THE FIRST VENTURE.
WE turned our faces westward toward the sun, whose last rays were
gilding the clouds along the horizon, following the little valley which
had been hollowed in the hills by the stream at which we had drunk. As
we went on, this valley opened more and more, changing from a rough and
precipitous aspect to one smooth and rolling, giving promise of human
occupancy. Our most urgent need was food, and I determined to apply for
it at the first house we came to, no matter what its appearance,--first
with silver, and if that failed, with a loaded pistol as a persuasive.
So I kept a sharp lookout, but for nearly an hour we pressed forward
without catching a glimpse of any human habitation save a few shacks
long since deserted and falling to decay. Plainly this country had not
escaped the blight which had fallen on the rest of France--which swept
the peasants into the armies, drove the nobles abroad, and left the
fields deserted. Darkness closed in about us as we went; but I still
kept my eyes to left and right, in the hope that they might be greeted
by a ray of light from some welcome window.
At last my companion, who had kept close at my heels, halted and sank
down upon a hummock of earth with a sigh of weariness.
“I fear I must ask a breathing-spell, my friend,” she said.
“Of course,” I answered instantly. “I have been thoughtless;” and I
dropped beside her. Even in the darkness I could see by the white face
she bent upon me how utterly spent she was, and a sharp twinge of
remorse seized me. “I strode along without considering you!”
“You paid me the compliment of thinking me not entirely a weakling,”
she corrected, and smiled wearily.
“You turn it skilfully,” I said. “At least, I hope you will discourage
any more such compliments.”
“Very well,” she agreed; “I promise. But we must be getting on;” and
she attempted to rise.
I caught her arm and held her in her seat.
“We must be doing no such thing!” I retorted. “It is worse than foolish
to plunge ahead as we have been doing, half-starved. You are going to
remain here and rest. I will make you a bed of grass and leaves in this
little hollow, and you will lie here quietly and gaze at the stars,
thinking of me as kindly as you can, while I go in search of food. I
shall not be long away, and you will be quite safe.”
She sat without answering, watching me while I piled such dry grass as
I could find into the little hollow. At last it was ready.
“Now,” I said, turning to her, “if you will rest here----”
“You are very good to me,” she breathed, and took her place upon the
couch I had provided, which, I fear, was none too soft.
“Oh, no,” I answered, controlling myself with a mighty effort as I bent
above her and assured myself that her cloak was snug about her; “I am
not wholly unselfish. I must keep you fresh; I must not permit you to
exhaust yourself, or you will be getting ill, and then what should I
do?”
“No, I shall not be ill,” she said quite positively. “I am not such a
weakling as that!”
“Besides,” I added, “I am frightfully hungry; I must have something to
eat, if I commit murder for it.”
“You will not expose yourself?” she asked quickly.
“No; there is no danger,” I assured her.
“I shall pray for you,” she added calmly. “And I fear there is one
thing I must ask of you.”
“Ask it,” I said.
“Before I left my room at the château,” she continued, “I chose the
heaviest shoes I had----”
There was no need that she should say more. I bent and touched one of
the little feet just peeping from beneath the cloak. However heavy
the shoes had been, they were certainly far too light for the rough
service which had been exacted of them. They were almost in tatters,
and I could guess how the sharp stones which had torn the leather had
bruised the tender flesh within. Yet she had followed me without a
sigh, without a murmur! Impulsively I bent and kissed the instep of
the little shoe, then rose unsteadily to my feet.
“I will get you another pair,” I said; “and if I am to have any peace
of mind, you must not again permit me to forget your welfare, as I have
been doing. With the best intentions in the world, I am only a selfish
and obtuse fellow, with a brain not bright enough to think of more than
one thing at a time.”
“I saw how your thoughts were occupied,” she protested. “I knew that
our safety depended upon you, and I did not wish to disturb you.”
“To disturb me?” I echoed. “Ah, for once, mademoiselle, you were not
really kind; for by keeping silent you have done more than that--you
have made me suffer. But there!--I am wasting time, and I can guess
your hunger by my own. I will go. You are not afraid?”
“No,” she murmured; “and yet I hope that you will not be long.”
“No,” I said; “no;” and not daring to trust myself further, I turned
and strode away through the darkness.
Only the biting need for prompt and well-directed action enabled me
to master the sweet emotion which those words, so softly uttered, had
awakened. But I managed to crush it down, to put it behind me, and to
address myself wholly to the task in hand. I must get food at once, and
at any price. But food in such a wilderness!
Yet fortune favored me,--or perhaps the country was not such a
wilderness as I imagined,--for at the end of ten minutes’ brisk
walking I collided with a hedge, and too rejoiced at the discovery to
heed the scratches I had sustained, I felt my way along it and came at
last to a gate. It was not even latched, so I pushed it open and passed
through. Once on the other side of it, I found myself in what seemed an
orchard.
Arguing that where there was a hedge, a gate, and an orchard, there
must also be a house, I pushed forward among the trees and came out at
last into the clear air beyond. At the first glance I perceived a light
just ahead of me, and made my way toward it with a deep thankfulness
readily imagined. As I drew nearer I saw that the light proceeded from
the window of a small house which I was evidently approaching from the
rear. I advanced cautiously and looked within. Three men were sitting
about a table on which was a bottle of wine and the remains of a meal.
They were talking together with great earnestness.
There was no time for hesitation or the weighing of risks, so I waited
to see no more, but hastened around the house. It fronted upon a road
which seemed wide and well kept--undoubtedly a high-road, and not a
mere country lane. A creaking sign proclaimed the place an inn. I
raised the latch and entered, and without pausing to look about me sat
down at the nearest table and rapped loudly. One of the three men whom
I had observed through the window arose and came to me.
“You are the inn-keeper?” I asked.
“Yes,” he answered gruffly, his brows drawn close with annoyance, not
in the least in the manner of a man welcoming a customer.
“Well, citizen,” I continued, “I am in great haste--I am on an errand
of importance; I must be off at once. Can I have some food to take
with me--a fowl, say, and whatever else is at hand; together with two
bottles of wine?”
“All that may no doubt be had, citizen,” he answered, relaxing nothing
of his sinister expression. “But there are certain difficulties in the
way.”
“Money you mean?” and I laughed and threw two silver crowns upon the
table. “Well, there it is, and you cannot quarrel with it. I don’t
offer you assignats, mind you--and one doesn’t often hear the ring of
honest coin nowadays.”
“That is true,” he admitted; and his face relaxed a little as he eyed
the money. “But there is yet another difficulty.”
“And what is it?” I demanded.
“The other difficulty,” he answered, watching me keenly, “is that in
giving you these provisions I may be succoring an enemy of the Nation.”
I threw myself back in my chair and burst into a roar of laughter.
Looking back upon it, there is no moment of my life of which I am more
proud than I am of that one.
“An enemy of the Nation!” I repeated, and then fell suddenly silent and
affected to study him. “But how am I to know,” I asked at last, “that
that description may not really be deserved by you? How am I to know
that it is not some villainy against the Nation which you are plotting
at that table yonder?”
He started, turned red, shifted under my gaze, and I saw that I had won.
“I swear to you, citizen,” he began; but I cut him short.
“And I also swear to you,” I retorted, “that I am on the Nation’s
business, which brooks no delay. If you are a friend of the Nation,
give me food; if you are its enemy, refuse it. The Nation knows how to
punish, and its hand is heavy. Shall I write your name in my little
book, and after it the word ‘suspect’? Come, prove yourself a good
citizen, and at the same time get these pieces of silver for your
pocket.”
He hesitated yet a moment, going from one foot to the other in
perplexity; but the silver, or my arguments, or perhaps both together,
carried the day.
“You shall have it,” he said, and went to the farther end of the room,
where he opened a cupboard which was at the same time larder and
wine-cellar. From it he produced two bottles, a fowl already roasted,
and a loaf of bread. As he passed his two companions I fancied that a
glance of understanding passed between them. A moment later they pushed
back their chairs, bade him a noisy good-night, and left the room.
“How will this do?” asked my host, placing the bottles, the loaf and
the fowl on the table before me, his vexation quite vanished.
“Excellently,” I answered, noting with surprise that the fowl had
really some flesh upon its bones. “One thing more: this road, I
suppose, leads to----”
“Loudun,” he said.
“And from there to Thouars?”
“Undoubtedly.”
“I am on the right track, then,” I said, simulating a sigh of relief.
“That is all,” I added; for I saw it was useless, as well as dangerous,
to ask for shoes. “The silver is yours;” and while he tested it with
his teeth, I placed a bottle in either pocket, and with the loaf under
my arm, and the fowl in my hand, opened the door and stepped out into
the night.
I had my pistol ready, and looked sharply to right and left, but saw
no one. Then, taking care to walk in the middle of the road, I pushed
forward at a good pace until I was well away from the inn. I glanced
around from time to time, but saw no sign that I was followed nor heard
any sound of pursuing footsteps. So telling myself at last that my
fears were groundless, I leaped the ditch at the side of the road and
retraced my steps, until I came again to the hedge back of the inn.
From this I had but to follow the course of the brook, here the merest
thread of water, and at the end of ten minutes I was back again at my
starting-point. I stopped and bent over the hollow, when a soft hand
rose and touched my cheek.
“Is it you, M. de Tavernay?” asked a voice. “Oh, but I am glad! I was
beginning to fear for you. What is that in your hand?”
“It is food,” I answered, sitting down beside her and laughing with
sheer joy. I drew my knife and severed loaf and fowl alike into two
equal portions; then with the point of it drew the corks and placed the
bottles carefully in a hollow of the grass, propping them upright with
some little stones. “There!” I said, “the meal is served. I think we
may dispense with grace, as we must with knives and forks.”
She laughed delightedly as she took the portions I placed in her hands.
“You are a wizard, M. de Tavernay,” she said. “I had expected at most a
crust of bread, and you provide a feast.”
“A feast is of value,” I pointed out, “only when it is in one’s
stomach.”
“Well, this shall soon be in mine,” she retorted. “Never in my life
have I had such an appetite;” and she attacked the food with a vigor
which it did me good to see.
Nor was I behind her. Never before or since have I tasted a fowl so
tender, bread so sweet, wine so satisfying. It was almost worth the
privations we had undergone--it was nature’s compensation for that
suffering. And our first hunger past, we took time to pause and chat
a little. She had regained all her old spirit, and I am sure that for
her, as for me, there was something fascinating and even dangerous in
that moment. We forgot past sorrow and future peril; we forgot our
present situation and the trials we must still encounter. The moon was
rising again over the hills to the east, and revealed, just as it had
done the night before, all the subtle delicacy of her beauty. What she
was thinking of I know not, but my own thoughts flew back irresistibly
to that hour in the garden--that sweet, swift-winged hour!
“But was it only last night?” I murmured, not realizing that I spoke
aloud until the words were uttered.
“Indeed, it seems an age away!” she assented absently; and a sudden
burst of joy glowed within me.
“So you were thinking of it, too!” I cried, and tried to catch her hand.
“Thinking of what?” she asked, drawing away from me.
“Of the garden--of the few precious moments we passed together there,”
I answered eagerly, my eyes on hers.
“On the contrary,” she answered coolly, though I could have sworn
she blushed, “I was thinking only that last night I was safe with my
friends at the château----”
“Oh!” I said, not waiting to hear more; and I sank back into my seat
with a gesture of impatience.
“Though if you had not interrupted my thoughts,” she continued, smiling
slyly, “I should doubtless in time have come to the garden scene.”
“In time!” I repeated bitterly. “Of all the hours of my life, that one
is ever present with me. It eclipses all the rest.”
“It will fade!” she assured me lightly. “It will fade! As for me, I do
not dwell upon it, because I must be careful.”
“Careful?”
“Certainly. Careful not to permit myself to think too tenderly of a man
already betrothed. That would be the height of folly. Suppose I should
begin to love him!”
“I see you are armed against me,” I said dismally, “and that the
poniard of your wit is as sharp as ever.”
“It is the instinctive weapon of our sex,” she explained. “We draw it
whenever we scent danger. Once it fails us we are lost.”
“It failed you for a time last night, thank God!” I retorted. “I have
that to remember;” and I recalled the sweet face raised to mine, the
yielding form----
“Ungenerous!” she cried. “I did not think it of you, M. de Tavernay!
Darkness and stress of storm drive a bird to take refuge in your bosom,
and at daybreak you wring its neck!”
“No,” I said, with a sudden revulsion of feeling, “I release it; I toss
it back into the air; it flies away without a thought of me, glad only
to escape; but I--I remember it, and love it, and I thank heaven for
the chance which drove it to me.”
Impulsively she reached out her hand and touched my own.
“That is more like yourself,” she said. “Now I know you again. And
perhaps, my friend, the bird is not so ungrateful as you think.”
“It may even return to the bosom which sheltered it?” I asked softly,
leaning forward. “You think that, mademoiselle?”
“I fancy it would fear to do so.”
“Fear?” I repeated. “Surely--that least of all!”
“Fear that it might not find the bosom empty,” she explained
remorselessly; and I saw the old light in her eyes. “Fear that it might
blunder upon another occupant with a better right----”
I drew away from her, wounded, stung.
“But whether it returns or not,” she added in a gentler tone, “I am
sure it will never forget.”
And with that comfort, cold as it was, I was forced to be content.
“Come,” I said, a sudden impatience of the place seizing me, “we must
be getting forward. The moon will light our way.” And then my heart
fell suddenly; for I remembered her torn and ragged shoes. “I could not
get you shoes,” I said.
“No one can accomplish the impossible. It was foolish of me to ask for
them.”
“I _will_ get them,” I said; “but until then I shall have to carry you.”
“Nonsense!” she protested. “You will do nothing of the kind. With that
light in the sky I can choose my steps. Besides, my shoes are stronger
than you imagine.”
“The road is not far off,” I said. “Once we have gained that, you may
perhaps be able to walk alone. But I shall not permit you to torture
yourself by limping over this rough ground.”
She was looking at me with defiance in her eyes, and I saw that I
should have to use _finesse_.
“Please do not forget,” I reminded her, “the selfishness of my
disposition. One step upon a sharp stone and you will be so lamed that
I shall have to carry you, not a matter of a few hundred yards, but all
the way to the Bocage. My back aches at thought of it; and so I propose
for myself the lighter task, in order to escape the other.”
Her look changed from defiance to amusement.
“You have a wit truly ingenious, M. de Tavernay,” she said. “I yield to
it--for the moment.”
“I knew that reason would convince you,” I replied, trembling at the
thought that I should have her in my arms again. “Come, there is still
a little wine in the bottles. I propose a toast--the toast we drank
last night;” and I arose and bared my head. “God and the King!”
But that toast was never to be drunk; for even as I raised the bottle,
it was dashed from my lips, and two men hurled themselves upon me out
of the darkness.