It was our design to skirt, at a reasonable distance, the east walls of the city, and to strike at Pantin, going by way of Gentilly and Bercy—the road to Meaux. Thence we would make, by a north-westerly course, the Amiens highway; and so, with full hearts and purses tight-belted for their hunger, for the pathetically distant sea.
And all this we did, though not as we had foreseen. We toiled onwards in the dark throughout that first sweet night of liberty. For seven hours we tramped without resting; and then, ten miles north of the walls, we lay down under the lee of a skilling, and, rolled in one another’s arms, slept for four hours like moles.
* * * * * * *
I woke to the prick of rain upon my face. Before my half-conscious eyes a hectic spot faded and went wan in a grey miasma like death. It was the sun—the cheek of the virgin day, grown chill in a premature decline.
I sat up. From the south-west, like the breath of the fatal city pursuing us, a melancholy draft of cloud flowed and spread itself, making for the northern horizon. It wreathed in driving swirls and ripples, as if it were the very surface of a stream that ran above us; and, indeed almost before we were moved to a full wakefulness, we were as sopt as though we lay under water.
A swampy day it was to be. The drops soon fell so thickly that heaven seemed shut from us by a skylight of blurred glass. The interval from cloud to earth was like a glaze upon the superficies of a fire-baked sphere. The starved clammy fields shone livid; the highway ran, literally; the poplars that skirted it were mere leafy piles in a lagoon. Then the wind rose, shouldering us forward and bombarding us from the rear in recurrent volleys, till I, at least, felt like a fugitive saurian escaping from the Deluge with my wet tail between my legs.
I looked at my comrade, the delicate gallant lady. Her hair was whipped about her face, her skirt about her ankles. The red cap on her head, with which Gusman had provided her, hung over like the comb of a vanquished cockerel. She was not vanquished, however. Her white teeth clicked a little with the cold; but when she became conscious of my gaze, she returned it with an ardour of the sweetest drollery.
“Enfin, mon p’tit Thibaut,” she said; “I prefer Liberty in her chilly moods, though she make a noyade of us.”
“It is almost come to that. With a brave effort, it seems, we might rise to the clouds by our own buoyancy. Take a long breath, Carinne. Canst thou swim?”
She laughed and stopped a moment, and took me by the hands.