XXIV
Could Citizen Chauvelin have seen his calèche and horses a couple of hours later on the road, he would perhaps not have been quite so complacent as to its fate. After rattling over the cobblestones of Valence and tearing down the high road at maddening speed, it slackened a little for the hill, and worked its way slowly up through the small township of Livron. A quarter of a league or so further, it turned off at the crossroads in the direction of Cest and after another half-hour came to a halt at that small cottage which still nestles to this day, with its tumble-down roof and vine-covered harbour, beside the celebrated Roman ruins at the foot of the hill, not far from the banks of the Drôme.
Three ruffians, grimy from the roots of their hair to their down-at-heel shoes, jumped out of the calèche, dragging after them in the open the driver and postilion lately in the employ of Citizen Chauvelin, Representative of the National Convention on special mission. Whilst thus journeying between Valence and Livron these two poor wretches had been securely pinioned with ropes, but they were not gagged, and they used the freedom left to their tongues, by uttering oaths and protests which appeared vastly to amuse their captors.
The fourth ruffian—for ruffian he was—despite the fact that he had donned a bourgeois’ dress, the better to carry out his coup and pass unnoticed on the road, had in the meanwhile scrambled down from the box.
“Quite successful so far,” he remarked lightly, speaking in English, and rubbing his hands, which were slender and long and firm, contentedly together.
“What shall we do with these?” one of his companions asked, laughing and pointing to the two woebegone prisoners, who had ceased to curse and to protest, chiefly owing to want of breath, but also through astonishment at finding themselves the victims of some kind of foreign brigands whose language they did not understand.
“Poor beggars!” the other said lightly. “We’ll place them in front of an excellent breakfast and I’ll warrant we need not as much as tie their legs to their chairs. Get them inside, Ffoulkes, will you, and I’ll talk to them as soon as Tony and I have seen to the horses.”
“You don’t think the gendarmerie from Valence will be after us, Blakeney, do you?”
“Not they,” Sir Percy replied. “They are very short of horses in these parts, and the best will, I doubt not, be requisitioned by my friend M. Chambertin for his own use. I wonder now,” he added musing, “what he is after, taking those two ruffians with him to Paris; and whether his errand is sufficiently urgent to cause him to travel in the stagecoach, now that we have borrowed his calèche. …”
He paused, slightly frowning, evidently a little puzzled.
“I wonder,” he added, “if our friend in there can throw some light upon the matter.”
After which Sir Percy Blakeney and Lord Anthony Dewhurst took the streaming horses out of the shafts, relieved them of their harness and gave them a good rub down, a drink and a feed, while Sir Andrew Ffoulkes and Lord Hastings went into the cottage and busied themselves with their prisoners.
My Lord Stowmaries was for the moment in charge of this untenanted cottage, which was a stronghold as well as a rallying place of the League of the Scarlet Pimpernel, as it lay perdu, off both the main and the secondary roads. He it was who had prepared food for his chief and his comrades with the assistance of one Amédé Colombe. The cottage consisted of four rooms; unsecurely sheltered against the weather by a cracked roof, and against damp by broken floors. There were a few very rare pieces of furniture in the place, abandoned there by the late owner and his family, worthy farmers whom the League of the Scarlet Pimpernel had conveyed safely out of France when their loyal adherence to their exiled seigneurs had brought them under the ban of the Revolutionary Government.
In one of the rooms the two prisoners were busy for the moment pinching one another to see if they were really awake. After thinking that they were within sight of death at the hands of a band of malefactors, they found themselves sitting at a table in front of an excellent plate of soup, some bread and cheese and a very large mug of excellent wine, while the cords round their bodies had been removed. Anyway, a very pleasant dream. Leaving conjecture to take care of itself, they fell to on this welcome repast with a healthy appetite. The door which gave on the larger room had been left open, and through it the two men could see the band of malefactors falling to, just like themselves, in front of an excellent meal, laughing and talking in that same gibberish language which they did not understand.
“They don’t look to me much like brigands,” the driver remarked presently, speaking with his mouth full, “in spite of their dirty clothes.”
“And that tall one,” the postilion added thoughtfully, “he seems to be their captain. If you ask me I think he is an aristo.”
“Or an English spy.”
The other shook his head.
“Not he. English spies would have murdered us.”
“Then what in the name of hell—”
He got no further, the postilion had gripped him by the arm.
“Nom de nom!” the postilion exclaimed; and expressed further amazement by a prolonged whistle. “If that is not Amédé Colombe.”
“Qui ça Amédé Colombe?” the other asked.
“The son of the grocer over at Laragne. I know, I come from those parts. But what the hell is he doing here?”
Amédé Colombe sitting at the table with his wonderful new friends, caught the sound of his name, and gave an anxious start.
“Do not worry about them, my young friend,” Sir Percy Blakeney said reassuringly. “Before they could do you any harm we shall be many leagues out of the way.”
At which postilion and driver gazed at one another, more puzzled than ever before. Were they really dreaming, or had they actually heard that foreigner speaking their own language?—and perfectly. The driver was inclined to think that the wine which they had been drinking was potent enough to be the cause of an hallucination. Not that this deterred him from pouring himself out another mugful, and drinking it down with much smacking of the lips and sighs of contentment. It was such very excellent wine. Didn’t his friend the postilion agree with him? Why of course, and the filling and refilling of the two mugs continued apace and at a great rate.
“They’ll be blind in a few moments,” Lord Anthony Dewhurst remarked, glancing over his shoulder at the two men.
And he was right in this surmise. In less than a quarter of an hour driver and postilion were blind to the world with arms stretched out across the table, their heads buried in the bend of their elbows, breathing stertorously.
“You are not eating, my friend,” my Lord Stowmaries remarked to Amédé Colombe, who in truth had been sitting, silent, self-absorbed, neither eating nor drinking.
“Friend Amédé does not appreciate your cooking, old man,” Blakeney put in lightly. “It is fairly bad, I confess. Is it not, Monsieur Amédé?”
“It is excellent, milor’,” the young man sighed, “but I ask you, how can I eat or drink when I am in such terrible anxiety?”
“We were just going to discuss the best way—and the quickest—of alleviating your anxiety, mon ami,” Sir Percy rejoined, “all we were waiting for was for those two amiable gentlemen over there to become deaf temporarily as well as blind.”
“It is not for myself that I am anxious, milor’,” the young man said timidly. He was over shy of these wonderful men, who had led him from adventure to adventure, in a manner that had almost addled his poor brain. His unsophisticated mind was still vibrating with the excitement of the unforgettable hour, when throwing disguise aside these strangers had revealed themselves not as revolutionary soldiers at all, but as mysterious beings, whose actions had appeared to him to savour of the supernatural. It took him a long time to understand the situation. It seems that his being in possession of Madame de Frontenac’s valuables was known to the girl Adèle who was nothing but a spy in the pay of the Committee of Public Safety. She had that night spied upon him and the girl he loved, seen the girl hand over the valuables to him, and revealed the fact to the Committee. Had these mysterious strangers not played the part of revolutionary soldiers and got him, Amédé, safely out of the way, before the real soldiers appeared upon the scene, he would at this moment be languishing in a prison at Sisteron or Orange preparatory to being sent either to the guillotine or for cannon-fodder on the frontier.
All this Amédé understood well enough, he cursed Adèle a thousand times in his heart for being such a snake in the grass. What he could not understand was why these strangers should take an interest in him and in his fate. When to his timid query on that subject their leader laughingly replied: “Sport! mon ami, the fun, the excitement! nothing more philanthropic, I assure you, than just sport!” he understood still less.
No wonder that to him, Amédé Colombe, the whole adventure had come as a manifestation of something supernatural. As for M. de Frontenac, his fellow-sufferer, on the other hand, he had apparently been prepared for that manifestation. It appeared that Madame and Mademoiselle had already been rescued from peril and taken to a place of safety, where presently M. de Frontenac would be able to join them, always through the instrumentality of these wonder-working strangers. The last thing M. de Frontenac had said to him, Amédé, when he took leave of him a couple of days ago, somewhere in the lonely mountain paths where the party had called a halt, was: “Trust these Englishmen, Amédé, trust them with everything you hold dear. Look at me, had I not trusted them with my wife and daughter, I should have seen my dear ones first, and myself afterwards, facing the guillotine at this very hour!”
It was with these words ringing in his ears, that Amédé, sitting now amongst these men to whom he owed his life, had mustered up sufficient courage to reiterate more firmly: “It is not for myself I am anxious, milor’.”
“I know that, mon ami,” Sir Percy replied, “you are thinking of that brave little girl—Fleurette. Isn’t that her name?”
“Yes, milor’,” Amédé whispered timidly.
“Some of my friends and I are going straightway back to look after her now.”
“And you will hurry, milor’, you will hurry, will you not? Every day may be fatal for her.”
“I think not,” Blakeney said in that decisive way of his, which carried so much conviction. “You told me she was the daughter of a man high up in the councils of the revolutionary government.”
“One Armand, milor’,” Amédé continued. “Little is known of him in the neighbourhood, save that he is a widower and apparently has influence with the government.”
“Fleurette is an only child?”
“Yes. She has lived at Lou Mas all her life.”
“If her father has influence he can protect her for a time.”
“For a time—yes! But—oh milor’!” the poor young man suddenly burst out with passionate vehemence, “if anything were to happen to Fleurette, I would curse you for having saved my life.”
Blakeney smiled at the young man’s eagerness.
“Listen, friend Amédé,” he said lightly, “are you going to trust me and my friends?”
And Amédé, who remembered those last solemn words spoken by M. de Frontenac, looked into those lazy grey eyes, meeting that half earnest, half-humorous glance beneath the heavy lids, replied simply: “Yes, milor’!”
“And you will accord me what my friends accord so ungrudgingly, bless them, implicit obedience?”
Again Amédé replied simply: “Yes, milor’!” And then he added: “What am I to do?”
“For the moment nothing,” Sir Percy replied, “but remain here quietly and alone until you hear from me again. Can you do it?”
“If you command.”
“You won’t mind the loneliness?”
“I shall be thinking of Fleurette and trusting you.”
“Come, that’s brave!” Sir Percy concluded lightly. “You will find some provisions in the armoire in this room: but apart from that you will find your way every day down to the river, and turning to your right, you will walk along its bank till you come to a derelict shed hidden from view by two old walnut trees. In a corner of the shed, beneath a pile of leaves, you will find something to comfort you, either a loaf of bread, or a piece of cheese, sometimes a jug of milk or a bottle of wine. Scanty fare probably, but it will suffice to keep the wolf from the door. Those who supply it are poor and risk much to do it. They owe my friends and me a debt which they pay in this fashion. Now are you prepared to live this life of a lonely anchorite while my friends and I return to Laragne and gather news of your Fleurette?”
“If I could only come with you, milor’!” Amédé sighed.
“Tush, man, what were the good of that?” Sir Percy retorted with a slight note of impatience in his pleasant voice. “You would only lead us all—and your Fleurette—into trouble.”
“But you will bring me news of her soon?” Amédé entreated with tears in his kind, innocent-looking eyes.
“Either news of her—or Fleurette herself.”
Amédé shook his head. “She would not leave her father,” he said dolefully.
“Then she will be safe with him, until better times come along, which will be very soon, friend Amédé, you may take that from me. Another few months—very few—and the dragon’s own teeth will be turned against itself. This anarchy cannot endure forever, because all evil, friend Amédé, is by the grace of God finite.”
He spoke these last words with unwonted earnestness, and simple Amédé Colombe looked up to him with awe as to a prophet standing there, magnificent in energy and strength, head thrown back, the lazy eyes beneath their heavy lids flashing with unquenchable inner fire. And suddenly he checked himself, laughter chased away earnestness, the eyes twinkled with merriment like those of a carefree schoolboy, rather than a seer.
“La!” he said lightly, “I verily believe we were waxing serious. No cause for that, eh, friend Amédé? My friends and I are off on a gay adventure. To take a message of love from you to a brave little girl who loves you, a shade better methinks, than she loves that mysterious father of hers. Write your love letter, my friend, but be sure and make it brief, and I’ll deliver it myself in her own little hands. I saw her, that sweet wench of yours, no woman ever showed more pluck than she did when she went to seek Madame de Frontenac’s valuables.”
“You saw her, milor’?” Amédé exclaimed wide-eyed. “Mon Dieu! is there anything that you do not see?”
“There is, mon ami,” Sir Percy replied gaily. “I have never seen your pretty Fleurette’s mysterious father. He must be a fine man to keep the love of so sweet a daughter. So write your letter, my friend,” he went on, and pointing to an oaken desk at the further end of the room on which were quill-pen, inkpot and sand, “and I promise you that I will deliver it, if only for the pleasure of having a squint at the mysterious owner of Lou Mas. Heigh-ho!” he added with a contented sigh, “but this promises to be fine sport. What say you, Ffoulkes, or you, Tony? We are going to put our heads into the wolf’s jaws again, eh? Stowmaries, you too, and Hastings. But we’ll do it, and I promise you that the sight of pretty Fleurette will be a fitting compensation for some very unpleasant half hours we may have to go through. Now then, friend Amédé! your love missive, and two of you put the horses to, we’ll have to make Montélimar by nightfall! there we’ll either abandon the calèche, steal a couple of horses and cut across the hills to Sisteron, or keep to the calèche and the road as far as the neighbourhood of Orange, where much information can always be gleaned about the district. We’ll make no plans now and trust to luck and chance. What?”
Lord Tony then pointed, smiling, to the driver and postilion still fast asleep in the adjoining room.
“What is to happen to those mudlarks?” he asked.
“We’ll take them along, of course,” Blakeney replied. “So thrust them into the bottom of the calèche, under the seat for choice, and those who sit inside can use them as footstools. Where we leave the calèche, there we leave them too, to find their way back to the bosom of their families in due course.”
He looked so gay and so full of life and strength, so sure of himself, such pure joy in this new adventure radiated from his entire person, that some of that divine spark in him set Amédé Colombe’s blood tingling through his veins. Anxiety, melancholy, doubt fell away from him at a glance from those lazy eyes now twinkling with joy, at sight of that firm mouth, ever softened by a smile; of those long, slender hands, delicate as a woman’s, firm as those of a leader of men. Poor Amédé was almost happy at this moment, feeling that he was one with this band of heroes, that just by obedience and self-effacement, he could feel that he was one of them.
In cramped schoolboy hand, he wrote a brief, very brief little line to Fleurette, and told her how he adored her and longed for her nearness. He also told her that whatever else happened he implored her to trust the bearer of this note, who would be the means of bringing her back one day to the shelter of her Amédé’s arms.
Less than an hour later he was all alone in the tumble-down cottage that nestled against the ruins of a former, long-since-dead civilization. The late afternoon was soothing and balmy, the sky of a pale turquoise, clear and translucent, and as Amédé, standing somewhat forlorn at the cottage door, watching the narrow road over which the calèche had lumbered awhile ago, bearing away his mysterious new friends, the pale crescent of the moon appeared above the snow-capped crest of La Lance, and Amédé, remembering the old superstition, bowed solemnly nine times to the moon.