"Objection? No. But it is ten miles."
"A long stretch," she said with a half sigh, "but I am young, strong, and excitement counts for something: besides, there is no remedy. We must consider them."
There had been about fifteen other persons on the train. A dozen of these, finding we were going to walk back to Paris, proposed to join us. The night was growing dark, and we pushed on. There was no woman afoot but Hermione. "Madame" they called her, evidently taking her for my wife, but by no word or smile did she notice the blunder. After a while she accepted my arm, drawing up her skirts by means of loops or pins. We had one lantern among us, and from time to time its glare permitted me to see her dainty feet growing heavy with mud and travel.
It was not what could be called a lovers' walk, tramping in the dark through mud and water, on a French country road, at a cart's tail, and hardly a word was exchanged between us; yet had it not been for fears about her safety it would have been the most delightful expedition I had ever known.
From time to time Mrs. Leare and the old nurse in the cart complained of their bones. Hermione was always ready with encouragement, but she said little else to any one. She appeared to be reserving all her energies to assist her physical endurance and to strengthen her for her task of taking care of the others.
I had always seen my sisters and other girls protected, sheltered, cared for: it gave me a sharp pang to see this beautiful and dainty creature totally unthought of by those dependent on her. Nor did Mrs. Leare seem to feel any anxiety about my comradeship with her daughter. I could fully appreciate Hermione's remark about her chaperonage being very unsatisfactory.
Every now and then we passed through villages along whose straggling streets the population was aswarm, eager for news and wondering at our muddy procession. In one of the villages I suggested stopping, but Mrs. Leare was now as frantic to get home again as she had been to get away. She said, and truly, that it had been a wild plan to start from Paris—that if she had seen me and had heard that I thought the émeute was at an end and that the report about the English was untrue, she should never have left her apartment. She had been frightened out of her senses by some men en blouse who had made their way into her rooms and had carried off her pistol and a little Turkish dagger. Victor's theft of his own wages had upset her. She had insisted upon setting out. Hermione had got post-horses somehow: Hermione ought never to have let her come away.
About three in the morning we reached a larger village than we had hitherto passed. The inhabitants had been apprised of the events in the Rue Neuve des Capucines before the ministry of the Affaires Étrangères, and the revolutionary element had increased in audacity. A crowd of turbulent-looking working-men dressed in blouses, armed with muskets, old sabres and all kinds of miscellaneous weapons, stopped our way. Some seized the head of the old horse, some gathered round the cart and lifted lanterns into the faces of the ladies. The French workman is a much more athletic man than the French soldier. I own to a sensation of deadly terror for a moment when I saw the ladies in the midst of a lawless rabble whose brawny arms were bared as if prepared for butchery of any kind. Far off, too, a low rattle of distant musketry warned us that the tumult in Paris was renewed.
"Mourir pour la Patrie" appeared to come from every throat, and many of the crowd were the worse for liquor. Indeed, these patriots had rendezvoused at a cabaret at the entrance of the village, and swarmed from its tables to intercept us. The ladies, they insisted, must alight and be examined. Mammy Chris was drawn out of the cart, looking as if her face had been rubbed in ashes: Mrs. Leare was nervously excited, Hermione went up to her, supported her and drew her bag of diamonds out of her hand. I took Claribel in my arms.
"Vos passeports," they demanded.