Under the Red Robe
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Stanley Weyman >> Under the Red Robe
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For some time I stood in ambush watching her, and with each
minute I grew more impatient. At last I began to doubt--to have
strange thoughts. The green walls were growing dark. The sun
was sinking; a sharp, white peak, miles and miles away, which
closed the vista of the ride, began to flush and colour rosily.
Finally, but not before I had had leisure to grow uneasy, she
stood up and walked on more slowly. I waited, as usual, until
the next turning hid her. Then I hastened after her, and, warily
passing round the corner came face to face with her!
I knew all in a moment saw all in a flash: that she had fooled
me, tricked me, lured me away. Her face was white with scorn,
her eyes blazed; her figure, as she confronted me, trembled with
anger and infinite contempt.
'You spy!' she cried. 'You hound! You--gentleman! Oh, MON
DIEU! if you are one of us--if you are really not of the
CANAILLE--we shall pay for this some day! We shall pay a heavy
reckoning in the time to come! I did not think,' she continued,
and her every syllable was like the lash of a whip, 'that there
was anything so vile as you in this world!'
I stammered something--I do not know what. Her words burned into
me--into my heart! Had she been a man, I would have struck her
dead!
'You thought that you deceived me yesterday,' she continued,
lowering her tone, but with no lessening of the passion, the
contempt, the indignation, which curled her lip and gave fullness
to her voice. 'You plotter! You surface trickster! You thought
it an easy task to delude a woman--you find yourself deluded.
God give you shame that you may suffer!' she continued
mercilessly. 'You talked of Clon, but Clon beside you is the
most spotless, the most honourable of men!'
'Madame,' I said hoarsely--and I know that my face was grey as
ashes--'let us understand one another.'
'God forbid!' she cried on the instant. 'I would not soil
myself!'
'Fie! Madame,' I said, trembling. But then, you are a woman.
That should cost a man his life!'
She laughed bitterly.
'You say well,' she retorted. 'I am not a man--and if you are
one, thank God for it. Neither am I Madame. Madame de
Cocheforet has spent this afternoon--thanks to your absence and
your imbecility--with her husband. Yes, I hope that hurts you!'
she went on, savagely snapping her little white teeth together.
'I hope that stings you; to spy and do vile work, and do it ill,
Monsieur Mouchard--Monsieur de Mouchard, I should say--I
congratulate you!'
'You are not Madame de Cocheforet?' I cried, stunned, even in
the midst of my shame and rage, by this blow.
'No, Monsieur!' she answered grimly. 'I am not! I am not. And
permit me to point out--for we do not all lie easily--that I
never said I was. You deceived yourself so skilfully that we had
no need to trick you.'
'Mademoiselle, then?' I muttered.
'Is Madame!' she cried. 'Yes, and I am Mademoiselle de
Cocheforet. And in that character, and in all others, I beg from
this moment to close our acquaintance, sir. When we meet again
--if we ever do meet, which God forbid!' she went on, her eyes
sparkling--'do not presume to speak to me, or I will have you
flogged by the grooms. And do not stain our roof by sleeping
under it again. You may lie to-night in the inn. It shall not
be said that Cocheforet,' she continued proudly, 'returned even
treachery with inhospitality; and I will give orders to that end.
But to-morrow begone back to your master, like the whipped cur
you are! Spy and coward!'
With those last words she moved away. I would have said
something, I could almost have found it in my heart to stop her
and make her hear. Nay, I had dreadful thoughts; for I was the
stronger, and I might have done with her as I pleased. But she
swept by me so fearlessly, as I might pass some loathsome cripple
on the road, that I stood turned to stone. Without looking at
me, without turning her head to see whether I followed or
remained, or what I did, she went steadily down the track until
the trees and the shadow and the growing darkness hid her grey
figure from me; and I found myself alone.
CHAPTER V
REVENGE
And full of black rage! Had she only reproached me, or,
turning on me in the hour of MY victory, said all that
she had now said in the moment of her own, I could have
borne it. She might have shamed me then, and I might
have taken the shame to myself and forgiven her. But,
as it was, I stood there in the gathering dusk, between
the darkening hedges, baffled, tricked, defeated! And
by a woman! She had pitted her wits against mine, her
woman's will against my experience, and she had come off
the victor. And then she had reviled me! As I took it
all in, and began to comprehend also the more remote
results, and how completely her move had made further
progress on my part impossible, I hated her. She had
tricked me with her gracious ways and her slow-coming
smile. And, after all--for what she had said--it was
this man's life or mine. 'What had I done that another
man would not do? MON DIEU! in the future there was
nothing I would not do. I would make her smart for
those words of hers! I would bring her to her knees!
Still, hot as I was, an hour might have restored me to
coolness. But when I started to return, I fell into a
fresh rage, for I remembered that I did not know my way
out of the maze of rides and paths into which she had
drawn me; and this and the mishaps which followed, kept
my rage hot. For a full hour I wandered in the wood,
unable, though I knew where the village lay, to find any
track which led continuously in one direction.
Whenever, at the end of each attempt, the thicket
brought me up short, I fancied that I heard her laughing
on the farther side of the brake; and the ignominy of
this chance punishment, and the check which the
confinement placed on my rage, almost maddened me. In
the darkness I fell, and rose cursing; I tore my hands
with thorns; I stained my suit, which had suffered sadly
once before. At length, when I had almost resigned
myself to lie in the wood, I caught sight of the lights
of the village, and, trembling between haste and anger,
pressed towards them. In a few minutes I stood in the
little street.
The lights of the inn shone only fifty yards away; but
before I could show myself even there pride suggested
that I should do something to repair my clothes. I
stopped, and scraped and brushed them; and, at the same
time, did what I could to compose my features. Then I
advanced to the door and knocked. Almost on the instant
the landlord's voice cried from the inside, 'Enter,
Monsieur!'
I raised the latch and went in. The man was alone,
squatting over the fire warming his hands. A black pot
simmered on the ashes, As I entered he raised the lid
and peeped inside. Then he glanced over his shoulder.
'You expected me?' I said defiantly, walking to the
hearth, and setting one of my damp boots on the logs.
'Yes,' he answered, nodding curtly. 'Your supper is
just ready. I thought that you would be in about this
time.'
He grinned as he spoke, and it was with difficulty I
suppressed my wrath.
'Mademoiselle de Cocheforet told you,' I said, affecting
indifference, 'where I was?'
'Ay, Mademoiselle--or Madame,' he replied, grinning
afresh.
So she had told him; where she had left me, and how she
had tricked me! She had, made me the village laughing-
stock! My rage flashed out afresh at the thought, and,
at the sight of his mocking face, I raised my fist.
But he read the threat in my eyes, and was up in a
moment, snarling, with his hand on his knife.
'Not again, Monsieur!' he cried, in his vile patois.
'My head is sore still. raise your hand and I will rip
you up as I would a pig!'
'Sit down, fool,' I said. 'I am not going to harm you.
Where is your wife?'
'About her business.'
'Which should be getting my supper,' I retorted.
He rose sullenly, and, fetching a platter, poured the
mess of broth and vegetables into it. Then he went to a
cupboard and brought out a loaf of black bread and a
measure of wine, and set them also on the table.
'You see it,' he said laconically.
'And a poor welcome!' I replied.
He flamed into sudden passion at that. Leaning with
both his hands on the table he thrust his rugged face
and blood-shot eyes close to mine. His moustachios
bristled, his beard trembled.
'Hark ye, sirrah!' he muttered, with sullen emphasis,
'be content! I have my suspicions. And if it were not
for my lady's orders I would put a knife into you, fair
or foul, this very night. You would lie snug outside,
instead of inside, and I do not think anyone would be
the worse. But as it is, be content. Keep a still
tongue; and when you turn your back on Cocheforet
to-morrow keep it turned.'
'Tut! tut!' I said--but I confess that I was a little
out of countenance. 'Threatened men live long, you
rascal!'
'In Paris!' he answered significantly. 'Not here,
Monsieur.'
He straightened himself with that, nodded once, and went
back to the fire; and I shrugged my shoulders and began
to eat, affecting to forget his presence. The logs on
the hearth burned sullenly, and gave no light. The poor
oil-lamp, casting weird shadows from wall to wall,
served only to discover the darkness. The room, with
its low roof and earthen floor, and foul clothes flung
here and there, reeked of stale meals and garlic and
vile cooking. I thought of the parlour at Cocheforet,
and the dainty table, and the stillness, and the scented
pot-herbs; and though I was too old a soldier to eat the
worse because my spoon lacked washing, I felt the
change, and laid it savagely at Mademoiselle's door.
The landlord, watching me stealthily from his place by
the hearth, read my thoughts and chuckled aloud.
'Palace fare, palace manners!' he muttered scornfully.
'Set a beggar on horseback, and he will ride--back to
the inn!'
'Keep a civil tongue, will you!' I answered, scowling
at him.
'Have you finished?' he retorted.
I rose, without deigning to reply, and, going to the
fire, drew off my boots, which were wet through. He, on
the instant, swept off the wine and loaf to the
cupboard, and then, coming back for the platter I had
used, took it, opened the back door, and went out,
leaving the door ajar. The draught which came in beat
the flame of the lamp this way and that, and gave the
dingy, gloomy room an air still more miserable. I rose
angrily from the fire, and went to the door, intending
to close it with a bang.
But when I reached it, I saw something, between door and
jamb, which stayed my hand. The door led to a shed in
which the housewife washed pots and the like. I felt
some surprise, therefore, when I found a light there at
this time of night; still more surprise when I saw what
she was doing.
She was seated on the mud floor, with a rush-light
before her, and on either side of her a high-piled heap
of refuse and rubbish. From one of these, at the moment
I caught sight of her, she was sorting things--horrible
filthy sweepings of road or floor--to the other; shaking
and sifting each article as she passed it across, and
then taking up another and repeating the action with it,
and so on--all minutely, warily, with an air of so much
patience and persistence that I stood wondering. Some
things--rags--she held up between her eyes and the
light, some she passed through her fingers, some she
fairly tore in pieces. And all the time her husband
stood watching her greedily, my platter still in his
hand, as if her strange occupation fascinated him.
I stood looking, also, for half a minute, perhaps; then
the man's eye, raised for a single second to the door-
way, met mine. He started, muttered something to his
wife, and, quick as thought, he kicked the light out,
leaving the shed in darkness. Cursing him for an ill-
conditioned fellow, I walked back to the fire, laughing.
In a twinkling he followed me, his face dark with rage.
'VENTRE-SAINT-GRIS!' he exclaimed, thrusting himself
close to me. 'Is not a man's house his own?'
'It is, for me,' I answered coolly, shrugging my
shoulders. 'And his wife: if she likes to pick dirty
rags at this hour, that is your affair.'
'Pig of a spy!' he cried, foaming with rage.
I was angry enough at bottom, but I had nothing to gain
by quarrelling with the fellow; and I curtly bade him
remember himself.
'Your mistress gave you orders,' I said contemptuously.
'Obey them.'
He spat on the floor, but at the same time he grew
calmer.
'You are right there,' he answered spitefully. 'What
matter, after all, since you leave to-morrow at six?
Your horse has been sent down, and your baggage is
above.'
'I will go to it,' I retorted. 'I want none of your
company. Give me a light, fellow!'
He obeyed reluctantly, and, glad to turn my back on him,
I went up the ladder, still wondering faintly, in the
midst of my annoyance, what his wife was about that my
chance detection of her had so enraged him. Even now he
was not quite himself. He followed me with abuse, and,
deprived by my departure of any other means of showing
his spite, fell to shouting through the floor, bidding
me remember six o'clock, and be stirring; with other
taunts, which did not cease until he had tired himself
out.
The sight of my belongings--which I had left a few hours
before at the Chateau--strewn about the floor of this
garret, went some way towards firing me again. But I
was worn out. The indignities and mishaps of the
evening had, for once, crushed my spirit, and after
swearing an oath or two I began to pack my bags.
Vengeance I would have; but the time and manner I left
for daylight thought. Beyond six o'clock in the morning
I did not look forward; and if I longed for anything it
was for a little of the good Armagnac I had wasted on
those louts of merchants in the kitchen below. It might
have done me good now.
I had wearily strapped up one bag, and nearly filled the
other, when I came upon something which did, for the
moment, rouse the devil in me. This was the tiny
orange-coloured sachet which Mademoiselle had dropped
the night I first saw her at the inn, and which, it will
be remembered, I picked up. Since that night I had not
seen it, and had as good as forgotten it. Now, as I
folded up my other doublet, the one I had then been
wearing, it dropped from my pocket.
The sight of it recalled all--that night, and
Mademoiselle's face in the lantern light, and my fine
plans, and the end of them; and, in a fit of childish
fury, the outcome of long suppressed passion, I snatched
up the sachet from the floor and tore it across and
across, and flung the pieces down. As they fell, a
cloud of fine pungent dust burst from them, and with the
dust, something more solid, which tinkled sharply on the
boards, as it fell. I looked down to see what this was
--perhaps I already repented of my act; but for a moment
I could see nothing. The floor was grimy and
uninviting, the light bad.
In certain moods, however, a man is obstinate about
small things, and I moved the taper nearer. As I did so
a point of light, a flashing sparkle that shone for a
second among the dirt and refuse on the floor, caught my
eye. It was gone in a moment, but I had seen it. I
stared, and moved the light again, and the spark flashed
out afresh, this time in a different place. Much
puzzled, I knelt, and, in a twinkling, found a tiny
crystal. Hard by it lay another--and another; each as
large as a fair-sized pea. I took up the three, and
rose to my feet again, the light in one hand, the
crystals in the palm of the other.
They were diamonds! Diamonds of price! I knew it in a
moment. As I moved the taper to and fro above them, and
watched the fire glow and tremble in their depths, I
knew that I held in my hand that which would buy the
crazy inn and all its contents a dozen times over! They
were diamonds! Gems so fine, and of so rare a water--or
I had never seen gems--that my hand trembled as I held
them, and my head grew hot and my heart beat furiously.
For a moment I thought that I dreamed, that my fancy
played me some trick; and I closed my eyes and did not
open them again for a minute. But when I did, there
they were, hard, real, and angular. Convinced at last,
in a maze of joy and fear, I closed my hand upon them,
and, stealing on tip-toe to the trap-door, laid first my
saddle on it and then my bags, and over all my cloak,
breathing fast the while.
Then I stole back, and, taking up the light again, began
to search the floor, patiently, inch by inch, with naked
feet, every sound making me tremble as I crept hither
and thither over the creaking boards. And never was
search more successful or better paid. In the fragments
of the sachet I found six smaller diamonds and a pair of
rubies. Eight large diamonds I found on the floor.
One, the largest and last found, had bounded away, and
lay against the wall in the farthest corner. It took me
an hour to run that one to earth; but afterwards I spent
another hour on my hands and knees before I gave up the
search, and, satisfied at last that I had collected all,
sat down on my saddle on the trap-door, and, by the last
flickering light of a candle which I had taken from my
bag, gloated over my treasure--a treasure worthy of
fabled Golconda.
Hardly could I believe in its reality, even now.
Recalling the jewels which the English Duke of
Buckingham wore on the occasion of his visit to Paris in
1625, and whereof there was so much talk, I took these
to be as fine, though less in number. They should be
worth fifteen thousand crowns, more or less. Fifteen
thousand crowns! And I held them in the hollow of my
hand--I, who was scarcely worth ten thousand sous.
The candle going out cut short my admiration. Left in
the dark with these precious atoms, my first thought was
hour I might dispose of them safely; which I did, for
the time, by secreting them in the lining of my boot.
My second thought turned on the question how they had
come where I had found them, among the powdered spice
and perfumes in Mademoiselle de Cocheforet's sachet.
A minute's reflection enabled me to come very near the
secret, and at the same time shed a flood of light on
several dark places, What Clon had been seeking on the
path between the house and the village, what the
goodwife of the inn had sought among the sweepings of
yard and floor, I knew now the sachet--knew, too, what
had caused the marked and sudden anxiety I had noticed
at the Chateau--the loss of this sachet.
And there for a while I came to a check But one step
more up the ladder of thought brought all in view. In a
flash I guessed how the jewels had come to be in the
sachet; and that it was not Mademoiselle but M. de
Cocheforet who had mislaid them. I thought this last
discovery so important that I began to pace the room
softly, unable, in my excitement, to remain still.
Doubtless he had dropped the jewels in the hurry of his
start from the inn that night! Doubtless, too, he had
carried them in that bizarre hiding-place for the sake
of safety, considering it unlikely that robbers, if he
fell into their hands, would take the sachet from him;
as still less likely that they would suspect it to
contain anything of value. Everywhere it would pass for
a love-gift, the work of his mistress.
Nor did my penetration stop there. I guessed that the
gems were family property, the last treasure of the
house; and that M. de Cocheforet, when I saw him at the
inn, was on his way to convey them out of the country;
either to secure them from seizure by the Government, or
to raise money by selling them--money to be spent in
some last desperate enterprise. For a day or two,
perhaps, after leaving Cocheforet, while the mountain
road and its chances occupied his thoughts, he had not
discovered his loss. Then he had searched for the
precious sachet, missed it, and returned hot-foot on his
tracks.
The longer I considered the circumstances the more
certain I was that I had hit on the true solution; and
all that night I sat wakeful in the darkness, pondering
what I should do. The stones, unset as they were, could
never be identified, never be claimed. The channel by
which they had come to my hands could never be traced.
To all intents they were mine; mine, to do with as I
pleased! Fifteen thousand crowns, perhaps twenty
thousand crowns, and I to leave at six in the morning,
whether I would or no! I might leave for Spain with the
jewels in my pocket. Why not?
I confess I was tempted. And indeed the gems were so
fine that I doubt not some indifferently honest men
would have sold salvation for them. But--a Berault his
honour? No. I was tempted, I say; but not for long.
Thank God, a man may be reduced to living by the
fortunes of the dice, and may even be called by a woman
'spy' and 'coward,' without becoming a thief! The
temptation soon left me--I take credit for it--and I
fell to thinking of this and that plan for making use of
them. Once it occurred to me to take the jewels to the
Cardinal and buy my pardon with them; again, to use them
as a trap to capture Cocheforet; again, to--and then,
about five in the morning, as I sat up on my wretched
pallet, while the first light stole slowly in through
the cobwebbed, hay-stuffed lattice, there came to me the
real plan, the plan of plans, on which I acted.
It charmed me I smacked my lips over it, and hugged
myself, and felt my eyes dilate in the darkness, as I
conned it. It seemed cruel, it seemed mean; I cared
nothing. Mademoiselle had boasted of her victory over
me, of her woman's wits and her acuteness and of my
dullness. She had said that her grooms should flog me.
She had rated me as if I had been a dog. Very well; we
would see now whose brains were the better, whose was
the master mind, whose should be the whipping.
The one thing required by my plan was that I should get
speech with her; that done, I could trust myself and my
new-found weapon for the rest. But that was absolutely
necessary, and, seeing that there might be some
difficulty about it, I determined to descend as if my
mind were made up to go; then, on pretence of saddling
my horse, I would slip away on foot, and lie in wait
near the Chateau until I saw her come out. Or if I
could not effect my purpose in that way--either by
reason of the landlord's vigilance, or for any other
cause--my course was still easy. I would ride away, and
when I had proceeded a mile or so, tie up my horse in
the forest and return to the wooden bridge. Thence I
could watch the garden and front of the Chateau until
time and chance gave me the opportunity I sought.
So I saw my way quite clearly; and when the fellow below
called me, reminding me rudely that I must be going, and
that it was six o'clock, I was ready with my answer. I
shouted sulkily that I was coming, and, after a decent
delay, I took up my saddle and bags and went down.
Viewed by the light of a cold morning, the inn-room
looked more smoky, more grimy, more wretched than when I
had last seen it. The goodwife was not visible. The
fire was not lighted. No provision, not so much as a
stirrup-cup or bowl of porridge cheered the heart.
I looked round, sniffing the stale smell of last night's
lamp, and grunted.
'Are you going to send me out fasting?' I said,
affecting a worse humour than I felt.
The landlord was standing by the window, stooping over a
great pair of frayed and furrowed thigh-boots which he
was labouring to soften with copious grease.
'Mademoiselle ordered no breakfast,' he answered, with a
malicious grin.
'Well it does not much matter,' I replied grandly. 'I
shall be at Auch by noon.'
'That is as may be,' he answered with another grin.
I did not understand him, but I had something else to
think about, and I opened the door and stepped out,
intending to go to the stable. Then in a second I
comprehended. The cold air laden with woodland moisture
met me and went to my bones; but it was not that which
made me shiver. Outside the door, in the road, sitting
on horseback in silence, were two men. One was Clon.
The other, who had a spare horse by the rein--my horse--
was a man I had seen at the inn, a rough, shock-headed,
hard-bitten fellow. Both were armed, and Clon was
booted. His mate rode barefoot, with a rusty spur
strapped to one heel.
The moment I saw them a sure and certain fear crept into
my mind: it was that which made me shiver But I did not
speak to them. I went in again and closed the door
behind me. The landlord was putting on his boots.
'What does this mean?' I said hoarsely--though I had a
clear prescience of what was coming. 'Why are these men
here?'
'Orders,' he answered laconically.
'Whose orders?' I retorted.
'Whose?' he answered bluntly. 'Well, Monsieur, that is
my business. Enough that we mean to see you out of the
country, and out of harm's way.'
'But if I will not go?' I cried.
'Monsieur will go,' he answered coolly. 'There are no
strangers in the village to-day,' he added, with a
significant smile.
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