CHAPTER VIII

SOME RESULTS OF LISTENING TO POETRY

(1)

Mathieu Pourcelles had now definitely become a nuisance to the habitués of that old-established house of entertainment, the _Hôtel du Faisan et de la Constitution_ at Abbeville. To the patron indeed he was more than a nuisance; he was a source of frenzy. But since Mathieu's elder brother, the notary, was the patron's creditor to the extent of some two thousand francs, the patron had to suffer him, and all the clients of the _Faisan_ had to suffer him too--unless they removed their custom to another hostelry. And this, to be exact, was what they were gradually doing, for there are limits even to the patience of a decent citizen who has for years played his nightly little game of draughts at the same tavern and does not favour changes.

It shall briefly be revealed what was the matter with Mathieu Pourcelles. He was a poet. Nor was he a good poet; nay, not even an indifferent poet. But his muse was both prolific and patriotic, giving birth to some abortion at almost every public event, and though all good citizens of Abbeville were properly interested in such occurrences as, say, the repeal of the Law of the Maximum, they preferred a plain newspaper account of it to Mathieu's rhythmical rendering. Yet if they showed undue restiveness under the poet's outpourings it was just conceivable that, seeing the subject of his verse, they might be suspected of 'incivisme.' And thus there was little help for them.

On a certain evening, then, in April 1795, Mathieu entered the _Faisan_ a little earlier than usual. In his hand was a fresh, untumbled manuscript. Several citizens incontinently rose, paid their scores, and went out. The patron cast an agonised look at their retreating backs, and one full of venom at Mathieu's. The poet, a lanky personage, sat down, gave the smallest possible order for refreshments, and, after scandalously few preliminaries and a marked absence of any kind of encouragement, unrolled his manuscript.

"I have here, fellow-citizens, some verses which I should like to submit to your valued judgment." Such was Mathieu's formula to-night. "These verses deal with the present situation of the arms of our beloved country, being, in fact, an 'Ode on the Peace recently concluded between the glorious Republic and Prussia.'"

All present resigned themselves, except one man who ostentatiously buried himself in a news-sheet. Mathieu, than whom was no happier mortal at that moment between the English Channel and the Pyrenees, began joyfully to roll forth his periods and his execrable rhymes. And, weedy though he was of aspect, his own outpourings soon began increasingly to inflate his not inconsiderable voice, so that presently the room rang with his bellowings, and the table before him jumped as he pounded it.

Among all his unwilling listeners he had none a tenth part as interested as a small, tired-looking boy who sat, a spoon in his hand, at a table some distance away. With him was a neat man of forty who, in the midst of his own repast, attended to his small companion's wants. Since the opening of Mathieu's performance the child had more or less neglected his meal to listen with an attention distinctly strained, his eyes anxiously fixed on the orator. Nor did Mathieu fail, after a while, to observe the flattering behaviour of his youngest auditor, and at last broke off and apostrophised him, trusting, he said, that his young friend would profit by these lessons, and remember them in years to come.

The young friend, on whom all eyes were immediately turned, shrank back, looking terrified. But Mathieu lost no time in continuing his reading. He was approaching a favourite passage, a purple patch directed against "crowned tyrants," "perfidious Albion," and "those vipers, the émigrés," and so he unleashed fully the voice which was so much at variance with his physique. A man yawned, another banged approval--and the small boy, overcome by emotion or fatigue, hid his face in his hands and burst into tears. His companion tried to quiet him, but the child drew away from him, and the man, evidently annoyed, and muttering, "He is overtired; excuse him, my friends!" picked him up, and carried him out of the room.

Mathieu was not unaccustomed to exits during his performances, but this retreat was rather flattering than otherwise, since it could only be attributed to his power of moving the heart. He paused a moment, smirked, and proceeded.

(2)

Half an hour later, however, he had succeeded in clearing the room in earnest. Yet did he not himself depart, having regard to the possible advent of other guests, but remained awhile, running his hand through his dank hair, and casting up his eyes to the ceiling whenever the patron, scowling, looked in at the door.

His patience was duly rewarded when, at about five minutes to eight, the host ushered in a tall man in a cloak, evidently a traveller. The newcomer ordered a meal, and went to sit at a table in a far corner. Mathieu took stock of him, and finally arose and approached him.

"You are travelling, citizen?"

La Vireville looked carefully at the speaker. He himself desired rather to ask than to answer questions, but the poet appeared harmless. Moreover, having traced Anne-Hilarion and his companion as far as Abbeville, and having already drawn blank at two inns in that town, he was glad of the chance of information. So he said quietly, "Yes, citizen. And you?"

"Ah no; I inhabit Abbeville. You will not have heard of me, citizen, but I am not quite unknown, even in Paris. My name is Pourcelles--Mathieu Pourcelles. I write a little--verse. I wonder if I might presume? . . . You have the look of a lover of letters" (the phrase with which Mathieu was wont to approach any victim not absolutely bucolic). "I may?" And out came the manuscript of the Ode.

La Vireville endured it, eating his omelette, and thinking fast. He was beginning to feel a little baffled. Anne and his escort had certainly come to Abbeville; the point was, had they already left it? It appeared, from the cautious inquiries which he had made along the road from Calais, that the travellers were but little ahead of him--a fact which, in spite of the nearly incredible haste which he had made, seemed almost too good to be true, and which, considering their twenty-four hours' start, he found it difficult to account for. It was risky to ask direct questions, yet he would shortly be driven to that course. But he had not reckoned for the vanity of an author.

"I now come," said the gifted poet, simpering, "to a passage which, as recently as three-quarters of an hour ago, inspired tears in a member of my little audience. It is true that he was very young, but who shall say whether the pure heart of childhood----"

"A child, eh?" interrupted his hearer, continuing to eat, but fixing Mathieu with a very keen gaze. "An infant prodigy, I suppose?"

"No; just a little boy with his father or uncle. But he was overcome, and had to be taken away. His companion has indeed left his own meal unfinished, no doubt in order to soothe the terror which my description of tyranny had awaked in the childish breast."

"Is this susceptible infant staying in the inn?" inquired La Vireville carelessly.

"I believe so," replied the poet, who had already lost interest in his young hearer, and was itching to declaim the purple passage in question, of which he again stood on the brink. La Vireville made a gesture to intimate that he should do so, and diplomatically neglected his meal to listen.

"Bravo!" he exclaimed at the end. "Magnificent, citizen! You have the foes of our beloved country on the hip, indeed. Those lines about the émigrés, now!"

Mathieu smirked. Then he glowed. "I declare to you, citizen, that if I were to meet one of those scorpions--those vipers, as I have termed them--I would not hesitate a moment to----"

"To denounce him, of course," said La Vireville, helping himself to wine.

"No, citizen, to kill him with these hands!"

"Ma foi," said La Vireville gravely, "if you ply the sword, citizen, as ably as the pen, France may well be proud of you."

Mathieu, much flattered, was beginning an answer, when the door opened and the little boy's guardian reappeared. The poet turned round.

"I trust your charge is recovered!" said he ingratiatingly. "A most interesting child!"

"Thank you," replied the other rather coldly, as he returned to his place; "my nephew was merely overtired." And he ordered coffee, while La Vireville secretly studied him. He looked, thought the Chouan, a person who could neither be bullied nor flustered, a man in whose veins ran some unusually cold liquid. How was he to get him out of the way? Besides, was it certain that the little boy with him was Anne-Hilarion? That he _must_ know.

Absorbed in these speculations he paid scant attention to the conclusion of the Ode, which its author had the obligingness to read again for his benefit and for that of the returned guest, who drank his coffee very slowly, but appeared to be interested in neither of his companions. And before very long the Citizen Pourcelles, seeing no fresh worlds to conquer, drifted out, followed, after a moment's hesitation, by La Vireville, who buttonholed him at the door of the hostelry, to say that he could not let him go without thanking him for the pleasure which he had afforded him.

A very little of this balm, dexterously applied, sufficed to get out of the poet a description of the little boy upstairs sufficiently detailed to satisfy La Vireville that he was indeed Anne-Hilarion.

And then, Mathieu having at last taken his departure, La Vireville was left at the door of the inn, revolving plans. It was tempting to go upstairs now, while the man was below, and (if he could find the right room) slip out of the place with the child. But he would be tracked at once. No plan was sound which did not provide, somehow, for the disposal of Anne's captor. La Vireville was not in the least inclined to boggle at the idea of putting a knife into that gentleman if an opportunity occurred; the difficulty was less to provide that opportunity than to get rid of the ensuing corpse. To go in and quarrel with the man would only lead to tumult and imprisonment. Yet if he delayed and followed the two to-morrow, waiting for fortune to smile upon him, they would all three, with every hour, be nearing Paris and leaving the coast farther behind them, and adding thereby to the length and risk of the return journey.

At any rate he would, he decided, stay at the inn for the night, that is, unless Anne and his 'uncle' were proceeding.

"I want a quiet room," he said to the patron. "You can give me one at the back if you choose." And, the apartment in question being shown to him, he further expressed a hope that there was no one near who would come late to bed and disturb him.

"There is no other guest in the _Hôtel du Faisan_," replied the landlord, "but the citizen downstairs and his little nephew, and they sleep in Number Nine, which is at the other end of the corridor, as you see. And probably the citizen will retire to bed early, because of the child."

"Tiresome," commented the émigré, "to share a room with a child, and to have to regulate your hours of repose accordingly."

"That," said the landlord, with a slightly offended air, "is not really necessary in this case. Number Nine has an inner room opening out of it."

(3)

The fruits of the reflections to which, after this colloquy, the Chevalier de la Vireville abandoned himself in his bedroom were manifested between one and two in the morning, when he stood outside the door which the patron had pointed out at the end of the passage. He had groped his way thither in the darkness, not venturing to bring a candle. At this door he now knocked with extreme gentleness, then again a little louder, and, still receiving no answer, he tried the handle. To his surprise it turned, and the door opened.

"Odd!" thought the intruder. "Mme. de Chaulnes' emissary is of a singularly trustful nature." And he slipped in with great caution.

The room was absolutely dark, but not silent. A heavy snoring proceeded from the bed, and was, indeed, the only evidence of its whereabouts. "I had not somehow thought him a snorer," reflected La Vireville. "At any rate one knows that he sleeps. Now I wonder whereabouts is that inner room?" Very softly he breathed Anne's name in the close darkness. Nothing but snores answered him.

It was obvious that by feeling round the walls he would arrive in time at the door, shut or open, of the other room, for whose presence the landlord had vouched. La Vireville began this circumnavigation (so he discovered) in the neighbourhood of the washstand; proceeded a little--going very slowly and quietly, and feeling carefully with his hands--passed a hanging press, the fireplace, and began to be conscious that he was approaching the bed. He stopped, not wishing to collide with it, and at that moment found his hands resting on something thrown over the back of a chair. And that something was--yes, there could be no doubt--a pair of corsets.

"Ciel!" exclaimed the petrified émigré below his breath. Wild ideas scurried instantly through his brain, as that Anne's companion was really of the corset-wearing sex, or that he had a woman with him, or---- Then a simpler explanation visited him; he had, in the darkness without, mistaken the room, and his present business was to get out of this apartment, whoever were its tenant, as quickly and as quietly as possible. If the snoring fair one should wake! . . . It was a very long minute before he found himself outside the door again.

* * * * *

He set forth the second time with a candle, and found that he had, indeed, mistaken the number. Number Nine was two doors farther on. He could only hope that the snorer would continue the sound sleep in which he had left her, since what he contemplated doing in Number Nine might cause some noise.

He knocked gently at the door of that apartment.

There was instantly a movement within, followed by a sound as of someone getting out of or off the bed. He knocked again, and then the door was unlocked, and opened a foot or two by the man whom La Vireville sought. He was half-dressed, and had a pistol in his hand. There was a lamp burning in the room.

"May I come in, citizen?" asked La Vireville mildly, facing the barrel with all the appearance of innocent intent. "I wish to speak with you on important business."

The occupant of Number Nine looked at him straight and searchingly with his strange light eyes. Then, still keeping his visitor covered, he moved aside for him to enter, and closed the door behind him, locking it.

La Vireville's immediate dread, on entering, was of finding Anne-Hilarion there, or at least awake in the inner room,--whose door he saw ajar in front of him,--to recognise him, as he surely would, with a cry, and spoil everything. "Shall I close this door?" he suggested, and, turning his back on the pistol, he shut the door which faced him. "We do not want to wake the boy, and it is about him that I have come to speak to you."

"You choose a very strange time for the errand, citizen," observed M. Duchâtel, but he lowered the pistol.

"Yet you were expecting me, were you not?" queried La Vireville, glancing at the bed and the book lying open on it. "_She_ told you, of course, that she might send me? On the whole it seemed best, though to be sure he--you know whom I mean--will suffer by it." Anne's gaoler was, he trusted, gravelled by this pronouncement, which was devoid of meaning even to himself; but it was impossible to tell. The man with the goat's eyes merely said curtly:

"I saw you downstairs with that fool of a versifier. Why did you not speak to me then?"

"Juste ciel!" exclaimed the émigré, putting down his candle. "What imprudence! You know her recommendation!"

"I don't know your business--or your credentials!" snapped the other.

"I will show you both," quoth La Vireville sweetly; and, opening his coat, he pulled out the thin leather case in which he had put the passports. From this he carefully drew forth Anne-Hilarion's, and spread enough of it before his adversary's vision to show him the boy's name.

"Why, what have you there?" exclaimed M. Duchâtel, shaken out of his self-possession. And he added something under his breath about a trick and an old vixen, while, eager for a fuller sight or complete possession of the document, he hastily laid down the pistol on the mantelpiece.

It was the moment for which the Chouan had been waiting. He gave the passport bodily into those incautious hands, and a second later smote their owner with exceeding force on the point of the jaw. M. Duchâtel staggered back, his arms going wide, and the passport flew half across the room as La Vireville followed up with a smashing blow over the heart. The tall mahogany bedpost, which the kidnapper's head next violently encountered, finished La Vireville's work for him with much completeness, but before the inanimate body could slide to the floor La Vireville had grabbed at it and pulled it on to the bed.

"If I have killed him!" he thought, as he bent over his victim, for it looked rather like it. "No; that kind does not die of a good honest blow." With luck, however, he might be unconscious for hours, but it was as well to be on the safe side; so, since it repelled him to cut the throat of a senseless man, he tied his feet with the bell-pull, which he hacked down for the purpose, his hands with the curtain cords. Then he stuffed a towel into his mouth, tied it in position with another, and flung the quilt entirely over him.

He had already possessed himself of M. Duchâtel's papers, reserving their perusal, however, for a more favourable opportunity, and now, picking up Anne-Hilarion's passport, he tiptoed to the door of the inner room, and listened for a moment. Singularly little noise, on the whole, had attended his assault on Anne's guardian, and there was complete silence the other side of the door, yet La Vireville's heart was nearer his mouth than it had yet been, for a child's shrill scream either of joy or terror--and Anne must be thoroughly unnerved by this time--might bring the house about them. However, the possibility had to be faced, so he opened the door a little and called the boy's name softly. There was no answer, and as the room was in darkness the rescuer had perforce to take the lamp from the larger apartment, and to enter, shading it with one hand.

The Comte de Flavigny was fast asleep in the wide bed, which looked large in the little room, and in which he himself appeared very small, lonely, and pathetic, with one hand under a flushed cheek and the other clutching fast the edge of the patchwork quilt. "The poor baby!" thought La Vireville, but had no time to spend upon sentiment. The main thing, for both their sakes, was to wake him without startling him.

"If I were really the nurse whose duties I now seem to be taking upon myself," thought the Chouan, "I should know better what to do."

He put down the lamp and stooped over the child, shaking the small shoulder very gently, and calling him by name, a hand ready to clap over his mouth if he should scream. At the third or fourth repetition of his name Anne-Hilarion stirred.

"It is not time, Elspeth," he murmured rather crossly, and buried his face in the pillow. "It is not time to get up, I tell you!"

"But it is," asserted La Vireville; "high time. Anne, my little one. . . ." He put his arms under him and lifted him up a trifle.

Anne gave a great sigh and opened his eyes. "Is it thou, Papa? I dreamed--I had such a horrible dream. . . ." Then he returned more fully to waking life. "Who is it?" he said shrilly, beginning to struggle in the strong arms like a captured bird.

"It is I, my child--your friend the Chevalier," said La Vireville, kissing him. "Don't make a noise, little cabbage! See, I am going to take you back to England. But you must be quiet, above all things!"

Anne-Hilarion looked up into his face, the fear in his eyes changed to an almost incredulous joy. "Oh, M. le Chevalier!" he exclaimed. Then he threw his arms round his friend's neck and held him very tight. "Oh, how glad I am! how good of you to come!" he whispered fervently. "But the--that other man in there?"

"He will not trouble us--not, at least, if we are quick. Get into your clothes, Anne, faster than you have ever done in your life. _Can_ you get into them?" asked the Chouan a little doubtfully, setting the half-clothed figure down upon the bed, and looking round in the lamplight for more garments.

"Already it is many weeks since I can dress myself," announced the Comte de Flavigny proudly. "But this is my shirt that I have on. I have no nightshirt. He said it did not matter, but I have never before gone to bed in----"

"Never mind," said La Vireville, pitching a few garments on to the bed. They seemed to him ridiculously minute. "How does this go on?"

"That is the wrong way round!" observed Anne, so hilariously that the émigré glanced at the open door and put his finger to his lip. Evidently Anne's faith in him was so great that his mere presence was to him the equivalent of safety.

"Now wait here a moment in the dark," said La Vireville when, between them, a rapid toilet had been effected. "It is only for an instant." He returned with the lamp to the outer room, satisfied himself that Mme. de Chaulnes's emissary was still soundly unconscious under the counterpane, and, unlocking the door, stole out into the passage and listened. There was neither sound nor light anywhere. He went back to Anne-Hilarion.

And, five minutes later, by the simple expedient of letting themselves out of its back door, the Chevalier de la Vireville and his small charge found themselves free of the _Hôtel du Faisan et de la Constitution_, and standing, under the April stars, between high walls in an unsavoury back lane of Abbeville. It was not, indeed, a propitious hour for the walks abroad of a reputable citizen, still less for those of a boy of tender years, but there was now excellent reason why the open air should appeal strongly to them both. Wherefore La Vireville prayed that fate and the darkness should so favour him, that by six or seven o'clock he should find himself at the little port of St. Valéry-sur-Somme, thirteen miles or so down the river, and that there a still further indulgence of the gods would enable him to hire a boat to return across the Channel. For to go back to Boulogne or Calais would be madness, and the chief recommendation of St. Valéry, besides the fact of its being a harbour, was that it lay off all the main roads between those greater ports and Paris. Even then it would be hard enough to get a boat without exciting suspicion. But the Fates had been hitherto so kind that he must go on trusting them.

"I shall have to carry you most of the way, child, so I had best begin now," he whispered, and picked up his half-sleepy, half-excited charge.