“You’re just in time, Michael Stein; thank God, you’re just in time! Annot, come on, its only a dozen yards to the raft, and we’ll be off at once. Well, this is the luckiest chance: come on, before a whole crowd are down upon us, and swamp us all.”
“Oh me! oh me!” sobbed Annot, still sitting on the ground, as though she had not the slightest intention of stirring another step that night: “to be left and deserted in this way by one’s friends—and one’s brothers—and—and—one’s—” she didn’t finish the list, for she felt sure that she had said enough to cut Chapeau to the inmost heart, if he still had a heart.
“Come, dearest girl, come; I’ll explain it all by-and-bye. We have not a moment to spare. Come, I’ll lift you,” and he stooped to raise her from the ground.
“Thank you, M. Chapeau, thank you, Sir; but pray leave me. I shall be better tomorrow morning; that is, if I’m not dead, or killed, or worse. The blues are close behind us; ain’t they, father?”
“Get up, Annot; get up, thou little fool, and don’t trouble the man to carry thee,” said Michael. “If there be still a boat to take us, in God’s name let us cross the river; for the blues are truly in St. Florent, and after flying from them so far, it would be sore ill luck to be taken now.”
Chapeau, however, would not leave her to herself, but took her up bodily in his arms, and carrying her down to the water’s edge, put her on the raft. He and Michael soon followed, and the frail vessel was hauled for the last time over into the island. The news that the enemy was already in St. Florent soon passed from month to mouth, and each wretched emigrant congratulated himself in silence that he had so far escaped from republican revenge. Many of them had still to sojourn on the island for the night, but there they were comparatively safe; and Arthur, Chapeau, and his friends, succeeded in gaining the opposite shore.
Poor Annot was truly in a bad state. When they heard that the ladies had left Chatillon, she and her father, and, indeed, all the inhabitants of Echanbroignes, felt that they could no longer be safe in the village; and they had started off to follow the royalist army on foot through the country. From place to place they had heard tidings, sometimes of one party, and sometimes of another. The old man had borne the fatigue and dangers of the journey well; for, though now old, he had been a hard-working man all his life, and was tough and seasoned in his old age; but poor Annot had suffered dreadfully. The clothes she had brought with her were nearly falling off her back; her feet were all but bare, and were cut and blistered with walking. Grief and despair had taken the colour and roundness from her cheek, and she had lacked time on her mournful journey to comb the pretty locks of which she was generally so proud.
“Oh, Jacques, Jacques, how could you leave us! how could you go away and leave us, after all that’s been between us,” she said, as he bustled about to make some kind of bed for her in the little hut, in which they were to rest for the night.
“Leave you,” said Chapeau, who had listened for some time in silence to her upbraidings; “leave you, how could I help leaving you? Has not everybody left everybody? Did not M. Henri leave his sister, and M. de Lescure leave his wife? And though they are now here all together, it’s by chance that they came here, the same as you have come yourself. As long as these wars last, Annot dear, no man can answer as to where he will go, or what he will do.”
“Oh, these weary wars, these weary wars!” said she, “will they never be done with? Will the people never be tired of killing, and slaying, and burning each other? And what is the King the better of it? Ain’t they all dead: the King, and the Queen, and the young Princes, and all of them?”