Chapter XIX: Concerning a Handkerchief

“If you be the Earl, as I think you be,
Sit down and drink the red wine with me;
But I rede ye, when ye shall rise from the board,
Ye commend your soul to the saints, my lord!”

At noon they came into the square at Mamers. Louis was in wild spirits; amused with the country people who thronged the wide market-place—it was market-day—and wanting to buy all kinds of useless objects at the stalls as they picked their way through the crowd looking for an inn. The Hôtel d’Espagne appeared so full that they chose an eating-house instead, and hence, after a modest repast, Gilbert sallied forth to enquire for a conveyance. He came back with the disconcerting intelligence that the diligence for Fresnay and Sillé-le-Guillaume had already started, and that there would not be another till the late afternoon.

“We must walk it,” he said to Louis, adding in a lower tone: “It would be unwise to wait about here so long for the diligence.”

“How many miles is Sillé?” asked Louis, who was finishing his coffee. He made a slight grimace when he heard. “And we have already walked about a hundred!”

“We can always stop at Fresnay, which is about fifteen, instead of going further,” said his cousin.

“I suspect we shall,” returned the Vicomte. He got up with a little sigh. “Well, needs must when the devil drives! I beg your pardon, Gilbert; I did not mean to be personal. I should enjoy this walking tour better if it were not so hot.”

At that instant the Marquis became aware of two young peasant women who were looking at them with interest and whispering together. The elder of them suddenly approached him. “Messieurs,” she said, with the trace of a blush, “if you want to get to Fresnay, my sister and I are starting back for Saint-Ouen, which is almost on the way . . .” And she looked from one to the other of the travellers, the tint deepening on her round, fresh visage.

“Madame, we should inconvenience you,” said the Marquis, hesitating.

“_Nenni_,” replied the damsel, and she pointed through the open door to a large market cart which reclined on its shafts near the church. “You see, Monsieur, that it would hold a great many.”

And thus it was settled, and in a few moments they were following the sisters across the sunlit market-place to the vehicle in question, Louis carrying a large basket full of their purchases. His spirits were by no means lowered by this turn of affairs.

“We may feel particularly safe in the hands of these nymphs,” he observed _sotto voce_ to Gilbert, “for they did not, as you may have noticed, treat us to the eternal ‘citizen’ which I am getting so sick of.”

Amid laughter they helped to put in the stout Percheron horse. The baskets and a good-sized roll of Mamers cloth were stowed away under the seats, together with a vociferous duck which had not been sold; and, with the eldest sister and Château-Foix seated in front, and Louis with the younger behind, also facing the horse, the equipage rattled out of the market-place. It attracted little attention. A swain, somewhat the worse for drink, who stood in a by-street, and requested the fair charioteer to tell him with whom she had taken up now, narrowly escaped destruction, the shaft catching him with some force and sending him into the gutter, wherein he sat, still repeating his query to the world in general.

“That was my second cousin, Michel,” observed the younger sister to Louis. And she added, somewhat unnecessarily: “He was drunk.”

The Percheron horse did not exert himself unduly up hills, and the miles rolled past but slowly. The sun was very hot, but the vehicle contained a large faded green umbrella, which the cousins held in turn over the heads of their respective partners. The heat, the hard seat, and the jogging made Gilbert feel tired and sleepy, but Louis kept up an animated conversation with both damsels at once. Occasionally he declared that the captive duck was biting large pieces out of his legs, a witticism which had enormous success. But in the end, despite the hilly road and the horse-flies, they reached the turning to Saint-Ouen. Great were the leave-takings; but the white caps, with many a backward turn, dwindled at last along the side road.

“Goddesses with the machine!” yawned Louis. “Good heavens! how thirsty I am!”

“No wonder,” retorted the Marquis. “And yet you complain of my talking too much to M. Maillard, a really intelligent man.”

“I was paying our fare,” said Louis, yawning again. “One had to do something. Would you rather have kissed them? Let’s get into the wood; this sun makes one damned sleepy.” He thrust his arm into Gilbert’s, and pulled him into the shade.

The road to Sillé-le-Guillaume lay through the heart of the forest—a matter of some four miles, so they had been told. It was now six o’clock; there was more than enough time to get to Sillé by dusk—time enough, in fact, to push on to Evron some eight miles beyond, had either of them had the inclination to do so. But, as Louis pointed out with some eloquence, the most sensible thing to do would be to lie down and rest in the wood. He was obviously tired, and Gilbert himself confessed to feeling weary. So they left the main road and plunged along a by-path until, finding a suitable tree, they threw themselves down beneath it.

The green coolness, after the hot hilly road and the day’s persistent sun, was delicious. In five minutes Louis was asleep. Gilbert studied him for a little, flung at his ease on the moss; yes, he looked too serenely unconscious for treachery. And how had he dared to put the letters of that terrible word near those of Lucienne’s name . . . how had he dared to! But the fatigue which, in quickening his mental vision, had begun to bring a hundred pictures of her, finally overpowered its own work, and he fell fast asleep.

He woke with a start, to find their late positions reversed, for Louis, wide awake, was sitting with his hands clasped round his knees regarding him with an air of amusement.

“I wouldn’t wake you,” he observed, “but do you know how long we’ve slept? We have been here nearly two hours.”

The long July day was dying rapidly now, was dead rather, and the two walked along under the trees agreeably enough, until they came to an unexpected and perplexing fork in the road. After due discussion they took the left-hand turning instead of keeping straight on, found after a time that they had strayed into a by-way, but persevered, and emerged, a little before nine o’clock, on another high-road. Along this, a few hundred yards to the right of them, shone the lights of a tiny village, which was obviously not Sillé. A passing rustic informed them that the hamlet was Pézé-le-Robert, and the road the highway from Beaumont-sur-Sarthe to Sillé-le-Guillaume.

Louis sighed. “Couldn’t we at least have supper here?” he asked pathetically. “It’s heart-rending to think how long it is since we had our last meal.”

The Marquis laughed. “Now that you remind me, I feel very hungry too,” he admitted. “Let us sup here, then, if we can; we might possibly get a bed as well.”

As it happened, the first house to which they came, a tiny low-browed inn, displayed a faded but recognisable wheatsheaf with the legend, “A la Gerbe d’Or.” A slatternly-looking woman with a dirty cloth in her hand appeared in response to their knock. In her wake the travellers exchanged the peculiar close smell of the passage for the hardly more agreeable though varied odours of the kitchen of the hostelry, which appeared to be its dining-room also. A couple of rough-looking men were playing cards at a table in the middle of the room. The woman ushered the cousins to a small oblong table nearer to the window, at the end of which sat an individual who was making great play with his soup. His liberal exhibition of the method of suction came, however, to an end about a moment after the two had sat down, when, leaning back in his chair, he pulled out a toothpick and used it vigorously. While engaged in the performance of this merely ceremonial act—for there was no meat in the soup—he subjected the newcomers to a steady scrutiny, not diverted until the advent of a plate of meat, to which he transferred his attention.

The thin soup was hot, at any rate, the stewed meat passable. The cousins were half-way through the latter before the man at the end of the table pushed away his empty plate.

“Pas mal, la mère,” he remarked. “A trifle overdone, perhaps. But it is something to get meat at all. Some never taste it from week’s end to week’s end. That’s true, isn’t it, citizen?” he added, leaning forward and pointedly addressing his query to the Marquis, who sat opposite at the other end of the little table.

“Perfectly,” responded Gilbert without enthusiasm.

“But you’ve never had to go without it, eh? You’ve never known a day when you haven’t eaten good, satisfying meat? Come now, confess it!” And he cackled with a rather unpleasant laughter.

The Marquis was taken aback, and he was also angry at the impertinence. He was about to reply in no very conciliatory spirit when Louis suddenly struck in.

“Do you think that we seem too fat and well-liking, citizen?” he asked gaily. “Our looks belie us if you do. For my part, it’s a long day since I have tasted meat like this.” Which was true.

“Come from far?” asked the other, producing the toothpick again.

“Far enough to be tired,” replied the Vicomte casually. “From Mamers, if it interests you to know.”

“Tired!” exclaimed the questioner with a sneer. “Gentry like you didn’t walk all the way from Mamers, I’ll wager.”

His tone was extremely offensive. From where he sat Louis could see the table in the middle of the room, and was aware that the two men sitting at it had stopped their card-playing to listen.

“Quite true,” he said, as he helped himself to wine. “Two charming _citoyennes_ were so kind as to give us a lift in their cart part of the way.”

“And shall you stop here to-night?”

“No,” said Gilbert curtly, tired of the insolent and significant interrogatory.

“Beds not good enough for you, I suppose,” riposted their fellow-guest.

Château-Foix took no notice, but saying to Louis in a low voice, “We had best begone as soon as we can,” he finished his plateful of meat in silence, and the Vicomte followed his example. At the end Gilbert knocked on the table with the handle of his knife to summon the landlady. “The reckoning, if you please,” he called out.

As if the word had been a preconcerted signal the little man at the other end of the table sprang to his feet. “There is another reckoning to be settled first!” he screamed. “You shall pay it before you leave this place. Citizens, I appeal to you to do your duty! These men are _ci-devants_—they are aristocrats from Paris—escaping, most probably, from the just doom the nation imposes on them—aristocrats who have ground us down for a thousand years, and boast even now of seducing our wives and daughters. . . .”

The two other men were on their feet. The Marquis, conscious of unknown perils behind him, had also risen, but Louis, having a clear view of the whole room, was still sitting coolly in his chair against the wall. In spite of the extreme seriousness of the situation the orator’s interpretation of their ride in the market cart was too much for his gravity, and he was openly laughing. His sangfroid still further maddened the denunciator.

“I tell you that it is true!” cried the latter, his voice breaking on a high note of rage. “I denounce them—I spit on them—enemies of the nation—aristocrats——”

“Prove it!” said Gilbert sternly, grasping the back of his chair as a possible weapon. “You cannot!”

A positive yell of triumph and malice escaped the little man, and plucking something white from his breast he turned it about for a second feverishly, and then held out to his allies a fine lawn handkerchief with a tiny coronet in the corner.

“It is his!” he cried, pointing to Louis. “He cannot deny it. It was under the table by his foot . . . and look at it, my friends!”

The taller man snatched it from him. “It is true!” he cried with an oath. “No one but a _ci-devant_ carries a handkerchief like that!”

Louis got leisurely up, his eyes dancing. “Ah, my friend,” he said softly, “there are so many _ci-devants_ nowadays. You no doubt are a _ci-devant_ scavenger or something of the sort, and the gentleman at the end of the table——”

His voice was drowned in the hubbub that ensued, as the individual in question, screaming “Arrest them!” flung himself towards Louis. There was the table between them, but the young man’s fist, shooting out like lightning, caught him between the eyes, and he staggered back, to subside upon the hearthstone. Ere he reached it the shorter of the two card-players was wrestling bodily with the Marquis, who had not space to use his chair. The other was crouching in the dusky corner near the window with the evident intention of taking Gilbert in the rear. Suddenly Château-Foix forced his vociferating foe downwards and backwards over the table, and at this the man in the corner sprang forward.

“Take care! he’s coming on you from behind!” shouted Louis, and he leapt from his own entrenched position between the table and the wall and rushed between them. In a second he was sent spinning out of the way, to be brought up by the centre table, over which he fell with a crash. But he had defeated the enemy’s design. Hurling his beaten opponent on to the ground the Marquis snatched up the scarcely-tasted bottle of wine by his plate and broke it fair and full across the head of his new assailant. The man collapsed groaning at his feet, and with his fall the coast was clear. The woman had fled long ago.

“Come on, Louis!” shouted Gilbert to his cousin, who was rather dizzily picking himself up from the debris of cards and shattered plates. “No—not by the door—the window!”

He had the casement open in an instant; the drop was barely five feet. Louis scrambled after him, and the Marquis, guided by instinct rather than by sight, hurried through a little orchard, a paddock, over a brook, through a meagre hedge, and, bearing always to the left, and away from Sillé-le-Guillaume, was forced at last to emerge into the high-road.

Assuring himself that Saint-Ermay was close at his heels, he started to run down the starlit road. His own footfalls filled his ears with a horrid sense of their betraying loudness, and it was not for a minute or so that he realised the growing faintness of those behind. When he did so he looked over his shoulder, and then stopped in astonishment. Louis, now some ten yards behind, had dropped to a walk, and a leisurely one at that. He went quickly back towards him.

“I thought you were a good runner,” was on his lips, instead of which he cried sharply: “What’s the matter?”

“Go on without me,” said the Vicomte breathlessly. “I—I really can come no further.” He staggered a little as he spoke; one hand was clutching at his left breast.

A quick fear shot into the Marquis’ mind. “Are you hurt, my dear boy?” he asked anxiously, taking a step towards him, for he looked as though he would fall.

“He had a knife . . .” said Louis faintly but succinctly, and with the words reeled sideways into his cousin’s arms.