“Mademoiselle,” he called softly, “will you do me the favour to alight for an instant? I must speak to you.”
“Can you not say what you have to say where you are?” came the Marquise’s voice.
“No, Madame,” answered La Boulaye coldly, “I cannot.”
“Oh, it is ‘Madame’ and ‘Mademoiselle’ now, eh? What have you done to the man, child, to have earned us so much deference.”
“May I remind Mademoiselle,” put in La Boulaye firmly, “that time presses, and that there is much to be done?”
“I am here, Monsieur” she answered, as without more ado, and heedless of her mother’s fresh remarks, she stepped from the carriage.
La Boulaye proffered his wrist to assist her to alight, then reclosed the door, and led her slowly towards the stable.
“Where are the soldiers?” she whispered.
“Every soul in the inn is asleep,” he answered. “I have drugged them all, from the Captain down to the hostess. The only one left is the ostler, who is sleeping in one of the outhouses here. Him you must take with you, not only because it is not possible to drug him as well, but also because the blame of your escape must rest on someone, and it may as well rest on him as another.”
“But why not on you?” she asked.
“Because I must remain.”
“Ah!” It was no more than a breath of interrogation, and her face was turned towards him as she awaited an explanation.
“I have given it much thought, Suzanne, and unless someone remains to cover, as it were, your retreat, I am afraid that your flight might be vain, and that you would run an overwhelming risk of recapture. You must remember the resourcefulness of this fellow, Tardivet, and his power in the country here. If he were to awake to the discovery that I had duped him, he would be up and after us, and I make little doubt that it would not be long ere he found the scent and ran us to earth. Tomorrow I shall discover your flight and the villainy of the ostler, and I shall so organise the pursuit that you shall not be overtaken.”
There was a moment’s pause, during which La Boulaye seemed to expect some question. But none came, so he proceeded:
“Your original intention was to make for Prussia, where you say that your father and your brother are awaiting you.”
“Yes, Monsieur. Beyond the Moselle — at Treves.”
“You must alter your plans,” said he shortly. “Your mother, no doubt, will insist upon repairing thither, and I will see that the road is left open for her escape. At Soignies you, Suzanne, can hire yourself a berline, that will take you back to France.”
“Back to France?” she echoed.
“Yes, back to France. That is the unlikeliest road on which to think of pursuing you, and thus you will baffle Charlot. Let your mother proceed on her journey to Prussia, but tell her to avoid Charleroi, and to go round by Liege. Thus only can she hope to escape Tardivet’s men that are patrolling the road from France. As for you, Suzanne, you had best go North as far as Oudenarde, so as to circumvent the Captain’s brigands on that side. Then make straight for Roubaix, and await me at the ‘Hotel des Cloches.’”
“But, Monsieur, I shudder at the very thought of re-entering France.”
“As Mademoiselle de Bellecour, a proscribed aristocrat, that is every reason for your fears. But I have given the matter thought and I can promise you that as the Citoyenne La Boulaye, wife of the Citizen-deputy Caron La Boulaye, you will be as safe as I should be myself, if you are questioned, and, in response, you will find nothing but eagerness to serve you on every hand.”
She spoke now of the difficulties her mother would make, but he dismissed the matter by reminding her that her mother could not detain her by force. Again she alluded to her dowry, but that also he dismissed, bidding her leave it behind. Her family would need the money, to be realised by the jewels. As for herself, he assured her that as his wife she would not want, and showed her how idle was her dread of living in France.
“And now, Mademoiselle,” he said, more briskly, “let us see to this ostler.”
He opened the door of the outhouse, and uncovering his lantern he raised it above his head. Its yellow light revealed to them a sleeper on the straw in a corner. La Boulaye entered and stirred the man with his foot.
The fellow sat up blinking stupidly and dragging odd wisps of straw from his grey hair.
“What’s amiss?” he grunted.
As briefly as might be La Boulaye informed him that he was to receive a matter of five hundred francs if he would journey into Prussia with the ci-devant Marquise de Bellecour.
Five hundred francs? It was a vast sum, the tenth of which had never been his at any one time of his wretched life. For five hundred francs he would have journeyed into Hades, and La Boulaye found him willing enough to go to Prussia, and had no need to resort to the more forcible measures he had come prepared to employ.
Accompanied by the ostler, they now passed to the stables, and when La Boulaye had unlocked the door and cut the bonds that pinioned the Marquis’s coachman, they got the horses, and together they harnessed them as quietly as might be.
Then working with infinite precaution, and as little sound as possible, they brought them out into the yard and set them in the shafts of the carriage. The rest was easy work, and a quarter of an hour later the heavy vehicle rumbled through the porte-cochere and started on its way to Soignies.
La Boulaye dropped the keys into a bucket and went within. In the common-room nothing had changed, and the men lay about precisely as he had left them. Reassured, he went above and took a peep at the Captain, whom he found snoring lustily.
Satisfied that all was well, Caron passed quietly to his own chamber, and with an elation of soul such as had never been his since boyhood, he fell asleep amid visions of Suzanne and the new life he was to enter upon in her sweet company.
CHAPTER XII. THE AWAKENING
La Boulaye awakened betimes next morning. It may be that the matter on his mind and the business that was toward aroused him; certainly it was none of the sounds that are common to an inn at early morn, for the place was as silent as a tomb.
Some seconds he remained on his back, staring at the whitewashed ceiling and listening to the patter of the rain against his window. Then, as his mind gathered up the threads of recollection, he leapt from his bed and made haste to assume a garment or two.
He stood a moment at his casement, looking out into the empty courtyard. From a leaden sky the rain was descending in sheets, and the gargoyle at the end of the eaves overhead was discharging a steady column of water into the yard. Caron shivered with the cold of that gloomy February morning, and turned away from the window. A few moments later he was in Tardivet’s bedchamber, vigorously shaking the sleeping Captain.
“Up, Charlot! Awake!” he roared in the man’s ear.
“What o’clock?” he asked with a yawn. Then a sudden groan escaped him, and he put his hand to his head. “Thousand devils!” he swore, “what a headache!”
But La Boulaye was not there on any mission of sympathy, nor did he waste words in conveying his news.
“The coach is gone,” he announced emphatically.
“Coach? What coach?” asked the Captain, knitting his brows.
“What coach?” echoed La Boulaye testily. “How many coaches were there? Why, the Bellecour coach; the coach with the treasure.”
At that Charlot grew very wide-awake. He forgot his headache and his interest in the time of day.
“Gone?” he bellowed. “How gone? Pardieu, it is not possible!”
“Look for yourself,” was La Boulaye’s answer as he waved his hand in the direction of the window. “I don’t know what manner of watch your men can have kept that such a thing should have come about. Probably, knowing you ill a-bed, they abused the occasion by getting drunk, and probably they are still sleeping it off. The place is silent enough.”
But Tardivet scarcely heard him. From his window he was staring into the yard below, too thunderstruc
k by its emptiness to even have recourse to profanity. Stable door and porte-cochere alike stood open. He turned suddenly and made for his coat. Seizing it, he thrust his hand in one pocket after another. At last:
“Treachery!” he cried, and letting the garment fall to the ground, he turned upon La Boulaye a face so transfigured by anger that it looked little like the usually good-humoured countenance of Captain Tardivet “My keys have been stolen. By St. Guillotine, I’ll have the thief hanged.”
“Did anybody know that the keys were in your pocket?” asked the ingenuous Caron.
“I told you last night.”
“Yes, yes; I remember that. But did anybody else know?”
“The ostler knew. He saw me lock the doors.”
“Why, then, let us find the ostler,” urged Caron. “Put on some clothes and we will go below.”
Mechanically Charlot obeyed him, and as he did so he gave his feelings vent at last. From between set teeth came now a flow of oaths and imprecations as steady as the flow of water from the gargoyle overhead.
At last they hastened down the stairs together, and in the common-room they found the sleeping company much as La Boulaye had left it the night before. In an access of rage at what he saw, and at the ample evidences of the debauch that had reduced them to this condition, Charlot began by kicking the chair from under Mother Capoulade. The noise of her fall and the scream with which she awoke served to arouse one or two others, who lifted their heads to gaze stupidly about them.
But Charlot was busy stirring the other slumberers. He had found a whip, and with this he was now laying vigorously about him.
“Up, you swine!” he blazed at them. “Afoot, you drunken scum!”
His whip cracked, and his imprecations rang high and lurid. And La Boulaye assisted him in his labours with kicks and cuffs and a tongue no less vituperative.
At last they were on their feet — a pale, bewildered, shamefaced company — receiving from the infuriated Charlot the news that whilst they had indulged themselves in their drunken slumbers their prisoners had escaped and carried off the treasure with them. The news was received with a groan of dismay, and several turned to the door to ascertain for themselves whether it was indeed exact. The dreary emptiness of the rain-washed yard afforded them more than ample confirmation.
“Where is your pig of an ostler, Mother Capoulade?” demanded the angry Captain.
Quivering with terror, she answered him that the rascal should be in the shed by the stables, where it was his wont to sleep. Out into the rain, despite the scantiness of his attire, went Charlot, followed closely by La Boulaye and one or two stragglers. The shed proved empty, as Caron could have told him — and so, too, did the stables. Here, at the spot where Madame de Bellecour’s coachman had been left bound, the Captain turned to La Boulaye and those others that had followed him.
“It is the ostler’s work,” he announced. “There was knavery and treachery writ large upon his ugly face. I always felt it, and this business proves how correct were my instincts. The rogue was bribed when he discovered how things were with you, you greasy sots. But you, La Boulaye,” he cried suddenly, “were you drunk, too?”
“Not I,” answered the Deputy.
“Then, name of a name, how came that lumbering coach to leave the yard without awakening you?”
“You ask me to explain too much,” was La Boulaye’s cool evasion. “I have always accounted myself a light sleeper, and I could not have believed that such a thing could really have taken place without disturbing me. But the fact remains that the coach has gone, and I think that instead of standing here in idle speculation as to how it went, you might find more profitable employment in considering how it is to brought back again. It cannot have gone very far.”
If any ray of suspicion had begun to glimmer in Charlot’s brain, that suggestion of La Boulaye’s was enough to utterly extinguish it.
They returned indoors, and without more ado Tardivet set himself to plan the pursuit. He knew, he announced, that Prussia was their destination. He had discovered it at the time of their capture from certain papers that he had found in a portmanteau of the Marquise’s. He discussed the matter with La Boulaye, and it was now that Caron had occasion to congratulate himself upon his wisdom in having elected to remain behind.
The Captain proposed to recall the fifty men that were watching the roads from France, and to spread them along the River Sambre, as far as Liege, to seek information of the way taken by the fugitives. As soon as any one of the parties struck the trail it was to send word to the others, and start immediately in pursuit.
Now, had Charlot been permitted to spread such a net as this, the Marquise must inevitably fall into it, and Caron had pledged his word that she should have an open road to Prussia. With a map spread upon the table he now expounded to the Captain how little necessity there was for so elaborate a scheme. The nearest way to Prussia was by Charleroi, Dinant, and Rochefort, into Luxembourg, and — he contended — it was not only unlikely, but incredible, that the Marquise should choose any but the shortest road to carry her out of Belgium, seeing the dangers that must beset her until the frontiers of Luxembourg were passed.
“And so,” argued La Boulaye, “why waste time in recalling your men? Think of the captives you might miss by such an act! It were infinitely better advised to assume that the fugitives have taken the Charleroi-Dinant road, and to despatch, at once, say, half-a-dozen men in pursuit.”
Tardivet pondered the matter for some moments.
“Yom are right,” he agreed at last. “If they have resolved to continue their journey, a half-dozen men should suffice to recapture them. I will despatch these at once...”
La Boulaye looked up at that.
“If they have resolved to continue their journey?” he echoed. “What else should they have resolved?”
Tardivet stroked his reddish hair and smiled astutely.
“In organising a pursuit,” said he, “the wise pursuer will always put himself in the place of the fugitives, and seek to reason as they would probably reason. Now, what more likely than that these ladies, or their coachman, or that rascally ostler, should have thought of doubling back into France? They might naturally argue that we; should never think of pursuing them in that direction. Similarly placed, that is how I should reason, and that is the course I should adopt, making for Prussia through Lorraine. Perhaps I do their intelligences too much honour — yet, to me, it seems such an obvious course.”’
La Boulaye grew cold with apprehension. Yet impassively he asked:
“But what of your men who are guarding the frontiers?”
“Pooh! A detour might circumvent them. The Marquise might go as far north as Roubaix or Comines, or as fair south as Rocroy, or even Charlemont. Name of a name, but it is more than likely!” he exclaimed, with sudden conviction. “What do you say, Caron?”
“That you rave,” answered La Boulaye coldly.
“Well, we shall see. I will despatch a message to my men, bidding them spread themselves as far north as Comiines and as far south as Charlemont. Should the fugitives have made such a detour as I suggested there will be ample time to take them.”
La Boulaye still contemned the notion with a fine show of indifference, but Tardivet held to his purpose, and presently despatched the messengers as he had proposed. At that Caron felt his pulses quickening with anxiety for Mademoiselle. These astute measures must inevitably result im her capture — for was it not at Roubaix that he had bidden her await him? There was but one thing to be done, to ride out himself to meet her along the road from Soignies to Oudenarde, and to escort her into France. She should go ostensibly as his prisoner, and he was confident that not all the brigands of Captain Tardivet would suffice to take her from him.
Accordingly, he announced his intention of resuming his interrupted journey, and ordered his men to saddle and make ready. Meanwhile, having taken measures to recapture the Marquise should she have doubled back into France, Charlot was now or
ganising an expedition to scour the road to Prussia, against the possibility of her having adhered to her original intention of journeying that way. Thus he was determined to take no risks, and leave her no loophole of escape.
Tardivet would have set himself at the head of the six horsemen of this expedition, but that La Boulaye interfered, and this time to some purpose. He assured the Captain that he was still far from recovered, and that to spend a day in the saddle might have the gravest of consequences for him.
“If the occasion demanded it,” he concluded, “I should myself urge you to chance the matter of your health. But the occasion does not. The business is of the simplest, and your men can do as much without you as they could with you.”
Tardivet permitted himself to be persuaded, and Caron had again good cause to congratulate himself that he had remained behind to influence him. He opined that the men, failing to pick up the trail at Charleroi, would probably go on as far as Dinant before abandoning the chase; then they would return to Boisvert to announce their failure, and by that time it would be too late to reorganise the pursuit. On the other hand, had Tardivet accompanied them, upon failing to find any trace of the Marquise at Charleroi, La Boulaye could imagine him pushing north along the Sambre, and pressing the peasantry into his service to form an impassable cordon.
And so, having won his way in this at least, and seen the six men set out under the command of Tardivet’s trusted Guyot, Caron took his leave of the Captain. He was on the very point of setting out when a courier dashed up to the door of the “Eagle,” and called for a cup of wine. As it was brought him he asked the hostess whether the Citizen-deputy La Boulaye, Commissioner to the army of Dumouriez, had passed that way. Upon being informed that the Deputy was even then within the inn, the courier got down from his horse and demanded to be taken to him.
The hostess led him into the common-room, and pointed out the Deputy. The courier heaved a sigh of relief, and removing his sodden cloak he bade the landlady get it dried and prepare him as stout a meal as her hostelry afforded.
Collected Works of Rafael Sabatini Page 74