CHAPTER XXX

ATROPOS

La Vireville reprieved was much less composed than La Vireville condemned. For about half an hour, it is true, he sat motionless on the steps of the desecrated altar in the little chapel-prison, a prey to the most acute feeling of loneliness he had ever known in his life. The place was so horribly empty now that it was unbearable. But after a while he rose and began to walk up and down. The harvest of relics which he had seen last night was this morning a little more plentiful, but most of this morning's victims had taken their last precious things with them to the place of death. That young man, his erstwhile comrade, with the miniature--who had that now? he wondered,--how had he, in the end, been able to face the levelled muskets? . . .

As Fortuné paced to and fro, he naturally came before long to the thought of escape. He had promised to try. . . . But a very cursory survey of the improvised jail, with its windows high up in the wall, quite out of reach, convinced him of its efficiency in that respect. And, Royalist in sentiment though the people of Auray were, had he succeeded in breaking out he would hardly find safety by broad daylight in its streets full of soldiers. These things needed some previous arrangement. It wanted someone ready to receive and hide him, someone to--yes, parbleu, someone to gallop up with a horse, unlock the door, and then . . . For his mind, by no very subtle ways, had leapt back to the captive of Porhoët, reversing the part he had played in that episode of deliverance. Now was the time for Mme. de Guéfontaine to appear and save him in her turn. It was, alas! a most unlikely consummation. Away in Guernsey, no doubt, she was quietly mending her brother Henri's uniform. But she would have made the attempt, had she been here; of that he was sure.

La Vireville sat down once more on the altar steps, and leant his head against the chipped and discoloured plaster rail upborne by its short, stout columns. Two instincts were beginning now to torment him, hunger and curiosity, and neither could he satisfy. From whatever angle he looked at the postponement of his fate--for he never judged it to be more than that--he was baffled. _He_ had no friend in the ranks of the foe. The only thing that occurred to him was that, since his appearance before them, his judges had discovered his identity with that sought-for chief, Augustin of Kerdronan, and wished to question him further--a nuisance, if it were so, and a proceeding likely to be of advantage to neither party. He profoundly wished, however, that something would happen.

Yet he was half dozing against the rail when, about nine o'clock, he heard a key thrust into the chapel door, and beheld the entrance of a grizzled sergeant of grenadiers, with a couple of soldiers behind him. Others were visible in the sunlight outside. Fortuné got up and stretched himself.

"What the devil is the meaning of this, I should like to know?" he inquired. "Is the Citizen Hoche desirous of offering me a post under him? It is lost labour on his part; I shall not take it."

"It is orders, neither more nor less," replied the sergeant briefly. "All I know is--yes, you had better tie him up--that you are not going to join the others to-day. Afterwards, perhaps--I don't know. At present I am to take you to a house in the town."

And so, with his wrists lashed together behind his back--a posture which secretly caused him not a little pain--La Vireville set off in the midst of his escort. This could hardly mean release, still less escape. Besides, except that a natural revulsion had left him a little doubtful as to what he really did wish, he was not sure that his desire was towards release if he could have it. But why this house in the town, and who--or what--could be awaiting him there?

In Auray streets, where he had twice fought, and which were full this morning of sunshine and bright air, and of peasants with baskets, leading cows or driving pigs (for it was market-day), La Vireville was looked at with curiosity and pity. Probably, he thought, recognising the fact, because he was a solitary prisoner in the middle of his guards. They were used to batches at a time now in Auray. . . . And, passing once again by the Halles, he met the glance, brimming with a beautiful compassion, of a young countrywoman in a wonderful wide coif, who held a child in her arms. Indifferent though he was to his own fate, Fortuné felt that look like a benediction, and he wished that he could have kissed her hand. All he could do was to smile at the child, who was waving a small delighted arm to the soldiers.

Auray is a little town, and it was not long before the guard halted in front of a house taller than its elder neighbours, having a passionless female head in the Græco-Roman style and a frieze of acanthus leaves above the door. La Vireville particularly noticed them. In the large well-furnished room on the first floor, looking out on to the street, to which he was conducted, was a silver-haired old lady seated in an arm-chair, reading, whom he noticed with even more particularity. It was Mme. de Chaulnes.

He was hardly astonished, in a sense. After all, it was ridiculous to suppose that his escort would have conducted him to anything agreeable. But he could not conceive what she wanted with him.

On their entry Mme. de Chaulnes looked up, closing the book over her finger, for all the world like a woman suffering a trivial interruption which she also intends shall be brief.

"You can remove your men, sergeant," she said calmly. "I have a moment or two's private business with this gentleman, and I do not doubt the security of your knots."

The soldier had presumably no fears on that point either, and in another instant the former antagonists were alone. La Vireville had no difficulty in recalling their last meeting. Now he was a beaten man, wounded and fettered, but he stood before her very composedly, and waited. He had to wait some time, too, while Mme. de Chaulnes studied him. But there was no vulgar triumph visible in her look.

"You are wondering," she said at last, "why I have had you brought here?"

La Vireville assented.

"You are possibly thinking, Monsieur Augustin, that I am about to heap coals of fire on your head by putting the means of escape within your reach, like other charitable ladies of this place?"

"I am sorry if it disappoints you, Madame," returned the captive politely, "but that is the last idea that I should entertain."

"Or to offer you your life on terms, then?"

"They would undoubtedly be terms that I could not accept."

Mme. de Chaulnes smiled slightly, and laid down her book on a little table near her. "That is a good thing, then, for indeed I have no terms to offer to a person of your integrity, Monsieur. Though, if I had, perhaps you might find them tempting for the sake of the little boy--now, I presume, fatherless--for whom you once risked that life so successfully."

The émigré was silent.

"You are right to give me no answer," went on the old lady, "for really I have no proposition of any kind to make to you. I merely wish to ask you a question, which you will not, I think, find it inconsistent with your honour to answer. But I cannot force you to give me a reply, nor (as you see) do I seek to bribe you into doing so."

"I will answer your question if it be in my power, Madame," said La Vireville, outwardly unmoved and secretly curious.

"Thank you, Monsieur. It is merely this--did you, or did you not, bribe my agent Duchâtel when you took the child from him at Abbeville?"

"No," replied the Chouan on the instant, "most certainly I did not. The only intercourse of any moment that passed between us was a blow."

"Ah," said Mme. de Chaulnes, with an air, real or fictitious, of relief, "that interests me very much. I am greatly indebted to you for your frankness, Monsieur Augustin. Since you can have no motive in protecting Duchâtel--rather the reverse--I believe you unreservedly. He is a useful tool, but there have been moments when I was tempted to consider that transaction at Abbeville a farce. I am glad to learn, on the best authority, that it was not." And taking up a tablet that hung at her waist she scribbled something on it with a silver pencil.

"And it was in order to discover this," broke out the prisoner in spite of himself, "that you were barbarous enough to have me reprieved at the last moment, to----" He pulled himself up, for he had no wish to exhibit his emotions to this woman.

Mme. de Chaulnes finished writing. "And you would really have preferred to go with the rest this morning?" she asked.

La Vireville bowed. "Your occupation, Madame, has very naturally blunted your perception of what a French gentleman would prefer."

"On the contrary," retorted Mme. de Chaulnes, sitting up in her chair, her old eyes flashing, "it has greatly enlightened me as to his preferences. It has taught me that he considers it consistent with that honour of which he talks so much, to make war on his native land for the sake of his own class, and for a discredited dynasty--you see that I place these in the order in which they appeal to him--and that for his own ends he will not scruple even to call in the assistance of his country's enemies, the Prussians, and her hereditary foe of foes, England."

La Vireville shrugged his shoulders (thereby causing himself a violent twinge of pain). "On that point, Madame, we shall never agree. In return for the question I have answered, may I now ask one of you? . . . How do you reconcile your own position as a French gentlewoman with--the use to which you put it?"

Mme. de Chaulnes' smile was insolent. "Quite easily, Monsieur. I fight for my country--at the cost, I grant you, of my class; you, for your class, that degenerate, self-seeking class, at the expense of your country. To me it seems the more patriotic course to sacrifice the part to the whole, whatever it may cost one personally. I had a nephew in this morning's batch, but I would not have saved him if I could. Yes, it is rotten, this aristocracy of ours, and the sooner France is purged of it the better."

That smile had maddened La Vireville. She was a woman, and his hands were tied behind him, but he still had the means of striking. "Ah yes," he said, in his most careless voice. "And when your misguided father was shot by order of Montcalm for his treachery during the siege of Quebec, you approved even then, no doubt, of the process of purgation, and applauded its beginning. He also, if I have heard rightly, had the same fancy for the assistance of the English against his own country."

Not a muscle of Mme. de Chaulnes' face had quivered, but its faint colour had faded to grey, and La Vireville saw the small knotted hands in her lap gripping each other till the knuckles stood out white. And he was pleased.

"You think, Monsieur, that this forty years' old story is the reason for my present actions? It is not, I assure you." And, seeing the smile on his face, she added with more warmth, "No, you would never understand that a woman could have conviction, apart from personal animus, in a matter of this sort."

"You misjudge me, Madame," retorted the Chouan. "I am quite sure that Delilah, for instance, had convictions of the same kind. No doubt your unfortunate father had them too when he invited the English into Quebec. One may say, in fact, that it was a sort of family conviction that upheld you in your spider's web at Canterbury. But if the blood of those you have betrayed could speak, I think it would cry out less against a renegade who acted from revenge, than against one who made a trade of treachery from 'conviction'!"

Light and intentionally wounding as his tone had been at the beginning of this brief speech, a passion of loathing had slipped into it by the end. A flush crept into the grey old face opposite him, and the blue eyes hardened. But, a condemned man, La Vireville knew himself beyond any vengeance of hers. She could not touch him now.

"If our not very fruitful conversation is at an end, Madame . . ." he suggested.

There was a little bell on the table near her, and to this she put out a still shaking hand. But before she rang it she showed herself not unconscious of his thought.

"You owe me something, Monsieur, for your triumph over me in the matter of the child. I dare say you think that since this is to be your last day on earth you have paid me that debt. You are wrong." She rang the bell. "You have not paid it yet!"

As his guards took La Vireville away he saw that she had returned to her book, but one hand was pulling at the lace round her wasted throat, and she looked very old. He flattered himself that he had contributed something towards that effect of age.