And so we began our journey; sadly, under dripping trees and a leaden sky. The country we had to traverse was the same I had trodden on the last day of my march southwards, but the pa.s.sage of a month had changed the face of everything. Green dells, where springs welling out of the chalk had made of the leafy bottom a fairies" home, strewn with delicate ferns and hung with mosses--these were now swamps into which our horses sank to the fetlock. Sunny brows, whence I had viewed the champaign and traced my forward path, had become bare, windswept ridges. The beech woods, which had glowed with ruddy light, were naked now; mere black trunks and rigid arms pointing to heaven. An earthy smell filled the air; a hundred paces away a wall of mist closed the view. We plodded on sadly, up hill and down hill; now fording brooks already stained with flood-water, now crossing barren heaths.
But up hill or down hill, whatever the outlook, I was never permitted to forget that I was the jailer, the ogre, the villain; that I, riding behind in my loneliness, was the blight on all, the death-spot. True, I was behind the others; I escaped their eyes. But there was not a line of Mademoiselle"s drooping figure that did not speak scorn to me, not a turn of her head that did not seem to say, "Oh G.o.d, that such a thing should breathe!"
I had only speech with her once during the day, and that was on the last ridge before we went down into the valley to climb up again to Auch. The rain had ceased; the sun, near its setting, shone faintly; and for a few moments we stood on the brow and looked southwards while we breathed the horses. The mist lay like a pall on all the country we had traversed; but beyond it and above it, gleaming pearl-like in the level rays, the line of the mountains stood up like a land of enchantment, soft, radiant, wonderful, or like one of those castles on the Hill of Gla.s.s of which the old romances tell us. I forgot, for an instant, how we were placed, and I cried to my neighbour that it was the fairest pageant I had ever seen.
She--it was Mademoiselle, and she had taken off her mask--cast one look at me; only one, but it conveyed disgust and loathing so unspeakable that scorn beside them would have been a gift. I reined in my horse as if she had struck me, and felt myself go first hot and then cold under her eyes. Then she looked another way.
I did not forget the lesson; after that I avoided her more sedulously than before. We lay that night at Auch, and I gave M. de Cocheforet the utmost liberty; even permitting him to go out and return at his will. In the morning, believing that on the farther side of Auch we ran less risk of attack, I dismissed the two dragoons, and an hour after sunrise we set out again. The day was dry and cold, the weather more promising. I planned to go by way of Lectoure, crossing the Garonne at Agen; and I thought with roads continually improving as we moved northwards, we should be able to make good progress before night. My two men rode first; I came last by myself.
Our way lay for some hours down the valley of the Gers, under poplars and by long rows of willows; and presently the sun came out and warmed us. Unfortunately, the rain of the day before had swollen the brooks which crossed our path, and we more than once had a difficulty in fording them. Noon, therefore, found us little more than half-way to Lectoure, and I was growing each minute more impatient, when our road, which had for a little while left the river bank, dropped down to it again, and I saw before us another crossing, half ford, half slough.
My men tried it gingerly, and gave back, and tried it again in another place and finally, just as Mademoiselle and Monsieur came up to them, floundered through and sprang slantwise up the farther bank.
The delay had been long enough to bring me, with no good will of my own, close up to the Cocheforets. Mademoiselle"s horse made a little business of the place; this delayed them still longer, and in the result, we entered the water almost together, and I crossed close on her heels. The bank on either side was steep; while crossing we could see neither before nor behind. At the moment, however, I thought nothing of this, nor of her delay, and I was following her quite at my leisure, when the sudden report of a carbine, a second report, and a yell of alarm in front, thrilled me through.
On the instant, while the sound was still in my ears, I saw it all.
Like a hot iron piercing my brain, the truth flashed into my mind. We were attacked! We were attacked, and I was here helpless in this pit, this trap! The loss of a second while I fumbled here, Mademoiselle"s horse barring the way, might be fatal.
There was but one way. I turned my horse straight at the steep bank, and he breasted it. One moment he hung as if he must fall back. Then, with a snort of terror and a desperate bound, he topped it, and gained the level, trembling and snorting.
It was as I had guessed. Seventy paces away on the road lay one of my men. He had fallen, horse and man, and lay still. Near him, with his back against a bank, stood his fellow, on foot, pressed by four hors.e.m.e.n, and shouting. As my eye lighted on the scene, he let fly with a carbine and dropped one.
I s.n.a.t.c.hed a pistol from my holster, c.o.c.ked it, and seized my horse by the head--I might save the man yet. I shouted to encourage him, and in another second should have charged into the fight, when a sudden vicious blow, swift and unexpected, struck the pistol from my hand.
I made a s.n.a.t.c.h at it as it fell, but missed it; and before I could recover myself, Mademoiselle thrust her horse furiously against mine, and with her riding-whip, lashed the sorrel across the ears. As my horse reared madly up, I had a glimpse of her eyes flashing hate through her mask; of her hand again uplifted; the next moment, I was down in the road, ingloriously unhorsed, the sorrel was galloping away, and her horse, scared in its turn, was plunging unmanageably a score of paces from me.
I don"t doubt that but for that she would have trampled on me. As it was, I was free to draw; and in a twinkling I was running towards the fighters. All I have described had happened in a few seconds. My man was still defending himself; the smoke of the carbine had scarcely risen. I sprang with a shout across a fallen tree that intervened; at the same moment, two of the men detached themselves, and rode to meet me. One, whom I took to be the leader, was masked. He came furiously at me, trying to ride me down; but I leaped aside nimbly, and evading him, rushed at the other, and scaring his horse, so that he dropped his point, cut him across the shoulder before he could guard himself.
He plunged away, cursing, and trying to hold in his horse, and I turned to meet the masked man.
"You double-dyed villain!" he cried, riding al. me again. And this time he man[oe]uvred his horse so skilfully that I was hard put to it to prevent him knocking me down; and could not with all my efforts reach him to hurt him. "Surrender, will you!" he continued, "you bloodhound!"
I wounded him slightly in the knee for answer; but before I could do more his companion came back, and the two set upon me with a will, slashing at my head so furiously and towering above me with so great an advantage that it was all I could do to guard myself.
I was soon glad to fall back against the bank--as my man had done before me. In such a conflict my rapier would have been of little use, but fortunately I had armed myself before I left Paris with a cut-and-thrust sword for the road; and though my mastery of the weapon was not on a par with my rapier-play, I was able to fend off their cuts, and by an occasional p.r.i.c.k keep the horses at a distance. Still they swore and cut at me, trying to wear me out; and it was trying work. A little delay, the least accident, might enable the other man to come to their help, or Mademoiselle, for all I knew, might shoot me with my own pistol; and I confess, I was unfeignedly glad when a lucky parade sent the masked man"s sword flying across the road. He was no coward; for unarmed as he was, he pushed his horse at me, spurring it recklessly; but the animal, which I had several times touched, reared up instead and threw him at the very moment that I wounded his companion a second time in the arm, and made him give back.
This quite changed the scene. The man in the mask staggered to his feet, and felt stupidly for a pistol. But he could not find one, and was, I saw, in no state to use it if he had. He reeled helplessly to the bank, and leaned against it. He would give no further trouble. The man I had wounded was in scarcely better condition. He retreated before me for some paces, but then losing courage, he dropped his sword, and, wheeling round, cantered off down the road, clinging to his pommel. There remained only the fellow engaged with my man, and I turned to see how they were getting on. They were standing to take breath, so I ran towards them; but, seeing me coming, this rascal, too, whipped round his horse, and disappeared in the wood, and left us masters of the field. The first thing I did--and I remember it to this day with pleasure--was to plunge my hand into my pocket, take out half the money I had in the world, and press it on the man who had fought for me so stoutly, and who had certainly saved me from disaster. In my joy I could have kissed him! It was not only that I had escaped defeat by the skin of my teeth,--and his good sword,--but I knew, and thrilled with the knowledge, that the fight had altered the whole position. He was wounded in two places, and I had a scratch or two, and had lost my horse; and my other poor fellow was dead as a herring.
But speaking for myself, I would have spent half the blood in my body to purchase the feeling with which I turned back to speak to M. de Cocheforet and his sister. _I had fought before them_.
Mademoiselle had dismounted, and with her face averted and her mask pushed on one side, was openly weeping. Her brother, who had scrupulously kept his place by the ford from the beginning of the fight to the end, met me with raised eyebrows and a peculiar smile. "Acknowledge my virtue," he said airily. "I am here, M. de Berault--which is more than can be said of the two gentlemen who have just ridden off."
"Yes," I answered, with a touch of bitterness. "I wish they had not shot my poor man before they went."
He shrugged his shoulders. "They were my friends," he said. "You must not expect me to blame them. But that is not all."
"No," I said, wiping my sword. "There is this gentleman in the mask."
And I turned to go towards him.
"M. de Berault!" There was something abrupt in the way in which Cocheforet called my name after me.
I stood. "Pardon?" I said, turning.
"That gentleman?" he answered, hesitating, and looking at me doubtfully. "Have you considered--what will happen to him, if you give him up to the authorities?"
"Who is he?" I said sharply.
"That is rather a delicate question," he answered, frowning, and still looking at me fixedly.
"Not from me," I replied brutally, "since he is in my power. If he will take off his mask, I shall know better what I intend to do with him."
The stranger had lost his hat in his fall, and his fair hair, stained with dust, hung in curls on his shoulders. He was a tall man, of a slender, handsome presence, and though his dress was plain and almost rough, I espied a splendid jewel on his hand, and fancied I detected other signs of high quality. He still lay against the bank in a half-swooning condition, and seemed unconscious of my scrutiny.
"Should I know him if he unmasked?" I said suddenly, a new idea in my head.
"You would," M. de Cocheforet answered simply.
"And?"
"It would be bad for every one."
"Ho, ho!" I said softly, looking hard, first at my old prisoner, and then at my new one. "Then, what do you wish me to do?"
"Leave him here," M. de Cocheforet answered glibly, his face flushed, the pulse in his cheek beating. I had known him for a man of perfect honour before, and trusted him. But this evident earnest anxiety on behalf of his friend touched me. Besides, I knew that I was treading on slippery ground; that it behoved me to be careful. "I will do it,"
I said, after a moment"s reflection. "He will play me no tricks, I suppose? A letter of--"
"_Mon Dieu_, no! He will understand," Cocheforet answered eagerly.
"You will not repent it, I swear. Let us be going."
"Well,--but my horse?" I said, somewhat taken aback by this extreme haste.
"We shall overtake it," he replied urgently. "It will have kept to the road. Lectoure is no more than a league from here, and we can give orders there to have these two fetched in and buried."
I had nothing to gain by demurring, and so it was arranged. After that we did not linger. We picked up what we had dropped, M. de Cocheforet mounted his sister, and within five minutes we were gone. Casting a glance back from the skirts of the wood, as we entered it, I fancied that I saw the masked man straighten himself and turn to look after us; but the leaves were beginning to intervene, the distance was great and perhaps cheated me. And yet I was not disinclined to think the unknown a little less severely injured and a trifle more observant than he seemed.
CHAPTER XII.
AT THE FINGER-POST.
Through all, it will have been noticed, Mademoiselle had not spoken to me, nor said one word, good or bad. She had played her part grimly; had taken her defeat in silence, if with tears; had tried neither prayer, nor defence, nor apology. And the fact that the fight was now over, the scene left behind, made no difference in her conduct--to my surprise and discomfiture. She kept her face averted from me; she rode as before; she affected to ignore my presence. I caught my horse feeding by the road-side, a furlong forward, and mounted, and fell into place behind the two, as in the morning. And just as we had plodded on then in silence, we plodded on now, while I wondered at the unfathomable ways of women, and knowing that I had borne myself well, marvelled that she could take part in such an incident and remain unchanged.
Yet it had made a change in her. Though her mask screened her well, it could not entirely hide her emotions, and by-and-bye I marked that her head drooped, that she rode sadly and listlessly, that the lines of her figure were altered. I noticed that she had flung away, or furtively dropped, her riding-whip, and I understood that to the old hatred of me were now added shame and vexation; shame that she had so lowered herself, even to save her brother, vexation that defeat had been her only reward.
Of this I saw a sign at Lectoure, where the inn had but one common room, and we must all dine in company. I secured for them a table by the fire, and leaving them standing by it, retired myself to a smaller one, near the door. There were no other guests, and this made the separation between us more marked. M. de Cocheforet seemed to feel this. He shrugged his shoulders and looked at me with a smile half sad, half comical. But Mademoiselle was implacable. She had taken off her mask, and her face was like stone. Once, only once, during the meal I saw a change come over her. She coloured, I suppose at her thoughts, until her face flamed from brow to chin. I watched the blush spread and spread, and then she slowly and proudly turned her shoulder to me, and looked through the window at the shabby street.
I suppose that she and her brother had both built on this attempt, Which must have been arranged at Auch. For when we went on in the afternoon, I saw a more marked change. They rode now like people resigned to the worst. The grey realities of the brother"s position, the dreary, hopeless future, began to hang like a mist before their eyes; began to tinge the landscape with sadness; robbed even the sunset of its colours. With each hour their spirits flagged and their speech became less frequent, until presently, when the light was nearly gone and the dusk was round us, the brother and sister rode hand in hand, silent, gloomy, one at least of them weeping. The cold shadow of the Cardinal, of Paris, of the scaffold, was beginning to make itself felt; was beginning to chill them. As the mountains which they had known all their lives sank and faded behind us, and we entered on the wide, low valley of the Garonne, their hopes sank and faded also--sank to the dead-level of despair. Surrounded by guards, a mark for curious glances, with pride for a companion, M. de Cocheforet could doubtless have borne himself bravely; doubtless he would bear himself bravely still when the end came. But almost alone, moving forward through the grey evening to a prison, with so many measured days before him, and nothing to exhilarate or anger,--in this condition it was little wonder if he felt, and betrayed that he felt, the blood run slow in his veins; if he thought more of the weeping wife and ruined home, which he left behind him, than of the cause in which he had spent himself.
But G.o.d knows, they had no monopoly of gloom. I felt almost as sad myself. Long before sunset the flush of triumph, the heat of the battle, which had warmed my heart at noon, were gone; giving place to a chill dissatisfaction, a nausea, a despondency, such as I have known follow a long night at the tables. Hitherto there had been difficulties to be overcome, risks to be run, doubts about the end.
Now the end was certain, and very near; so near that it filled all the prospect. One hour of triumph I might still have; I hugged the thought of it as a gambler hugs his last stake. I planned the place and time and mode, and tried to occupy myself wholly with it. But the price?