CHAPTER XVIII

EQUALLY SURPRISING CONDUCT OF "MONSIEUR AUGUSTIN"

(1)

Five seconds, no more, did Fortuné de la Vireville allow himself wherein to reflect that he found himself, as the door was shut and the bolt slid into place, in one of the most unpleasant situations of his life; ten to formulate a plan--a very precarious and weak-kneed plan--of escape therefrom, and about a minute and a half to scramble into the rest of his clothes. He could have done this quicker but for his foot, which hampered him at every turn. Then, kneeling on the bed, he pushed the little casement wide, tore off the sheets, knotted them together, twisted them round into the semblance of a rope, made one end fast to the head of the bed, and threw the slack out of the window. But he did not climb down it. Nor did he attempt to break open the door, which he could probably have done with ease. To escape in either of those ways before the house was surrounded would necessitate running, and, unfortunately he could not run. But he trusted that the sheet hanging out of the window would convince the National Guard that he _had_ run. . . . He thrust his pistols into his belt, picked up his hunting-knife--a smile flitted across his face as he touched it--and limped across the room to his chosen refuge.

If it was a refuge! For his life depended at that moment on what Mme. de Guéfontaine, the 'fisherman's widow,' had a habit of storing in the large press built into the side of the little room. If it were linen, or anything that required the presence of shelves, then--"Good-night, my friend!" said La Vireville to himself.

"But no!--one enters!" he finished, when the door stood wide. There was nothing at all in the cupboard but a row of pegs, from one of which depended, oddly enough, a tricolour sash. So he went in.

The place had a strange, stuffy smell. Light, but not much air, came under the flimsy double doors, and between them. "And if I am to stay here long," thought La Vireville, "a chair would be very acceptable;" for it was tiring to stand, as he was doing, practically on one leg. If he sat upon the floor he could not make much of a fight of it, supposing the necessity arose. He was beginning seriously to contemplate emerging to fetch the chair when he heard numerous and hurried steps on the steep stairway outside. "This cannot, surely, be the National Guard already," thought their quarry. "The vindictive lady has not had the time to summon them!" For he remembered noticing last night that Mme. Rozel's cottage stood at a little distance from Porhoët itself.

Nevertheless the visitors' method of procedure pointed to a raid. Some form of battering ram, presumably the butt of a musket, was hastily applied to the door of the room. A very little hammering, and the portal fell inwards with a crash. As it was fastened on the outside only, the refugee was tickled at this evidence of local zeal. "If these individuals look into this cupboard I fear they will be very ungentle with me," he reflected, a pistol in either hand. "Let me see to it, in that case, that their numbers are somewhat reduced."

But he had no need of his weapons; his ruse had been enough for these simple and enthusiastic souls. La Vireville heard a wild rush to the window and the (as he had hoped) convincing sheet; thereafter cries, stampings, curses, and voices proclaiming that the Chouan had escaped by the window, and that the woman Rozel, in league with him, had warned him.

"Hardly the way that I should have put it!" thought the fugitive.

And from that indictment of complicity to avenging action was but a step. "Arrest her! arrest her!" shouted several voices. And with a fresh rush down the stairs, with noise and loud talking from below, and what La Vireville half took to be a stifled scream, this was evidently accomplished. Five minutes had seen the development of the whole drama.

(2)

With the loud banging of the cottage door a great and signal silence fell upon the dwelling of the 'fisherman's widow,' even upon the cupboard upstairs and its occupant. For La Vireville was filled in the first place with an access of prudence which urged him to make no sound until he was tolerably sure that the house was really empty; in the second with a certain ironical satisfaction. Into a memory not over well stored with such literature had come the words of the Psalmist concerning such as dug a pit and fell into the midst of it themselves, and he stayed to savour them. Poor Mme. de Guéfontaine! she had paid dearly for her vengeful instincts. Moreover, in spite of the poetical justice which had overtaken her, she might have that revenge even yet. La Vireville was helpless, even in the empty house. Grain d'Orge would certainly not come till dusk, always supposing that he were free to come at all. Before his advent, too, the village authorities might return to search the house; it seemed strange, indeed, that they had not already done so.

But, however precarious one's position, it is impossible to live without food. La Vireville hobbled downstairs and found a loaf of bread and some sour milk, with which he clambered back to his little room. Eating the bread thoughtfully, as he sat on his devastated bed, he considered the case of Mme. de Guéfontaine. So 'Alexis' had been the unfortunate du Coudrais, the victim of an odious charge made against him (whether in good faith or for some ulterior object Fortuné had never felt quite sure) by a near kinsman of La Vireville's own, the Marquis of that name! La Vireville himself had only arrived at Coblentz a few days after the duel which ensued upon the Marquis's denunciation of du Coudrais at the Three Crowns, to which Mme. de Guéfontaine had made hot reference; but émigré circles were still ringing with the scandal, and the Marquis de la Vireville, his own arm in a sling, was better able to explain to his cousin how he had run du Coudrais through the lungs than to satisfy him--or anybody else--of the ill-starred gentleman's dishonour. But du Coudrais, when he recovered from his wound, had to leave Coblentz nevertheless . . . and, having left it, was abundantly cleared, too late, of the charge against him by the dramatic unmasking of another man as a professional sharper. And for this affair, in which ironically enough, La Vireville had by no means supported his cousin, of whose past record he knew too much, he had been himself within an ace of paying the penalty--might, indeed, yet pay it.

It was quite clear to him why Mme. de Guéfontaine had taken him for her late brother's aggressor. He had confessed to his name, he had mentioned having been at Coblentz at the time, and he bore a close family resemblance to his kinsman--close enough, at least, to deceive anyone who relied merely on a verbal description; for it was tolerably certain that Mme. de Guéfontaine had never seen the Marquis de la Vireville. Evidently she had been devotedly attached to her brother; had shared in his schemes, worked and plotted for him here at Porhoët, in a position of no small danger, and then, fresh from the shock of that brother's violent death, was called upon--so she thought--to shelter and to help to install in his place the man who had been his worst enemy! She was a woman of strong feelings; she had found the situation, as she had declared to him, intolerable, and in a moment of wild impulse she had resolved to put a term to it and to avenge her brother in one and the same act. And, reviewing the episode dispassionately, La Vireville found he could not blame her overmuch . . . especially as she had failed. True, there was always something of a nauseous flavour about delation, but the matter of the cold steel had a primitive and heroic touch--Jael and Sisera. "And if," he said to himself, "if I had given her a minute longer she need not have been put to the shift of betraying me to the authorities!" . . . Yet, after all, he doubted whether she would have had the nerve to use the knife. And, whatever her intentions with regard to the National Guard, it was by no means certain that she had carried them out. He did not see how she could have done so in the time. And because he found himself oddly reluctant to associate her with the idea of just that form of treachery, he settled that she had _not_ had time. . . . But she was, no doubt of it, a remarkable woman!

And so, commending her spirit, as though he had not nearly been its victim, La Vireville arrived, as the long, featureless day was beginning to close in, at a certain decision.

When the dusk had quite fallen the owl's cry, as he had expected, came prudently to his ears. He answered it, and in a little while the countenance of Grain d'Orge was visible at the window, whence the misleading sheet still trailed into the garden.

"Come in," said his leader, without moving from the chair whereon he sat, with his legs extended on another. "A pretty sort of refuge you selected for me!"

The Chouan scrambled over the sill on to the bed, and broke into violent and ashamed protestations, mingled with horrible curses on the unknown informer. It was plain that he did not suspect where the guilt really lay.

"Never mind," remarked La Vireville carelessly. "I have fallen upon circumstances which you could not possibly have foreseen, and I harbour no grudge against you, mon gars. But have you any plan for getting me away?"

"There will be two horses to-night at the cross-roads, a quarter of a mile away, if you think you can get so far, Monsieur Augustin, and if we have the luck not to be seen."

"I can get there," said La Vireville. "Repose has benefited my foot. But we have a little matter that demands our attention in Porhoët first. You know that Mme. Rozel has been arrested?"

"Yes, the poor woman!"

"The poor woman, as you say. Well, before we leave this place I am minded to repay her hospitality. We must remember, too, that she was the defunct M. Alexis' agent here, and has deserved well of the King's cause. It will therefore be our business, before proceeding to Carhoët, to set her at liberty."

"Monsieur is joking!" said the Chouan, his jaw dropped.

And it took La Vireville, with all his authority, quite twenty minutes to extract from his horrified follower what he knew of the conditions of Mme. Rozel's captivity, and to reduce him, on the point of an attempt at rescue, to an incredibly sulky submission.

"I am about to become a Republican to that end," announced the émigré when this result had at last been attained. "Do you fancy me in the rôle, Grain d'Orge?" And, limping to the cupboard, he snatched the tricolour sash off the peg, wound it twice round his waist and tied a flamboyant bow at the left side.

Mingled horror and disgust strove in the Breton's face.

"For God's sake, Monsieur Augustin!" he protested.

"Citizen Augustin, if you please," corrected La Vireville with dignity. "I have, unfortunately, no cockade. Never mind; it is dark. But we want some little scrap of writing on official paper--just to make an effect. . . . I have it!" and he took from the breast of his coat the Government proclamation for his own head.

"With a trifle of manipulation . . ." said he. "Grain d'Orge, descend into our parlour and bring me the pen and ink that is there."

Unspeakably sullen, the Chouan obeyed, and when La Vireville had, by doubling up the paper, secured a blank space under the "In the name of the Republic one and indivisible," he executed thereon a few specious forgeries and waved the paper about to dry it.

"Observe, my good Grain d'Orge," he said, "to what virtuous use can things evil be put. This paper, instead of being a brave man's death-warrant, shall bring liberty to a woman . . . who very little deserves it," he added to himself. "More, my faithful follower," he pursued impressively, "if you understood better what I was doing, you would be lost in admiration at the nobility of my character. I own that I am myself so lost."

"I understand this, M. le Chevalier," retorted the Breton with passion, "that you are mad, stark mad, to go playing your head like this! The woman Rozel has bewitched you."

"I believe you are right," answered his leader. "And she did it with a knife--my own! It is a potent spell, if an unusual. But you surely would not have a gentleman leave a woman to her fate, be she enchantress or no? . . . Well, we must have our horses before we can pay our visit to the Citizen Botidoux--that, I think you said, was the mayor's name. You can go first down the sheet and steady it for me."

It is not altogether surprising that Grain d'Orge, when his master slid to earth beside him, was muttering mingled prayers and imprecations. La Vireville smiled to himself as he leant his weight on that faithful arm, and the two moved off into the darkness.

(3)

About a quarter after midnight, M. Jacques-Pierre Botidoux, grocer and mayor, sleeping peacefully beside his wife, was aware of a very persistent knocking upon the door of his little shop below him. Arising, not without lamentation, and thrusting a night-capped head out of the window, he was astounded to see in the street two shadowy figures on horseback.

"What do you want?" he shouted ill-temperedly.

The taller figure lifted a dim face. "Silence!" it said in a low, rapid, and singularly impressive voice. "Silence, Citizen, and come down to the door!"

And at M. Botidoux, when, dazed, cross, and sleepy, he finally unfastened his shop door, was launched an imperative demand for the key of the village lock-up. As he gaped at the mandate the tall rider bent from the saddle; a vast tricolour sash showed indistinctly round his middle as he moved his arm under his cloak. "Citizen, I am from the quarters at Carhoët, but I carry orders from the Convention itself. You are to deliver to me without delay the person of the woman Rozel, arrested by you this morning. You did well and wisely in so arresting her, but higher powers than you have need of her, and at once. A conspiracy of great extent . . . the State . . . information . . . you understand?"

"But . . . but . . ." began M. Botidoux, who did not understand at all.

The emissary of the Convention changed his tone. "Eh?" he said sharply. "Will not this satisfy you?" He flapped some kind of paper in the startled face. "Must I bring in my escort to convince you?"

"No, no!" stammered Botidoux. "No, Citizen Commissary, I will get the key, I will come at once!"

"That is well," responded the cloaked figure. "But, look you, not a word! It is of the utmost importance that no one in the village knows of this transfer of a prisoner of State. Others are not to be trusted as the Convention trusts you, Citizen! That is why I left my escort at the cross-roads, and came with only this good fellow to guide me."

"But the woman----"

"Do you think two able men cannot manage one woman, Mr. Mayor?"

Very soon the short, stout, and rattled Botidoux was trotting by the side of the silent horsemen, was leading them towards the little house standing back from the street which served as a lock-up for drunkards. Porhoët was not of sufficient importance for a jail. Towards this Botidoux vanished, important, if puzzled, and in a little while reappeared, bringing by the wrist the figure of a woman. Some other man was vaguely discernible in the background.

"Put her up in front of the guide," ordered the Commissary, who seemed to have no wish to dismount.

Mme. Rozel must have recognised his voice, for she gave a faint scream, which Botidoux had the wit to smother ere he lifted her into Grain d'Orge's unwilling arms. But once there the captive began a fresh protest.

"Where are you taking me--who is it?" she cried, struggling. But, since expostulations were only to be expected in her situation, M. Botidoux was not at all perturbed.

"Be silent, woman!" he urged; and as the riders, turning their steeds, began to move down the street, he added, "I think your escort has come to look for you, M. le Commissaire."

"What!" exclaimed La Vireville, startled out of his sangfroid. "By God, it's true!" For he had heard the jingle of bits at the end of the street. It could be nothing else but the cavalry detachment from Carhoët out to hunt for him.

He uttered a very pretty and comprehensive curse, and turned his horse's head in the opposite direction. "Come on, we must ride for it! Come on, I say!" Grain d'Orge's mount--a grey--sprang forward, and Mme. Rozel screamed again. A shout answered her from a point nearer than the oncoming hussars--from another little group of horses, imperfectly seen, on the left, whose riders were mounting in haste.

"Madame, you have lost us all!" said La Vireville furiously. "Ride like the devil, Grain d'Orge; straight on--straight on, I tell you! I'm going back; they will come after me!" He tugged at his bewildered steed, brought it slithering to its haunches, swung round yet again, and set off in the direction of the hussars at the end of the street.

As he had hoped, the mounting men on their left, confused, hesitated a moment, then decided to follow him and not the doubly-burdened grey. In front was the stationary, or almost stationary, cavalry, as yet only one vague bunch on the road. But, much as La Vireville would have liked to try it, he could scarcely venture to ride past or through them. He checked his horse, hoping that what he took to be a hedge on his left hand was really a hedge, and put the animal at it, somewhat expecting to land in a garden or an orchard. But, apparently, he was in a field, and a large one at that. On the grass he urged his excited horse into a frantic gallop, his blood racing not unpleasantly. Shouts told him that other horsemen had also cleared the hedge and were after him. "I wonder what I shall ride into in this cursed darkness?" he thought. And he thought also, "I did not expect she would be a woman to scream. . . ." Something black rose before him--the usual Breton field hedge, a six-foot bank with forest trees atop, impossible to negotiate on horseback. Should he then abandon his mount? He had but a second in which to make up his mind, for his pursuers, better horsed, were inevitably gaining on him. No, he would go on, and, trusting to find the échalier--the low, ladder-like gate of those parts--he cantered for a moment alongside the bank.

Here, judging by the cessation of the dark mound and its crown of trees, was what he sought. He put his horse at the gap. As he rose, a spattering fire rang out; a bullet sang past his cheek, there was a most unpleasant sensation of a jerking fall, and he found himself among a great deal of wet grass, with his injured foot excruciatingly pinned beneath the weight of his struggling horse. La Vireville instinctively stuffed the back of his hand into his mouth to prevent himself from screaming out, saw all the stars of the dark heaven swoop down on him, and incontinently fainted.