Chapter XXIII: Travels of an English Gentleman

“Well hail’d, well hail’d, you jolly gallants,
And whither are you bound-a?
O let me have your company till
We come unto the Sound-a.”
—_The Two Noble Kinsmen_.

As the sun set on Nuillé-sur-Vicoin a single horseman clattered into its main street, and, drawing rein before the Soleil d’Or, looked about him. Mr Harry Trenchard had been journeying in France for pleasure, but even to his impassivity there had come an intimation that the pleasure was well-nigh over, and that its place was being taken by an increasing peril which was not, however, without its own charm. The young man—he might have been thirty—was therefore proceeding to Nantes by leisurely stages, and on horseback, as his custom was, he having a dislike to the diligence. Tall, well-built, well-dressed, he sat his mare with a confident aspect, and as he looked along the almost deserted street he exclaimed aloud at the negligence of the hostelry which hung out its sign of refreshment and provided no ostler to hold the steed of the traveller.

He shouted; no one appeared at the moment, but, as he withdrew his foot from the stirrup preparatory to dismounting, the figure of a young man emerged from a side-street on his right and crossed the cobbles towards the inn. Mr Trenchard was not sure that his voice had evoked him, but as he looked very shabby he hailed him again in his resolute tones.

“Hi! my good fellow, come and hold my horse! I shall be out in a minute.” He swung out of the saddle as he spoke, and when he turned, with the reins in his hand, was astounded to find the shabby young man regarding him with what he instantly characterised to himself as “a d——d insolent French stare.” He looked very handsome, rather ill, and at the moment decidedly quarrelsome.

“You want me to hold your horse!” he exclaimed in tones of mingled anger and astonishment.

Trenchard attributed this resentment to the form rather than to the nature of the request, since the newcomer seemed by no means too prosperous to be above acceding to it.

“I beg your pardon, citizen,” he said, with scarcely veiled sarcasm. “I forgot that I was not giving you your proper title. I assure you that I meant no disrespect to you nor to the French nation—but if you will not hold her, will you tell me where I can find a citizen who will?”

Instead of being further irritated by this somewhat unwise address the shabby young man appeared mollified. The frown disappeared, and, suddenly smiling an easy smile as one who is amused at an idea of his own, he came nearer and put a hand on the bridle. His other arm, as Trenchard now remarked, he carried in a sling beneath his well-worn coat.

“There is no need; I will hold her myself, citizen traveller,” he said with a composure not unmixed with the air of one conferring a favour. Nor was his French, even to the ear of a foreigner, the French of the lower classes.

Trenchard swept a hasty, half-puzzled glance over him, and went into the tavern. Outside Louis de Saint-Ermay, who loved all horses, stood with her bridle over his arm and talked to the Englishman’s mare.

“Was I not a fool, ma belle, to be angry? But it was startling, confess now,” he said, stroking her muzzle. “I hope your master will be generous to a poor one-armed devil. And are you not to get anything yourself?” The mare, pleased by the voice, began to sniff at him, and finally dropped her nose on to his left shoulder. Louis winced, and, smiting her softly under the chin, induced her to remove this mark of favour, on which she searched his pockets for apples, and the Vicomte, whistling idly, looked at her beautiful lines and wished that he and Gilbert had a couple of steeds like her in place of their own broken-down hacks.

Presently out came the mare’s rider again, tapping his booted legs with his riding-whip.

“Hallo! my beast seems to have taken a fancy to you, citizen. I have changed my mind about going on; I shall wait until to-morrow. But I shall want my horse put up, and there seem to be no servants at this inn.”

“There are scarcely any,” responded Louis. “I will take your horse round to the stable if you wish.”

“Thank you, citizen,” said Mr Trenchard, feeling in his pocket. “And see that some one attends to her.”

“If you want that done,” advised the Vicomte, “you had better come round with me, for most likely there will be no one there, and though I would willingly stable her myself—she is such a fine beast—I am not sure that I can manage it with one arm.”

Again the Englishman looked at him, puzzled at his easy tone, and the assignat between his finger and thumb dropped back into his pocket as he postponed the moment of recompense. Louis smiled to himself as he turned to lead the mare; the little interlude was amusing him.

The stables, by courtesy so called, rather resembled a cowshed, and the yard was thickly coated with various kinds of mire. Here, however, they did find a sort of ostler, to whom Trenchard a little suspiciously committed his mare.

“I shall come out again shortly and see that you have done your work properly,” he said severely, and turned round to reward the holder of his steed, fully expecting, he knew not why, to find that he had slipped away. But the shabby young man stood at his elbow in evident expectation of some recognition of his services.

“Thank you, citizen,” he said gravely, pocketing the blue ten-sol assignat without a trace of embarrassment. “If you want me to hold your horse again you will find me in the inn.” And with a species of salute he made his way over the filth of the yard towards the hostelry. The Englishman could have sworn that he laughed softly as he went.

By nightfall the traveller was fully persuaded that the Soleil d’Or was the worst of all the bad French inns on which he had chanced on his wanderings. He had the best bedroom, which a tawdry attempt at magnificence rendered only the more squalid, and he had also the best supper, a meal which merely awoke in him a wonder as to what the worst could be like. To eat it he sat at the best table spread with the best cloth, and he thought as he surveyed the latter article with disgust, that the inferior tables at the other end of the room, which had none, might be preferable. And while he studied these less lofty places he saw at one of them, to his surprise, his acquaintance of the afternoon. Seen without his hat, in a room full of bucolic faces, he—as well as the companion with whom he shared the little table in the corner—seemed to the Englishman oddly incongruous with his clothes. The discrepancy was so striking that he became curious.

“Can you tell me who those two men are—who is the one with his arm in a sling?” he demanded of the frowsy wench who removed the thing of skin and bone, afloat in tepid water, which the inn termed a roast chicken.

She followed his glance. “He is a druggist’s assistant, Monsieur. The other is the apothecary.”

“Apothecaries!” repeated Trenchard, incredulously, looking at them again.

“Yes, sir. The citizen apothecary himself bound up my hand for me this afternoon when I cut it. He is very skilful.”

“H’m,” said Trenchard sapiently.

He resolved to speak again with the shabby young man, whom he once saw glance laughing in his direction, but when he had finished the two companions were gone, and he did not see them again that evening. Later, when Trenchard tossed in the best bed, he regretted that he had not applied to the apothecary for some specific against its other occupants.

But the apothecary might himself have been in the same need, for the attic which he shared with his assistant was, outwardly at least, more objectionable than the Englishman’s chamber. Nevertheless, on one of the two pallets which lay, without bedsteads, on the bare floor, near the single dormer window, Louis slumbered peacefully. Château-Foix, on the contrary, was looking up at a solitary star, the only clear object in view either of his eyes or his mind. At last the star, much gazed at, seemed to grow dim and die out, and then all at once he was staring at it again, grown brighter than ever, with the consciousness of having heard a noise. He listened; it was repeated, and defined itself as a gentle tap at the door.

For a moment Gilbert hesitated, then he decided not to wake the sleeper, and got up to see what it was. When he drew back the crazy bolt he saw standing there, a lantern in her hand, the slatternly girl whose fingers he had that afternoon bound up. She looked completely terrified.

“Go! go at once!” she said in little gasps. “You will all be murdered, or put in prison at least! I heard them say it.”

“Who?” asked Gilbert, bewildered. “And who will be murdered?”

The girl glanced nervously down the staircase. “May I come in, lest they hear me?” And as the Marquis stepped back for her to enter she went on quickly: “You and your friend, the English milord. They say that he is one of Pitt’s spies, and that you are aristocrats. O mon Dieu, the dreadful threats! I heard them in the bar-room. They are half drunk; they will denounce you to the section if they are sober enough, but they will come up and cut your throats if they get drunker.”

At least the girl seemed persuaded of the truth of her warning. The lantern swayed in her shaking fingers, and her ugly features were rigid with terror. What she said was, moreover, quite possible. Gilbert went across to his cousin’s pallet.

But Louis had already struggled up on to his elbow. “What on earth are you doing?” he demanded in a sleepy voice. “Is this an assignation?”

Château-Foix told him, while the trembling girl implored them to be quick.

“Oh, let us leave by all means,” observed the Vicomte when Gilbert finished. “Can we get at our _ci-devant_ horses; they might go faster than we can walk.”

“Here is the stable key,” put in their protectress. “There is no one about at the back, and a lane leads from the yard. I will help you saddle the horses.”

“And the Englishman?” asked Louis, getting to his feet. “Has no one warned him?”

“We cannot very well leave him,” said Château-Foix. “Still——”

“Oh, we will give him a chance,” said Louis cheerfully. “He is a good fellow; perhaps he will tip me again. Just help me into my coat, Gilbert, and while Mademoiselle and you get the horses ready, I will go to the milord’s room.”

As Louis in his disabled state could be of little use in the stable-yard, Gilbert reluctantly consented to this plan, and as silently as they could the three stole down the creaking staircase.

So it befell that Harry Trenchard was roused from a deep though troubled slumber by a hand which vigorously shook his shoulder, and by a low voice adjuring him in English instantly to get up. As his eyes blinked in the sudden candle-light he pushed his hand quickly under the pillow.

“That is useless,” said the voice. “I took it away before I woke you. I am the man who held your horse, and I have come to tell you that you and I and my cousin are in danger of being murdered.”

Trenchard lay for a full ten seconds and stared at his midnight visitor without speaking. Possibly his survey convinced him, for at the end of that time he said slowly: “Then I will get up.”

“Pray do, and be very quick and quiet,” said Louis, seating himself on the bed. “_Are_ you a spy of Pitt’s?”

“Oho! is that the game!” exclaimed Trenchard as he got out of bed. “No, I am not. And—imagine your speaking English!—why should we be murdered together?”

Louis told him, very laconically, while Trenchard hurried on a portion of his clothing.

“Then you are a proscribed aristocrat?” he asked, surveying the shabby figure with interest.

“So they suppose,” returned Louis with composure. “Are you nearly ready, because we cannot wait much longer.”

Trenchard finished buttoning his waistcoat before replying. “I am not sure that I shall come,” he said suddenly. “Why should I run away from these rapscallions? I would rather see it out.”

Louis got off the bed and scanned him with a glance between amusement and annoyance. “Very well, milord,” he said. “Here is your pistol. Perhaps, then, one of us may have your horse?”

“Confound you!” said the traveller, rather angry. “Why should you take me for a fool? Why don’t you stop too?”

“Because the next knife I have into me may go further than the last,” returned Saint-Ermay with meaning. “However, it is nothing to me whether you come or no. I have warned you.”

Mr Trenchard, half into his coat, stared at him across the bed, and the dimly-seen figure may have suggested to him that, after all, the more adventurous course lay in following the unknown out into the night.

“I don’t know who the devil you are,” he said, “but I’ll come with you.”