Suddenly Madame laughed again, out of her corner; a laugh that made me wince, and grow hot. "She is not made for a nun, M. le Vicomte, is she?" she said.
I bounced in my seat. The speaker"s tone, gay, insulting, flicked, not me, but the girl, like a whip.
"You really, Denise, must have had practice," Madame continued smoothly. "I love, you love, we love--you are quite perfect. Did you practise with M. le Directeur? Or with the big boys over the wall?"
"Madame!" I cried. The girl had drawn her hood over her face, but I could fancy her shame.
But Madame was inexorable. "Really, Denise, I do not know that I ever told even your father "I love you,"" she said. "At any rate, until he had kissed me on the lips. But I suppose that you reverse the order----"
"Madame," I stammered. "This is infamous!"
"What, Monsieur?" she answered, this time heeding me. "May I not punish my daughter in my own way?"
"Not before me," I retorted, full of wrath. "It is cruel! It is----"
"Oh, before you, M. le Vicomte?" Madame answered, mocking me. "And why not before you? I cannot degrade her lower than she has herself stooped!"
"It is false!" I cried, in hot rage. "It is a cruel falsehood!"
"Oh, I can? Then if I please, I shall!" Madame answered, with ruthless pleasantry. "And you, Monsieur, will sit by and listen, if I please. Though, make no mistake, M. le Vicomte," she continued, leaning forward, and gazing keenly into my face. "Because I punish her before you, do not think that you are, or ever shall be, of the family. Or that this unmaidenly, immodest----"
Mademoiselle uttered a cry of pain, and shrank lower in her corner.
"Little fool," Madame continued coolly, "who, when she was primed with a c.o.c.k-and-bull story about the c.o.c.kade, must needs add, "I love him"--I love him, and she a maiden!--will ever be anything to you! That link was broken long ago. It was broken when your friends burned our house at St. Alais; it was broken when they sacked our house in Cahors; it was broken when they made our king a prisoner, when they murdered our friends, when they dragged our Church a slave at the chariot wheels of their triumph; ay, and broken once for all, beyond mending by mock heroics! Understand that fully, M. le Vicomte," Madame continued pitilessly. "But as you saw her stoop, you shall see her punished. She is the first St. Alais that ever wooed a lover!"
I knew that of the family which would have given the lie to that statement; but it was not a tale for Mademoiselle"s ears, and instead I rose. "At least, Madame," I said, bowing, "I can free Mademoiselle from the embarra.s.sment of my presence. And I shall do so."
"No, you will not do even that," Madame answered unmoved. "If you will sit down, I will tell you why."
I sat down, compelled by her tone.
"You will not do it," Madame continued, looking me coolly in the face, "because I am bound to admit, though I no longer like you, that you are a gentleman."
"And therefore should leave you."
"On the contrary, for that reason you will continue to travel with us."
"Outside," I said.
"No, inside," she answered quietly. "We have no pa.s.sport nor papers; without your company we should be stopped in each town through which we pa.s.s. It is unfortunate," Madame continued, shrugging her shoulders; "--I did not know that the country was in so bad a state, or I would have taken precautions--it is unfortunate. But as it is we must put up with it and travel together."
I felt a warm rush of joy, of triumph, of coming vengeance. "Thank you, Madame," I said, and I bowed to her, "for telling me that. It seems, then, that you are in my power."
"Ah?"
"And that to requite you for the pain you have just caused Mademoiselle, I have only to leave you."
"Well?"
"I see even now a little town before us; in three minutes we shall enter it. Very well, Madame. If you say another word to your daughter, if you insult her again in my presence by so much as a syllable, I leave you and go my way."
To my surprise Madame St. Alais broke into a silvery laugh. "You will not, Monsieur," she said. "And yet I shall treat my daughter as I please."
"I shall do so!"
"You will not."
"Why, then? Why shall I not?" I cried.
"Because," she answered, laughing softly, "you are a gentleman, M. le Vicomte, and can neither leave us nor endanger us. That is all."
I sank back in my seat, and glared at her in speechless indignation; seeing in a flash my impotence and her power. The cushions burned me; but I could not leave them.
She laughed again, well pleased. "There, I have told you what you will not do," she said. "Now I am going to tell you what you will do. In front, I am told, they are very suspicious. The story of Madame Corvas, even if backed by your word, may not suffice. You will say, therefore, that I am your mother, and that Mademoiselle is your sister. She would prefer, I daresay," Madame continued, with a cutting glance at her daughter, "to pa.s.s for your wife. But that does not suit me."
I breathed hard; but I was helpless as any prisoner, closely bound to obedience as any slave. I could not denounce them, and I could not leave them; honour and love were alike concerned. Yet I foresaw that I must listen, hour by hour, and mile by mile, to gibes at the girl"s expense, to sneers at her modesty, to words that cut like whip-lashes. That was Madame"s plan. The girl must travel with me, must breathe the same air with me, must sit for hours with the hem of her skirt touching my boot. It was necessary for the safety of all. But, after this, after what we had both heard, if her eye met mine, it could only fall; if her hand touched mine, she must shrink in shame. Henceforth there was a barrier between us.
As a fact, Mademoiselle"s pride came to her aid, and she sat, neither weeping nor protesting, nor seeking to join her forces to mine by a glance; but bearing all with steadfast patience, she looked out of the window when I pretended to sleep, and looked towards her mother when I sat erect. Possibly she found her compensations, and bore her punishment quietly for their sake. But I did not think of that. Possibly, too, she suffered less than I fancied; but I doubt if she would admit that, even to-day.
At any rate she had heard me fight her battle; yet she did not speak to me nor I to her; and under these strange conditions we began and pursued the strangest journey man ever made. We drove through pleasant valleys growing green, over sterile pa.s.ses, where winter still fringed the rocks with snow, through sunshine, and in the teeth of cold mountain winds; but we scarcely heeded any of these things. Our hearts and thoughts lay inside the carriage, where Madame sat smiling, and we two kept grim silence.
About noon we halted to rest and eat at a little village inn, high up. It seemed to me a place almost at the end of the world, with a chaos of mountains rising tier on tier above it, and slopes of shale below. But the frenzy of the time had reached even this barren nook. Before we had taken two mouthfuls, the Syndic called to see our papers; and--G.o.d knows I had no choice--Madame pa.s.sed for my mother, and Denise for my sister. Then, while the Syndic still stood bowing over my commission, and striving to learn from me what news there was below, a horse halted at the door, and I heard a man"s voice, and in a breath M. le Baron de Geol walked in. There was a single decent room in the inn--that in which we sat--and he came into it.
He uncovered, seeing ladies; and recognising me with a start smiled, but a trifle sourly. "You set off early?" he said. "I waited at the east gate, but you did not come, Monsieur."
I coloured, conscience-stricken, and begged a thousand pardons. As a fact, I had clean forgotten him. I had not once thought of the appointment I had made with him at the gate.
"You are not riding?" he said, looking at my companions a little strangely.
"No," I answered. And I could not find another word to say. The Syndic still stood smiling and bowing beside me; and on a sudden I saw the pit on the edge of which I tottered; and my face burned.
"You have met friends?" M. le Baron persisted, looking, hat in hand, at Madame.
"Yes," I muttered. Politeness required that I should introduce him. But I dared not.
However, at that, he at last took the hint; and retired with the Syndic. The moment they were over the threshold Madame flashed out at me, in a pa.s.sion of anger. "Fool!" she said, without ceremony, "why did you not present him? Don"t you know that that is the way to arouse suspicion, and ruin us? A child could see that you had something to hide. If you had presented him at once to your mother----"
"Yes, Madame?"
"He would have gone away satisfied."
"I doubt it, Madame, and for a very good reason," I answered cynically. "Seeing that yesterday I told him, with the utmost particularity, that I had neither mother nor sister."
That afforded me a little revenge. Madame St. Alais went white and red in the same instant, and sat a moment with her lips pressed together, and her eyes on the table. "Who is he? What do you know of him?" she said at last.
"He is a poor gentleman and a bigoted Protestant," I answered drily.
She bit her lip. "Bon Dieu!" she muttered. "Who could have foreseen such an accident? Do you think that he suspects anything?"
"Doubtless. To begin, I left early this morning, in breach of an agreement to travel with him. When he learns, in addition, that I am travelling with my mother and sister, whom yesterday I did not possess----"
Madame looked at me, as if she would strike me. "What will you do?" she cried.
"It is for my mother to say," I answered politely. And I helped myself very indifferently to cheese. "She dictated this policy."
She was white with rage, and perhaps alarm; I chuckled secretly, seeing her condition. But rage availed her little; she had to humble herself. "What do you advise?" she said at last.
"There is only one course open," I answered. "We must brazen it out."
She agreed. But this, though a very easy course to advise, was one anything but easy to pursue. I discovered that, a few minutes later, when I went out to see if the carriage was ready, and found De Geol in the doorway with a face as hard as his own hills. "You are starting?" he said.
I muttered that I was.
"I find that I have to congratulate you," he continued, with a smile of unpleasant meaning.
"On what, Monsieur?"
"On finding your family," he answered, looking at me with a bitter sort of humour. "To discover both a mother and a sister in twenty-four hours must be great happiness. But--may I give you a hint, M. le Vicomte?"
"If you please," I said, with desperate coolness.
"Then if--being so happy in making discoveries--you happen to light next on M. Froment--on M. Froment, the firebrand of Nimes, false Capuchin, and false traitor!--do not adopt him also! That is all."
"I am not acquainted with him," I said coldly. He had spoken with pa.s.sion and fire.
"Do not become so," he answered.
I shrugged my shoulders, and he said no more; and in a moment Madame and Mademoiselle came out, and took their seats, and I set out to walk up the hill beside the horses.
The ascent was steep and long and toilsome, and a dozen times as we climbed out of the valley we had to halt to breathe the cattle; a dozen times I looked back at the grey mountain inn lying on the desolate grey plateau at our feet. Always I found the Baron looking up at us, stern and gaunt and motionless as the house before which he stood. And I shivered.
CHAPTER XVII.
FROMENT OF NIMES.
This encounter served neither to raise my spirits nor to remove the apprehensions with which I looked forward to our arrival in places more populous; places where suspicion, once roused, might be less easily allayed. True, Geol had not betrayed me, but he might have his reasons for that; nor did the fact any the more reconcile me to having on our trail this grim stalking-horse in whose person a fanaticism I had deemed dead lurked behind modern doctrines, and sought under the cloak of a new party to avenge old injuries. The barren slopes and rugged peaks that rose above us, as we plodded toilsomely onward, the windswept pa.s.ses over which the horses scarce dragged the empty carriage, the melancholy fields of snow that lay to right and left, all tended to deepen the impression made on my mind; so that feeling him one with his native hills, I longed to escape from them, I longed to be clear of this desolation and to see before me the sunshine and olive slopes sweep down to the southern sea.
Yet even here there was a counterpoise. The peril which had startled me had not been lost on Madame St. Alais; it had sensibly lowered her tone, and damped the triumph with which she had been disposed to treat me. She was more quiet; and sitting in her place, or walking beside the labouring carriage, as it slowly wound its way round shoulders, or wearily climbed long lacets, she left me to myself. Nay, it did not escape me that distance, far from relieving, seemed to aggravate her anxiety; so that the farther we left the uncouth Baron behind, the more restless she grew, the more keenly she scanned the road behind us, and the less regard she paid to me.
This left me at liberty to use my eyes as I would; and I remember to this day that hour spent under the shoulder of Mont Aigoual. Mademoiselle, worn out by days and nights of exertion, had fallen asleep in her corner, and shaken by the jolting of the coach had let the cloak slip from her face. A faint flush warmed her cheeks, as if even in sleep she felt my eyes upon her; and though a tear presently stole from under her long lashes, a smile almost nave--a smile that remained while the tear pa.s.sed--seemed to say that the joys of that strange day surpa.s.sed the pains, and that in her sleep Mademoiselle found nothing to regret. G.o.d, how I watched that smile! How I hoped that it was for me, how I prayed for her! Never before had it been my happiness to gaze on her uncontrolled, as I did now; to trace the shadow where the first tendrils of her hair stole up from the smooth, white forehead, to learn the soft curves of lips and chin, and the dainty ear half-hidden; to gaze at the blue-veined eyelids half in fear, half in the hope that they might rise and discover me!
Denise, my Denise! I breathed the word softly, in my heart, and was happy. In spite of all--the cold, the journey, Geol, Madame--I was happy. And then in a moment I fell to earth, as I heard a voice say clearly, "Is that he?"
It was Madame"s voice, and I turned to her. I was relieved to find that she was not looking my way, but was on her feet, gazing back the way we had come. And in a moment, whether she gave an order or the driver halted on his own motion, the carriage came to a stand; in a mountain pa.s.s, where rocks lay huddled on either side.
"What is it?" I said in wonder.
She did not answer, but on the silence of the road and the mountains rose the thin strain of a whistled air. The air was "O Richard, O mon Roi!" In that solitude of rock and fell, it piped high and thin, and had a weird startling effect. I thrust out my head on the other side, and saw a man walking after us at his leisure; as if we had pa.s.sed him, and then stood to wait for him. He was tall and stout, wore boots and a common-looking cloak; but for all that he had not the air of a man of the country.
"You are going to Ganges?" Madame cried to him, without preface.
"Yes, Madame," he answered, as he came quietly up, and saluted her.
"We can take you on," she said.
"A thousand thanks," he answered, his eyes twinkling. "You are too good. If the gentleman does not object?" And he looked at me, smiling without disguise.
"Oh, no!" Madame said, with a touch of contempt in her voice, "the gentleman will not object."
But that gave me, in the middle of my astonishment, the fillip that I needed. The device of the meeting was so transparent, the appearance of this man, in cloak and boots, on the desolate road far from any habitation, was so clearly a part of an arranged plan, that I could not swallow it; I must either fall in with it, be dupe, and play my role with my eyes open, or act at once. I awoke from my astonishment. "One moment, Madame," I said. "I do not know who this gentleman is."
She had resumed her seat, and the stranger had come up to the window on her side, and was looking in. He had a face of striking power, large-sized and coa.r.s.e, but not unpleasant; with quick, bright eyes, and mobile lips that smiled easily. The hand he laid on the carriage door was immense.
I think my words took Madame by surprise. She flashed round on me. "Nonsense," she cried imperiously. And to him, "Get in, Monsieur."
"No," I retorted, half-rising. "Stay, if you please. Stay where you are, until----"
Madame turned to me, furious. "This is my carriage," she said.
"Absolutely," I answered.
"Then what do you mean?"
"Only that if this gentleman enters it, I leave it."
For an instant we looked at one another. Then she saw that I was determined, and, knowing my position, she lowered her tone. "Why?" she said, breathing quickly. "Why, because he enters it, should you leave it?"
"Because, Madame," I answered, "I see no reason for taking in a stranger whom we do not know. This gentleman may be everything that is upright----"
"He is no stranger!" she snapped. "I know him. Will that satisfy you?"
"If he will give me his name," I said.
Hitherto he had stood unmoved by the discussion, looking with a smile from one to the other of us; but at this he struck in. "With pleasure, Monsieur," he said. "My name is Alibon, and I am an advocate of Montauban, who last week had the good fortune----"
"No," I said, interrupting him brusquely, and once for all; "I think not. Not Alibon of Montauban. Froment of Nimes, I think, Monsieur."
A little tract of snow flushed by the sunset lay behind him, and by contrast darkened his face; I could not see how he took my words. And a few seconds elapsed before he answered. When he did, however, he spoke calmly, and I fancied I detected as much vanity as chagrin in his tone. "Well, Monsieur," he said, "and if I am? What then?"
"If you are," I replied resolutely, meeting his eyes, "I decline to travel with you."