THREE IN A CARRIAGE.
"Of course, if Madame--if Madame knows nothing of the monk," he said,
looking vacantly about the dirty room, "it is clear that--it seems
clear that there has been a mistake."
"And only one thing remains to be done," I suggested.
"But--but," he continued, with a resumption of his former importance,
"there is still one point unexplained--that of the red cockade,
Monsieur? What of that, M. le Vicomte?"
"The red cockade?" I said.
"Ay, what of that?" he asked briskly.
I had not expected this, and I looked desperately at Madame. Surely
her woman's wit would find a way, whatever the cockade meant. "Have
you asked Madame Correas?" I said at last, feebly shifting the burden.
"Have you asked her to explain it?"
"No," he answered.
"Then I would ask her," I said.
"Nay, do not ask me; ask M. le Vicomte," she answered lightly. "Ask
him of what colour are the facings of the National Guards of Quercy?"
"Red!" I cried, in a burst of relief. "Red!" I knew, for had I not
seen Buton's coat lying by the forge? But how Madame de St. Alais knew
I have no idea.
"Ah!" M. Flandre said, with the air of one still a little doubtful.
"And Madame wears the cockade for that reason?"
"No, M. le Maire," she answered, with a roguish smile; I saw that it
was her plan to humour him. "I do not--my daughter does. If you wish
to ask further, or the reason, you must ask her."
M. Flandre had the curiosity of the true bourgeois, and the love of
the sex. He simpered. "If Mademoiselle would be so good," he said.
Denise had remained up to this point hidden behind her mother, but at
the word she crept out, and reluctantly and like a prisoner brought to
the bar, stood before us. It was only when she spoke, however, nay, it
was not until she had spoken some words that I understood the full
change that I saw in her; or why, instead of the picture of pallid
weariness which she had presented a few minutes before, she now
showed, as she stood forward, a face covered with blushes, and eyes
shining and suffused.
"It is simple, Monsieur," she said in a low voice. "My _fiance_, M. le
Maire, is in that regiment."
"And you wear it for that reason?" the Mayor cried, delighted.
"I love him," she said softly. And for a moment--for a moment her eyes
met mine.
Then I know not which was the redder, she or I; or which found that
vile and filthy room more like a palace, its tobacco-laden air more
sweet! I had not dreamed what she was going to say, least of all had I
dreamed what her eyes said, as for that instant they met mine and
turned my blood to fire! I lost the Mayor's blunt answer and his
chuckling laugh; and only returned to a sense of the present when
Mademoiselle slipped back to hide her burning face behind her mother,
and I saw in her place Madame, facing me, with her finger to her lip,
and a glance of warning in her eyes.
It was a warning not superfluous, for in the flush of my first
enthusiasm I might have said anything. And the Mayor was in better
hands than mine. The little touch of romance and sentiment which
Mademoiselle's avowal had imported into the matter, had removed his
last suspicion and won his heart. He ogled Madame, he beamed on the
girl with fatherly gallantry. He made a jest of the monk.
"A mistake, and yet one I cannot deplore, Madame," he protested, with
clumsy civility. "For it has given me the pleasure of seeing you."
"Oh, M. le Maire!" Madame simpered.
"But the state of the country is really such," he continued, "that
for the beautiful sex to be travelling alone is not safe. It exposes
them----"
"To worse _rencontres_ than this, I fear," Madame said, darting a look
from her fine eyes. "If this were the worst we poor women had to
fear!" And she looked at him again.
"Ah, Madame!" he said, delighted.
"But, alas, we have no escort."
The fat Mayor sighed, I think that he was going to offer himself. Then
a thought struck him. "Perhaps this gentleman," and he turned to me.
"You go to Nimes, M. le Vicomte?"
"Yes," I said. "And, of course, if Madame Correas----"
"Oh, it would be troubling M. le Vicomte," Madame said; and she went a
step farther from me and a step nearer to M. Flandre, as if he must
understand her hesitation.
"I am sure it could be no trouble to any one!" he answered stoutly.
"But for the matter of that, if M. le Vicomte perceives any
difficulty," and he laid his hand on his heart, "I will find some
one----"
"Some one?" Madame said archly.
"Myself," the Mayor answered.
"Ah!" she cried, "if you----"
But I thought that now I might safely step in. "No, no," I said. "M.
le Maire is taking all against me. I can assure you, Madame, I shall
be glad to be of service to you. And our roads lie together. If,
therefore----"
"I shall be grateful," Madame answered with a delightful little
courtesy. "That is, if M. le Maire will let out his poor prisoners.
Who, as he now knows, have done nothing worse than sympathise with
National Guards."
"I will take it on myself, Madame," M. Flandre said, with vast
importance. He had been brought to the desired point. "The case is
quite clear. But----" he paused and coughed slightly, "to avoid
complications, you had better leave early. When you are gone, I shall
know what explanations to give. And if you would not object to
spending the night here," he continued, looking round him, with a
touch of sheepishness, "I think that----"
"We shall mind it less than before," Madame said, with a look and a
sigh. "I feel safe since you have been to see us." And she held out a
hand that was still white and plump.
The Mayor kissed it.
* * * * *
As I walked, a few minutes later, across the square, picking my steps
by the yellow light of M. Flandre's lantern, and at times enveloped in
the flying skirt of his cloak--for the good man had his own visions
and for a hundred yards together forgot his company--I could have
thought all that had passed a dream; so unreal seemed the squalid
prison-lodging I had just left, so marvellous the ladies' presence in
it, so incredible Mademoiselle's blushing avowal made to my face. But
a wheezing clock overhead struck the hour before midnight, and I
counted the strokes; a watchman, not far from me, cried, after the old
fashion, that it was eleven o'clock and a fine night; and I stumbled
over a stone. No, I was not dreaming.
But if I had to stumble then, to persuade myself that I was awake, how
was it with me next morning, when, with the first glimmer of light, I
walked beside the carriage from the inn to the prison, and saw, before
I reached the gloomy door, Madame and Mademoiselle standing shivering
under the wall beside it? How was it with me when I held
Mademoiselle's hand in mine, as I helped her in, and then followed her
in and sat opposite to her--sat opposite to her with the knowledge
that I was so to sit for days, that I was to be her fellow-traveller,
that we were to go to Nimes together?
Ah, how was it, indeed? But there is nothing quite perfect; there is
no hour in which a man says that he is quite happy; and a shadow of
fear and stealth darkened my bliss that morning. The Mayor was there
to see us start, and I fancy that it was his face of apprehension that
lay at the bottom of this feeling. A moment, however, and the face was
gone from the window; another, and the carriage began to roll quickly
through the dim streets, while we lay back, each in a corner, hidden
by the darkness even from one another. Still, we had the gates to
pass, and the guard; or the watch might stop us, or some early-rising
townsman, or any one of a hundred accidents. My heart beat fast.
But all went well. Within five minutes we had passed the gates and
left them behind us, and were rolling in safety along the road. The
dawn was no more than grey, the trees showed black against the sky, as
we crossed the Tarn by the great bridge, and began to climb the valley
of the Dourbie.
I have said that we could not see one another. But on a sudden Madame
laughed out of the darkness of her corner. "O Richard, O _mon Roi!_"
she hummed. Then "The fat fool!" she cried; and she laughed again.
I thought her cruel, and almost an ingrate; but she was Mademoiselle's
mother, and I said nothing. Mademoiselle was opposite to me, and I was
happy. I was happy, thinking what she would say to me, and how she
would look at me, when the day came and she could no longer escape my
eyes; when the day came and the dainty, half-shrouded face that
already began to glimmer in the roomy corner of the old berlin should
be mine to look on, to feast my eyes on, to question and read through
long days and hours of a journey, a journey through heaven!
Already it was growing light; I had but a little longer to wait. A
rosy flush began to tinge one half the sky; the other half, pale blue
and flecked with golden clouds, lay behind us. A few seconds, and the
mountain tips caught the first rays of the sun, and floated far over
us, in golden ether. I cast one greedy glance at Mademoiselle's face,
saw there the dawn out-blushed, I met for one second her eyes and saw
the glory of the ether outshone--and then I looked away, trembling. It
seemed sacrilege to look longer.
Suddenly Madame laughed again, out of her corner; a laugh that made me
wince, and grow hot. "She is not made for a nun, M. le Vicomte, is
she?" she said.
I bounced in my seat. The speaker's tone, gay, insulting, flicked, not
me, but the girl, like a whip.
"You really, Denise, must have had practice," Madame continued
smoothly. "I love, you love, we love--you are quite perfect. Did you
practise with M. le Directeur? Or with the big boys over the wall?"
"Madame!" I cried. The girl had drawn her hood over her face, but I
could fancy her shame.
But Madame was inexorable. "Really, Denise, I do not know that I
ever told even your father 'I love you,'" she said. "At any rate,
until he had kissed me on the lips. But I suppose that you reverse the
order----"
"Madame," I stammered. "This is infamous!"
"What, Monsieur?" she answered, this time heeding me. "May I not
punish my daughter in my own way?"
"Not before me," I retorted, full of wrath. "It is cruel! It is----"
"Oh, before you, M. le Vicomte?" Madame answered, mocking me. "And why
not before you? I cannot degrade her lower than she has herself
stooped!"
"It is false!" I cried, in hot rage. "It is a cruel falsehood!"
"Oh, I can? Then if I please, I shall!" Madame answered, with ruthless
pleasantry. "And you, Monsieur, will sit by and listen, if I please.
Though, make no mistake, M. le Vicomte," she continued, leaning
forward, and gazing keenly into my face. "Because I punish her before
you, do not think that you are, or ever shall be, of the family. Or
that this unmaidenly, immodest----"
Mademoiselle uttered a cry of pain, and shrank lower in her corner.
"Little fool," Madame continued coolly, "who, when she was primed with
a cock-and-bull story about the cockade, must needs add, 'I love
him'--I love him, and she a maiden!--will ever be anything to you! That
link was broken long ago. It was broken when your friends burned our
house at St. Alais; it was broken when they sacked our house in
Cahors; it was broken when they made our king a prisoner, when they
murdered our friends, when they dragged our Church a slave at the
chariot wheels of their triumph; ay, and broken once for all, beyond
mending by mock heroics! Understand that fully, M. le Vicomte," Madame
continued pitilessly. "But as you saw her stoop, you shall see her
punished. She is the first St. Alais that ever wooed a lover!"
I knew that of the family which would have given the lie to that
statement; but it was not a tale for Mademoiselle's ears, and instead
I rose. "At least, Madame," I said, bowing, "I can free Mademoiselle
from the embarrassment of my presence. And I shall do so."
"No, you will not do even that," Madame answered unmoved. "If you will
sit down, I will tell you why."
I sat down, compelled by her tone.
"You will not do it," Madame continued, looking me coolly in the face,
"because I am bound to admit, though I no longer like you, that you
are a gentleman."
"And therefore should leave you."
"On the contrary, for that reason you will continue to travel with
us."
"Outside," I said.
"No, inside," she answered quietly. "We have no passport nor papers;
without your company we should be stopped in each town through which
we pass. It is unfortunate," Madame continued, shrugging her
shoulders; "--I did not know that the country was in so bad a state,
or I would have taken precautions--it is unfortunate. But as it is we
must put up with it and travel together."
I felt a warm rush of joy, of triumph, of coming vengeance. "Thank
you, Madame," I said, and I bowed to her, "for telling me that. It
seems, then, that you are in my power."
"Ah?"
"And that to requite you for the pain you have just caused
Mademoiselle, I have only to leave you."
"Well?"
"I see even now a little town before us; in three minutes we shall
enter it. Very well, Madame. If you say another word to your daughter,
if you insult her again in my presence by so much as a syllable, I
leave you and go my way."
To my surprise Madame St. Alais broke into a silvery laugh. "You will
not, Monsieur," she said. "And yet I shall treat my daughter as I
please."
"I shall do so!"
"You will not."
"Why, then? Why shall I not?" I cried.
"Because," she answered, laughing softly, "you are a gentleman, M. le
Vicomte, and can neither leave us nor endanger us. That is all."
I sank back in my seat, and glared at her in speechless indignation;
seeing in a flash my impotence and her power. The cushions burned me;
but I could not leave them.
She laughed again, well pleased. "There, I have told you what you will
not do," she said. "Now I am going to tell you what you will do. In
front, I am told, they are very suspicious. The story of Madame
Corvas, even if backed by your word, may not suffice. You will say,
therefore, that I am your mother, and that Mademoiselle is your
sister. She would prefer, I daresay," Madame continued, with a cutting
glance at her daughter, "to pass for your wife. But that does not suit
me."
I breathed hard; but I was helpless as any prisoner, closely bound to
obedience as any slave. I could not denounce them, and I could not
leave them; honour and love were alike concerned. Yet I foresaw that I
must listen, hour by hour, and mile by mile, to gibes at the girl's
expense, to sneers at her modesty, to words that cut like whip-lashes.
That was Madame's plan. The girl must travel with me, must breathe the
same air with me, must sit for hours with the hem of her skirt
touching my boot. It was necessary for the safety of all. But, after
this, after what we had both heard, if her eye met mine, it could only
fall; if her hand touched mine, she must shrink in shame. Henceforth
there was a barrier between us.
As a fact, Mademoiselle's pride came to her aid, and she sat, neither
weeping nor protesting, nor seeking to join her forces to mine by a
glance; but bearing all with steadfast patience, she looked out of the
window when I pretended to sleep, and looked towards her mother when I
sat erect. Possibly she found her compensations, and bore her
punishment quietly for their sake. But I did not think of that.
Possibly, too, she suffered less than I fancied; but I doubt if she
would admit that, even to-day.
At any rate she had heard me fight her battle; yet she did not speak
to me nor I to her; and under these strange conditions we began and
pursued the strangest journey man ever made. We drove through pleasant
valleys growing green, over sterile passes, where winter still fringed
the rocks with snow, through sunshine, and in the teeth of cold
mountain winds; but we scarcely heeded any of these things. Our hearts
and thoughts lay inside the carriage, where Madame sat smiling, and we
two kept grim silence.
About noon we halted to rest and eat at a little village inn, high up.
It seemed to me a place almost at the end of the world, with a chaos
of mountains rising tier on tier above it, and slopes of shale below.
But the frenzy of the time had reached even this barren nook. Before
we had taken two mouthfuls, the Syndic called to see our papers;
and--God knows I had no choice--Madame passed for my mother, and
Denise for my sister. Then, while the Syndic still stood bowing over
my commission, and striving to learn from me what news there was
below, a horse halted at the door, and I heard a man's voice, and in a
breath M. le Baron de Geol walked in. There was a single decent room
in the inn--that in which we sat--and he came into it.
He uncovered, seeing ladies; and recognising me with a start smiled,
but a trifle sourly. "You set off early?" he said. "I waited at the
east gate, but you did not come, Monsieur."
I coloured, conscience-stricken, and begged a thousand pardons. As a
fact, I had clean forgotten him. I had not once thought of the
appointment I had made with him at the gate.
"You are not riding?" he said, looking at my companions a little
strangely.
"No," I answered. And I could not find another word to say. The Syndic
still stood smiling and bowing beside me; and on a sudden I saw the
pit on the edge of which I tottered; and my face burned.
"You have met friends?" M. le Baron persisted, looking, hat in hand,
at Madame.
"Yes," I muttered. Politeness required that I should introduce him.
But I dared not.
However, at that, he at last took the hint; and retired with the
Syndic. The moment they were over the threshold Madame flashed out at
me, in a passion of anger. "Fool!" she said, without ceremony, "why
did you not present him? Don't you know that that is the way to arouse
suspicion, and ruin us? A child could see that you had something to
hide. If you had presented him at once to your mother----"
"Yes, Madame?"
"He would have gone away satisfied."
"I doubt it, Madame, and for a very good reason," I answered
cynically. "Seeing that yesterday I told him, with the utmost
particularity, that I had neither mother nor sister."
That afforded me a little revenge. Madame St. Alais went white and red
in the same instant, and sat a moment with her lips pressed together,
and her eyes on the table. "Who is he? What do you know of him?" she
said at last.
"He is a poor gentleman and a bigoted Protestant," I answered drily.
She bit her lip. "_Bon Dieu!_" she muttered. "Who could have foreseen
such an accident? Do you think that he suspects anything?"
"Doubtless. To begin, I left early this morning, in breach of an
agreement to travel with him. When he learns, in addition, that I am
travelling with my mother and sister, whom yesterday I did not
possess----"
Madame looked at me, as if she would strike me. "What will you do?"
she cried.
"It is for my mother to say," I answered politely. And I helped myself
very indifferently to cheese. "She dictated this policy."
She was white with rage, and perhaps alarm; I chuckled secretly,
seeing her condition. But rage availed her little; she had to humble
herself. "What do you advise?" she said at last.
"There is only one course open," I answered. "We must brazen it out."
She agreed. But this, though a very easy course to advise, was one
anything but easy to pursue. I discovered that, a few minutes later,
when I went out to see if the carriage was ready, and found De Geol in
the doorway with a face as hard as his own hills. "You are starting?"
he said.
I muttered that I was.
"I find that I have to congratulate you," he continued, with a smile
of unpleasant meaning.
"On what, Monsieur?"
"On finding your family," he answered, looking at me with a bitter
sort of humour. "To discover both a mother and a sister in twenty-four
hours must be great happiness. But--may I give you a hint, M. le
Vicomte?"
"If you please," I said, with desperate coolness.
"Then if--being so happy in making discoveries--you happen to light
next on M. Froment--on M. Froment, the firebrand of Nimes, false
Capuchin, and false traitor!--do not adopt him also! That is all."
"I am not acquainted with him," I said coldly. He had spoken with
passion and fire.
"Do not become so," he answered.
I shrugged my shoulders, and he said no more; and in a moment Madame
and Mademoiselle came out, and took their seats, and I set out to walk
up the hill beside the horses.
The ascent was steep and long and toilsome, and a dozen times as we
climbed out of the valley we had to halt to breathe the cattle; a
dozen times I looked back at the grey mountain inn lying on the
desolate grey plateau at our feet. Always I found the Baron looking up
at us, stern and gaunt and motionless as the house before which he
stood. And I shivered.