Under the Red Robe, Stanley Weyman [hardest books to read .txt] 📗

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CHAPTER XII. THE ROAD TO PARIS

I remember hearing Marshal Bassompierre, who, of all the men within my knowledge, had the widest experience, say that not dangers but discomforts prove a man and show what he is; and that the worst sores in life are caused by crumpled rose-leaves and not by thorns.

I am inclined to think him right, for I remember that when I came from my room on the morning after the arrest, and found hall and parlour and passage empty, and all the common rooms of the house deserted, and no meal laid; and when I divined anew from this discovery the feeling of the house towards me--however natural and to be expected--I remember that I felt as sharp a pang as when, the night before, I had had to face discovery and open rage and scorn. I stood in the silent, empty parlour, and looked on the familiar things with a sense of desolation, of something lost and gone, which I could not understand. The morning was grey and cloudy, the air sharp, a shower was falling. The rose-bushes outside swayed in the wind, and inside, where I could remember the hot sunshine lying on floor and table, the rain beat in and stained the boards. The inner door flapped and creaked on its hinges. I thought of other days and of meals I had taken there, and of the scent of flowers; and I fled to the hall in despair.

But here, too, were no signs of life or company, no comfort, no attendance. The ashes of the logs, by whose blaze Mademoiselle had told me the secret, lay on the hearth white and cold fit emblem of the change that had taken place; and now and then a drop of moisture, sliding down the great chimney, pattered among them. The main door stood open, as if the house had no longer anything to guard. The only living thing to be seen was a hound which roamed about restlessly, now gazing at the empty hearth now lying down with pricked cars and watchful eyes. Some leaves, which had been blown in by the wind, rustled in a corner.

I went out moodily into the garden and wandered down one path and up another, looking at the dripping woods, and remembering things, until I came to the stone seat. On it, against the wall, trickling with raindrops, and with a dead leaf half filling its narrow neck, stood the pitcher of food. I thought how much had happened since Mademoiselle took her hand from it and the sergeant's lanthorn disclosed it to me; and, sighing grimly, I went in again through the parlour door.

A woman was on her knees, on the hearth kindling the belated fire. She had her back to me, and I stood a moment looking at her doubtfully, wondering how she would bear herself and what she would say to me. Then she turned, and I started back, crying out her name in horror--for it was Madame! Madame de Cocheforet!

She was plainly dressed, and her childish face was wan and piteous with weeping; but either the night had worn out her passion and drained her tears, or some great exigency had given her temporary calmness, for she was perfectly composed. She shivered as her eyes met mine, and she blinked as if a bright light had been suddenly thrust before her; but that was all, and she turned again to her task without speaking.

'Madame! Madame!' I cried in a frenzy of distress. 'What is this?'

'The servants would not do it,' she answered in a low but steady voice. 'You are still our guest, Monsieur.'

'But I cannot suffer it!' I cried. 'Madame de Cocheforet, I will not--'

She raised her hand with a strange patient expression in her face.

'Hush! please,' she said. 'Hush! you trouble me.'

The fire blazed up as she spoke, and she rose slowly from it, and with a lingering look at it went out, leaving me to stand and stare and listen in the middle of the floor. Presently I heard her coming back along the passage, and she entered bearing a tray with wine and meat and bread. She set it down on the table, and with the same wan face, trembling always on the verge of tears, she began to lay out the things. The glasses clinked fitfully against the plates as she handled them; the knives jarred with one another. And I stood by, trembling myself; and endured this strange kind of penance.

She signed to me at last to sit down; and she went herself, and stood in the garden doorway with her back to me. I obeyed. I sat down. But though I had eaten nothing since the afternoon of the day before, I could not swallow. I fumbled with my knife, and drank; and grew hot and angry at this farce; and then looked through the window at the dripping bushes, and the rain and the distant sundial--and grew cold again.

Suddenly she turned round and came to my side. 'You do not eat,' she said.

I threw down my knife, and sprang up in a frenzy of passion. 'MON DIEU! Madame,' I cried, 'do you think that I have NO heart?'

And then in a moment I knew what I had done, what a folly I had committed. For in a moment she was on her knees on the floor, clasping my knees, pressing her wet cheeks to my rough clothes, crying to me for mercy--for life! life! his life! Oh, it was horrible! It was horrible to hear her gasping voice, to see her fair hair falling over my mud-stained boots, to mark her slender little form convulsed with sobs, to feel that it was a woman, a gentlewoman, who thus abased herself at my feet!

'Oh, Madame! Madame!' I cried in my pain, 'I beg you to rise. Rise, or I must go!'

'His life! only his life!' she moaned passionately. 'What had he done to you--that you should hunt him down? what have we done to you that you should slay us? Oh! have mercy! Have mercy! Let him go, and we will pray for you, I and my sister will pray for you, every morning and night of our lives.'

I was in terror lest someone should come and see her lying there, and I stooped and tried to raise her. But she only sank the lower, until her tender little hands touched the rowels of my spurs. I dared not move, At last I took a sudden resolution.

'Listen, then, Madame!' I said almost sternly, 'if you will not rise. You forget everything, both how I stand, and how small my power is! You forget that if I were to release your husband to-day he would be seized within the hour by those who are still in the village and who are watching every road--who have not ceased to suspect my movements and my intentions. You forget, I say my circumstances--'

She cut me short on that word. She sprang to her feet and faced me. One moment more and I should have said something to the purpose. But at that word she stood before me, white, breathless, dishevelled, struggling for speech.

'Oh, yes, yes!' she panted eagerly. 'I know--I know!' And she thrust her hand into her bosom and plucked something out and gave it to me--forced it upon me. 'I know--I know!' she said again. 'Take it, and God reward you, Monsieur! God reward you! We give it freely--freely and thankfully!'

I stood and looked at her and it; and slowly I froze. She had given me the packet--the packet I had restored to Mademoiselle--the parcel of jewels. I weighed it in my hands, and my heart grew hard again, for I knew that this was Mademoiselle's doing; that it was she who, mistrusting the effect of Madame's tears and prayers, had armed her with this last weapon--this dirty bribe. I flung it down on the table among the plates.

'Madame!' I cried ruthlessly, all my pity changed to anger, 'you mistake me altogether! I have heard hard words enough in the last twenty-four hours, and I know what you think of me! But you have yet to learn that I have never done one thing. I have never turned traitor to the hand that employed me, nor sold my own side! When I do so for a treasure ten times the worth of that, may my hand rot off!'

She sank on a seat with a moan of despair; and precisely at that moment M. de Cocheforet opened the door and came in. Over his shoulder I had a glimpse of Mademoiselle's proud face, a little whiter than of yore, with dark marks under the eyes, but like Satan's for coldness.

'What is this?' he said, frowning, as his eyes lighted on Madame.

'It is--that we start at eleven o'clock, Monsieur,' I answered, bowing curtly. And I went out by the other door.

. . . . .

That I might not be present at their parting I remained in the garden until the hour I had appointed was well past; and then, without entering the house, I went to the stable entrance. Here I found all in readiness, the two troopers whose company I had requisitioned as far as Auch, already in the saddle, my own two knaves waiting with my sorrel and M. de Cocheforet's chestnut. Another horse was being led up and down by Louis, and, alas! my heart moved at the sight, for it bore a lady's saddle. We were to have company then. Was it Madame who meant to come with us, or Mademoiselle? And how far? To Auch?

I suppose that they had set some kind of a watch on me, for as I walked up M. de Cocheforet and his sister came out of the house; he with a pale face and bright eyes, and a twitching visible in his cheek--though he still affected a jaunty bearing; she wearing a black mask.

'Mademoiselle accompanies us?' I said formally.

'With your permission, Monsieur,' he answered with bitter politeness. But I saw that he was choking with emotion; he had just parted from his wife, and I turned away.

When we were all mounted he looked at me.

'Perhaps--as you have my parole, you will permit me to ride alone?' he said with a little hesitation. 'And--'

'Without me!' I rejoined keenly. 'Assuredly, so far as is possible.'

Accordingly I directed the troopers to ride before him, keeping out of earshot, while my two men followed him at a little distance with their carbines on their knees. Last of all, I rode myself with my eyes open and a pistol loose in my holster. M. de Cocheforet muttered a sneer at so many precautions and the mountain made of his request; but I had not done so much and come so far, I had not faced scorn and insults to be cheated of my prize at last; and aware that until we were beyond Auch there must be hourly and pressing danger of a rescue, I was determined that he who should wrest my prisoner from me should pay dearly for it. Only pride, and, perhaps, in a degree also, appetite for a fight, had prevented me borrowing ten troopers instead of two.

As was wont I looked with a lingering eye and many memories at the little bridge, the narrow woodland path, the first roofs of the village; all now familiar, all seen for the last time. Up the brook a party of soldiers were dragging for the captain's body. A furlong farther