She sprang back. "Oh, do not!" she cried. "Oh, do not!" And, dropping the dagger, she covered her face with her hands, and burst into weeping.
He stooped coolly, and, after groping some time for the poniard, drew it from the leaves among which it had fallen. He put it into the sheath, and not until he had done that did he speak. Then it was with a sneer. "I have no need to fear overmuch," he said. "You are a poor hater, madame. And poor haters make poor lovers. "Tis his loss! If you will not strike a blow for him, there is but one thing left. Go, dream of him!"
And shrugging his shoulders contemptuously he turned on his heel.
CHAPTER x.x.xIII.
THE AMBUSH.
The start they made at daybreak was gloomy and ill-omened, through one of those white mists which are blown from the Atlantic over the flat lands of Western Poitou. The horses, looming gigantic through the fog, winced as the cold harness was girded on them. The men hurried to and fro with saddles on their heads, and stumbled over other saddles, and swore savagely. The women turned mutinous and would not rise; or, being dragged up by force, shrieked wild unfitting words, as they were driven to the horses. The Countess looked on and listened, and shuddered, waiting for Carlat to set her on her horse. She had gone during the last three weeks through much that was dreary, much that was hopeless; but the chill discomfort of this forced start, with tired horses and wailing women, would have darkened the prospect of home had there been no fear or threat to cloud it.
He whose will compelled all stood a little apart and watched all, silent and gloomy. When Badelon, after taking his orders and distributing some slices of black bread to be eaten in the saddle, moved off at the head of his troop, Count Hannibal remained behind, attended by Bigot and the eight riders who had formed the rearguard so far. He had not approached the Countess since rising, and she had been thankful for it. But now, as she moved away, she looked back and saw him still standing; she marked that he wore his corselet, and in one of those revulsions of feeling--which outrun man"s reason--she who had tossed on her couch through half the night, in pa.s.sionate revolt against the fate before her, took fire at his neglect and his silence; she resented on a sudden the distance he kept, and his scorn of her.
Her breast heaved, her colour came, involuntarily she checked her horse, as if she would return to him, and speak to him. Then the Carlats and the others closed up behind her, Badelon"s monotonous "Forward, madame, _en avant!_" proclaimed the day"s journey begun, and she saw him no more.
Nevertheless, the motionless figure, looming Homeric through the fog, with gleams of wet light reflected from the steel about it, dwelt long in her mind. The road which Badelon followed, slowly at first, and with greater speed as the horses warmed to their work, and the women, sore and battered, resigned themselves to suffering, wound across a flat expanse broken by a few hills. These were little more than mounds, and for the most part were veiled from sight by the low-lying sea-mist, through which gnarled and stunted oaks rose mysterious, to fade as strangely. Weird trees they were, with branches unlike those of this world"s trees, rising in a grey land without horizon or limit, through which our travellers moved, jaded phantoms in a clinging nightmare. At a walk, at a trot, more often at a weary jog, they pushed on behind Badelon"s humped shoulders. Sometimes the fog hung so thick about them that they saw only those who rose and fell in the saddles immediately before them; sometimes the air cleared a little, the curtain rolled up a s.p.a.ce, and for a minute or two they discerned stretches of unfertile fields, half-tilled and stony, or long tracts of gorse and broom, with here and there a thicket of dwarf shrubs or a wood of wind-swept pines. Some looked and saw these things; more rode on sulky and unseeing, supporting impatiently the toils of a flight from they knew not what.
To do Tignonville justice, he was not of these. On the contrary, he seemed to be in a better temper on this day; and, where so many took things unheroically, he showed to advantage. Avoiding the Countess and riding with Carlat, he talked and laughed with marked cheerfulness; nor did he ever fail, when the mist rose, to note this or that landmark, and confirm Badelon in the way he was going.
"We shall be at Lege by noon!" he cried more than once, "and if M. le Comte persists in his plan, may reach Vrillac by late sunset. By way of Challans!"
And always Carlat answered, "Ay, by Challans, monsieur, so be it!"
He proved, too, so far right in his prediction that noon saw them drag, a weary train, into the hamlet of Lege, where the road from Nantes to Olonne runs southward over the level of Poitou. An hour later Count Hannibal rode in with six of his eight men, and, after a few minutes" parley with Badelon, who was scanning the horses, he called Carlat to him. The old man came.
"Can we reach Vrillac to-night?" Count Hannibal asked curtly.
"By Challans, my lord," the steward answered, "I think we can. We call it seven hours" riding from here."
"And that route is the shortest?"
"In time, M. le Comte, the road being better."
Count Hannibal bent his brows. "And the other way?" he said.
"Is by Commequiers, my lord. It is shorter in distance."
"By how much!"
"Two leagues. But there are fordings and a salt marsh; and with Madame and the women----"
"It would be longer?"
The steward hesitated. "I think so," he said slowly, his eyes wandering to the grey misty landscape, against which the poor hovels of the village stood out naked and comfortless. A low thicket of oaks sheltered the place from southwesterly gales. On the other three sides it lay open.
"Very good," Tavannes said curtly. "Be ready to start in ten minutes.
You will guide us."
But when the ten minutes had elapsed and the party were ready to start, to the astonishment of all the steward was not to be found. To peremptory calls for him no answer came; and a hurried search through the hamlet proved equally fruitless. The only person who had seen him since his interview with Tavannes turned out to be M. de Tignonville; and he had seen him mount his horse five minutes before, and move off--as he believed--by the Challans road.
"Ahead of us!"
"Yes, M. le Comte," Tignonville answered, shading his eyes and gazing in the direction of the fringe of trees. "I did not see him take the road, but he was beside the north end of the wood when I saw him last.
Thereabouts!" and he pointed to a place where the Challans road wound round the flank of the wood. "When we are beyond that point, I think we shall see him."
Count Hannibal growled a word in his beard, and, turning in his saddle, looked back the way he had come. Half a mile away, two or three dots could be seen approaching across the plain. He turned again. "You know the road?" he said, curtly addressing the young man.
"Perfectly. As well as Carlat."
"Then lead the way, monsieur, with Badelon. And spare neither whip nor spur. There will be need of both, if we would lie warm to-night."
Tignonville nodded a.s.sent and, wheeling his horse, rode to the head of the party, a faint smile playing about his mouth. A moment, and the main body moved off behind him, leaving Count Hannibal and six men to cover the rear. The mist, which at noon had risen for an hour or two, was closing down again, and they had no sooner pa.s.sed clear of the wood than the trees faded out of sight behind them. It was not wonderful that they could not see Carlat. Objects a hundred paces from them were completely hidden.
Trot, trot! Trot, trot! through a. grey world so featureless, so unreal that the riders, now dozing in the saddle, and now awaking, seemed to themselves to stand still, as in a nightmare. A trot and then a walk, and then a trot again; and all a dozen times repeated, while the women b.u.mped along in their wretched saddles, and the horses stumbled, and the men swore at them.
Ha! La Garnache at last, and a sharp turn southward to Challans. The Countess raised her head, and began to look about her. There, should be a church, she knew; and there, the old ruined tower built by wizards, or the Carthaginians, so old tradition ran; and there, to the westward, the great salt marshes towards Noirmoutier. The mist hid all, but the knowledge that they were there set her heart beating, brought tears to her eyes, and lightened the long road to Challans.
At Challans they halted half-an-hour, and washed out the horses"
mouths with water and a little _guignolet_--the spirit of the country.
A dose of the cordial was administered to the women; and a little after seven they began the last stage of the journey, through a landscape which even the mist could not veil from the eyes of love.
There rose the windmill of Soullans! There the old dolmen, beneath which the grey wolf that ate the two children of Tornic had its lair.
For a mile back they had been treading my lady"s land; they had only two more leagues to ride, and one of those was crumbling under each dogged footfall. The salt flavour, which is new life to the sh.o.r.e-born, was in the fleecy reek which floated by them, now thinner, now more opaque; and almost they could hear the dull thunder of the Biscay waves falling on the rocks.
Tignonville looked back at her and smiled. She caught the look; she fancied that she understood it and his thoughts. But her own eyes were moist at the moment with tears, and what his said, and what there was of strangeness in his glance, half-warning, half-exultant, escaped her. For there, not a mile before them, where the low hills about the fishing village began to rise from the dull inland level--hills green on the land side, bare and scarped towards the sea and the island--she espied the wayside chapel at which the nurse of her early childhood had told her beads. Where it stood, the road from Commequiers and the road she travelled became one: a short mile thence, after winding among the hillocks, it ran down to the beach and the causeway--and to her home.
At the sight she bethought herself of Carlat, and calling to M. de Tignonville she asked him what he thought of the steward"s continued absence.
"He must have outpaced us!" he answered with an odd laugh.
"But he must have ridden hard to do that."
He reined back to her. "Say nothing!" he muttered under his breath.
"But look ahead, madame, and see if we are expected!"
"Expected? How can we be expected?" she cried. The colour rushed into her face.
He put his finger to his lip, and looked warningly at Badelon"s humped shoulders, jogging up and down in front of them. Then, stooping towards her, in a lower tone, "If Carlat has arrived before us, he will have told them," he said.
"Have told them!" she exclaimed.
"He came by the other road, and it is quicker."
She gazed at him in astonishment, her lips parted; and slowly she comprehended, and her eyes grew hard. "Then why," she said, "did you say it was longer? Had we been overtaken, monsieur, we had had you to thank for it, it seems!"
He bit his lip. "But we have not been overtaken," he rejoined. "On the contrary, you have me to thank for something quite different."