ROSALINE’S HUMBLE FRIENDS
Meanwhile a very different scene had been enacted in the kitchen,
where Babet had confronted the cobbler and poured upon his devoted
head a volley of questions. She had gone out with Rosaline early,
before there was even a hint of approaching catastrophe, and she could
not understand the swift march of events, and her suspicious soul was
possessed with a rooted distrust of the poor hunchback, who had not yet
rallied from Rosaline’s accusations, striking home as they did after
the guilty hours of his temptation. The two had shut themselves in the
kitchen with the dog, and le Bossu sat by the fire, an expression of
dull despair upon his face, while Babet stood over him, her arms akimbo
and her keen black eyes riveted upon him. Like Rosaline, she questioned
his motive for coming to the house at all.
“What brought you here this morning, Petit Bossu?” she demanded
harshly; “we needed no new shoes.”
The cobbler’s face darkened. “_Nom de St. Denis!_” he exclaimed; “have
you nothing better to do than to suspect your friends at such a time?”
“Yet you came--and why?” persisted Babet.
The hunchback threw out his hands with a gesture of impatience.
“There is no reason why I should explain to you,” he retorted
contemptuously.
“Ah!” ejaculated Babet, in a tone of dark suspicion, “what do you
expect me to think of such obstinate silence? You must be a wicked
man--I have always heard that hunchbacks were malicious; how could you
give mademoiselle up? Why did you not let her escape through the woods,
beast?”
The cobbler was tried beyond endurance.
“Mother of Heaven!” he cried bitterly, “do you think that I would
injure a hair of mademoiselle’s head? She could not escape; M. de
Baudri had two circles of sentries about the place, and I knew it.
There were men below the cataract--in the woods--to attempt to pass
them would have been to risk her life. You were in the snare; I tried
to keep her away from the house, but I could not, and they would have
found her anywhere in the end.”
Babet threw back her head with a snort; she had the air of an old
war-horse scenting the battle from afar.
“You knew a great deal about it,” she remarked maliciously; “couldn’t
you warn us?”
He sighed; a weary resignation was settling down on his heart. It
seemed that no one thought well of him, or expected good from him.
“I knew nothing of it until this morning,” he said coldly, “and then
too late to help you. I am lame, and M. de Baudri rides a fine horse.
Nevertheless, I got here five minutes before him--but that was too
late.”
His face and his voice began to convince even Babet, and a faint pang
of remorse smote her heart, which, after all, was angered only on
Rosaline’s account. She left off questioning him and walked to and fro
in the kitchen, trying to collect her thoughts, and the process was
much impeded by the even tramp of the sentry, which sounded distinctly
enough on the gravel path outside the windows. Once or twice, when the
soldier’s back was turned, Babet shook her fist at it, uttering threats
in language that was more fervent than pious.
“My poor lamb!” she muttered, her thoughts returning to Rosaline, “what
will she do in the hands of this wolf? _Nom de Ciel!_ if I could but
tear his throat!”
The hunchback did not heed her; he was staring at the floor with
vacant eyes. He meant to save mademoiselle if he could, but how? His
lips moved now and then, and his brown hands twitched nervously, but
his ears were straining to catch the slightest sound. Presently Babet
turned around, as if a sudden thought had flashed upon her; she picked
up the tongs from beside the fire, and hiding them under her apron
walked deliberately out of the kitchen, slamming the door behind her.
The sound brought the sentry at a run, and they met face to face.
Without a word, Babet lifted the tongs, and, snapping them on to the
brim of his hat, flung it over the hedge.
“There, you varlet!” she exclaimed, holding the tongs close to the end
of his nose, “learn to take off your hat to a decent woman, who’s old
enough to be your mother, and stop staring in the window with those
goggle eyes of yours. I’m no jail-bird, I tell you!”
“Mother!” ejaculated the astonished dragoon, “you old gray cat! _Dame!_
if I do not wring your neck for your impudence when M. le Capitaine has
gone.”
“Humph!” retorted Babet, grimly, “you’ll find it tough, _mon fils_.
Your hat is in the briar bush, my lad;” and she walked back into the
house with a grim smile of triumph, leaving the soldier cursing her
while he searched for his hat.
Babet did not return to the kitchen; she proceeded up the stairs to the
room where Rosaline was talking to M. de Baudri. The door was closed;
but refined scruples were not among the good housekeeper’s faults, and
she calmly applied her ear to the keyhole, all the while clasping the
tongs fiercely under her apron; and for the next twenty minutes her
face was a picture. More than once she had her hand on the latch, but
prudence finally prevailed, and three minutes before M. de Baudri
emerged, she made her way cautiously back to the kitchen. She had heard
enough to understand the whole, and she descended upon the cobbler like
an avalanche, carrying all before her. In the storm of her indignation
she could not remain silent, and she poured out the whole story of M.
de Baudri’s shameless persecution of his prisoner. Le Bossu had long
ago learned the lesson of self-control, and he listened with composure,
though his face seemed to have aged since the morning.
“_Mon Dieu!_” cried Babet, regardless now of the sentry’s stare, “he
would force that white dove to marry him! That villain de Baudri--may
the _bon Dieu_ blast him as the great chestnut-tree yonder was blasted
with lightning! He--the rogue--would make mademoiselle sell herself
to him to save old madame and her lover. Woe is me, why did that man
d’Aguesseau ever come here?”
The hunchback looked up, surprise in his dull eyes.
“What do you mean?” he demanded, “save her lover? Her lover is safe in
the Cévennes.”
“Much you know!” retorted the woman, scornfully; “it seems that he was
captured this morning.”
The cobbler was silent a moment, thinking deeply.
“I do not believe it,” he said quietly.
“You think it a lie of that devil’s?” asked Babet, eagerly.
He nodded. “M. de Baudri is doing it to force her to yield,” he said
slowly; “he has sworn to marry her. I do not believe that he has taken
one Huguenot prisoner to-day, save--” he stopped, and looked out of the
window at the sentry, who kept staring in with a furious face.
“_Dieu_, what a fiend!” exclaimed Babet, thrusting her tongs into the
fire, where they would heat, after casting a vicious glance toward the
window. “He has given mademoiselle until to-morrow morning to decide,”
she added.
“What will she do?” the cobbler asked in a strange voice.
“Do? oh, I know her!” the woman retorted with a snort; “to save those
two she would die. She’ll marry him unless--” Babet thrust the tongs
deeper in the coals, “unless I wring his neck!”
“That cannot be done,” remarked le Bossu, soberly, “but something must
be done to-night.”
“What?” snapped his companion, “what can a hunchback and an old woman
do? A pretty pair of birds for such an emergency. Leer away, young man;
I have the tongs ready for you!” she added in an aside, her fierce eyes
on the window.
“Has she one true friend with influence in Nîmes?” the cobbler asked.
Babet shook her head, and then, after a moment’s thought,--
“There is Père Ambroise,” she said.
Le Bossu’s face brightened. “Good!” he said, “the priest can do much;
and now, I am a Catholic, Babet, but as there is a God in heaven, I
mean no harm! Is there any boy or man who could carry a message amongst
the Camisards?”
Babet had grown reckless in her misery over mademoiselle; she did not
hesitate to reply.
“There is the blacksmith’s boy at St. Césaire,” she said, “a good
child, and active as a wild hare. What do you want of him?”
“If possible, I must find M. d’Aguesseau,” he replied, “and also Père
Ambroise; I cannot do both without help.”
“And if M. d’Aguesseau is in prison,” suggested Babet, grimly.
“The will of Heaven be done,” replied the cobbler, calmly, “but Père
Ambroise shall be here before dawn,” and he rose as he spoke.
“How will you get out?” asked the woman, eying him curiously.
“You will see,” he rejoined, and quietly gathering up his bag of tools,
he left the kitchen and walked through the hall.
M. de Baudri had just left by the front way, and the cobbler went out
at the back of the house. There was a high row of box beside the path,
and dropping on his hands and knees he crept along behind it, past the
sentry on that side. He had to move very slowly and softly, avoiding
every dry twig and even the dead leaves, but he reached the outer hedge
at last. Here there was a hole, through which Truffe passed in and out.
The cobbler thrust his bag through and then followed it; his face and
hands were scratched, but what of that? He rose from his knees in the
open road, and, shaking off the dust, shouldered his load and walked
on, limping more painfully than usual. He had to pass one guard, but
this man did not know that he had been in the house and saw nothing
unusual in the appearance of the little cobbler of St. Antoine.
“You are late, le Bossu,” he said good-naturedly.
“The shoes fit too well,” retorted the hunchback, coolly, “and my
patron is rich.”
“_Pardieu!_” the soldier exclaimed with a laugh. “I will borrow
to-morrow morning. We have a bag of heretics here.”
“_Mère de Dieu_, burn them,--all but the shoes!” said le Bossu, and
walked calmly on.