. Garin dismounted and came to the Deputy's side, and
it was found that his condition was none so grave after all, for he was
able to stand unaided. When, however, he attempted to walk, he reeled,
and would of a certainty have fallen, but that Garin put out his arm to
support him.
“Steady there, Citizen,” the corporal admonished him.
“Get my horse!” he commanded briefly.
“But, name of a name! you are not fit to ride,” Garin protested.
La Boulaye, however, would listen to no reason. With the recovery of his
faculties came the consideration of how miserably Suzanne had duped him,
and of how she had dealt with him when he had overtaken her. He burned
now to be avenged, and at all costs he would ride after and recapture
her. He announced, therefore, to the corporal that they must push on
to Liege. Garin gasped at his obstinacy, and would have sought to have
dissuaded him, but that La Boulaye turned on him with a fierceness that
silenced his expostulations.
It was left to Nature to enforce what Garin could not achieve. When La
Boulaye came to attempt to mount he found it impossible. He was stiff
and numb from his long exposure in the rain, and when he moved with any
vigour his head swam dizzily and throbbed with pain.
At last he was forced to realise--with inward girding--that he must
relinquish his determination, and he acknowledged himself ready to take
the corporal's advice and make for the house whose lighted window shone
like a beacon in the darkness that had descended. He even allowed
them to prevail upon him to lie down in the cloak again, and thus they
carried him the remainder of the way. In his heart he still bore the
hope that short rest, restoratives, and fresh clothes would fit him for
the pursuit once more, and that if he set out within the next few hours
he might yet come up with Mademoiselle before she had passed beyond his
reach. Should the morning still find him unequal to the task of going
after her, he would despatch Garin and his men.
At last they reached the cottage--it was little more--and Garin rapped
on the door with his whip. It was opened by a woman, who told them, in
answer to the corporal's request for shelter, that her husband was from
home, and that she had no accommodation for them. It would seem that
the woman had housed soldiers of the Republic before, and that her
experiences had not been of a nature calculated to encourage her in the
practice. But La Boulaye now staggered forward and promised her generous
payment if she would receive them.
“Payment?” she cried. “In worthless assignats that nobody will take from
me. I know the ways of you.”
“Not in assignats,” La Boulaye promised her, “but in coin.”
And having mollified her somewhat with that assurance, he proceeded
to urge her to admit them. Yonder was a shed where the horses could be
stabled for the night. But still the woman demurred.
“I lack the room,” she said, with some firmness.
“But at least,” put in Garin, “you could house the Citizen here. He has
been hurt, and he is scarcely able to stand. Come, woman, if you will
consent to that, we others can lie with the horses in the shed.”
This in the end they gained by renewed promises of good payment. She
brewed a broth for them, and for La Boulaye she found a suit of her
absent husband's clothes, whilst his own wet garments were spread to dry
before the fire. Some brandy, too, she found and brought him, and the
draught did much to restore him.
When they had supped, Garin and the troopers withdrew to the outhouse,
leaving La Boulaye in sole possession of the cottage hearth. And there,
in a suit of the absent farmer's grey homespun, his legs encased in
coarse woollen stockings and sabots upon his feet, sat the young Deputy
alone with his unpleasant thoughts. The woman had brought him a pipe,
and, although the habit was foreign to him as a rule, he had lighted
it and found the smoking somewhat soothing. Ruefully he passed his hand
across his bandaged brow, and in pondering over all that had taken place
since yesternight at Boisvert, his cheeks grew flushed at once with
anger and with shame.
“To have been so duped!”
And now--his mind growing clearer as he recovered in vigour--it occurred
to him that by to-morrow it would be too late to give pursuit. Once she
crossed the Sambre at Liege, or elsewhere, who could tell him by what
road she would elect to continue her journey? He had not sufficient men
at his disposal to send out parties along each of the possible roads.
That her ultimate destination was Treves he knew. But once there she was
beyond his reach, at safety from the talons of the French Republic.
He sat on and thought, what time his brows came closer together and his
teeth fastened viciously upon the stem of the pipe. By the table sat the
woman, knitting industriously, and ever and anon glancing inquiry at her
stern, thoughtful guest, and the click of her needles was the only sound
that disturbed the stillness of the room. Outside the wind was wailing
like the damned, and the rain which had recommenced with new vigour,
rattled noisily upon the panes.
Suddenly above the din of the elements a shout sounded in the night. The
Deputy raised his head, and glanced towards the woman. A moment later
they heard the gate creak, and steps upon the path that led to the
cottage door.
“Your husband?” inquired La Boulaye.
“No, monsieur. He has gone to Liege, and will not return until
to-morrow. I do not know who it can be.”
There was alarm on her face, which La Boulaye now set himself to allay.
“At least you are well protected, Citoyenne. My men are close at hand,
and we can summon them if there be the need.”
Reassured she rose, and at the same moment a knock sounded on the door.
She went to open it, and from his seat by the hearth La Boulaye heard a
gentle, mincing voice that was oddly familiar to him.
“Madame,” it said, “we are two poor, lost wayfarers, and we crave
shelter for the night. We will pay you handsomely.”
“I am desolated that I have no room, Messieur,” she answered, with
courteous firmness.
“Pardi!” interpolated another voice. “We need no room. A bundle of straw
and a corner is all we seek. Of your charity, Madame, is this a night on
which to leave a dog out of doors?”
A light of recollection leaped suddenly to La Boulaye's eyes, and with a
sudden gasp he stooped to the hearth.
“But I cannot, Messieurs,” the woman was saying, when the second voice
interrupted her.
“I see your husband by the fire, Madame. Let us hear what he has to
say.”
The woman coloured to the roots of her hair. She stepped back a pace,
and was about to answer them when, chancing to glance in La Boulaye's
direction, she paused. He had risen, and was standing with his back to
the fire. There was a black smudge across his face, which seemed to act
as a mask, and his dark eyes glowed with an intensity of meaning which
arrested her attention, and silenced the answer which was rising to her
lips.
In the brief pause the new-comers had crossed the threshold, and stood
within the rustic chamber. The first of these was he whose gentle voice
La Boulaye had recognised--old M. des Cadoux, the friend of the Marquis
de Bellecour. His companion, to the Deputy's vast surprise, was none
other than the bearded courier who had that morning delivered him at
Boisvert the letter from Robespierre. What did these two together, and
upon such manifest terms of equality? That, it should be his business to
discover.
“Come in, Messieurs,” he bade them, assuming the role of host. “We are
unused to strangers, and Mathilde there is timid of robbers. Draw near
the fire and dry yourselves. We will do the best we can for you. We are
poor people, Messieurs; very poor.”
“I have already said that we will pay you handsomely my friend,” quoth
Des Cadoux, coming forward with his companion. “Do your best for us and
you shall not regret it. Have you aught to eat in the house?”
The woman was standing by the wall, her face expressing bewilderment and
suspicion. Suspicious she was, yet that glance of La Boulaye's had ruled
her strangely, and she was content to now await developments.
“We will see what we can do,” answered La Boulaye, as he made room for
them by the hearth. “Come, Mathilde, let us try what the larder will
yield.”
“I am afraid that Madame still mistrusts us,” deplored Des Cadoux.
La Boulaye laughed for answer as he gently but firmly drew her towards
the door leading to the interior of the house. He held it for her to
pass, what time his eyes were set in an intent but puzzled glance upon
the courier. There was something about the man that was not wholly
strange to La Boulaye. That morning, when he had spoken in the gruff
accents of one of the rabble, no suspicion had entered the Deputy's
mind that he was other than he seemed, for all that he now recalled how
Tardivet had found the fellow's patriotism a little too patriotic. Now
that he spoke in the voice that was naturally usual to him, it seemed to
La Boulaye that it contained a note that he had heard before.
Still puzzled, he passed out of the room to be questioned sharply by the
woman of the house touching his motives for passing himself off as her
husband and inviting the new-comers to enter.
“I promise you their stay will be a very brief one,” he answered. “I
have suspicions to verify the ends to serve, as you shall see. Will
you do me the favour to go out by the back and call my men? Tell the
corporal to make his way to the front of the house, and to hold himself
in readiness to enter the moment I call him.”
“What are you about to do?” she asked and the face, as he saw it by the
light of the candle she held, wore an expression of sullen disapproval.
He reassured her that there would be no bloodshed, and suggested that
the men were dangerous characters whom it might be ill for her to
entertain. And so at last he won his way, and she went to do his errand,
whilst he reentered the kitchen.
He found Des Cadoux by the fire, intent upon drying as much of himself
as possible. The younger man had seized upon the bottle of brandy that
had been left on the table, and was in the act of filling himself a
second glass. Nothing could be further from the mind of either than
a suspicion of the identity of this rustically-clad and grimy-faced
fellow.
“Mathilde will be here in a moment,” said Caron deferentially. “She is
seeking something for you.”
Had he told them precisely what she was seeking they had been, possibly,
less at ease.
“Let her hasten,” cried the courier, “for I am famished.”
“Have patience, Anatole,” murmured the ever-gentle Cadoux. “The good
woman did not expect us.”
Anatole! The name buzzed through Caron's brain. To whom did it belong?
He knew of someone who bore it. Yet question himself though he might,
he could at the moment find no answer. And then the courier created a
diversion by addressing him.
“Fill yourself a glass, mon bonhomme,” said he. “I have a toast for
you.”
“For me, Monsieur,” cried La Boulaye, with surprised humility. “It were
too great an honour.”
“Do as you are bidden, man,” returned this very peremptory courier.
“There; now let us see how your favour runs. Cry 'Long Live the King!'”
Holding the brandy-glass, which the man had forced upon him, La Boulaye
eyed him whimsically for a second.
“There is no toast I would more gladly drink,” said he at last, “if I
considered it availing. But--alas--you propose it over-late.”
“Diable! What may you mean?”
“Why, that since the King is dead, it shall profit us little to cry,
'Long Live the King!'”
“The King, Monsieur, never dies,” said Cadoux sententiously.
“Since you put it so, Monsieur,” answered La Boulaye, as if convinced,
“I'll honour the toast.” And with the cry they asked of him he drained
his glass.
“And so, my honest fellow,” said Des Cadoux, producing his eternal
snuff-box, “it seems that you are a Royalist. We did but test you with
that toast, my friend.”
“What should a poor fellow know of politics, Messieurs?” he deprecated.
“These are odd times. I doubt me the world has never seen their like. No
man may safely know his neighbour. Now you, sir,” he pursued, turning
to the younger man, “you have the air of a sans-culotte, yet from your
speech you seem an honest enough gentleman.”
The fellow laughed with unction.
“The air of a sans-culotte?” he cried. “My faith, yes. So much so, that
this morning I imposed myself as a courier from Paris upon no less
an astute sleuth-hound of the Convention than the Citizen-deputy La
Boulaye.”
“Is it possible?” cried Caron, his eyes opening wide in wonder. “But
how, Monsieurs? For surely a courier must bear letters, and--”
“So did I, so did I, my friend,” the other interrupted, with vain glory.
“I knocked a patriotic courier over the head to obtain them. He was
genuine, that other courier, and I passed myself out of France with his
papers.”
“Monsieur is amusing himself at the expense of my credulity,” La Boulaye
complained.
“My good man, I am telling you facts,” the other insisted.
“But how could such a thing be accomplished?” asked Caron, seating
himself at the table, and resting his chin upon his hand, his gaze so
full of admiration as to seem awestruck.
“How? I will tell you. I am from Artois.”
“You'll be repeating that charming story once too often,” Des Cadoux
cautioned him.
“Pish, you timorous one!” he laughed, and resumed his tale. “I am from
Artois, then. I have some property there, and it lately came to my ears
that this assembly of curs they call the Convention had determined to
make an end of me. But before they could carry out their design, those
sons of dogs, my tenants, incited by the choice examples set them
by other tenantry, made a descent on my Chateau one night, and did
themselves the pleasure of burning it to the ground. By a miracle I
escaped with my life and lay hidden for three weeks in the house of an
old peasant who had remained faithful. In that time I let my beard
grow, and trained my hair into a patriotic unkemptness. Then, in filthy
garments, like any true Republican, I set out to cross the frontier. As
I approached it, I was filled with fears that I might not win across,
and then, in the moment of my doubtings, I came upon that most opportune
of couriers. I had the notion to change places with him, and I did. He
was the bearer of a letter to the Deputy La Boulaye, of whom you may
have heard, and this letter I opened to discover that it charged him to
effect my arrest.”
If La Boulaye was startled, his face never betrayed it, not by so much
as the quiver of an eyelid. He sat on, his jaw in his palm, his eyes
admiringly bent upon the speaker.
“You may judge of my honesty, and of how fully sensible I was of
the trust I had undertaken, when I tell you that with my own hand
I delivered the letter this morning to that animal La Boulaye at
Boisvert.” He seemed to swell with pride in his achievement. “Diable!”
he continued. “Mine was a fine piece of acting. I would you could have
seen me play the part of the patriot. Think of the irony of it! I won
out of France with the very papers ordering my arrest. Ma foi! You
should have seen me befool that dirt of a deputy! It was a performance
worthy of Talma himself.” And he looked from Cadoux to La Boulaye for
applause.
“I doubt not,” said the Deputy coldly. “It must have been worth
witnessing. But does it not seem a pity to spoil everything and to
neutralise so wonderful an achievement for the mere sake of boasting of
it to a poor, ignorant peasant, Monsieur le Vicomte Anatole d'Ombreval?”
With a sudden cry, the pseudo courier leapt to his feet, whilst Des
Cadoux turned on the stool he occupied to stare alarmedly at the
speaker.
“Name of God! Who are you?” demanded Ombreval advancing a step.
With his sleeve La Boulaye rubbed part of the disfiguring smear from his
face as he stood up and made answer coolly:
“I am that dirt of a Deputy whom you befooled at Boisvert.” Then,
raising his voice, “Garin!” he shouted, and immediately the door opened
and the soldiers filed in.
Ombreval stood like a statue, thunderstruck with amazement at this
most unlooked-for turning of the tables, his face ashen, his weak mouth
fallen open and his eyes fearful.
Des Cadoux, who had also risen, seemed to take in the situation at a
glance. Like a well-bred gamester who knows how to lose with a good
grace the old gentleman laughed drily to himself as he tapped his
snuff-box.
“We are delightfully taken, cher Vicomte,” he murmured, applying the
tobacco to his nostril as he spoke. “It's odds you won't be able to
repeat that pretty story to any more of your friends. I warned you that
you inclined to relate it too often.”
With a sudden oath, Ombreval--moved to valour by the blind rage that
possessed him--sprang at La Boulaye. But, as suddenly, Garin caught his
arms from behind and held him fast.
“Remove them both,” La Boulaye commanded. “Place them in safety for the
night, and see that they do not escape you, Garin, as you value your
neck.”
Des Coudax shut his snuff-box with a snap.
“For my part, I am ready, Monsieur--your pardon--Citizen,” he said, “and
I shall give you no trouble. But since I am not, I take it, included in
the orders you have received, I have a proposal to make which may prove
mutually convenient.”
“Pray make it, Citizen,” said La Boulaye.
“It occurs to me that it may occasion you some measure of annoyance to
carry me all the way to Paris--and certainly, for my part, I should
much prefer not to undertake the journey. For one thing, it will be
fatiguing, for another, I have no desire to look upon the next world
through the little window of the guillotine. I wish, then, to propose,
Citizen,” pursued the old nobleman, nonchalantly dusting some fragments
of tobacco from his cravat, “that you deal with me out of hand.”
“How, Citizen?” inquired La Boulaye.
“Why, your men, I take it are tolerable marksmen. I think that it might
prove more convenient to both of us if you were to have me shot as soon
as there is light enough.”
La Boulaye's eyes rested in almost imperceptible kindness upon Des
Cadoux. Here, at least, was an aristocrat with a spirit to be admired
and emulated.
“You are choosing the lesser of two evils, Citizen,” said the Deputy.
“Precisely,” answered Des Cadoux.
“But possibly, Citizen, it may be yours to avoid both. You shall hear
from me in the morning. I beg that you will sleep tranquilly in the
meantime. Garin, remove the prisoners.”