Under the Red Robe

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But after supper I found myself in a dilemma; I did not see how I
was to sleep. The ruddy light which gleamed on the knave's swart
face and sinewy hands showed also his eyes, black, sullen, and
watchful. I knew that the man was plotting revenge; that he
would not hesitate to plant his knife between my ribs should I
give him the chance; and I could find only one alternative to
remaining awake. Had I been bloody-minded, I should have chosen
it and solved the question at once and in my favour by shooting
him as he sat.

But I have never been a cruel man, and I could not find it in my
heart to do this. The silence of the mountain and the sky-which
seemed a thing apart from the roar of the torrent and not to be
broken by it--awed me. The vastness of the solitude in which we
sat, the dark void above, through which the stars kept shooting,
the black gulf below in which the unseen waters boiled and
surged, the absence of other human company or other signs of
human existence, put such a face upon the deed that I gave up the
thought of it with a shudder, and resigned myself, instead, to
watch through the night--the long, cold, Pyrenean night.
Presently he curled himself up like a dog and slept in the blaze,
and then for a couple of hours I sat opposite him, thinking. It
seemed years since I had seen Zaton's or thrown the dice. The
old life, the old employments--should I ever go back to them?--
seemed dim and distant. Would Cocheforet, the forest and the
mountain, the grey Chateau and its mistresses, seem one day as
dim? And if one bit of life could fade so quickly at the
unrolling of another, and seem in a moment pale and colourless,
would all life some day and somewhere, and all the things we--But
enough! I was growing foolish. I sprang up and kicked the wood
together, and, taking up the gun, began to pace to and fro under
the cliff. Strange that a little moonlight, a few stars, a
breath of solitude should carry a man back to childhood and
childish things.

. . . . . .

It was three in the afternoon of the next day, and the sun lay
hot on the oak groves, and the air was full of warmth as we began
to climb the slope, midway up which the road to Auch shoots out
of the track. The yellow bracken and the fallen leaves underfoot
seemed to throw up light of themselves; and here and there a
patch of ruddy beech lay like a bloodstain on the hillside. In
front a herd of pigs routed among the mast, and grunted lazily;
and high above us a boy lay watching them. 'We part here,' I
said to my companion.

It was my plan to ride a little way along the road to Auch so as
to blind his eyes; then, leaving my horse in the forest, I would
go on foot to the Chateau. 'The sooner the better!' he answered
with a snarl. 'And I hope I may never see your face again,
Monsieur.'

But when we came to the wooden cross at the fork of the roads,
and were about to part, the boy we had seen leapt out of the fern
and came to meet us.

'Hollo!' he cried in a sing-song tone.

'Well,' my companion answered, drawing rein impatiently. 'What
is it?'

'There are soldiers in the village.'

'Soldiers" Antoine cried incredulously.

'Ay, devils on horseback,' the lad answered, spitting on the
ground. 'Three score of them. From Auch.'

Antoine turned to me, his face transformed with fury.

'Curse you!' he cried. 'This is some of your work. Now we are
all undone. And my mistresses? SACRE! if I had that gun I
would shoot you like a rat.'

'Steady, fool,' I answered roughly. 'I know no more of this than
you do.'

Which was so true that my surprise was at least as great as his,
and better grounded. The Cardinal, who rarely made a change of
front, had sent me hither that he might not be forced to send
soldiers, and run the risk of all that might arise from such a
movement. What of this invasion, then, than which nothing could
be less consistent with his plans? I wondered. It was possible
that the travelling merchants, before whom I had played at
treason, had reported the facts; and that on this the Commandant
at Auch had acted. But it seemed unlikely since he had had his
orders too, and under the Cardinal's rule there was small place
for individual enterprise. Frankly I could not understand it,
and found only one thing clear; I might now enter the village as
I pleased.

'I am going on to look into this,' I said to Antoine. 'Come, my
man.' He shrugged his shoulders, and stood still.

'Not I!' be answered, with an oath. 'No soldiers for me I have
lain out one night, and I can lie out another.'

I nodded indifferently, for I no longer wanted him; and we
parted. After this, twenty minutes' riding brought me to the
entrance of the village, and here the change was great indeed.
Not one of the ordinary dwellers in the place was to be seen:
either they had shut themselves up in their hovels, or, like
Antoine, they had fled to the woods. Their doors were closed,
their windows shuttered. But lounging about the street were a
score of dragoons, in boots and breastplates, whose short-
barrelled muskets, with pouches and bandoliers attached, were
piled near the inn door. In an open space, where there was a gap
in the street, a long row of horses, linked head to head, stood
bending their muzzles over bundles of rough forage; and on all
sides the cheerful jingle of chains and bridles and the sound of
coarse jokes and laughter filled the air.

As I rode up to the inn door an old sergeant, with squinting eyes
and his tongue in his cheek, scanned me inquisitively, and
started to cross the street to challenge me. Fortunately, at
that moment the two knaves whom I had brought from Paris with me,
and whom I had left at Auch to await my orders, came up. I made
them a sign not to speak to me, and they passed on; but I suppose
that they told the sergeant that I was not the man he wanted, for
I saw no more of him.

After picketing my horse behind the inn--I could find no better
stable, every place being full--I pushed my way through the group
at the door, and entered. The old room, with the low, grimy roof
and the reeking floor, was half full of strange figures, and for
a few minutes I stood unseen in the smoke and confusion. Then
the landlord came my way, and as he passed me I caught his eye.
He uttered a low curse, dropped the pitcher he was carrying, and
stood glaring at me like a man possessed.

The soldier whose wine he was carrying flung a crust in his face,
with,--

'Now, greasy fingers! What are you staring at?'

'The devil!' the landlord muttered, beginning to tremble.

'Then let me look at him!' the man retorted, and he turned on
his stool.

He started, finding me standing over him.

'At your service!' I said grimly. 'A little time and it will be
the other way, my friend.

CHAPTER VII

A MASTER STROKE

I have a way with me which commonly commands respect; and when
the landlord's first terror was over and he would serve me, I
managed to get my supper--the first good meal I had had in two
days--pretty comfortably in spite of the soldiers' presence. The
crowd, too, which filled the room, soon began to melt. The men
strayed off in groups to water their horses, or went to hunt up
their quarters, until only two or three were left. Dusk had
fallen outside; the noise in the street grew less. The firelight
began to glow and flicker on the walls, and the wretched room to
look as homely as it was in its nature to look. I was pondering
for the twentieth time what step I should take next, and
questioning why the soldiers were here, and whether I should let
the night pass before I moved, when the door, which had been
turning on its hinges almost without pause for an hour, opened
again, and a woman came in.

She paused a moment on the threshold looking round, and I saw
that she had a shawl on her head and a milk-pitcher in her hand,
and that her feet and ankles were bare. There was a great rent
in her coarse stuff petticoat, and the hand which held the shawl
together was brown and dirty. More I did not see: for,
supposing her to be a neighbour stolen in, now that the house was
quiet, to get some milk for her child or the like, I took no
farther heed of her. I turned to the fire again and plunged into
my thoughts.

But to get to the hearth where the goodwife was fidgeting the
woman had to pass in front of me; and as she passed I suppose
that she stole a look at me from under her shawl. For just when
she came between me and the blaze she uttered a low cry and
shrank aside--so quickly that she almost stepped on the hearth.
The next moment she turned her back to me, and was stooping
whispering in the housewife's ear. A stranger might have thought
that she had trodden on a hot ember.

But another idea, and a very strange one, came into my mind; and
I stood up silently. The woman's back was towards me, but
something in her height, her shape, the pose of her head hidden
as it was by her shawl, seemed familiar. I waited while she hung
over the fire whispering, and while the goodwife slowly filled
her pitcher out of the great black pot. But when she turned to
go, I took a step forward so as to bar her way. And our eyes
met.

I could not see her features; they were lost in the shadow of the
hood. But I saw a shiver run through her from head to foot. And
I knew then that I had made no mistake.

'That is too heavy for you, my girl,' I said familiarly, as I
might have spoken to a village wench. 'I will carry it for you.'

One of the men, who remained lolling at the table, laughed, and
the other began to sing a low song. The woman trembled in rage
or fear; but she kept silence and let me take the jug from her
hands; and when I went to the door and opened it, she followed
mechanically. An instant, and the door fell to behind us,
shutting off the light and glow, and we two stood together in the
growing dusk.

'It is late for you to be out, Mademoiselle,' I said politely.
'You might meet with some rudeness, dressed as you are. Permit
me to see you home.'

She shuddered, and I thought that I heard her sob, but she did
not answer. Instead, she turned and walked quickly through the
village in the direction of the Chateau, keeping in the shadow of
the houses. I carried the pitcher and walked close to her,
beside her; and in the dark I smiled. I knew how shame and
impotent rage were working in her. This was something like
revenge!

Presently I spoke.

'Well, Mademoiselle,' I said, 'where are your grooms?'

She gave me one look, her eyes blazing with anger, her face like
hate itself; and after that I said no more, but left her in
peace, and contented myself with walking at her shoulder until we
came to the end of the village, where the track to the great
house plunged into the wood. There she stopped, and turned on me
like a wild creature at bay.

'What do you want?' she cried hoarsely, breathing as if she had
been running.

'To see you safe to the house,' I answered coolly. 'Alone you
might be insulted.'

'And if I will not?' she retorted.

'The choice does not lie with you, Mademoiselle,' I answered
sternly, 'You will go to the house with me, and on the way you
will give me an interview--late as it is; but not here. Here we
are not private enough. We may be interrupted at any moment, and
I wish to speak to you at length.'

'At length?' she muttered.

'Yes, Mademoiselle.'

I saw her shiver. 'What if I will not?" she said again.

'I might call to the nearest soldiers and tell them who you are,'
I answered coolly. 'I might do that, but I should not. That
were a clumsy way of punishing you, and I know a better way. I
should go to the Captain, Mademoiselle, and tell him whose horse
is locked up in the inn stable. A trooper told me--as someone
had told him--that it belonged to one of his officers; but I
looked through the crack, and I knew the horse again.'

She could not repress a groan. I waited; still she did not
speak.

'Shall I go to the Captain?' I said ruthlessly.

She shook the hood back from her face and looked at me.

'Oh, you coward! you coward!' she hissed through her teeth.
'If I had a knife!'

'But you have not, Mademoiselle,' I answered, unmoved. 'Be good
enough, therefore, to make up your mind which it is to be. Am I
to go with my news to the captain, or am I to come with you?'

'Give me the pitcher,' she said harshly.

I did so, wondering. In a moment she flung it with a savage
gesture far into the bushes.

'Come!' she said, 'if you will. But some day God will punish
you!'

Without another word she turned and entered the path through the
trees, and I followed her. I suppose that every one of its
windings, every hollow and broken place in it had been known to
her from childhood, for she followed it swiftly and unerringly,
barefoot as she was. I had to walk fast through the darkness to
keep up with her. The wood was quiet, but the frogs were
beginning to croak in the pool, and their persistent chorus
reminded me of the night when I had come to the house-door, hurt
and worn out, and Clon had admitted me, and she had stood under
the gallery in the hall. Things had looked dark then. I had
seen but a very little way ahead then. Now all was plain. The
commandant might be here with all his soldiers, but it was I who
held the strings.

We came to the little wooden bridge and saw beyond the dark
meadows the lights of the house. All the windows were bright.
Doubtless the troopers were making merry.

'Now, Mademoiselle,' I said quietly, 'I must trouble you to stop
here, and give me your attention for a few minutes. Afterwards
you may go your way.'

'Speak!' she said defiantly. 'And be quick! I cannot breathe
the air where you are! It poisons me!'

'Ah!' I said slowly. 'Do you think that you make things better
by such speeches as those?'

'Oh!' she cried and I heard her teeth click together. 'Would
you have me fawn on you?'

'Perhaps not,' I answered. 'Still you make one mistake.'

'What is it?' she panted.

'You forget that I am to be feared as well as--loathed,
Mademoiselle! Ay, Mademoiselle, to be feared!' I continued
grimly. 'Do you think that I do not know why you are here in
this guise? Do you think that I do not know for whom that
pitcher of broth was intended? Or who will now have to fast to-
night? I tell you I know all these things. Your house was full
of soldiers; your servants were watched and could not leave. You
had to come yourself and get food for him?'

She clutched at the handrail of the bridge, and for an instant
clung to it for support. Her face, from which the shawl had
fallen, glimmered white in the shadow of the trees. At last I
had shaken her pride. At last!

'What is your price?' she murmured faintly.

'I am going to tell you,' I replied, speaking so that every word
might fall distinctly on her ears, and sating my eyes the while
on her proud face. I had never dreamed of such revenge as this!
'About a fortnight ago, M. de Cocheforet left here at night with
a little orange-coloured sachet in his possession.'

She uttered a stifled cry, and drew herself stiffly erect.

'It contained--but there, Mademoiselle, you know its contents,' I
went on. 'Whatever they were, M. de Cocheforet lost it and them
at starting. A week ago he came back--unfortunately for himself
--to seek them.'

She was looking full in my face now. She seemed scarcely to
breathe in the intensity of her surprise and expectation.

'You had a search made, Mademoiselle,' I continued quietly.
'Your servants left no place unexplored The paths, the roads, the
very woods were ransacked, But in vain, because all the while the
orange sachet lay whole and unopened in my pocket.'

'No!' she cried impetuously. 'There, you lie sir, as usual!
The sachet was found, torn open, many leagues from this place!'

'Where I threw it, Mademoiselle,' I replied, 'that I might
mislead your rascals and be free to return to you. Oh! believe
me,' I continued, letting something of my true self, something of
my triumph, appear at last in my voice. 'You have made a
mistake! You would have done better had you trusted me. I am no
bundle of sawdust, Mademoiselle, though once you got the better
of me, but a man; a man with an arm to shield and a brain to
serve, and--as I am going to teach you--a heart also!'

She shivered.

'In the orange-coloured sachet that you lost I believe that there
were eighteen stones of great value?'

She made no answer, but she looked at me as if I fascinated her.
Her very breath seemed to pause and wait on my words. She was so
little conscious of anything else, of anything outside ourselves,
that a score of men might have come up behind her, unseen and
unnoticed.

CHAPTER VIII

A MASTER STROKE--Continued

I took from my breast a little packet wrapped in soft leather,
and I held it towards her.

'Will you open this?' I said. 'I believe that it contains what
your brother lost. That it contains all I will not answer,
Mademoiselle, because I spilled the stones on the floor of my
room, and I may have failed to find some. But the others can be
recovered; I know where they are.'

She took the packet slowly and began to unroll it, her fingers
shaking. A few turns and the mild lustre of the stones shone
out, making a kind of moonlight in her hands--such a shimmering
glory of imprisoned light as has ruined many a woman and robbed
many a man of his honour. MORBLEU! as I looked at them and as
she stood looking at them in dull, entranced perplexity--I
wondered how I had come to resist the temptation.

While I gazed her hands began to waver.

'I cannot count,' she muttered helplessly. 'How many are there?'

'In all, eighteen.'

'There should be eighteen,' she said.

She closed her hand on them with that, and opened it again, and
did so twice, as if to reassure herself that the stones were real
and that she was not dreaming. Then she turned to me with sudden
fierceness, and I saw that her beautiful face, sharpened by the
greed of possession, was grown as keen and vicious as before.

'Well?' she muttered between her teeth.

'Your price, man? Your price?'

'I am coming to it now, Mademoiselle,' I said gravely. 'It is a
simple matter. You remember the afternoon when I followed you
--clumsily and thoughtlessly perhaps--through the wood to restore
these things? In seeming that happened about a month ago. I
believe that it happened the day before yesterday. You called me
then some very harsh names, which I will not hurt you by
repeating. The only price I ask for the restoration of your
jewels is that you on your part recall those names.'

'How?' she muttered. 'I do not understand.'

I repeated my words very slowly. 'The only price or reward I
ask, Mademoiselle, is that you take back those names and say that
they were not deserved.'

'And the jewels?' she exclaimed hoarsely.

'They are yours. They are not mine. They are nothing to me.
Take them, and say that you do not think of me--Nay, I cannot say
the words, Mademoiselle.'

'But there is something--else! What else?' she cried, her head
thrown back, her eyes, bright as any wild animal's, searching
mine. 'Ha! my brother? What of him? What of him, sir?'

'For him, Mademoiselle--I would prefer that you should tell me no
more than I know already,' I answered in a low voice. 'I do not
wish to be in that affair. But yes; there is one thing I have
not mentioned. You are right.'

She sighed so deeply that I caught the sound.

'It is,' I continued slowly, 'that you will permit me to remain
at Cocheforet for a few days while the soldiers are here. I am
told that there are twenty men and two officers quartered in your
house. Your brother is away. I ask to be permitted,
Mademoiselle, to take his place for the time, and to be
privileged to protect your sister and yourself from insult. That
is all.'

She raised her hand to her head. After a long pause,--

'The frogs!' she muttered, 'they croak! I can not hear.'

Then, to my surprise, she turned quickly and suddenly on her
heel, and walked over the bridge, leaving me standing there. For
a moment I stood aghast, peering after her shadowy figure, and
wondering what had taken her. Then, in a minute or less, she
came quickly back to me, and I understood. She was crying.

'M. de Barthe,' she said, in a trembling voice, which told me
that the victory was won, 'is there nothing else? Have you no
other penance for me?'

'None, Mademoiselle.'

She had drawn the shawl over her head, and I no longer saw her
face.

'That is all you ask?' she murmured.

'That is all I ask--now,' I answered.

'It is granted,' she said slowly and firmly. 'Forgive me if I
seem to speak lightly--if I seem to make little of your
generosity or my shame; but I can say no more now. I am so deep
in trouble and so gnawed by terror that--I cannot feel anything
keenly to-night, either shame or gratitude. I am in a dream; God
grant that it may pass as a dream! We are sunk in trouble. But
for you and what you have done, M. de Barthe--I--' she paused and
I heard her fighting with the sobs which choked her--'forgive
me... I am overwrought. And my--my feet are cold,' she added,
suddenly and irrelevantly. 'Will you take me home?'

'Ah, Mademoiselle,' I cried remorsefully, 'I have been a beast!
You are barefoot, and I have kept you here.'

'It is nothing,' she said in a voice which thrilled me. 'My
heart is warm, Monsieur--thanks to you. It is many hours since
it has been as warm.'

She stepped out of the shadow as she spoke--and there, the thing
was done. As I had planned, so it had come about. Once more I
was crossing the meadow in the dark to be received at Cocheforet,
a welcome guest. The frogs croaked in the pool and a bat swooped
round us in circles; and surely never--never, I thought, with a
kind of exultation in my breast--had man been placed in a
stranger position.

Somewhere in the black wood behind us--probably in the outskirts
of the village--lurked M. de Cocheforet. In the great house
before us, outlined by a score of lighted windows, were the
soldiers come from Auch to take him. Between the two, moving
side by side in the darkness, in a silence which each found to be
eloquent, were Mademoiselle and I: she who knew so much, I who
knew all--all but one little thing!

We reached the house, and I suggested that she should steal in
first by the way she had come out, and that I should wait a
little and knock at the door when she had had time to explain
matters to Clon.

'They do not let me see Clon,' she answered slowly.

'Then your woman must tell him,' I rejoined, 'or he may do
something and betray me.'

'They will not let our women come to us.'

'What?' I cried, astonished. 'But this is infamous. You are
not prisoners!'

Mademoiselle laughed harshly.

'Are we not? Well, I suppose not; for if we wanted company,
Captain Larolle said that he would be delighted to see us--in the
parlour.'

'He has taken your parlour?' I said.

'He and his lieutenant sit there. But I suppose that we rebels
should be thankful,' she added bitterly; 'we have still our
bedrooms left to us.'

'Very well,' I said. 'Then I must deal with Clon as I can. But
I have still a favour to ask, Mademoiselle. It is only that you
and your sister will descend to-morrow at your usual time. I
shall be in the parlour.'

'I would rather not,' she said, pausing and speaking in a
troubled voice.

'Are you afraid?'

'No, Monsieur, I am not afraid,' she answered proudly, 'but--'

'You will come?' I said.

She sighed before she spoke. At length,--

'Yes, I will come--if you wish it,' she answered. And the next
moment she was gone round the corner of the house, while I
laughed to think of the excellent watch these gallant gentlemen
were keeping. M. de Cocheforet might have been with her in the
garden, might have talked with her as I had talked, might have
entered the house even, and passed under their noses scot-free.
But that is the way of soldiers. They are always ready for the
enemy, with drums beating and flags flying--at ten o'clock in the
morning. But he does not always come at that hour.

I waited a little, and then I groped my way to the door and
knocked on it with the hilt of my sword. The dogs began to bark
at the back, and the chorus of a drinking-song, which came
fitfully from the east wing, ceased altogether. An inner door
opened, and an angry voice, apparently an officer's, began to
rate someone for not coming. Another moment, and a clamour of
voices and footsteps seemed to pour into the hall, and fill it.
I heard the bar jerked away, the door was flung open, and in a
twinkling a lanthorn, behind which a dozen flushed visages were
dimly seen, was thrust into my face.

'Why, who the fiend is this?' one cried, glaring at me in
astonishment.

'MORBLEU! It is the man!' another shrieked. 'Seize him!'

In a moment half a dozen hands were laid on my shoulders, but I
only bowed politely.

'The officer, my friends,' I said, 'M. le Capitaine Larolle.
'Where is he?'

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