IN WHICH SUCCOR COMES FROM AN UNEXPECTED QUARTER.
During the week which had just elapsed Maître Courtin kept prudently quiet and out of sight in his farmhouse at La Logerie. Like all diplomatists, Courtin had no great fancy for war; he calculated, very justly, that the period of pistol-shots and sabre-cuts must soon pass by, and he wished to be fresh and lively for the succeeding period, when he might be useful to the cause--and to himself--according to the petty means which Nature allotted to him.
He was not without some uneasiness, the cautious farmer, as to the consequences which might result to him from the part he had taken in the arrest of Jean Oullier and the death of Bonneville; and at this moment when hatred, rancor, vengeance of all kinds had put the country under arms, he thought it wisest not to foolishly risk his person within their range. He was even afraid of meeting his young master, Baron Michel (inoffensive as he knew him to be), ever since a certain night when he had cut the girths of the baron's saddle.
In fact, the day after that performance, thinking that the best way to escape being killed was to seem half dead, he took to his bed and gave out, by his servant-woman, to his neighbors and administrators that a malignant fever like that of poor old Tinguy had brought him to death's door.
Madame de la Logerie, in her distress at Michel's flight, had sent twice for her farmer; but danger paralyzed Courtin's desire to please her, and the proud baroness, goaded by anxiety, was forced to go herself to the peasant's house.
She had heard that Michel was a prisoner, and was about to start for Nantes to use all her influence with the authorities to get him released, and all her authority as a mother to take him far away from this disastrous neighborhood. Under no circumstances would she return to La Logerie, where further sojourn seemed to her dangerous by reason of the conflict about to take place; and she was anxious to see Courtin and leave him in charge of the château and her interests.
Courtin promised to be worthy of her confidence, but in so weak and dolorous a voice that the baroness left the farmhouse with a heart full of pity for the poor devil, even in the midst of her own personal anxieties.
After this came the fights at Chêne and La Pénissière. On the days of their occurrence the noise of the musketry, as it reached the farmer's ears, caused a relapse in his illness. But no sooner had he heard of the result of those fights than he rose from his bed entirely cured. The next day he felt so vigorous that, in spite of his woman's remonstrance, he determined to go to Montaigu, his market-town, and get the orders of the sub-prefect as to his future course. The vulture smelt the carnage, and wanted to be sure of his little share of the spoil.
At Montaigu Maître Courtin learned that his trip was useless; the department had just been placed under military authority. The sub-prefect advised the mayor of La Logerie to go to Aigrefeuille and get his instructions from the general, who was there at that moment.
Dermoncourt, fully occupied with the movement of his columns, and having, as a brave and loyal soldier, little liking for men of Courtin's character, received the latter's denunciations, made under the guise of necessary information, with an abstracted air, and, in fact, showed a coldness to the mayor of La Logerie which greatly chilled that functionary's hopes. Nevertheless the general accepted a proposal which Courtin made him, to put a garrison in the château de la Logerie; for the position seemed to him an excellent one from which to hold the whole region in hand, from Machecoul to Saint Colombin.
Heaven owed the farmer some compensation for the general's want of sympathy, and, with its usual justice, soon bestowed it.
As he left the house which served as headquarters, Maître Courtin was approached by a man whom he had no recollection of ever having met, but who, nevertheless, showed him the utmost civility and a friendliness that was altogether touching. This individual was a man about thirty years of age, dressed in black clothes, the cut of which resembled that of priestly garments worn in a city. His forehead was low, his nose hooked like the beak of a bird of prey. His lips were thin; and yet, in spite of their thinness, they were prominent, owing to a peculiar formation of the jaw; his pointed chin protruded at an angle which was more than sharp; his hair, of a leaden black, was plastered along his temples, and his gray eyes, often dropped, seemed to see through his winking eyelids. It was the countenance of a Jesuit grafted on the face of a Jew.
A few words said by this unknown man to Courtin appeared to remove the distrust with which the latter was inclined to receive advances which seemed to him at first suspicious. He even accepted with a good grace an invitation to dinner at the hôtel Saint-Pierre, which the stranger gave him; and after two hours passed tête-à-tête in a private room, where the individual we have described ordered the table to be laid, such mutual sympathy had been developed that they treated each other, Courtin and he, as old friends; exchanging, when they parted, many shakings of the hand, while the mayor of La Logerie, as he struck his spurs into his pony's flanks, promised his new acquaintance that he should not be long without hearing from him.
Toward nine o'clock that evening Maître Courtin was jogging along, with the tail of his beast toward Aigrefeuille and its nose toward La Logerie; he seemed quite lively and joyous, and was flirting his whip by its leather handle right and left on the flanks of his little steed, with a jollity and ease that were not characteristic of him.
Maître Courtin's brain was evidently larded with couleur-de-rose ideas. He was thinking how on the morrow he should have, at a stone's throw from his farm, a detachment of fifty soldiers, whose presence would relieve him of anxiety, not only about the consequences of what he had done, but also about those of certain things that he wanted to do; he was thinking, too, that in his capacity as mayor he could use those fifty bayonets according to the needs of his private animosities. This idea gratified his self-love and his hatred together.
But, seductive as this idea of a Pretorian guard which could, if cleverly managed, be turned into his private guard, might be, it was surely not sufficient to give Maître Courtin--a practical man if ever there was one--his present exuberant satisfaction.
The mysterious unknown had no doubt dazzled his eyes with something more than the glitter of an ephemeral glory,--in fact, it was neither more nor less than piles of gold and silver which Maître Courtin was beholding in his mind's eye through the mists of the future, and toward which he was mechanically stretching out his hand with a smile of covetousness.
Under the control of these agreeable hallucinations, and somewhat hazy from the fumes of wine which his is new friend had poured for him generously, Maître Courtin let himself drop into a state of gentle somnolence; his body swayed to right and left, according to the caprices of his ambling pony, until at last, the quadruped having stumbled over a stone, Maître Courtin pitched forward and remained doubled over on the pommel of his saddle.
The position was uncomfortable, but Maître Courtin was careful not to change it; he was then in the midst of so delightful a dream that, for all the world, he would not lose it by awaking. He thought he was meeting his young master, who said to him, waving his hand over the domain of La Logerie, "All this is thine!"
The gift was proving more considerable than Courtin at first thought it; untold riches were developing. The trees in the orchard were laden down with gold and silver fruit; all the poles in the neighborhood would not suffice to hinder the branches from breaking under the weight of such wealth. The wild-roses and hawthorns were bearing, instead of their usual haws, jewels of all colors, which sparkled in the sun like so many carbuncles; and there was such a quantity of them that, although he knew they were precious stones, Courtin saw, with an eye of equanimity, a small marauder filling his pockets with them.
The farmer entered his own stable. In that stable he beheld a file of fat and well-fed cows extending out of sight so far, so far, that the one which was nearest the door seemed to be of the size of an elephant, while the one in the farthest distance was no bigger than a worm. Under each of these cows was a young girl milking. The first two had the features of the "she-wolves," the daughters of the Marquis de Souday. From the teats of the cows they were milking ran a white and yellow liquid, brilliant as two metals in fusion. As it fell into the copper pails of the two girls it produced that delightful sound which is music to the ear,--the sound of gold and silver coins piling one above the other.
As he looked into the pails the happy farmer saw that they were more than half full of rare and precious coins of various effigies. He stretched out his eager, grasping, quivering hands to seize these treasures, and as he did so a violent shock accompanied by a cry of agony put to flight his soft illusions.
Courtin opened his eyes and saw in the darkness a peasant-woman with torn clothes and dishevelled hair stretching out her hands to him.
"What do you want?" cried Maître Courtin, assuming a gruff voice and raising his stick in a threatening manner.
"Your help, my good man; I implore it in God's name!"
Finding that pity alone was asked for, and certain now that he had only a woman to deal with, Maître Courtin, who at first had looked about him in a terrified manner, was completely reassured.
"You are committing a misdemeanor, my dear," he said. "You have no right to stop persons on the high-road and ask for alms!"
"Alms! who said anything about alms?" returned the woman, in a refined and haughty tone of voice which arrested Courtin's attention. "I want you to help in rescuing an unfortunate man who is dying of fatigue and exposure! I want you to lend me your horse to take him to some farmhouse in the neighborhood."
"Who is it I am to help?"
"You seem by your dress to belong to the country people. I shall therefore not hesitate to tell you the truth, for I am sure, whatever your political opinions may be, you will not betray us,--he is a royalist officer."
The voice of the unknown woman excited Courtin's curiosity to the utmost. He leaned from his saddle striving to see in the darkness the face of her to whom the voice belonged; but he did not succeed in doing so.
"Who are you, yourself?" he asked.
"What is that to you?"
"Do you expect me to lend my horse to persons I don't know?"
"I have made a mistake; your answer proves that I was wrong to treat you as a friend or a generous enemy. I had better have employed another means. Give me your horse at once!"
"Indeed!"
"You have two minutes for decision."
"And if I refuse?"
"I will blow your brains out!" said the woman, pointing a pistol at Courtin and clicking the trigger to let him know the execution of the threat would follow promptly.
"Ah, good! I recognize you now," said Courtin. "You are Mademoiselle de Souday."
Then, without allowing his questioner time to say more, the mayor of La Logerie got off his pony.
"Very good!" said Bertha, for it was she. "Now tell me your name, and to-morrow the horse shall be sent home to you."
"No need, for I'll go with you and help you."
"You! why this sudden change?"
"Because I take it the person you want me to help is the owner of my farm."
"His name?"
"Monsieur Michel de la Logerie."
"Ah! you are one of his tenants. Then we can go to your farmhouse for concealment."
"But," stammered Courtin, who was far from comfortable at the thought of meeting the young baron, especially when he reflected that if he took him with Bertha under his roof Jean Oullier would be certain to come there after them, "you see I am the mayor, and--"
"You are afraid of compromising yourself in serving your master!" exclaimed Bertha, in a tone of the deepest contempt.
"Oh, no, not that! I'd give my blood for the young man; but we are to have a garrison of soldiers in the château de la Logerie."
"So much the better; they will never suspect that Vendéans, insurgents, would take refuge so near them."
"But I think, in the interest of Monsieur le baron, that Jean Oullier could find you a safer retreat than my house, where the soldiers are likely to be, morning, noon, and night."
"Alas! poor Jean Oullier is not likely to help any of his friends in future."
"How so?"
"We heard this morning some brisk firing in the direction of the moor; we did not stir from where we were, as he told us to wait till he returned. But we waited, and waited, in vain! Jean Oullier is either dead or a prisoner, for he is not one of those who desert their friends."
If it had been daylight Courtin could not have concealed the joy this news, which relieved him of his worst anxieties, caused him. But, though he was not master of his countenance, he was of his words; and he answered Bertha, who had spoken in an agitated voice full of feeling, with a mournful ejaculation which rather reconciled her to him.
"Let us walk faster," said Bertha.
"I'm willing. What a smell of burning there is here!"
"Yes, they set fire to the heath."
"Ah! How came Monsieur le baron to escape the fire? He is in the direction of it."
"Jean Oullier put us among the reeds in the Fréneuse pond."
"Ah! that's why when I touched you just now I felt you were all wet?"
"Yes; as Jean Oullier did not return I crossed the pond to seek for help. Finding no one, I took Baron Michel on my shoulders and brought him ashore. I hoped to carry him to the nearest house, but I have not the strength. I have been obliged to leave him among the bushes and come to the high-road myself. We have had nothing to eat for twenty-four hours."
"Ha! you're a stalwart girl!" cried Courtin, who, in the uncertainty he felt as to how his young master might receive him, was not sorry to conciliate Mademoiselle Bertha's good-will. "You are just the helpmate Monsieur le baron needs in these stirring times."
"It is my duty to give my life for him," said Bertha.
"Yes," said Courtin, emphatically; "and that duty no one, I swear to God, understands as you do. But be calm and don't walk so fast!"
"But he suffers! he may be calling for me--if he comes out of his swoon."
"Did he swoon?" cried Courtin, eagerly, seeing in that small detail the chance of escaping an immediate explanation.
"Yes, poor fellow! he is badly wounded, too."
"Good God!"
"Just think! for twenty-four hours, in his state, he has had no proper care! for my help has been powerless, I may say."
"Good heavens!"
"And think, too! he has been all day in the burning sun in the middle of the reeds; and to-night, in spite of my precautions, the fog has wet him through and through, and he has had a chill.
"Good Lord!"
"Ah! if evil happens to him I'll expiate my fault in penance all my life for having urged him into dangers for which he was unfit!" cried Bertha, whose political sentiments vanished before the loving anguish Michel's sufferings caused her.
As for Courtin, Bertha's assurance that Michel was not in a state to talk to him seemed to double the length of his legs. The girl no longer needed to hasten him on; he walked at his top speed, with a vigor he seldom showed, pulling the pony after him by the bridle, the beast being recalcitrant over the rough and heated road.
Believed for ever and aye of Jean Oullier, Courtin believed it would be easy to excuse himself to his young master,--in fact, that the matter would settle itself.
They soon reached the spot where the girl had left Michel. He, with his back against a stone, his head dropped on his breast, was, if not actually unconscious, in such a state of utter prostration that he had only a dim and confused sense of what was passing about him. He paid no heed to Courtin; and when the latter, with Bertha's help, hoisted him on the pony, he pressed Courtin's hand, as he did that of Bertha, without knowing what he was about.
Courtin and Bertha walked on either side of the pony to support Michel, who, without their help, would have fallen to left or right.
They reached the farmhouse. Courtin woke up his servant-woman, on whom he knew he could rely, took his own mattress (the only one the house afforded) into a sort of lean-to above his bedroom, where he installed his young master with such zeal, self-devotion, and eager protestations that Bertha ended by regretting the opinion she had formed of him on the high-road.
When Michel's wound was dressed, and he was safely in the bed improvised for him, Bertha went to the servant's room to seek her rest.
Left alone, Maître Courtin rubbed his hands; he had done a good night's work. Violent behavior had not answered hitherto; gentleness, he was sure, was more likely to succeed. He had done better than enter the enemy's camp--he had brought the enemy's camp into his own house, which gave him every likelihood of detecting the secrets of the Whites, especially those concerning Petit-Pierre.
He went over in his brain all the injunctions given to him by the mysterious man at Aigrefeuille; the most important of which was to send him immediate information if he contrived to discover the retreat of the heroine of La Vendée, and not to communicate any facts to the generals,--men who cared nothing for the art of diplomacy, and were altogether below the level of great political machinations.
Courtin now thought it possible, through Michel and Bertha, to discover Madame's retreat; he began to believe that dreams were not always lies, and that, thanks to the two young people, the wells of gold and silver and precious stones, the streams of metallic milk, would become to him a reality.