The Red Cockade

"No, since she cannot travel without me," I answered with spirit.

He frowned at that; but in a moment, "And why?" he said with a sneer. "Am I not good enough for your excellency's company?"

"It is not a question of goodness," I said bluntly, "but of a passport, Monsieur. If you ask me, I do not travel with you because I hold a commission under the present Government, and I believe you to be working against that Government. I have lied for Madame St. Alais and her daughter. She was a woman and I had to save her. But I will not lie for you, nor be your cloak. Is that plain, Monsieur?"

"Quite," he said slowly. "Yet I serve the King. Whom do you serve?"

I was silent.

"Whose is this commission, Monsieur, that must not be contaminated?"

I writhed under the sneer, but I was silent.

"Come, M. le Vicomte," he continued frankly, and in a different tone. "Be yourself, I pray. I am Froment, you have guessed it. I am also a fugitive, and were my name spoken in Villeraugues, a league on, I should hang for it. And in Ganges the like. I am at your mercy, therefore, and I ask you to shelter me. Let me pass through Suméne and Ganges as one of your party; thenceforth onwards," he added with a smile and a gesture of conscious pride, "I can shift for myself."

I do not wonder I hesitated, I wonder I resisted. It seemed so small a thing to ask, so great a thing to refuse, that, though half a minute before my mind had been made up, I wavered; wavered miserably. I felt my face burn, I felt the passionate ardour of Madame's eyes as they devoured it, I felt the call of the silence for my answer. And I was near assenting. But as I turned feverishly in my seat to avoid Madame's look, my hand touched the packet which contained the commission, and the contact wrought a revulsion of feeling. I saw the thing as I had seen it before, and, rightly or wrongly, revolted from that which I had nearly done.

"No," I cried angrily. "I will not! I will not!"

"You coward!" Madame cried with sudden passion. And she sprang up as if to strike me, but sat down again trembling.

"It may be," I said. "But I will not do it."

"Why? Why? Why?" she cried.

"Because I carry that commission; and to use it to shelter M. Froment were a thing M. Froment would not do himself. That is all."

He shrugged his shoulders, and magnanimously kept silence. But she was furious. "Quixote!" she cried. "Oh, you are intolerable! But you shall suffer for it. Eh, bien, Monsieur, you shall suffer for it!" she repeated vehemently.

"Nay, Madame, you need not threaten," I retorted.

"For if I would, I could not. You forget that M. de Géol is no more than a league behind us, and bound for Nîmes; he may appear at any moment. At best he is sure to lodge where we do to-night. If he finds," I continued drily, "that I have added a brother to my growing family, I do not think that he will take it lightly."

But this, though she must have seen the sense of it, had no effect upon her. "Oh, you are intolerable!" she cried again. "Let me out! Let me out, Monsieur."

This last to Froment. I did not gainsay her, and he let her out, and the two walked a few paces away, talking rapidly.

I followed them with my eyes; and seeing him now, detached, as it were, and solitary in that dreary landscape-a man alone and in danger-I began to feel some compunction. A moment more, and I might have repented; but a touch fell on my sleeve, and I turned with a start to find Denise leaning towards me, with her face rapt and eager.

"Monsieur," she whispered eagerly; before she could say more I seized the hand with which she had touched me, and kissed it fiercely.

"No, Monsieur, no," she whispered, drawing it from me with her face grown crimson-but her eyes still met mine frankly. "Not now. I want to speak to you, to warn you, to ask you-"

"And I, Mademoiselle," I cried in the same low tone, "want to bless you, to thank you-"

"I want to ask you to take care of yourself," she persisted, shaking her head almost petulantly at me, to silence me. "Listen! Some trap will be laid for you. My mother would not harm you, though she is angry; but that man is desperate, and we are in straits. Be careful, therefore, Monsieur, and-"

"Have no fear," I said.

"Ah, but I have fear," she answered.

And the way in which she said that, and the way in which she looked at me, and looked away again like a startled bird, filled me with happiness-with intense happiness; so that, though Madame came back at that moment, and no more passed between us, not even a look, but we had to sink back in our seats, and affect indifference, I was a different man for it. Perhaps something of this appeared in my face, for Madame, as she came up to the door, shot a suspicious glance at me, a glance almost of hatred; and from me looked keenly at her daughter. However, nothing was said except by Froment, who came up to the door and closed it, after she had entered. He raised his hat to me.

"M. le Vicomte," he said, with a little bitterness, "if a dog came to my door, as I came to you to-day, I would take him in!"

"You would do as I have done," I said.

"No," he said firmly; "I would take him in. Nevertheless, when we meet at Nîmes, I hope to convert you."

"To what?" I said coldly.

"To having a little faith," he answered, with dryness. "To having a little faith in something-and risking somewhat for it, Monsieur. I stand here," he went on, with a gesture that was not without grandeur, "alone and homeless, to-day; I do not know where I shall lie to-night. And why, M. le Vicomte? Because I alone in France have faith! Because I alone believe in anything! Because I alone believe even in myself! Do you think," he continued with rising scorn, "that if you nobles believed in your nobility, you could be unseated? Never! Or that if you, who say 'Long live the King!' believed in your King, he could be unseated? Never! Or that if you who profess to obey the Church believed in her, she could be uprooted? Never! But you believe in nothing, you admire nothing, you reverence nothing-and therefore you are doomed! Yes, doomed; for even the men with whom you have linked yourself have a sort of bastard faith in their theories, their philosophy, their reforms, that are to regenerate the world. But you-you believe in nothing; and you shall pass, as you pass from me now!"

He waved his hand with a gesture of menace, and before I could answer, the carriage rolled on, and left him standing there; the grey landscape, cold and barren, took the place of his face at the door. The light was beginning to fail; we were still a league from Villeraugues. I was glad to feel the carriage moving, and to be free from him; my heart, too, was warm because Denise sat opposite me, and I loved her. But for all that-and though Madame, glowering at me from her corner, troubled me little-the thought that I had deserted him-that, and his words, and one word in particular, hummed in my head, and oppressed me with a sense of coming ill. "Doomed! Doomed!" He had said it as if he meant it. I could no longer question his eloquence. I could no longer be ignorant why they called him the firebrand of Nîmes. The hot breath of the southern city had come from him; the passion of world-old strifes had spoken in his voice. Uneasily I pondered over what he had said, and recalled the words spoken by Father Benôit, even by Géol, to the same effect; and so brooded in my corner, while the carriage jolted on and darkness fell, until presently we stopped in the village street.

I offered Madame St. Alais my arm to descend. "No, Monsieur," she said, repelling me with passion; "I will not touch you."

She meant, I think, to seclude herself and Mademoiselle, and leave me to sup alone. But in the inn there was only one great room for parlour, and kitchen, and all; and a little cupboard, veiled by a dingy curtain, in which the women might sleep if they pleased, but in which they could not possibly eat. The inn was, in fact, the worst in which I had stopped-the maid draggled and dirty, and smelling of the stable; the company three boors; the floor of earth; the windows unglazed. Madame, accustomed to travel, and supported by her anger, took all with the ease of a fine lady; but Denise, fresh from her convent, winced at the brawling and oaths that rose round her, and cowered, pale and frightened, on her stool.

A hundred times I was on the point of interfering to protect her from these outrages; but her eyes, when they made me happy by timidly seeking mine for an instant, seemed to pray me to abstain; and the men, as their senseless tirades showed, were delegates from Castres, who at a word would have raised the cry of "Aristocrats!" I refrained, therefore, and doubtless with wisdom; but even the arrival of Géol would have been a welcome interruption.

I have said that Madame heeded them little; but it presently appeared that I was mistaken. After we had supped, and when the noise was at its height, she came to me, where I sat a little apart, and, throwing into her tone all the anger and disgust which her face so well masked, she cried in my ear that we must start at daybreak.

"At daybreak-or before!" she whispered fiercely. "This is horrible! horrible!" she continued. "This place is killing me! I would start now, cold and dark as it is, if-"

"I will speak to them," I said, taking a step towards the table.

She clutched my sleeve, and pinched me until I winced. "Fool!" she said. "Would you ruin us all? A word, and we are betrayed. No; but at daybreak we go. We shall not sleep; and the moment it is light we go!"

I consented, of course; and, going to the driver, who had taken our place at the table, she whispered him also, and then came back to me, and bade me call him if he did not rise. This settled, she went towards the closet, whither Mademoiselle had already retired; but unfortunately her movements had drawn on her the attention of the clowns at the table, and one of these, rising suddenly as she passed, intercepted her.

"A toast, Madame! a toast!" he cried, with a gross hiccough; and reeling on his feet, he thrust a cup of wine in front of her. "A toast; and one that every man, woman, and child in France must drink, or be d-d! And that is the Tricolour! The Tricolour; and down with Madame Veto! The Tricolour, Madame! Drink to it!"

The drunken wretch pressed the cup on her, while his comrades roared, "Drink! Drink! The Tricolour; and down with Madame Veto!" and added jests and oaths I will not write.

This was too much; I sprang to my feet to chastise the wretches. But Madame, who preserved her presence of mind to a marvel, checked me by a glance. "No," she said, raising her head proudly; "I will not drink!"

"Ah!" he cried with a vile laugh. "An aristocrat, are we? Drink, nevertheless, or we shall show you-"

"I will not drink!" she retorted, facing him with superb courage. "And more, when M. de Géol arrives to-night, you will have to give an account to him."

The man's face fell. "You know the Baron de Géol?" he said in a different tone.

"I left him at the last village, and I expect him here to-night," she answered coolly. "And I would advise you, Monsieur, to drink your own toasts, and let others go! For he is not a man to brook an insult!"

The brawler shrugged his shoulders, to hide his mortification. "Oh! if you are a friend of his," he muttered, preparing to slink back to the table, "I suppose it is all right. He is a good man. No offence. If you are not an aristocrat-"

"I am no more of an aristocrat than is M. de Géol," she answered. And, with a cold bow, she turned, and went to the closet.