CHAPTER VIII.
TWO HENS AND AN EGG.
M. de Tignonville was shaken by the fall, and in the usual course ofthings he would have lain where he was, and groaned. But when a manhas once turned his back on death he is apt to fancy it at hisshoulder. He has small stomach for surprises, and is in haste to setas great a distance as possible between the ugly thing and himself. Soit was with the Huguenot. Shot suddenly into the full publicity of thestreet, he knew that at any instant danger might take him by the nape;and he was on his legs and glancing up and down before the clatter ofhis fall had travelled the length of three houses.
The rabble were still a hundred paces away, piled up and pressed abouta house where men were being hunted as men hunt rats. He saw that hewas unnoted, and apprehension gave place to rage. His thoughts turnedback hissing hot to the thing that had happened, and in a paroxysm ofshame he shook his fist at the gaping casement and the sneering faceof his rival, dimly seen in the background. If a look would havekilled Tavannes--and her--it had not been wanting.
For it was not only the man M. de Tignonville hated at this moment; hehated Mademoiselle also, the unwitting agent of the other's triumph.She had thrust him from her; she had refused to be guided by him; shehad resisted, thwarted, shamed him. Then let her take theconsequences. She willed to perish: let her perish!
He did not acknowledge even to himself the real cause of offence, theproof to which she had put his courage, and the failure of thatcourage to stand the test. Yet it was this, though he had himselfprovoked the trial, which burned up his chivalry, as the smuggler'sfire burns up the dwarf heath upon the Landes. It was the discoverythat in an heroic hour he was no hero that gave force to hispassionate gesture, and next moment sent him storming down thebeetling passage to the Rue du Roule, his heart a maelstrom of fiercevows and fiercer menaces.
He had reached the further end of the alley and was on the point ofentering the street before he remembered that he had nowhere to go.His lodgings were no longer his, since his landlord knew him to be aHuguenot, and would doubtless betray him. To approach those of hisfaith whom he had frequented was to expose them to danger; and, beyondthe religion, he had few acquaintances and those of the newest. Yetthe streets were impossible. He walked them on the utmost edge ofperil; he lurked in them under the blade of an impending axe. And,whether he walked or lurked, he went at the mercy of the first comersbold enough to take his life.
The sweat stood on his brow as he paused under the low arch of thealley-end, tasting the bitter forlornness of the dog banned and setfor death in that sunlit city. In every window of the gable end whichfaced his hiding-place he fancied an eye watching his movements; inevery distant step he heard the footfall of doom coming that way tohis discovery. And while he trembled, he had to reflect, to think, toform some plan.
In the town was no place for him, and short of the open country nosafety. And how could he gain the open country? If he succeeded inreaching one of the gates--St. Antoine, or St. Denis, in itself a taskof difficulty--it would only be to find the gate closed, and the guardon the alert. At last it flashed on him that he might cross the river;and at the notion hope awoke. It was possible that the massacre hadnot extended to the southern suburb; possible, that if it had, theHuguenots who lay there--Frontenay, and Montgomery, and Chartres, withthe men of the North--might be strong enough to check it, and even toturn the tables on the Parisians.
His colour returned. He was no coward, as soldiers go; if it came tofighting he had courage enough. He could not hope to cross the riverby the bridge, for there, where the goldsmiths lived, the mob werelike to be most busy. But if he could reach the bank he might procurea boat at some deserted point, or, at the worst, he might swim across.
From the Louvre at his back came the sound of gun-shots; from everyquarter the murmur of distant crowds, or the faint lamentable cries ofvictims. But the empty street before him promised an easy passage, andhe ventured into it and passed quickly through it. He met no one, andno one molested him; but as he went he had glimpses of pale faces thatfrom behind the casements watched him come and turned to watch him go;and so heavy on his nerves was the pressure of this silent ominousattention, that he blundered at the end of the street. He should havetaken the southerly turning; instead he held on, found himself in theRue Ferronerie, and a moment later was all but in the arms of a bandof city guards, who were making a house-to-house visitation.
He owed his safety rather to the condition of the street than to hispresence of mind. The Rue Ferronerie, narrow in itself, was so chokedat this date by stalls and bulkheads, that an edict directing theremoval of those which abutted on the cemetery had been issued alittle before. Nothing had been done on it, however, and this neck ofParis, this main thoroughfare between the east and the west, betweenthe fashionable quarter of the Marais and the fashionable quarter ofthe Louvre, was still a devious huddle of sheds and pent-houses.Tignonville slid behind one of these, found that it masked the mouthof an alley, and, heedless whither the passage led, ran hurriedlyalong it. Every instant he expected to hear the hue and cry behindhim, and he did not halt or draw breath until he had left the soldiersfar in the rear, and found himself astray at the junction of fournoisome lanes, over two of which the projecting gables fairly met.Above the two others a scrap of sky appeared, but this was too smallto indicate in which direction the river lay.
Tignonville hesitated, but not for long; a burst of voices heralded anew danger, and he shrank into a doorway. Along one of the lanes atroop of children, the biggest not twelve years old, came dancing andleaping round something which they dragged by a string. Now one of thehindmost would hurl it onward with a kick, now another, amid screamsof childish laughter, tripped headlong over the cord; now at thecrossways they stopped to wrangle and question which way they shouldgo, or whose turn it was to pull and whose to follow. At last theystarted afresh with a whoop, the leader singing and all plucking thestring to the cadence of the air. Their plaything leapt and dropped,sprang forward, and lingered like a thing of life. But it was no thingof life, as Tignonville saw with a shudder when they passed him. Theobject of their sport was the naked body of a child, an infant!
His gorge rose at the sight. Fear such as he had not beforeexperienced chilled his marrow. This was hate indeed, a hate beforewhich the strong man quailed; the hate of which Mademoiselle hadspoken when she said that the babes crossed themselves, at herpassing, and the houses tottered to fall upon her!
He paused a minute to recover himself, so deeply had the sight movedhim; and as he stood, he wondered if that hate already had its coldeye fixed on him. Instinctively his gaze searched the oppositewall, but save for two small double-grated windows it was blind;time-stained and stone-built, dark with the ordure of the city lane,it seemed but the back of a house, which looked another way. The outergates of an arched doorway were open, and a loaded hay-cart, touchingeither side and brushing the arch above, blocked the passage. Hisgaze, leaving the windows, dropped to this, he scanned it a moment;and on a sudden he stiffened. Between the hay and the arch a handflickered an instant, then vanished.
Tignonville stared. At first he thought his eyes had tricked him. Thenthe hand appeared again, and this time it conveyed an unmistakableinvitation. It is not from the unknown or the hidden that the fugitivehas aught to fear, and Tignonville, after casting a glance down thelane--which revealed a single man standing with his face the otherway--slipped across and pushed between the hay and the wall. Hecoughed.
A voice whispered to him to climb up; a friendly hand clutched him inthe act, and aided him. In a second he was lying on his face, tightsqueezed between the hay and the roof of the arch. Beside him lay aman whose features his eyes, unaccustomed to the gloom, could notdiscern. But the man knew him and whispered his name.
"You know me?" Tignonville muttered in astonishment.
"I marked you, M. de Tignonville, at the preaching last Sunday," thestranger answered placidly.
"You
were there?"
"I preached."
"Then you are M. la Tribe!"
"I am," the clergyman answered quietly. "They seized me on mythreshold, but I left my cloak in their hands and fled. One tore mystocking with his point, another my doublet, but not a hair of my headwas injured. They hunted me to the end of the next street, but I livedand still live, and shall live to lift up my voice against this wickedcity."
The sympathy between the Huguenot by faith and the Huguenot bypolitics was imperfect. Tignonville, like most men of rank of theyounger generation, was a Huguenot by politics; and he was in a bitterhumour. He felt, perhaps, that it was men such as this who had driventhe other side to excesses such as these; and he hardly repressed asneer. "I wish I felt as sure!" he muttered bluntly. "You know thatall our people are dead?"
"He can save by few or by many," the preacher answered devoutly. "Weare of the few, blessed be God, and shall see Israel victorious, andour people as a flock of sheep!"
"I see small chance of it," Tignonville answered contemptuously.
"I know it as certainly as I knew before you came, M. de Tignonville,that you would come!"
"That I should come?"
"That some one would come," La Tribe answered, correcting himself. "Iknew not who it would be until you appeared and placed yourself in thedoorway over against me, even as Obadiah in the Holy Book passedbefore the hiding-place of Elijah."
The two lay on their faces side by side, the rafters of the archwaylow on their heads. Tignonville lifted himself a little, and peeredanew at the other. He fancied that La Tribe's mind, shaken by thehorrors of the morning and his narrow escape, had given way. "Yourave, man," he said. "This is no time for visions."
"I said naught of visions," the other answered.
"Then why so sure that we shall escape?"
"I am certified of it," La Tribe replied. "And more than that, I knowthat we shall lie here some days. The time has not been revealed tome, but it will be days and a day. Then we shall leave this placeunharmed, as we entered it, and, whatever betide others, we shalllive."
Tignonville shrugged his shoulders. "I tell you, you rave, M. laTribe," he said petulantly. "At any moment we may be discovered. Evennow I hear footsteps."
"They tracked me well-nigh to this place," the minister answeredplacidly.
"The deuce they did!" Tignonville muttered, with irritation. He darednot raise his voice. "I would you had told me that before I joinedyou, Monsieur, and I had found some safer hiding-place! When we arediscovered----"
"Then," the other continued calmly, "you will see."
"In any case we shall be better farther back," Tignonville retorted."Here, we are within an ace of being seen from the lane." And he beganto wriggle himself backwards.
The minister laid his hand on him. "Have a care!" he muttered. "And donot move, but listen. And you will understand. When I reached thisplace--it would be about five o'clock this morning--breathless, andexpecting each minute to be dragged forth to make my confession beforemen, I despaired as you despair now. Like Elijah under the junipertree, I said 'It is enough, O Lord! Take my soul also, for I am nobetter than my fellows!' All the sky was black before my eyes, and myears were filled with the wailings of the little ones and thelamentations of women. 'O Lord, it is enough,' I prayed. 'Take mysoul, or, if it be Thy will, then, as the angel was sent to take thecakes to Elijah, give me also a sign that I shall live.'"
For a moment he paused, struggling with overpowering emotion. Even hisimpatient listener, hitherto incredulous, caught the infection, and ina tone of awe murmured, "Yes? And then, M. la Tribe!"
"The sign was given me. The words were scarcely out of my mouth when ahen flew up, and, scratching a nest in the hay at my feet, presentlylaid an egg."
Tignonville stared. "It was timely, I admit," he said. "But it is nouncommon thing. Probably it has its nest here and lays daily."
"Young man, this is new-mown hay," the minister answered solemnly."This cart was brought here no further back than yesterday. It smellsof the meadow, and the flowers hold their colour. No, the fowl wassent. To-morrow it will return, and the next, and the next, until theplague be stayed and I go hence. But that is not all. A while later asecond hen appeared, and I thought it would lay in the same nest. Butit made a new one, on the side on which you lie and not far from yourfoot. Then I knew that I was to have a companion, and that God hadlaid also for him a table in the wilderness."
"It did lay, then?"
"It is still on the nest, beside your foot."
Tignonville was about to reply when the preacher grasped his arm andby a sign enjoined silence. He did so not a moment too soon.Preoccupied by the story, narrator and listener had paid no heed towhat was passing in the lane, and the voices of men speaking close athand took them by surprise. From the first words which reached them,it was clear that the speakers were the same who had chased La Tribeas far as the meeting of the four ways, and, losing him there, hadspent the morning in other business. Now they had returned to hunt himdown, and but for a wrangle which arose among them and detained them,they had stolen on their quarry before their coming was suspected.
"'Twas this way he ran!" "No, 'twas the other!" they contended; andtheir words, winged with vile threats and oaths, grew noisy and hot.The two listeners dared scarcely to breathe. The danger was so near,it was so certain that if the men came three paces farther, they wouldobserve and search the hay-cart, that Tignonville fancied the steelalready at his throat. He felt the hay rustle under his slightestmovement, and gripped one hand with the other to restrain the tremorof overpowering excitement. Yet when he glanced at the minister hefound him unmoved, a smile on his face. And M. de Tignonville couldhave cursed him for his folly.
For the men were coming on! An instant, and they perceived the cart,and the ruffian who had advised this route pounced on it in triumph."There! Did I not say so?" he cried. "He is curled up in that hay, forthe Satan's grub he is! That is where he is, see you!"
"Maybe," another answered grudgingly, as they gathered before it. "Andmaybe not, Simon!"
"To hell with your maybe not!" the first replied. And he drove hispike deep into the hay and turned it viciously.
The two on the top controlled themselves. Tignonville's face waslivid; of himself he would have slid down amongst them and taken hischance, preferring to die fighting, to die in the open, rather than toperish like a rat in a stack. But La Tribe had gripped his arm andheld him fast.
The man whom the others called Simon thrust again, but too low andwithout result. He was for trying a third time, when one of hiscomrades who had gone to the other side of the lane announced that themen were on the top of the hay.
"Can you see them!"
"No, but there's room and to spare."
"Oh, a curse on your room!" Simon retorted.
"Well, you can look."
"If that's all, I'll soon look!" was the answer. And the rogue,forcing himself between the hay and the side of the gateway, found thewheel of the cart, and began to raise himself on it. Tignonville, wholay on that hand, heard, though he could not see his movements. Heknew what they meant, he knew that in a twinkling he must bediscovered; and with a last prayer he gathered himself for a spring.
It seemed an age before the intruder's head appeared on a level withthe hay; and then the alarm came from another quarter. The hen whichhad made its nest at Tignonville's feet, disturbed by the movement orby the newcomer's hand, flew out with a rush and flutter as of a greatfirework. Upsetting the startled Simon, who slipped swearing to theground, it swooped scolding and clucking over the heads of the othermen, and reaching the street in safety scuttled off at speed, itsoutspread wings sweeping the earth in its rage.
They laughed uproariously as Simon emerged, rubbing his elbow."There's for you! There's your preacher!" his opponent jeered.
"D----n her! she gives tongue as fast as any of them!" gibed a second."Will you try again, Simon? You may find another love-letter there!"
"Have done!
" a third cried impatiently. "He'll not be where the henis! Let's back! Let's back! I said before that it wasn't this way heturned! He's made for the river."
"The plague in his vitals!" Simon replied furiously. "Wherever he is,I'll find him!" And reluctant to confess himself wrong, he lingered,casting vengeful glances at the hay. But one of the other men cursedhim for a fool; and presently, forced to accept his defeat or be leftalone, he rejoined his fellows. Slowly the footsteps and voicesreceded along the lane; slowly, until silence swallowed them, and onthe quivering strained senses of the two who remained behind,descended the gentle influence of twilight and the sweet scent of thenew-mown hay on which they lay.
La Tribe turned to his companion, his eyes shining. "Our soul isescaped," he murmured, "even as a bird out of the snare of the fowler.The snare is broken and we are delivered!" His voice shook as hewhispered the ancient words of triumph.
But when they came to look in the nest at Tignonville's feet there wasno egg!
Historical Romances: Under the Red Robe, Count Hannibal, A Gentleman of France Page 23