The Red Cockade Part 20

I looked at Louis. But he had turned away, and affected to ignore me. And on that I succ.u.mbed. It was impossible to answer Madame, when she spoke to me in that way; and equally impossible to remain in the house, against her will. I bowed, therefore, in silence; and with the best grace I could, though I was sore and angry, I took my cloak and hat, which I had laid on a chair.

"I am sorry," Madame said kindly. And she held out her hand.

I raised it to my lips. "To-morrow--at twelve--here!" she breathed.

I started. I rather guessed than heard the words, so softly were they spoken; but her eyes made up for the lack of sound, and I understood. The next moment she turned from me, and with a last reluctant glance at Louis, who still had his back to me, I went out.

The man who had admitted me was in the hall. "You will find your horse at the Louvre, Monsieur," he said, as he opened the door.

I rewarded him, and going out, without a thought whither I was going, walked along the street, plunged in reflection; until marching on blindly I came against a man. That awoke me, and I looked round. I had been in the house little more than three hours, and in Nimes scarcely longer; yet so much had happened in the time that it seemed strange to me to find the streets unfamiliar, to find myself alone in them, at a loss which way to turn. Though it was hard on ten o'clock, and only a swaying lantern here and there made a ring of smoky light at the meeting of four ways, there were numbers of people still abroad; a few standing, but the majority going one way, the men with cloaks about their necks, the women with m.u.f.fled heads.

Feeling the necessity, since I must get myself a lodging, of putting away for the moment my one absorbing thought--the question of Louis' behaviour--I stopped a man who was not going with the stream, and asked him the way to the Hotel de Louvre. I learned not only that but the cause of the concourse.

"There has been a procession," he answered gruffly. "I should have thought that you would know that!" he added, with a glance at my hat. And he turned on his heel.

I remembered the red c.o.c.kade I wore, and before I went farther paused to take it out. As I moved on again, a man came quickly up behind me, and as he pa.s.sed thrust a paper into my hand. Before I could speak he was gone; but the incident and the bustle of the streets, strange at this late hour, helped to divert my thoughts; and I was not surprised when, on reaching the inn, I was told that every room was full.

"My horse is here," I said, thinking that the landlord, seeing me walk in on foot, might distrust the weight of my purse.

"Yes, Monsieur; and if you like you can lie in the eating-room," he answered very civilly. "You are welcome, and you will do no better elsewhere. It is as if the fair were being held at Beaucaire. The city is full of strangers. Almost as full as it is of those things!" he continued querulously, and he pointed to the paper in my hand.

I looked at it, and saw that it was a manifesto headed "Sacrilege! Mary Weeps!" "It was thrust into my hand a minute ago," I said.

"To be sure," he answered. "One morning we got up and found the walls white with them. Another day they were flying loose about the streets."

"Do you know," I asked, seeing that he had been supping, and was inclined to talk, "where the Marquis de St. Alais is living?"

"No, Monsieur," he said. "I do not know the gentleman."

"But he is here with his family."

"Who is not here," he answered, shrugging his shoulders. Then in a lower tone, "Is he red, or--or the other thing, Monsieur?"

"Red," I said boldly.

"Ah! Well, there have been two or three gentlemen going to and fro between our M. Froment, and Turin and Montpellier. It is said that our Mayor would have arrested them long ago if he had done his duty. But he is red too, and most of the councillors. And I don't know, for I take no side. Perhaps the gentleman you want is one of these?"

"Very likely," I said. "So M. Froment is here?"

"Monsieur knows him?"

"Yes," I said drily, "a little."

"Well, he is here, or he is not," the landlord answered, shaking his head. "It is impossible to say."

"Why?" I asked. "Does he not live here?"

"Yes, he lives here; at the Port d'Auguste on the old wall near the Capuchins. But----" he looked round and then continued mysteriously, "he goes out, where he has never gone in, Monsieur! And he has a house in the Amphitheatre, and it is the same there. And some say that the Capuchins is only another house of his. And if you go to the Cabaret de la Vierge, and give his name--you pay nothing."

He said this with many nods, and then seemed on a sudden to think that he had said too much, and hurried away. Asking for them, I learned that M. de Geol and Buton, failing to get a room there, had gone to the Ecu de France; but I was not very sorry to be rid of them for the time, and accepting the host's offer, I went to the eating-room, and there made myself as comfortable as two hard chairs and the excitement of my thoughts permitted.

The one thing, the one subject that absorbed me was Louis' behaviour, and the strange and abrupt change I had marked in it. He had been glad to see me, his hand had leaped to meet mine, I had read the old affection in his eyes; and then--then on a sudden, in a moment he had frozen into surly, churlish antagonism, an antagonism that had taken Madame Catinot by surprise, and was not without a touch of remorse, almost of horror. It could not be that she was dead? It could not be that Denise--no, my mind failed to entertain it. But I rose, trembling at the thought, and paced the room until daylight; listening to the watchman's cry, and the mournful hours, and the occasional rush of hurrying feet, that spoke of the perturbed city. What to me were Froment, or the red or the white or the tricolour, veto or no veto, endowment or disendowment, in comparison to that?

The house stirred at last, but I had still to wait till noon before I could see Madame Catinot. I spent the interval in an aimless walk through the town. At another time the things I saw must have filled me with wonder; at another time the h.o.a.ry, gloomy ring of the Arenes, rising in tiers of frowning arches, high above the squalid roofs that leaned against it--and choked within by a Ghetto of the like, huddled where prefects once sat, and the Emperor's colours flew victorious round the circle--must have won my admiration by its vastness; the Maison Carree by its fair proportions; the streets by the teeming crowds that filled them, and stood about the cabarets, and read the placards on the walls. But I had only thought for Louis, and my love, and the lagging minutes. At the first stroke of twelve I knocked at Madame Catinot's door; the last saw me in her presence.

It needed but a look at her face, and my heart sank; the thanks I was preparing to utter died on my lips as I gazed at her. She on her part was agitated. For a moment we were both silent.

At last, "I see that you have bad news for me, Madame," I said, striving to smile, and bear myself bravely.

"The worst, I fear," she said pitifully, smoothing her skirt. "For I have none, Monsieur."

"Yet I have heard it said that no news is good news?" I said, wondering.

Her lip trembled, but she did not look at me.

"Come, Madame," I persisted, though I was sick at heart. "Surely you are going to tell me more than that? At least you can tell me where I can see Madame St. Alais."

"No, Monsieur, I cannot tell you," she said in a low voice.

"Nor why M. Louis has so suddenly become hostile to me?"

"No, Monsieur, nor that. And I beg--as you are a gentleman," she continued hurriedly, "that you will spare me questions! I thought that I could help you, and I asked you to see me to-day. I find that I can only give you pain."

"And that is all, Madame?"

"That is all," she said, with a gesture that told more than her words.

I looked round the silent room, I walked half way to the door. And then I turned back. I could not go. "No!" I cried vehemently, "I will not go so! What is it you have learned, that has closed your lips, Madame? What are they plotting against her--that you fear to tell me? Speak, Madame! You did not bring me here to hear this! That I know."

But she only looked at me, her face full of reproach. "Monsieur," she said, "I meant kindly. Is this my reward?"

And that was too much for me. I turned without a word, and went out--of the room and the house.

Outside I felt like a child in darkness, on whom the one door leading to life and liberty had closed, as his hand touched it. I felt a dead, numbing disappointment that at any moment might develop into sharp pain. This change in Madame Catinot, resembling so exactly the change in Louis St. Alais, what could be the cause of it? What had been revealed to her? What was the mystery, the plot, the danger that made them all turn from me, as if I had the plague?

For awhile I was in the depths of despair. Then the warm sunshine that filled the streets, and spoke of coming summer, kindled lighter thoughts. After all it could not be hard to find a person in Nimes! I had soon found M. Louis. And this was the eighteenth century and not the sixteenth. Women were no longer exposed to the pressure that had once been brought to bear on them; nor men to the violence natural in old feuds.

And then--as I thought of that and strove to comfort myself with it--I heard a noise burst into the street behind me, a roar of voices and a sudden trampling of hundreds of feet; and turning I saw a dense press of men coming towards me, waving aloft blue banners, and crucifixes, and flags with the Five Wounds. Some were singing and some shouting, all were brandishing clubs and weapons. They came along at a good pace, filling the street from wall to wall; and to avoid them I stepped into an archway, that opportunely presented itself.

They came up in a moment, and swept past me with deafening shouts. It was difficult to see more than a forest of waving arms and staves over swart excited faces; but through a break in the ranks I caught a glimpse of three men walking in the heart of the crowd, quiet themselves, yet the cause and centre of all; and the middle man of the three was Froment. One of the others wore a ca.s.sock, and the third had a reckless air, and a hat c.o.c.ked in the military fashion. So much I saw, then only rank upon rank of hurrying shouting men. After these again followed three or four hundred of the sc.u.m of the city, beggars and broken rascals and homeless men.

As I turned from staring after them I found a man at my elbow; by a strange coincidence the very same man who, the night before, had directed me to the Hotel de Louvre. I asked him if that was not M. Froment.

"Yes," he said with a sneer. "And his brother."

"Oh, his brother! What is his name, Monsieur?"

"Bully Froment, some call him."

"And what are they going to do?"

"Groan outside a Protestant church to-day," he answered pithily. "To-morrow break the windows. The next day, or as soon as they can get their courage to the sticking point, fire on the worshippers, and call in the garrison from Montpellier. After that the refugees from Turin will come, we shall be in revolt, and there will be dragoonings. And then--if the Cevennols don't step in--Monsieur will see strange things."

"But the Mayor?" I said. "And the National Guards? Will they suffer it?"

"The first is red," the man answered curtly. "And two-thirds of the last. Monsieur will see."

And with a cool nod he went on his way; while I stood a moment looking idly after the procession. On a sudden, as I stood, it occurred to me that where Froment was, the St. Alais might be; and s.n.a.t.c.hing at the idea, wondering hugely that I had not had it before, I started recklessly in pursuit of the mob. The last broken wave of the crowd was still visible, eddying round a distant corner; and even after that disappeared, it was easy to trace the course it had taken by closed shutters and scared faces peeping from windows. I heard the mob stop once, and groan and howl; but before I came up with it it was on again, and when I at last overtook it, where one of the streets, before narrowing to an old gateway, opened out into a little square--with high dingy buildings on this side and that, and a meshwork of alleys running into it--the nucleus of the crowd had vanished, and the fringe was melting this way and that.

My aim was Froment, and I had missed him. But I was at a loss only for a moment, for as I stood and scanned the people trooping back into the town, my eye alighted on a lean figure with stooping head and a scanty ca.s.sock, that, wishing to cross the street, paused a moment striving to pa.s.s athwart the crowd. It needed a glance only; then, with a cry of joy, I was through the press, and at the man's side.

It was Father Benoit! For a moment we could not speak. Then, as we looked at one another, the first hasty joyful words spoken, I saw the very expression of dismay and discomfiture, which I had read on Louis St. Alais' face, dawn on his! He muttered, "O mon Dieu! mon Dieu!" under his breath, and wrung his hands stealthily.

But I was sick of this mystery, and I said so in hot words. "You at any rate shall tell me, father!" I cried.

Two or three of the pa.s.sers-by heard me, and looked at us curiously. He drew me, to escape these, into a doorway; but still a man stood peering in at us. "Come upstairs," the father muttered, "we shall be quiet there." And he led the way up a stone staircase, ancient and sordid, serving many and cleaned by none.

"Do you live here?" I said.

"Yes," he answered; and then stopped short, and turned to me with an air of confusion. "But it is a poor place, M. le Vicomte," he continued, and he even made as if he would descend again, "and perhaps we should be wise to go----"

"No, no!" I said, burning with impatience. "To your room, man! To your room, if you live here! I cannot wait. I have found you, and I will not let another minute pa.s.s before I have learned the truth."

He still hesitated, and even began to mutter another objection. But I had only mind for one thing, and giving way to me, he preceded me slowly to the top of the house; where under the tiles he had a little room with a mattress and a chair, two or three books and a crucifix. A small square dormer-window admitted the light--and something else; for as we entered a pigeon rose from the floor and flew out by it.

He uttered an exclamation of annoyance, and explained that he fed them sometimes. "They are company," he said sadly. "And I have found little here."

"Yet you came of your own accord," I retorted brutally. I was choking with anxiety, and it took that form.

"To lose one more illusion," he answered. "For years--you know it, M. le Vicomte--I looked forward to reform, to liberty, to freedom. And I taught others to look forward also. Well, we gained these--you know it, and the first use the people made of their liberty was to attack religion. Then I came here, because I was told that here the defenders of the Church would make a stand; that here the Church was strong, religion respected, faith still vigorous. I came to gain a little hope from others' hope. And I find pretended miracles, I find imposture, I find lies and trickery and chicanery used on one side and the other. And violence everywhere."

"Then in heaven's name, man, why did you not go home again?" I cried.

"I was going a week ago," he answered. "And then I did not go. And----"

"Never mind that now!" I cried harshly. "It is not that I want. I have seen Louis St. Alais, and I know that there is something amiss. He will not face me. He will not tell me where Madame is. He will have nothing to do with me. He looks at me as if I were a death's head! Now what is it? You know and I must know. Tell me."

"Mon Dieu!" he answered. And he looked at me with tears in his eyes. Then, "This is what I feared," he said.

"Feared? Feared what?" I cried.

"That your heart was in it, M. le Vicomte."

"In what? In what? Speak plainly, man."

"Mademoiselle de St. Alais'--engagement," he said.

I stood a moment staring at him. "Her engagement?" I whispered. "To whom?"

"To M. Froment," he answered.

CHAPTER XXI.

RIVALS.

"It is impossible!" I said slowly. "Froment! It is impossible!"

But even while I said it, I knew that I lied; and I turned to the window that Benoit might not see my face. Froment! The name alone, now that the hint was supplied, let in the light. Fellow-traveller, fellow-conspirator, in turn protected and protector, his face as I had seen it at the carriage door in the pa.s.s by Villeraugues, rose up before me, and I marvelled that I had not guessed the secret earlier. A bourgeois and ambitious, thrown into Mademoiselle's company, what could be more certain than that, sooner or later, he would lift his eyes to her? What more likely than that Madame St. Alais, impoverished and embittered, afloat on the whirlpool of agitation, would be willing to reward his daring even with her daughter's hand? Rich already, success would enn.o.ble him; for the rest I knew how the man, strong where so many were weak, resolute where a hundred faltered, a.s.sured of his purpose and steadfast in pursuing it, where others knew none, must loom in a woman's eyes. And I gnashed my teeth.

I had my eyes fixed, as I thought these thoughts, on a little dingy, well-like court that lay below his window, and on the farther side of which, but far below me, a monastic-looking porch surmounted by a carved figure, formed the centre of vision. Mechanically, though I could have sworn that my whole mind was otherwise engaged, I watched two men come into the court, and go to this porch. They did not knock or call, but one of them struck his stick twice on the pavement; in a second or two the door opened, as of itself, and the men disappeared.

I saw and noted this unconsciously; yet, in all probability, it was the closing of the door roused me from my thoughts. "Froment!" I said, "Froment!" And then I turned from the window. "Where is she?" I said hoa.r.s.ely.

Father Benoit shook his head.

"You must know!" I cried--indeed I saw that he did. "You must know!"

"I do know," he answered slowly, his eyes on mine. "But I cannot tell you. I could not, were it to save your life, M. le Vicomte. I had it in confession."

I stared at him baffled; and my heart sank at that answer, as it would have sunk at no other. I knew that on this door, this iron door without a key, I might beat my hands and spend my fury until the end of time and go no farther. At length, "Then why--why have you told me so much?" I cried, with a harsh laugh. "Why tell me anything?"

"Because I would have you leave Nimes," Father Benoit answered gently, laying his hand on my arm, his eyes full of entreaty. "Mademoiselle is contracted, and beyond your reach. Within a few hours, certainly as soon as the elections come on, there will be a rising here. I know you," he continued, "and your feelings, and I know that your sympathies will be with neither party. Why stay then, M. le Vicomte?"

"Why?" I said, so quickly that his hand fell from my arm as if I had struck him. "Because until Mademoiselle is married I follow her, if it be to Turin! Because M. Froment is unwise to mingle love and war, and my sympathies are now with one side, and it is not his! It is not his! Why, you ask? Because--you cannot tell me, but there are those who can, and I go to them!"

And without waiting to hear answer or remonstrance--though he cried to me and tried to detain me--I caught up my hat, and flew down the stairs; and once out of the house and in the street hastened back at the top of my speed to the quarter of the town I had left. The streets through which I pa.s.sed were still crowded, but wore an air not so much of disorder as of expectation, as if the procession I had followed had left a trail behind it. Here and there I saw soldiers patrolling, and warning the people to be quiet; and everywhere knots of townsmen, whispering and scowling, who stared at me as I pa.s.sed. Every tenth male I saw was a monk, Dominican or Capuchin, and though my whole mind was bent on finding M. de Geol and Buton, and learning from them what they knew, as enemies, of Froment's plans and strength, I felt that the city was in an abnormal state; and that if I would do anything before the convulsion took place, I must act quickly.

I was fortunate enough to find M. de Geol and Buton at their lodgings. The former, whom I had not seen since our arrival, and who doubtless had his opinion of the cause of my sudden disappearance in the street, greeted me with a scowl and a bitter sarcasm, but when I had put a few questions, and he found that I was in earnest, his manner changed. "You may tell him," he said, nodding to Buton.

Then I saw that they too were excited, though they would fain hide it. "What is it?" I asked.

"Froment's party rose at Avignon yesterday," he answered eagerly. "Prematurely; and were crushed--crushed with heavy loss. The news has just arrived. It may hasten his plans."

"I saw soldiers in the street," I said.

"Yes, the Calvinists have asked for protection. But, that, and the patrols," De Geol answered with a grim smile, "are equally a farce. The regiment of Guienne, which is patriotic and would a.s.sist us, and even be some protection, is kept within barracks by its officers; the mayor and munic.i.p.als are red, and whatever happens will not hoist the flag or call out the troops. The Catholic cabarets are alive with armed men; in a word, my friend, if Froment succeeds in mastering the town, and holding it three days, M. d'Artois, governor of Montpellier, will be here with his garrison, and----"

"Yes!"

"And what was a riot will be a revolt," he said pithily. "But there is many a slip between the cup and the lip, and there are more than sheep in the Cevennes Mountains!"