Under the Red Robe
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Stanley Weyman >> Under the Red Robe
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He went. The moment his back was turned, I slipped away, and in
a twinkling was hidden by a house. Two or three glum-looking
fellows stared at me as I passed down the street, but no one
moved; and in two minutes I was clear of the village, and in a
half-worn track which ran through the wood, and led--if my ideas
were right--to the Chateau. To discover the house and learn all
that was to be learned about its situation were my most pressing
needs; and these, even at the risk of a knife thrust, I was
determined to satisfy.
I had not gone two hundred paces along the path, however, before
I heard the tread of a horse behind me, and I had just time to
hide myself before Madame came up and rode by me, sitting her
horse gracefully, and with all the courage of a northern woman.
I watched her pass, and then, assured by her presence that I was
in the right road, I hurried after her. Two minutes walking at
speed brought me to a light wooden bridge spanning a stream. I
crossed this, and, as the wood opened, saw before me first a
wide, pleasant meadow, and beyond this a terrace. On the
terrace, pressed upon on three sides by thick woods, stood a grey
mansion, with the corner tourelles, steep, high roofs, and round
balconies, that men loved and built in the days of the first
Francis.
It was of good size, but wore a gloomy aspect. A great yew
hedge, which seemed to enclose a walk or bowling-green, hid the
ground floor of the east wing from view, while a formal rose
garden, stiff even in neglect, lay in front of the main building.
The west wing, of which the lower roofs fell gradually away to
the woods, probably contained the stables and granaries.
I stood a moment only, but I marked all, and noted how the road
reached the house, and which windows were open to attack; then I
turned and hastened back. Fortunately, I met no one between the
house and the village, and was able to enter my host's with an
air of the most complete innocence.
Short as had been my absence, however, I found things altered
there. Round the door lounged three strangers--stout, well-armed
fellows, whose bearing, as they loitered and chattered, suggested
a curious mixture of smugness and independence. Half a dozen
pack-horses stood tethered to the post in front of the house; and
the landlord's manner, from being rude and churlish only, had
grown perplexed and almost timid. One of the strangers, I soon
found, supplied him with wine; the others were travelling
merchants, who rode in the first one's company for the sake of
safety. All were substantial men from Tarbes--solid burgesses;
and I was not long in guessing that my host, fearing what might
leak out before them, and, particularly, that I might refer to
the previous night's disturbance, was on tenter-hooks while they
remained.
For a time this did not suggest anything to me. But when we had
all taken our seats for supper, there came an addition to the
party. The door opened, and the fellow whom I had seen the night
before with Madame de Cocheforet entered and took a stool by the
fire. I felt sure that he was one of the servants at the
Chateau; and in a flash his presence inspired me with the most
feasible plan for obtaining admission which I had yet hit upon.
I felt myself grow hot at the thought--it seemed so full of
promise, yet so doubtful--and, on the instant, without giving
myself time to think too much, I began to carry it into effect.
I called for two or three bottles of better wine, and, assuming a
jovial air, passed it round the table. When we had drunk a few
glasses I fell to talking, and, choosing politics, took the side
of the Languedoc party and the malcontents in so reckless a
fashion that the innkeeper was beside himself at my imprudence.
The merchants, who belonged to the class with whom the Cardinal
was always most popular, looked first astonished and then
enraged. But I was not to be checked; hints and sour looks were
lost upon me. I grew more outspoken with every glass, I drank to
the Rochellois, I swore it would not be long before they raised
their heads again; and, at last, while the innkeeper and his wife
were engaged lighting the lamp, I passed round the bottle and
called on all for a toast.
'I'll give you one to begin,' I bragged noisily. 'A gentleman's
toast! A southern toast! Here is confusion to the Cardinal, and
a health to all who hate him!'
'MON DIEU!' one of the strangers cried, springing from his seat
in a rage. 'I am not going to stomach that! Is your house a
common treason-hole,' he continued, turning furiously on the
landlord, 'that you suffer this?'
'Hoity-toity!' I answered, coolly keeping my seat. 'What is all
this? Don't you relish my toast, little man?'
'No--nor you!' he retorted hotly; 'whoever you may be!'
'Then I will give you another,' I answered, with a hiccough.
'Perhaps it will be more to your taste. Here is the Duke of
Orleans, and may he soon be King!'
CHAPTER III
THE HOUSE IN THE WOOD
Words so reckless fairly shook the three men out of their anger.
For a moment they glared at me as if they had seen a ghost. Then
the wine merchant clapped his hand on the table.
'That is enough,' he said, with a look at his companions. 'I
think that there can be no mistake about that. As damnable
treason as ever I heard whispered! I congratulate you, sir, on
your boldness. As for you,' he continued, turning with an ugly
sneer to the landlord, 'I shall know now the company you keep! I
was not aware that my wine wet whistles to such a tune!'
But if he was startled, the innkeeper was furious, seeing his
character thus taken away; and, being at no time a man of many
words, he vented his rage exactly in the way I wished, raising in
a twinkling such an uproar as can scarcely be conceived. With a
roar like a bull's, he ran headlong at the table, and overturned
it on the top of me. Fortunately the woman saved the lamp, and
fled with it into a corner, whence she and the man from the
Chateau watched the skirmish in silence; but the pewter cups and
platters flew spinning across the floor, while the table pinned
me to the ground among the ruins of my stool. Having me at this
disadvantage--for at first I made no resistance the landlord
began to belabour me with the first thing he snatched up, and
when I tried to defend myself, cursed me with each blow for a
treacherous rogue and a vagrant. Meanwhile the three merchants,
delighted with the turn things had taken, skipped round us
laughing, and now hounded him on, now bantered me with 'how is
that for the Duke of Orleans?' and 'How now, traitor?'
When I thought that this had lasted long enough--or, to speak
more plainly, when I could stand the innkeeper's drubbing no
longer--I threw him off, and struggled to my feet; but still,
though the blood was trickling down my face, I refrained from
drawing my sword. I caught up instead a leg of the stool which
lay handy, and, watching my opportunity, dealt the landlord a
shrewd blow under the ear, which laid him out in a moment on the
wreck of his own table.
'Now,' I cried, brandishing my new weapon, which fitted the hand
to a nicety, 'come on! Come on! if you dare to strike a blow,
you peddling, truckling, huckstering knaves! A fig for you and
your shaveling Cardinal!'
The red-faced wine merchant drew his sword in a one-two.
'Why, you drunken fool,' he said wrathfully, 'put that stick
down, or I will spit you like a lark!'
'Lark in your teeth!' I cried, staggering as if the wine were in
my head. 'And cuckoo, too! Another word, and I--'
He made a couple of savage passes at me, but in a twinkling his
sword flew across the room.
'VOILA!' I shouted, lurching forward, as if I had luck and not
skill to thank for my victory. 'Now, the next! Come on, come
on--you white-livered knaves!' And, pretending a drunken frenzy,
I flung my weapon bodily amongst them, and seizing the nearest,
began to wrestle with him.
In a moment they all threw themselves upon me, and, swearing
copiously, bore me back to the door. The wine merchant cried
breathlessly to the woman to open it, and in a twinkling they had
me through it, and half-way across the road. The one thing I
feared was a knife-thrust in the MELEE; but I had to run that
risk, and the men were honest, and, thinking me drunk, indulgent.
In a trice I found myself on my back in the dirt, with my head
humming; and heard the bars of the door fall noisily into their
places.
I got up and went to the door, and, to play out my part, hammered
on it frantically; crying out to them to let me in. But the
three travellers only jeered at me, and the landlord, coming to
the window, with his head bleeding, shook his fist at me, and
cursed me for a mischief-maker.
Baffled in this, I retired to a log which lay in the road a few
paces from the house, and sat down on it to await events. With
torn clothes and bleeding face, hatless and covered with dirt, I
was in little better case than my opponent. It was raining, too,
and the dripping branches swayed over my head. The wind was in
the south--the coldest quarter. I began to feel chilled and
dispirited. If my scheme failed, I had forfeited roof and bed to
no purpose, and placed future progress out of the question. It
was a critical moment.
But at last that happened for which I had been looking. The door
swung open a few inches, and a man came noiselessly out; it was
quickly barred behind him. He stood a moment, waiting on the
threshold and peering into the gloom; and seemed to expect to be
attacked. Finding himself unmolested, however, and all quiet, he
went off steadily down the street--towards the Chateau.
I let a couple of minutes go by, and then I followed. I had no
difficulty in hitting on the track at the end of the street, but
when I had once plunged into the wood, I found myself in darkness
so intense that I soon strayed from the path, and fell over
roots, and tore my clothes with thorns, and lost my temper twenty
times before I found the path again. However, I gained the
bridge at last, and thence caught sight of a light twinkling
before me. To make for it across the meadow and terrace was an
easy task; yet, when I had reached the door and had hammered upon
it, I was so worn out, and in so sorry a plight that I sank down,
and had little need to play a part, or pretend to be worse than I
was.
For a long time no one answered. The dark house towering above
me remained silent. I could hear, mingled with the throbbings of
my heart, the steady croaking of the frogs in a pond near the
stables; but no other sound. In a frenzy of impatience and
disgust, I stood up again and hammered, kicking with my heels on
the nail-studded door, and crying out desperately,--
'A MOI! A MOI!'
Then, or a moment later, I heard a remote door opened; footsteps
as of more than one person drew near. I raised my voice and
cried again,--
'A MOI!'
'Who is there?' a voice asked.
'A gentleman in distress,' I answered piteously, moving my hands
across the door. 'For God's sake open and let me in. I am hurt,
and dying of cold.'
'What brings you here?' the voice asked sharply. Despite its
tartness, I fancied that it was a woman's.
'Heaven knows!' I answered desperately. 'I cannot tell. They
maltreated me at the inn, and threw me into the street. I
crawled away, and have been wandering in the wood for hours.
Then I saw a light here.'
On that some muttering took place on the other side of the door--
to which I had my ear. It ended in the bars being lowered. The
door swung partly open, and a light shone out, dazzling me. I
tried to shade my eyes with my fingers, and, as did so, fancied I
heard a murmur of pity. But when I looked in under screen of my
hand, I saw only one person--the man who held the light, and his
aspect was so strange, so terrifying, that, shaken as I was by
fatigue, I recoiled a step.
He was a tall and very thin man, meanly dressed in a short,
scanty jacket and well-darned hose. Unable, for some reason, to
bend his neck, he carried his head with a strange stiffness.
And that head--never did living man show a face so like death.
His forehead was bald and yellow, his cheek-bones stood out under
the strained skin, all the lower part of his face fell in, his
jaws receded, his cheeks were hollow, his lips and chin were thin
and fleshless. He seemed to have only one expression--a fixed
grin.
While I stood looking at this formidable creature, he made a
quick movement to shut the door again, smiling more widely. I
had the presence of mind to thrust in my foot, and, before he
could resent the act, a voice in the background cried,--
'For shame, Clon! Stand back, stand back! do you hear? I am
afraid, Monsieur, that you are hurt.'
Those words were my welcome to that house; and, spoken at an hour
and in circumstances so gloomy, they made a lasting impression.
Round the hall ran a gallery, and this, the height of the
apartment, and the dark panelling seemed to swallow up the light.
I stood within the entrance (as it seemed to me) of a huge cave;
the skull-headed porter had the air of an ogre. Only the voice
which greeted me dispelled the illusion. I turned trembling
towards the quarter whence it came, and, shading my eyes, made
out a woman's form standing in a doorway under the gallery. A
second figure, which I took to be that of the servant I had seen
at the inn, loomed uncertainly beside her.
I bowed in silence. My teeth were chattering. I was faint
without feigning, and felt a kind of terror, hard to explain, at
the sound of this woman's voice.
'One of our people has told me about you, she continued, speaking
out of the darkness. 'I am sorry that this has happened to you
here, but I am afraid that you were indiscreet.'
'I take all the blame, Madame,' I answered humbly. 'I ask only
shelter for the night.'
'The time has not yet come when we cannot give our friends that!'
she answered with noble courtesy. 'When it does, Monsieur, we
shall be homeless ourselves.'
I shivered, looking anywhere but at her; for, if the truth be
told, I had not sufficiently pictured this scene of my arrival--I
had not foredrawn its details; and now I took part in it I felt a
miserable meanness weigh me down. I had never from the first
liked the work, but I had had no choice, and I had no choice now.
Luckily, the guise in which I came, my fatigue, and wound were a
sufficient mask, or I should have incurred suspicion at once.
For I am sure that if ever in this world a brave man wore a hang-
dog air, or Gil de Berault fell below himself, it was then and
there--on Madame de Cocheforet's threshold, with her welcome
sounding in my ears.
One, I think, did suspect me. Clon, the porter, continued to
hold the door obstinately ajar and to eye me with grinning spite,
until his mistress, with some sharpness, bade him drop the bars
and conduct me to a room.
'Do you go also, Louis,' she continued, speaking to the man
beside her, 'and see this gentleman comfortably disposed. I am
sorry,' she added, addressing me in the graceful tone she had
before used, and I thought that I could see her head bend in the
darkness, 'that our present circumstances do not permit us to
welcome you more fitly, Monsieur. But the troubles of the times
--however, you will excuse what is lacking. Until to-morrow, I
have the honour to bid you good-night.'
'Good-night, Madame,' I stammered, trembling. I had not been
able to distinguish her face in the gloom of the doorway, but her
voice, her greeting, her presence unmanned me. I was troubled
and perplexed; I had not spirit to kick a dog. I followed the
two servants from the hall without heeding how we went; nor was
it until we came to a full stop at a door in a white-washed
corridor, and it was forced upon me that something was in
question between my two conductors that I began to take notice.
Then I saw that one of them, Louis, wished to lodge me here where
we stood. The porter, on the other hand, who held the keys,
would not. He did not speak a word, nor did the other--and this
gave a queer ominous character to the debate; but he continued to
jerk his head towards the farther end of the corridor; and, at
last, he carried his point. Louis shrugged his shoulders, and
moved on, glancing askance at me; and I, not understanding the
matter in debate, followed the pair in silence.
We reached the end of the corridor, and there for an instant the
monster with the keys paused and grinned at me. Then he turned
into a narrow passage on the left, and after following it for
some paces, halted before a small, strong door. His key jarred
in the lock, but he forced it shrieking round, and with a savage
flourish threw the door open.
I walked in and saw a mean, bare chamber with barred windows.
The floor was indifferently clean, there was no furniture. The
yellow light of the lanthorn falling on the stained walls gave
the place the look of a dungeon. I turned to the two men. 'This
is not a very good room,' I said. 'And it feels damp. Have you
no other?'
Louis looked doubtfully at his companion. But the porter shook
his head stubbornly.
'Why does he not speak?' I asked with impatience.
'He is dumb,' Louis answered.
'Dumb!' I exclaimed. 'But he hears.'
'He has ears,' the servant answered drily. 'But he has no
tongue, Monsieur.'
I shuddered. 'How did he lose it?' I asked.
'At Rochelle. He was a spy, and the king's people took him the
day the town surrendered. They spared his life, but cut out his
tongue.'
'Ah!' I said. I wished to say more, to be natural, to show
myself at my ease. But the porter's eyes seemed to burn into me,
and my own tongue clave to the roof of my mouth. He opened his
lips and pointed to his throat with a horrid gesture, and I shook
my head and turned from him--'You can let me have some bedding?'
I murmured hastily, for the sake of saying something, and to
escape.
'Of course, Monsieur,' Louis answered. 'I will fetch some.'
He went away, thinking doubtless that Clon would stay with me.
But after waiting a minute the porter strode off also with the
lanthorn, leaving me to stand in the middle of the damp, dark
room and reflect on the position. It was plain that Clon
suspected me. This prison-like room, with its barred window, at
the back of the house, and in the wing farthest from the stables,
proved so much. Clearly, he was a dangerous fellow, of whom I
must beware. I had just begun to wonder how Madame could keep
such a monster in her house, when I heard his step returning. He
came in, lighting Louis, who carried a small pallet and a bundle
of coverings.
The dumb man had, besides the lanthorn, a bowl of water and a
piece of rag in his hand. He set them down, and going out again,
fetched in a stool. Then he hung up the lanthorn on a nail, took
the bowl and rag, and invited me to sit down.
I was loth to let him touch me; but he continued to stand over
me, pointing and grinning with dark persistence, and rather than
stand on a trifle I sat down at last and gave him his way. He
bathed my head carefully enough, and I daresay did it good; but
I understood. I knew that his only desire was to learn whether
the cut was real or a pretence, and I began to fear him more and
more; until he was gone from the room, I dared scarcely lift my
face lest he should read too much in it.
Alone, even, I felt uncomfortable, this seemed so sinister a
business, and so ill begun. I was in the house. But Madame's
frank voice haunted me, and the dumb man's eyes, full of
suspicion and menace. When I presently got up and tried my door,
I found it locked. The room smelt dank and close--like a vault.
I could not see through the barred window, but I could hear the
boughs sweep it in ghostly fashion; and I guessed that it looked
out where the wood grew close to the walls of the house, and that
even in the day the sun never peeped through it.
Nevertheless, tired and worn out, I slept at last. When I awoke
the room was full of grey light, the door stood open, and Louis,
looking ashamed of himself, waited by my pallet with a cup of
wine in his hand, and some bread and fruit on a platter.
'Will Monsieur be good enough to rise?' he said. 'It is eight
o'clock.'
'Willingly,' I answered tartly. 'Now that the door is unlocked.'
He turned red. 'It was an oversight,' he stammered 'Clon is
accustomed to lock the door, and he did it inadvertently,
forgetting that there was anyone--'
'Inside,' I said drily.
'Precisely, Monsieur.'
'Ah!' I replied. 'Well, I do not think the oversight would
please Madame de Cocheforet if she heard of it?'
'If Monsieur would have the kindness not to--'
'Mention it, my good fellow?' answered, looking at him with
meaning as I rose. 'No. But it must not occur again.'
I saw that this man was not like Clon. He had the instincts of
the family servant, and freed from the influences of fear and
darkness felt ashamed of his conduct. While he arranged my
clothes, he looked round the room with an air of distaste, and
muttered once or twice that the furniture of the principal
chambers was packed away.
'M. de Cocheforet is abroad, I think?' I said as I dressed.
'And likely to remain there,' the man answered carelessly,
shrugging his shoulders. 'Monsieur will doubtless have heard
that he is in trouble. In the meantime, the house is TRISTE, and
Monsieur must overlook much, if he stays. Madame lives retired,
and the roads are ill-made and visitors few.'
'When the lion was ill the jackals left him,' I said.
Louis nodded. 'It is true,' he answered simply. He made no
boast or brag on his own account, I noticed; and it came home to
me that he was a faithful fellow, such as I love. I questioned
him discreetly, and learned that he and Clon and an older man who
lived over the stables were the only male servants left of a
great household. Madame, her sister-in-law, and three women
completed the family.
It took me some time to repair my wardrobe, so that I daresay it
was nearly ten when I left my dismal little room. I found Louis
waiting in the corridor, and he told me that Madame de Cocheforet
and Mademoiselle were in the rose garden, and would be pleased to
receive me. I nodded, and he guided me through several dim
passages to a parlour with an open door, through which the sun
shone gaily on the floor. Cheered by the morning air and this
sudden change to pleasantness and life, I stepped lightly out.
The two ladies were walking up and down a wide path which
bisected the garden. The weeds grew rankly in the gravel
underfoot, the rose bushes which bordered the walk thrust their
branches here and there in untrained freedom, a dark yew hedge
which formed the background bristled with rough shoots and sadly
needed trimming. But I did not see any of these things. The
grace, the noble air, the distinction of the two women who paced
slowly to meet me--and who shared all these qualities, greatly as
they differed in others--left me no power to notice trifles.
Mademoiselle was a head shorter than her BELLE-SOEUR--a slender
woman and petite, with a beautiful face and a fair complexion; a
woman wholly womanly. She walked with dignity, but beside
Madame's stately figure she had an air almost childish. And it
was characteristic of the two that Mademoiselle as they drew near
to me regarded me with sorrowful attention, Madame with a grave
smile.
I bowed low. They returned the salute. 'This is my sister,'
Madame de Cocheforet said, with a very slight air of
condescension, 'Will you please to tell me your name, Monsieur?'
'I am M. de Barthe, a gentleman of Normandy,' I said, taking on
impulse the name of my mother. My own, by a possibility, might
be known.
Madame's face wore a puzzled look. 'I do not know that name, I
think,' she said thoughtfully. Doubtless she was going over in
her mind all the names with which conspiracy had made her
familiar.
That is my misfortune, Madame,' I said humbly.
'Nevertheless I am going to scold you,' she rejoined, still
eyeing me with some keenness. 'I am glad to see that you are
none the worse for your adventure--but others may be. And you
should have borne that in mind, sir.'
'I do not think that I hurt the man seriously,' I stammered.
'I do not refer to that,' she answered coldly. 'You know, or
should know, that we are in disgrace here; that the Government
regards us already with an evil eye, and that a very small thing
would lead them to garrison the village, and perhaps oust us from
the little the wars have left us. You should have known this,
and considered it,' she continued. 'Whereas--I do not say that
you are a braggart, M. de Barthe. But on this one occasion you
seem to have played the part of one.'
'Madame, I did not think,' I stammered.
'Want of thought causes much evil,' she answered, smiling.
'However, I have spoken, and we trust that while you stay with us
you will be more careful. For the rest, Monsieur,' she continued
graciously, raising her hand to prevent me speaking, 'we do not
know why you are here, or what plans you are pursuing. And we do
not wish to know. It is enough that you are of our side. This
house is at your service as long as you please to use it. And if
we can aid you in any other way we will do so.'
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