CHAPTER XVII

STRANGE CONDUCT OF THE AGENT

(1)

Half an hour later M. de la Vireville's half-perfunctory, half-condemnatory regret at Mme. Rozel's approaching departure was a much more genuine and a deeper feeling. At his request she had been giving him particulars about the arrangements of the correspondence at Porhoët, so that he or his delegate could take steps for it to be carried on with as little interruption as might be. And he very quickly saw that she was the right person for the post--a remarkable woman, full of intelligence and resource. M. de Kérouan had been lucky in his 'agent.' And yet, in talking to her much more frankly than he had yet done, or she to him, he could not help speculating as to where that passionate soul which he guessed to be yoked with so much understanding and will might one day lead her. He was to know before long.

She ended by warning him that she thought it would be well in the future to choose some other place on the coast for the Jersey correspondence. The new mayor was exhibiting a certain amount of suspicion and zeal. She hoped that Monsieur Augustin's landing had not been observed; she had warned Grain d'Orge to be very careful. Fortuné, who was a little surprised to learn that so small a place had a mayor at all, thereupon described with some humour the form which Grain d'Orge's inspired caution had taken.

And after this their talk, late as it was, began to range farther afield into the past, and somehow La Vireville found himself touching on his own previous experiences of exile, for he had been in the army of the Princes in 1792.

"I hated Coblentz when I was there," he said frankly, finishing his wine at last. "It is true I was pretty near starving at the time."

And suddenly he felt Mme. Rozel's recovering confidence in him retract, as a sea-anemone shrinks up at the touch of a finger.

"Ah, you have been at Coblentz, Monsieur," she said slowly, looking at him with a curious expression. "When exactly was that, if I may ask?"

He told her, within a week or two of the precise date, as well as he could remember. "You have been there too, Madame?" he hazarded.

"No; I have never been to Coblentz," she answered. Her eyes, that held a more ready speech than her lips, had clouded over, and he could almost see her thoughts playing round that Mecca of the French emigration. Again he wondered why.

He talked on a little more, but the mention of Coblentz seemed to have broken the spell, and he suddenly remembered that it was very late--or, rather, very early.

"I will ask your permission to retire, Madame," said he, a trifle formally. "I must be abroad before the village is awake--especially after what you have told me." He got to his feet, and stood leaning on the back of his chair, waiting for his dismissal. She too got up, and, after lighting a rushlight, threw a glance at the ladder-like stairs in the corner behind her. "I must apologise for your quarters, Monsieur Augustin. They are little better than a loft, I fear. Do you think that, crippled as you are, you can manage that steep ascent? And how will you get to Carhoët to-morrow?"

"I leave that to Grain d'Orge, Madame," replied the émigré. "He is a person of resource in his own line. Besides, I hope that my foot will be better."

The mention of his destination had reminded him of something, and he thrust a hand into his breast. "You were good enough, Madame, to give me some names at Carhoët, and so, to avoid disturbing you in the morning, may I ask you to write them down for me now? I have some paper here."

He drew out from an inner pocket a small bundle of loose letters, a couple of which incontinently slipped to the floor. Before he could prevent her she had stooped to pick them up, and had laid them at his elbow on the table. Thanking her, he meanwhile tore off a blank sheet from his correspondence.

"Now, if you would be so good, Madame," he said, handing her the piece of paper and instinctively looking round for pen and ink.

But Mme. Rozel, at his side, was staring as if transfixed at one of the letters she had rescued, now lying face upwards between them on the table.

"Is that your real name, Monsieur Augustin?" she asked, in an odd voice, pointing to the letter.

Now in Brittany La Vireville's nom de guerre was so much more significant than his own--which, as has been said, he made some endeavours to keep distinct from it--that it was second nature to him to be called by it, and he had never even thought of informing her of the latter. In Brittany communications also were addressed to "M. Augustin." But the topmost of the two letters which his hostess had picked up chanced to be a note from the Prince de Bouillon sent to him during his recent stay at St. Helier, and, presumably for that reason, directed to him in his real name. Hence a large "M. de la Vireville" looked up at them both from the table, for His Serene Highness wrote no crabbed hand.

"Why, yes, Madame," answered the owner carelessly. "Did you not know it? I had no intention of keeping you in the dark on the point."

"Nor had I any intention of . . . prying," she said, and, catching up the two letters, she held them out to him almost feverishly. "I will give you the names you want at once." She well-nigh snatched from him the piece of paper he was holding. "Where is the pen?"

Thoroughly puzzled, La Vireville watched her as, with set mouth and face as white as the paper itself, she wrote out the list he required. Why should his name so discompose her? M. de Kérouan, whom he had never met, had evidently not mentioned it to her while he was alive--possibly did not even know it himself. It was not as if their commands had been contiguous. But why should his 'agent' find the discovery so extremely disconcerting? Was it possible that she, like Mme. de Chaulnes . . .? No, that he could not credit for a moment. It was on the tip of his tongue to pursue the subject--and he knew he was rather a fool not to do so--but somehow he was too sorry for her to probe her distress to-night. She had but recently lost her lover, and she was so pale! When she gave him the list he merely thanked her, and bent over her hand for a moment with a grace oddly at variance with its surroundings. The hand in question was very cold.

Once again, as he took up the rushlight, she began an apology, scarcely audible, for the poorness of his quarters, and the difficulty of getting to them.

"A night in the hayloft used to be the summit of my ambition, Madame, when I was a child," replied he gaily. "I only hope that you will sleep as well as I shall." And with that he limped away to the stairs.

The ascent, indeed, was not too easy to him. At the top a last prompting of curiosity urged him to glance back over his shoulder down into the room. But his hostess was no longer visible, and he opened the door at the top of the ladder-stairs to find himself in a small, bare apartment, containing little save a truckle-bed under the window, with a rush-bottomed chair beside it, a press built into the wall by the door, and a crucifix.

Having ascertained that the crazy door possessed no means of fastening other than a latch, and a bolt on the outside, La Vireville set down the light on a chair and threw off his outer garments with celerity. He had the habit of seizing sleep when he could get it, and in Brittany a bed was something of a luxury. And though in Porhoët village he was probably less safe than he would have been sleeping, as usual, with his men in the lee of a hedge under the open sky, and knew it, and though his curiosity, if not his suspicions, had lately suffered a rousing prick, and though--more disturbing than either--his foot ached persistently, ere a quarter of an hour had elapsed he was in the enjoyment of a very refreshing slumber.

(2)

Perhaps if the guest could have known how his hostess spent the night he might have slept less well; perhaps, even, if, when he had looked back from the head of the stairs, he had seen how she stood rigid against the wall, in the lake of shadow by the press, her hands clenched at her sides, like one who has encountered some terrible vision, he might have descended to prosecute the inquiry he had abandoned. Perhaps he might have felt compassion at the tormented, desperate face she wore as the hours crept on towards morning, and every one brought conviction nearer to her, yet no guidance. "It is he! it must be he!" she said aloud, not once but many times. "He was at Coblentz then--he acknowledged it. Oh, was it god or devil showed me his name? . . . André, André, my darling, tell me what I am to do!" Rent with sobs, she would cease her agonised pacing to and fro, and throw herself down by the table, her head on her outstretched arms. . . . But of these phenomena La Vireville was not a witness.

And soon the dawn was stealing in, comfortless. Mme. Rozel extinguished the lamp, and sat, her hands locked tight together. As the daylight grew, so did the light in her eyes--a steady beacon. Her mouth hardened itself into an inflexible line, and at last, rising as one whose mind is irrevocably set, she began to go cautiously up the stairs to La Vireville's room.

So light was her tread that the steps did not creak. The door yielded to her touch. She went in, noiseless as a ghost, her face like a ghost's save for the flame in her eyes.

Under the tiny window, a little turned on his side, and with one arm crooked beneath his head, her guest lay in a profound sleep. She stood a minute by the door, then crept nearer and looked down at him long and steadily. Yes, it must be he! Here were the same features, as they had been painted to her; the same hair and brows, the same cleft in the chin. The mounting tide of hatred began to lift her off her feet. . . . And even while she studied his sleeping face she saw, hanging from the back of the chair by the bedside, a hunting-knife--his own.

She was not conscious of putting out her hand for it, still less of drawing it from its sheath, yet the moment after the bright blade was somehow in her grip. How absolutely he lay at her mercy!--and so still that his breathing scarcely lifted his half-open shirt. Staring down at the strong, bare throat she suddenly turned giddy. . . .

How far--or how little distance--would that wave of feeling have carried her? Next instant two eyes, quite calm and very alert, were looking up into hers, and the hand that had been under the sleeper's head held her wrist in a clutch like fate.

"Madame, private theatricals are out of fashion," said La Vireville in a lazy voice. A twist of his powerful fingers, and the hunting-knife dropped from her grasp to the coverlet, where his other hand secured it. "My own knife too! May I ask why you were rehearsing this dramatic scene?"

All the while he lay and looked up at her, too contemptuous, it seemed, to be at the trouble of raising himself, so long as he had her wrist prisoner in that hopeless grasp of his. White, silent, choking, her other hand at her throat, she did not even make an attempt to wrench herself away. At last, when her captor had run on a little more, he loosed his hold. "You can go, my fair assassin! In whose pay are you, by the way?"

She paid no heed to the taunt, but, having reached the door, she turned, and spoke in a voice rendered unsteady neither by fear nor shame, but by some more positive emotion.

"Listen, M. de la Vireville, and I will tell you my name. I am Raymonde de Guéfontaine--Raymonde du Coudrais, the sister of André du Coudrais, the man whom you hounded out of Coblentz on a lying charge of cheating at cards, whose reputation you blasted with your tongue, whose health you ruined with your sword! And now, before he is cold in his grave--murdered, for all I know, by your connivance--you come to claim his place! Oh, it is too much! After all, cold steel, could I have used it, is too good for you! I know a better way--a more fitting----"

"_Du Coudrais!_" broke in the thunderstruck La Vireville, on his elbow. "'Alexis' was du Coudrais! But he . . . it was----"

"Ah, you remember!" cried she, unheeding. "You remember that night at the Three Crowns, and the morning after! Till now you had forgotten, perhaps? Otherwise, surely, you would scarcely have dared to come--even you! I had heard a whisper of your name, but I did not believe----"

"Stop!" cried La Vireville, breaking in, in his turn. "I assure you----"

Her hand was already on the door. "Too late, M. le Marquis! What is done is done. But you shall never step into André's shoes. And at least you know now why I am going to give you up!"

"The devil you are!" said La Vireville, with a very grim face. The pistol in his hand covered her with a perfectly steady aim. "There is this between you and your hospitable project, Mme. de Guéfontaine!" He cocked it.

She stood flattened against the door, wide-eyed, scarcely breathing, but not attempting to move.

"Now swear," commanded the émigré, "swear on the crucifix there that you will do no such thing! Otherwise I shall fire!" For he knew that she would be through the door before he could spring on her.

"I will not swear!" cried she, her face a white flame. "Shoot me if you will--you can do no worse to me than you have already done through André--but if you do not shoot me, as sure as there is a God above us, I shall summon the National Guard of this place to take you!"

Though the colour of a sheet, she did not flinch before the barrel, not ten feet away. La Vireville set his teeth, and himself changed colour. But he could not do it. The pistol sank.

"Madame," he said, in his usual careless tone, "if you are treacherous you are devilish well-plucked. I wish I were as strong-minded. Go and fetch the National Guard then, and be damned to it!"