The Red Cockade

  CHAPTER XVIII.

  A POOR FIGURE.

  I did not struggle long. The efforts I had made to free myself fromthe men, and this last exertion of striving to shout, brought theblood to my head; and so exhausted me that I lay inert, my heartpanting as if it would suffocate me, and my lungs craving more air. Iwas in danger of being stifled in earnest, and knew it; but,fortunately, the horror of this fate, which a minute before had drivenme to frantic efforts, now gave me the supreme courage to lie still,and, collecting myself, do all I could to get air.

  It was time I did. I was hot as fire, and sweating at every pore;however the dreadful sensation of choking went off somewhat when I hadlain a while motionless, and by turning my head and chest a littleto the side--which I succeeded in doing, though I could not raisemyself--I breathed more freely. Still, my position was horrible.Helpless as I was, with the trusses of hay pressing on me, freshpains soon rose to take the place of those allayed. The bonds on mywrists began to burn into my flesh, the hilt of my sword forced itselfinto my side, my back seemed to be breaking under the burden, myshoulders ached intolerably. I was being slowly, slowly pressed todeath, in darkness, and when a cry--a single cry, if I could raise myvoice--would bring relief and succour!

  The thought so maddened me that, fancying after an age of thissuffering that I heard a faint sound as of some one moving in thestable, I lost control of myself, and fell to struggling again; whilegroans broke from me instead of cries, and the bonds cut into my arms.But the paroxysm only added to my misery; the person, whoever he was,did not hear me, and made no further noise; or, if he did, the bloodcoursing to my head, and swelling the veins of my neck almost tobursting, deafened me to the sound. The horrible weight that I hadraised for a moment sank again. I gave up, I despaired; and lay in akind of swoon, unable to think, unable to remember, no longer hopingfor relief, or planning escape, but enduring.

  I must have lain thus some time, when a noise loud enough to reach mydulled ears roused me afresh; I listened, at first with half a heart.The noise was repeated; then, without further warning, a sharp paindarted through the calf of my leg. I screamed out; and, though thecloak and the hay over my head choked the cry, I caught a kind of echoof it. Then silence.

  Stupid as a in an awakened from sleep, I thought for a moment that Ihad dreamed both the cry and the pain; and groaned in my misery. Thenext moment I felt the hay that lay on me move; then the truss thatpressed most heavily on me was lifted, and I heard voices and cries,and saw a faint light, and knew I was freed. In a twinkling I feltmyself seized and drawn out, amid a murmur of cries and exclamations.The cloak was plucked from my head, and, dazzled and half blind, Ifound half a dozen faces gaping and staring at me.

  "Why, _mon Dieu!_ it is the gentleman who departed this morning!"cried a woman. And she threw up her hands in astonishment.

  I looked at her. She was the woman of the house.

  My throat was dry and parched, my lips were swollen; but at the secondattempt I managed to tell her to untie me.

  She complied, amid fresh exclamations of surprise and astonishment;then, as I was so stiff and benumbed as to be powerless, they liftedme to the door of the stable, where one set a stool, and anotherbrought a cup of water. This and the cold air restored me, and in aminute or two I was able to stand. Meanwhile they pressed me withquestions; but I was giddy and confused, and could not for a fewminutes collect myself. By-and-by, however, a person who came upwith an air of importance, and pushed aside the crowd of clowns andstable-helpers that surrounded me, helped me to find my voice.

  "What is it?" he said. "What is it, Monsieur? What brought you in thestable?"

  The woman who kept the inn answered for me that she did not know; thatone of the men going to get hay had struck his fork into my leg, andso found me.

  "But who is he?" the new-comer asked imperatively. He was a tall, thinman, with a sour face and small, suspicious eyes.

  "I am the Vicomte de Saux," I answered.

  "Eh!" he said, prolonging the syllable. "And how came you, M. leVicomte--if that be your name--in the stable?"

  "I have been robbed," I muttered.

  "Bobbed!" he answered with a sniff. "Bah! Monsieur; in this commune wehave no robbers."

  "Still, I have been robbed," I answered stupidly.

  For answer, before I knew what he was about, he plunged his hand,without ceremony or leave, into the pocket of my coat, and brought outa purse. He held it up for all to see. "Robbed?" he said in a tone ofirony. "I think not, Monsieur; I think not!"

  I looked at the purse in astonishment; then, mechanically putting myhand into my pocket, I produced first one thing, and then another, andstared at them. He was right. I had not been robbed. Snuff-box,handkerchief, my watch and seals, my knife, and a little mirror, andbook--all were there!

  "And now I come to think of it," the woman said, speaking suddenly,"there are a pair of saddle-bags in the house that must belong to thegentleman! I was wondering a while ago whose they were."

  "They are mine!" I cried, memory and sense returning. "They are mine!But the ladies who were with me? They have not started?"

  "They went these three hours back," the woman answered, staring at me."And I could have sworn that Monsieur went with them! But, to be sure,it was only just light, and a mistake is soon made."

  A thought that should have occurred to me before--a horriblethought--darted its sting into my heart. I plunged my hand into theinner pocket of my coat, and drew it out empty. The commission--thecommission to which I had trusted was gone!

  I uttered a cry of rage and glared round me. "What is it?" said thesour man, meeting my eyes.

  "My papers!" I answered, almost gnashing my teeth, as I thought how Ihad been tricked and treated. I saw it all now. "My papers!"

  "Well?" he said.

  "They are gone! I have been robbed of them!"

  "Indeed!" he said drily. "That remains to be proved, Monsieur."

  I thought that he meant that I might be mistaken, as I had beenmistaken before; and, to make certain, I turned out the pocket.

  "No," he said, as drily as before. "I see that they are not there. Butthe point is, Monsieur, were they ever there?"

  I looked at him.

  "Yes," he said, "that is the point, Monsieur. Where are your papers?"

  "I tell you I have been robbed of them!" I cried, in a rage.

  "And I say, that remains to be proved," he answered. "And until it isproved, you do not leave here. That is all, Monsieur, and it issimple."

  "And who," I said indignantly, "are you, I should like to know,Monsieur, who stop travellers on the highway, and ask for papers?"

  "Merely the President of the Local Committee," he replied.

  "And do you suppose," I said, fuming at his folly, "that I bound myhands, and stifled myself under that hay, on purpose? On purpose topass through your wretched village?"

  "I suppose nothing, Monsieur," he answered coolly. "But this is theroad to Turin, where M. d'Artois is said to be collecting thedisaffected; and to Nimes, where mischievous persons are flaunting thered cockade. And without papers, no one passes."

  "But what will you do with me?" I asked, seeing that the clowns, whogaped round us, regarded him as nothing less than a Solomon.

  "Detain you, M. le Vicomte, until you procure papers," he answered.

  "But, _mon Dieu!_" I said. "That is not so easily done here. Who islikely to know me?"

  He shrugged his shoulders. "Monsieur does not leave without thepapers," he said. "That is all."

  And he spoke truly, that was all. In vain I laid the facts before him,and asked if any one would voluntarily suffer, merely to hide his lackof papers, what I had undergone; in vain I asked if the state in whichI had been found was not itself proof that I had been robbed; if a mancould tie his own hands, and pile hay on himself. In vain even that Isaid I knew who had robbed me; the last statement only made mattersworse.

  "Indeed!" he said ironical
ly. "Then, pray, who was it?"

  "The rogue Froment! Froment of Nimes!"

  "He is not in this country."

  "Indeed! I saw him yesterday," I answered.

  "Then that settles the matter," the Committee-man answered, with agrim smile; and his little court smiled too. "After that, we certainlycannot lose sight of M. le Vicomte."

  And so well did he keep his word, that when, to avoid the cold thatbegan to pierce me, I went into the wretched inn, and sat down on thehearth to think over the position, two of the yokels accompanied me;and when I went out again, and stood looking distrustfully up and downthe road, two more were at my elbow, as by magic. Whether I turnedthis way or that, one was sure to spring up, and, if I walked too farfrom the house, would touch me on the arm, and gruffly order me back.Mont Aigoual itself, lifting its crest, bleak, and stern, and cold,above the valley, was not more sure than their attendance, or moreimmovable.

  This added to my irritation, and for a time I was like a madman.Deluded by Madame St. Alais, and robbed by Froment--who, I felt sure,had taken my place, and was now rolling at his ease through Sumene andGanges with my commission in his pocket--I strode up and down theroad, the road that was my prison, in a fever of rage and chagrin.Madame's ingratitude, my own easiness, the villagers' stupidity, Iexecrated all in turn; but most, perhaps, the inaction to which theycondemned me. I had escaped with my life, and for that should havebeen thankful; but no man cares to be duped. And one day, two days,three days passed; it froze and thawed, snowed and was fine; still,while the carriage bowled along the road to Nimes, and carried mymistress farther and farther from me, I lay a prisoner in thiswretched hamlet. I grew to loathe the squalid inn, in which I kickedmy heels through the cold hours, the muddy road that ran by it, themean row of hovels they called the village. All day, and whenever Iwent abroad, the clowns dogged and flouted me, thinking it sport; eachevening the Committee came to stare and question. A house this way, ahouse that way, were my boundaries, while the world moved beyond themountains, and France throbbed; and I knew not what might be in handto separate Denise from me. No wonder that I almost chafed myself intomadness.

  I had left my horse at Milhau, whence the landlord had undertaken toforward it to Ganges within a couple of days, by the hand of anacquaintance who would be going that way. I expected it every hour,therefore, and my only hope was that its conductor might be able toidentify me, since half a hundred at Milhau had seen my commission, orheard it read. But the horse did not arrive, nor any one from Milhau,and fearing that the release of the two ladies had caused troublethere, my heart sank still lower. I could not easily communicate withCahors, and the Committee, with rustic independence and obstinacy,would neither let me go nor send me to Nimes, where I could beidentified. It was in vain I pressed them.

  "No, no," the sour-faced Committee-man answered, the first time Iraised the question. "Presently some one who knows you will come by.In the meantime have patience."

  "M. le Vicomte is a gentleman many would know," the woman of the housechimed in; looking at me with her arms wrapped up in her apron and herhead on one side.

  "To be sure! To be sure," the crowd agreed, and, rubbing their calves,the members of the Committee followed her lead, and looked at me withsatisfaction, as at something that did them credit.

  Their stupid complacency nearly drove me mad; but to what purpose?"After all, you are very well here," the first speaker would say,shrugging his shoulders. "You are very well here."

  "Better than under the hay!" the man who had pricked my leg was wontto answer.

  And on that--this was a nightly joke--a general laugh would follow,and with another admonition to be patient, the Committee would takeits leave.

  Or sometimes the argument in the kitchen took a harsher and moredangerous turn; and one and another would recall for my benefit oldtales of the dragooning, and Villars, and Berwick; tales, at which theblood crept, of horrible cruelties done and suffered, of sternmountain men and brave women who faced the worst that Kings could do,for the fate that they had chosen; of a great cause crushed but notdestroyed, of a whole people trodden down in dust and blood, and yetliving and growing strong.

  "And do you think that after this," the speaker would cry when he hadtold me these things with flashing eyes, these things that hisgrandfathers had done and suffered--"do you think that after this weare not concerned in this business? Do you think that now, Monsieur,when, after all these years, vengeance is in our hand and ourpersecutors are tottering, we will sit still and see them set upagain? Bishops and captains, canons and cardinals, where are they now?Where are the lands they stole from us? Gone from them! Where are thetithes they took with blood? Taken from them! Where is St. Etienne,whose father they persecuted? With his foot on their necks! And, afterthis, do you think that with all their processions and their idols andtheir Corpus Christi, they shall defy us and set up their rule again?No, Monsieur, no."

  "But there is no question of that!" I said mildly.

  "There is great question of that," was the stern answer. "In Nimes andMontauban, at Avignon, and at Arles! We who live in the mountains havetoo often heard the storm gathering in the plain to be mistaken. Thesepreachings and processions, and weeping virgins, this cry ofBlasphemy--what do they mean, Monsieur? Blood! Blood! Blood! It hasbeen so a score of times, it is so now! But this time blood will notbe shed on one side only!"

  And I listened and marvelled. I began to understand that the same wordmeant one thing in one man's mouth, and in another man's mouth anotherthing; and that that which worked easily and smoothly in the northmight in the south roll hideously through fire and blood. In Quercy wehad lost two or three chateaux, and a handful of lives, and for a fewhours the mob had got out of hand--all with little enthusiasm. Buthere--here I seemed to stand on the brink of a great furnace underwhich the fires of persecution still smouldered; I felt the scorchingbreath of passion on my cheek, and saw through the white-hot scum oldenmities seething with new and fiercer ambitions, old factions withnew bigotries. I had heard Froment, now I heard these; it remainedonly to be seen whether Froment had his followers.

  In the meantime, pent up in this place, I found little comfort in suchpredictions; I lived on my heart, and the better part of a fortnightwent by. The woman at the inn was well satisfied to keep me; I paid,and guests were rare. And the Committee took pride in me; I was aliving, walking token of their powers, and of the importance of theirvillage. Now to the mingled misery and absurdity of my position, theanxiety on Mademoiselle's account, which this news of Nimes caused me,added the last intolerable touch, and I determined at all risks toescape.

  That I had no horse, and that at Sumene or Ganges I should inevitablybe detained, had hitherto held me back from the attempt; now I couldbear the position no longer, and after weighing all the chances, Idetermined to slip away some evening at sunset, and make my way onfoot to Milhau. The villagers would be sure to pursue me in thedirection of Nimes, whither they knew that I was bound; and even if aparty took the other road, I should have many chances of escape in thedarkness. I counted on reaching Milhau soon after daybreak, and there,if the Mayor stood my friend, I might regain my horse, and withcredentials travel to Nimes by the same or another road.

  It seemed feasible, and that very evening fortune favoured me. The manwho should have kept me company, upset a pot of boiling water over hisfoot, and without giving a thought to me or his duty went off groaningto his house. A moment later the woman of the inn was called out by aneighbour, and at the very hour I would have chosen, I found myselfalone. Still I knew that I had not a moment to lose; instantly,therefore, I put on my cloak, and reaching down my pistols from ashelf on which they had been placed, I put a little food in my pocketand sneaked out at the rear of the house. A dog was kennelled there,but it knew me and wagged its tail; and in two minutes, after warilyskirting the backs of the houses, I gained the road to Milhau, andstood free and alone.

  Night had fallen, but it was not quite dark; and dreading every eye, Ihurried on thr
ough the dusk, now peering anxiously forward, and nowlooking and listening for the first sounds of pursuit. For a fewminutes the fear of that took up all my thoughts; later, when the onetwinkling light that marked the village had set behind me, and nightand the silent waste of mountains had swallowed me up, a sense ofeeriness, of loneliness, very depressing, took possession of me.Denise was at Nimes, and I was moving the other way; what accidentsmight not befall me, how many things might not happen to postpone myreturn? In the meantime she lay at the mercy of her mother andbrothers, with all the traditions of her family, all the prejudices ofmaidenhood and her education against my suit. To what use in thisimbroglio might not her hand be put? Or, if that were not in question,what in that city of strife, in that fierce struggle, of which thepeasants had forewarned me, might not be the fate of a young girl?

  Spurred by these thoughts, I pressed on feverishly, and had gone,perhaps, a league, when a sharp sound made by a horse's shoe strikinga stone, caught my ear. It came from the front, and I drew to the sideof the road, and crouched low to let the traveller go by. I fanciedthat I could distinguish the tramp of three horses, but when the menloomed darkly into sight, I could see only two figures.

  Perhaps I rose a little too high in my anxiety to see. At any rate Ihad not counted on the horses, the nearer of which, as it passed me,swerved violently from me. The rider was almost dismounted by theviolence of the movement, but in a twinkling had his horse again inhand, and before I knew what I was doing, was urging it upon me. Idared not move, for to move was to betray my presence, but this didnot avail, for in a minute the rider made out the outline of myfigure.

  "Hola," he cried sharply. "Who are you there, who lie in wait to breakmen's necks? Speak, man, or----"

  But I caught his bridle. "M. de Geol!" I cried, my heart beatingagainst my ribs.

  "Stand back!" he cried, peering at me. He did not know my voice. "Whoare you? Who is it?"

  "It is I, M. de Saux," I answered joyfully.

  "Why, man, I thought that you were at Nimes," he exclaimed in a toneof great astonishment, "these ten days past! We have your horse here."

  "Here? My horse?"

  "To be sure. Your good friend here has it in charge from Milhau. Butwhere have you been? And what are you doing here?" he continuedsuspiciously.

  "I lost my passport. It was stolen by Froment."

  He whistled.

  "And at Villeraugues they stopped me," I continued. "I have been theresince."

  "Ah," he said drily. "That comes of travelling in bad company, M. leVicomte. And to-night I suppose you were----"

  "Going to get away," I answered bluntly. "But you--I thought that youhad passed long ago?"

  "No," he said. "I was detained. Now we have met, I would advise you tomount and return with me."

  "I will," I said briskly, "with the greatest pleasure. And you will beable to tell them who I am."

  "I?" he answered. "No, indeed. I do not know. I only know who you toldme you were."

  I fell to earth again, and for a moment stood staring through thedarkness at him. A moment only. For then out of the darkness came avoice. "Have no fear, M. le Vicomte, I will speak for you."

  I started and stared. "_Mon Dieu!_" I said, trembling. "Who spoke?"

  "It is I--Buton," came the answer. "I have your horse, M. le Vicomte."

  It was Buton, the blacksmith; Captain Buton, of the Committee.

  * * * * *

  This for the time cut the thread of my difficulties. When we rode intothe village ten minutes later, the Committee, awed by the credentialswhich Buton carried, accepted his explanation at once, and raised nofurther objection to my journey. So twelve hours afterwards we three,thus strangely thrown together, passed through Sumene. We slept atSauve, and presently leaving behind us the late winter of themountains, with its frost and snow, began to descend in sunshine thewestern slope of the Rhone valley. All day we rode through balmy air,between fields and gardens and olive groves; the white dust, the whitehouses, the white cliffs eloquent of the south. And a little beforesunset we came in sight of Nimes, and hailed the end of a journeythat, for me, had not been without its adventures.