“No, it is the breaking of a spell, please God!” said he, recovering himself. “I will go and find this lady on the lande. It may be that . . . that she will not return to you, Mère Salaun.”
He took Zéphyr by the bridle, and went back on to the heather. But, once out of sight, he drew a long shuddering breath, and throwing his arm over Zéphyr’s crest, pressed his forehead against the warm satin of his neck, and so remained for a while.
And Zéphyr, convinced by now that the master he knew had returned to him, put his head round and lipped at his shoulder. Then he cocked his little ears and listened. Far away, the beat of another horse’s hoofs was audible on the highroad. His rider gave no sign of having heard it, but in a moment or two took the bridle again and went forward towards the Allée des Vieilles.
CHAPTER XI
AMONG THE WATCHERS
(1)
Versailles, Dreux, Alençon, Rennes, Pontivy—like beads on a chaplet they had slid past Valentine de Trélan, like locks on a smooth river or canal, opened for her by that bit of paper in Barras’ handwriting. She was herself amazed by the ease of her journey, that journey which was really a flight, hardly realising how much things were changed from the days, for instance, of the Terror, and how many people travelled comfortably now-a-days and contrived to elude showing their passports if they were out of date. And she had in her possession something much more potent than a mere passport. Whether she were taken for a political power, or for one of the many ladies in whom the raffish Director was interested—or for a combination of both, like Mme Tallien—Valentine neither knew nor cared; at any rate whenever she produced the laissez passer she was shown deference—till she got into the country districts of that land of the leal, farther Brittany. Here the municipalities indeed were Republican, but at one or two small places where she had to halt Barras’ signature commanded anything but reverence, though it had to be obeyed. Twice she distinctly heard the word “spy” whispered of her.
But once she had passed Scaër and was in full Finistère it was better, for here she could use the private directions which the Abbé had given her. And it was by the employment of these that she finally arrived, without mishap, at the Ferme des Vieilles, to which the Abbé had directed her.
The little old farmhouse by the roadside looked at her cunningly and rather inhospitably, she thought, from its tiny peering windows. Beyond it was a wide stretch of moorland with heather, and, in one place, long strange rows of upright stones. She descended from the farmer’s hooded cart by which she had replaced the diligence at her last stopping-place and knocked at the open half-door. Inside, a beautiful, grave and dirty little girl of six or so, dressed in all respects like a grown woman of the sixteenth century, stuck a finger in her mouth and stared at her.
“Mignonne,” said Valentine, stooping over the half-door “Ema ar bleun er balan—the broom is in flower.”