Historical Romances: Under the Red Robe, Count Hannibal, A Gentleman of France Part 4

It was a warm night, and she wore nothing over her white dress. I could see her tall, shapely figure and s.h.i.+ning eyes, and the firm contour of her beautiful face; which, if any fault might be found with it, erred in being too regular. She looked like a woman formed by nature to meet dangers and difficulties; and even here, at midnight, in the midst of these desperate men, she seemed in place. It was possible that under her queenly exterior, and behind the contemptuous laugh with which she heard the land lord's story, there lurked a woman's soul capable of folly and tenderness. But no outward sign betrayed its presence.

I scanned her very carefully; and secretly, if the truth be told, I was glad to find Madame de Cocheforet such a woman. I was glad that she had laughed as she had--that she was not a little, tender, child-like woman, to be crushed by the first pinch of trouble. For if I succeeded in my task, if I--but, pis.h.!.+ Women, I said, were all alike. She would find consolation quickly enough.

I watched until the group broke up, and Madame, with one of the men, went her way round the corner of the inn, and out of my sight. Then I retired to bed again, feeling more than ever perplexed what course I should adopt. It was clear that, to succeed, I must obtain admission to the house. This was garrisoned, unless my instructions erred, by two or three old men-servants only, and as many women; since Madame, to disguise her husband's visits the more easily, lived, and gave out that she lived, in great retirement. To seize her husband at home, therefore, might be no impossible task; though here, in the heart of the village, a troop of horse might make the attempt, and fail.

But how was I to gain admission to the house--a house guarded by quick-witted women, and hedged in with all the precautions love could devise? That was the question; and dawn found me still debating it, still as far as ever from an answer. With the first light I was glad to get up. I thought that the fresh air might inspire me, and I was tired, besides, of my stuffy closet. I crept stealthily down the ladder, and managed to pa.s.s unseen through the lower room, in which several persons were snoring heavily. The outer door was not fastened, and in a hand-turn I stood in the street.

It was still so early that the trees stood up black against the reddening sky, but the bough upon the post before the door was growing green, and in a few minutes the grey light would be everywhere.

Already even in the road way there was a glimmering of it; and as I stood at the corner of the house--where I could command both the front and the side on which the stable opened--looking greedily for any trace of the midnight departure, my eyes detected something light-coloured lying on the ground. It was not more than two or three paces from me, and I stepped to it and picked it up curiously, hoping it might be a note. It was not a note, however, but a tiny orange-coloured sachet, such as women carry in the bosom. It was full of some faintly scented powder, and bore on one side the initial "E,"

worked in white silk; and was altogether a dainty little toy, such as women love.

Doubtless Madame de Cocheforet had dropped it in the night. I turned it over and over; and then I put it away with a smile, thinking it might be useful some time, and in some way. I had scarcely done this, and turned with the intention of exploring the street, when the door behind me creaked on its leather hinges, and in a moment my host stood at my elbow.

Evidently his suspicions were again aroused, for from that time he managed to be with me, on one pretence or another, until noon.

Moreover, his manner grew each moment more churlish, his hints plainer; until I could scarcely avoid noticing the one or the other.

About midday, having followed me for the twentieth time into the street, he came at last to the point, by asking me rudely if I did not need my horse.

"No," I said. "Why do you ask?"

"Because," he answered, with an ugly smile, "this is not a very healthy place for strangers."

"Ah!" I retorted. "But the border air suits me, you see."

It was a lucky answer; for, taken with my talk of the night before, it puzzled him, by again suggesting that I was on the losing side, and had my reasons for lying near Spain. Before he had done scratching his head over it, the clatter of hoofs broke the sleepy quiet of the village street, and the lady I had seen the night before rode quickly round the corner, and drew her horse on to its haunches. Without looking at me, she called to the innkeeper to come to her stirrup.

He went. The moment his back was turned, I slipped away, and in a twinkling was hidden by a house. Two or three glum-looking fellows stared at me as I pa.s.sed, but no one moved; and in two minutes I was clear of the village, and in a half-worn track which ran through the wood, and led--if my ideas were right--to the Chateau. To discover the house and learn all that was to be learned about its situation was my most pressing need: even at the risk of a knife-thrust, I was determined to satisfy it.

I had not gone two hundred paces along the path before I heard the tread of a horse behind me, and I had just time to hide myself before Madame came up and rode by me, sitting her horse gracefully, and with all the courage of a northern woman. I watched her pa.s.s, and then, a.s.sured by her presence that I was in the right road, I hurried after her. Two minutes' walking at speed brought me to a light wooden bridge spanning a stream. I crossed this, and, the wood opening, saw before me first a wide, pleasant meadow, and beyond this a terrace. On the terrace, pressed upon on three sides by thick woods, stood a grey mansion, with the corner tourelles, steep, high roofs, and round balconies that men loved and built in the days of the first Francis.

It was of good size, but wore, I fancied, a gloomy aspect. A great yew hedge, which seemed to enclose a walk or bowling-green, hid the ground floor of the east wing from view, while a formal rose garden, stiff even in neglect, lay in front of the main building. The west wing, whose lower roofs fell gradually away to the woods, probably contained the stables and granaries.

I stood a moment only, but I marked all, and noted how the road reached the house, and which windows were open to attack; then I turned and hastened back. Fortunately, I met no one between the house and the village, and was able to enter the inn with an air of the most complete innocence.

Short as had been my absence, I found things altered there. Round the door loitered and chattered three strangers--stout, well-armed fellows, whose bearing suggested a curious mixture of smugness and independence. Half-a-dozen pack-horses stood tethered to the post in front of the house; and the landlord's manner, from being rude and churlish only, had grown perplexed and almost timid. One of the strangers, I soon found, supplied him with wine; the others were travelling merchants, who rode in the first one's company for the sake of safety. All were substantial men from Tarbes--solid burgesses; and I was not long in guessing that my host, fearing what might leak out before them, and particularly that I might refer to the previous night's disturbance, was on tenterhooks while they remained.

For a time this did not suggest anything to me. But when we had all taken our seats for supper there came an addition to the party. The door opened, and the fellow whom I had seen the night before with Madame de Cocheforet entered, and took a stool by the fire. I felt sure that he was one of the servants at the Chateau; and in a flash his presence inspired me with the most feasible plan for obtaining admission which I had yet hit upon. I felt myself growing hot at the thought--it seemed so full of promise and of danger--and on the instant, without giving myself time to think too much, I began to carry it into effect.

I called for two or three bottles of better wine, and, a.s.suming a jovial air, pa.s.sed it round the table. When we had drunk a few gla.s.ses, I fell to talking, and, choosing politics, took the side of the Languedoc party and the malcontents, in so reckless a fas.h.i.+on that the innkeeper was beside himself at my imprudence. The merchants, who belonged to the cla.s.s with whom the Cardinal was always most popular, looked first astonished and then enraged. But I was not to be checked.

Hints and sour looks were lost upon me. I grew more outspoken with every gla.s.s, I drank to the Roch.e.l.lois, I swore it would not be long before they raised their heads again; and at last, while the innkeeper and his wife were engaged lighting the lamp, I pa.s.sed round the bottle and called on all for a toast.

"I'll give you one to begin," I bragged noisily. "A gentleman's toast!

A southern toast! Here is confusion to the Cardinal, and a health to all who hate him!"

"Mon Dieu!" one of the strangers cried, springing from his seat in a rage. "I am not going to stomach that! Is your house a common treason-hole," he continued, turning furiously on the landlord, "that you suffer this?"

"Hoity-toity!" I answered, coolly keeping my seat. "What is all this?

Don't you relish my toast, little man?"

"No--nor you!" he retorted hotly, "whoever you may be!"

"Then I will give you another," I answered, with a hiccough. "Perhaps it will be more to your taste. Here is the Duke of Orleans, and may he soon be King!"

CHAPTER III.

THE HOUSE IN THE WOOD.

MY words fairly startled the three men out of their anger. For a moment they glared at me as if they had seen a ghost. Then the wine-merchant clapped his hand on the table. "That is enough!" he said, with a look at his companions. "I think there can be no mistake about that. As d.a.m.nable treason as ever I heard whispered! I congratulate you, Sir, on your boldness. As for you," he continued, turning with an ugly sneer to the landlord, "I shall know now the company you keep! I was not aware that my wine wet whistles to such a tune!"

But if he was startled, the innkeeper was furious, seeing his character thus taken away; and, being at no time a man of many words, he vented his rage exactly in the way I wished. In a twinkling he raised such an uproar as can scarcely be conceived. With a roar like a bull's he ran headlong at the table, and overturned it on the top of me. The woman saved the lamp and fled with it into a corner, whence she and the man from the Chateau watched the skirmish in silence; but the pewter cups and platters flew spinning across the floor, while the table pinned me to the ground among the ruins of my stool. Having me at this disadvantage--for at first I made no resistance--the landlord began to belabour me with the first thing he s.n.a.t.c.hed up, and when I tried to defend myself cursed me with each blow for a treacherous rogue and a vagrant. Meanwhile, the three merchants, delighted with the turn things had taken, skipped round us laughing; and now hounded him on, now bantered me with "How is that for the Duke of Orleans?"

and "How now, traitor?"

When I thought this had lasted long enough--or, to speak more plainly, when I could stand the innkeeper's drubbing no longer--I threw him off by a great effort, and struggled to my feet. But still, though the blood was trickling down my face, I refrained from drawing my sword. I caught up instead a leg of the stool which lay handy, and, watching my opportunity, dealt the landlord a shrewd blow under the ear, which laid him out in a moment on the wreck of his own table.

"Now!" I cried, brandis.h.i.+ng my new weapon, which fitted the hand to a nicety, "come on! Come on, if you dare to strike a blow, you peddling, truckling, huckstering knaves! A fig for you and your shaveling Cardinal!"

The red-faced wine-merchant drew his sword in a one-two. "Why, you drunken fool," he said wrathfully, "put that stick down, or I will spit you like a lark!"

"Lark in your teeth!" I cried, staggering as if the wine were in my head. "Another word, and I--"

He made a couple of savage pa.s.ses at me, but in a twinkling his sword flew across the room.

"_Voila!_" I shouted, lurching forward, as if I had luck and not skill to thank for it. "Now the next! Come on, come on--you white-livered knaves!" And, pretending a drunken frenzy, I flung my weapon bodily amongst them, and seizing the nearest, began to wrestle with him.

In a moment they all threw themselves upon me, and, swearing copiously, bore me back to the door. The wine-merchant cried breathlessly to the woman to open it, and in a twinkling they had me through it and half way across the road. The one thing I feared was a knife-thrust in the melee; but I had to run that risk, and the men were honest enough and, thinking me drunk, indulgent. In a trice I found myself on my back in the dirt, with my head humming; and heard the bars of the door fall noisily into their places.

I got up and went to the door, and, to play out my part, hammered on it frantically, crying out to them to let me in. But the three travellers only jeered at me, and the landlord, coming to the window, with his head bleeding, shook his fist at me and cursed me for a mischief-maker.

Baffled in this I retired to a log which lay in the road a few paces from the house, and sat down on it to await events. With torn clothes and bleeding face, hatless and covered with dirt, I was in scarcely better case than my opponent. It was raining, too, and the dripping branches swayed over my head. The wind was in the south--the coldest quarter. I began to feel chilled and dispirited. If my scheme failed, I had forfeited roof and bed to no purpose, and placed future progress out of the question. It was a critical moment.

But at last that happened for which I had been looking. The door swung open a few inches, and a man came noiselessly out; the door was quickly barred behind him. He stood a moment, waiting on the threshold and peering into the gloom; and seemed to expect to be attacked.

Finding himself unmolested, however, and all quiet, he went off steadily down the street--towards the Chateau.

I let a couple of minutes go by and then I followed. I had no difficulty in hitting on the track at the end of the street, but when I had once plunged into the wood, I found myself in darkness so intense that I soon strayed from the path, and fell over roots, and tore my clothes with thorns, and lost my temper twenty times before I found the path again. However, I gained the bridge at last, and caught sight of a light twinkling before me. To make for it across the meadow and terrace was an easy task; yet when I had reached the door and had hammered upon it, I was in so sorry a plight that I sank down, and had no need to play a part or pretend to be worse than I was.

For a long time no one answered. The dark house towering above me remained silent. I could hear, mingled with the throbbings of my heart, the steady croaking of the frogs in a pond near the stables; but no other sound. In a frenzy of impatience and disgust I stood up again and hammered, kicking with my heels on the nail-studded door, and crying out desperately, "_A moi_! _A moi!_"

Then, or a moment later, I heard a remote door opened; footsteps as of more than one person drew near. I raised my voice and cried again, "_A moi!_"

"Who is there?" a voice asked.

"A gentleman in distress," I answered piteously, moving my hands across the door. "For G.o.d's sake open and let me in. I am hurt, and dying of cold."

"What brings you here?" the voice asked sharply. Despite its tartness, I fancied it was a woman's.