“We must say that we are cider merchants, that is all,” observed Dormer Colville, when they crossed the river, which has always been the great divider of France.
“He is sobering down. I believe he will become serious,” wrote he to the Marquis de Gemosac. But he took care to leave Loo Barebone as free as possible.
“I am, in a way, a compulsory pilot,” he explained, airily, to his companion. “The ship is yours, and you probably know more about the shoals than I do. You must have felt that a hundred times when you were at sea with that solemn old sailor, Captain Clubbe. And yet, before you could get into port, you found yourself forced to take the compulsory pilot on board and make him welcome with such grace as you could command, feeling all the while that he did not want to come and you could have done as well without him. So you must put up with my company as gracefully as you can, remembering that you can drop me as soon as you are in port.”
And surely, none other could have occupied an uncomfortable position so gracefully.
Barebone found that he had not much to do. He soon accommodated himself to a position which required nothing more active than a ready ear and a gracious patience. For, day by day—almost hour by hour—it was his lot to listen to protestations of loyalty to a cause which smouldered none the less hotly because it was hidden from the sight of the Prince President’s spies.
And, as Colville had predicted, Barebone sobered down. He would ride now, hour after hour, in silence, whereas at the beginning of the journey he had talked gaily enough, seeing a hundred humorous incidents in the passing events of the day; laughing at the recollection of an interview with some provincial notable who had fallen behind the times, or jesting readily enough with such as showed a turn for joking on the road.
But now the unreality of his singular change of fortune was vanishing. Every village priest who came after dark to take a glass of wine with them at their inn sent it farther into the past, every provincial noble greeting him on the step of his remote and quiet house added a note to the drumming reality which dominated his waking moments and disturbed his sleep at night.
Day by day they rode on, passing through two or three villages between such halts as were needed by the horses. At every hamlet, in the large villages, where they rested and had their food, at the remote little town where they passed a night, there was always some one expecting them, who came and talked of the weather and more or less skilfully brought in the numeral nineteen. “Nineteen! Nineteen!” It was a watchword all over France.
Long before, on the banks of the Dordogne, Loo had asked his companion why that word had been selected—what it meant.
“It means Louis XIX,” replied Dormer Colville, gravely.