Читать книгу Angelot - Eleanor C. Price - Страница 8

Table of Contents

The sun was near setting when the Prefect and his companions rode away from Les Chouettes, their visit having resulted, as it seemed, in nothing worse than annoyance and anxiety.

Joseph de la Marinière drew a long breath as he saw them go. The Prefect looked back once or twice and saw him standing near his house, a small black figure in the full blaze of the west. He seemed to be alone with his dogs, though in fact Riette and the three servants were peeping round the corner of the house beyond him, waiting for the final disappearance of the visitors. He had asked Angelot to guide them through the labyrinth of woods and lanes to a road leading to a town which the Prefect wished to reach before nightfall. As Angelot was on foot, their progress was slow; and it seemed an age to Monsieur Joseph till they had crossed his broad meadow to the south, and instead of going on towards Lancilly, had struck into a wood on the left through which a narrow path ran.

When the last gendarme had passed from bright sunshine into shadows, when the tramp of the last horse had died away, Monsieur Joseph made a little joyful spring into the air and called, "Riette, my child, where are you?"

"Here I am, papa!" cried the girl, darting forward. "Ah, what a day we have had!"

"And what an evening we will have now!" said Monsieur Joseph.

He seized her two hands, and they danced round together. In the shadow behind the house Gigot and Marie followed their example, while Tobie, having no partner, jumped up and down with his arms akimbo. Mademoiselle Riette, catching sight of him, laughed so exhaustingly that she could dance no longer. Then the whole family laughed till the tears ran down their faces, while the dogs sat round and wagged their tails.

"The good God has protected us," said Gigot, coming forward to his master. "Does monsieur know that one of those gendarmes was Simon, the police agent, the Chouan-catcher, they call him? When I saw him, my heart died within me. But we were too clever for him. He went smelling about, but he found nothing."

"He smelt something, though," growled Tobie the groom. "He would have searched the stable and found the inner place if I had not stood in front of him: luckily I was the biggest man of the two. It is not so easy, do you see, to make a way past me."

"I gave them enough good food and wine to send them to sleep for the afternoon," said Marie the cook. "It was a sad waste, but the only way to keep such creatures quiet."

"What a terrible man, that General!" said Gigot. "How he slept and snored and kicked the sofa! you can see the marks of his boots now. And how he resembles the Emperor! I know, for I saw his Majesty once—"

"Stop your recollections, Gigot," said Monsieur Joseph; for Gigot, like many solemn and silent people, was difficult to check when once set talking. "We have something else to think of now. Make haste with dinner, Marie. We must console our poor friends for their captivity. Come, Riette, we will go and fetch them."

So that evening was a merry one at Les Chouettes, and the moon was high before the second batch of guests climbed slowly to the moor on their homeward way. The day's experience had not heightened their courage, somehow, or advanced their plans for a rising. Even the Comte d'Ombré agreed that the time was hardly ripe; that five or six men might throw away their own lives or liberties, but could not make a new revolution; that the peasants must be sounded, public opinion educated; and that the Prefect's courteous moderation was an odious quality which made everything more difficult.

And in the meanwhile, Monsieur de Mauves was justifying their conclusions in a way that would have startled them.

Beyond the wood, Angelot led the party across stubble-fields, where blue field flowers with grey dusty leaves clustered by the wayside, and distant poplars, pointing high into the evening air, showed where his home lay. Then they turned down into one of the hollow lanes of the country, its banks scooped out by winter rains and treading of cattle, so that it was almost like three sides of a cylinder, while the thick pollard oaks, leaning over it, made twilight even in the lingering sunshine.

The General was riding in front, the gendarmes some yards behind; Angelot, with his dog and gun, kept close beside the Prefect, who talked to him with his usual friendliness. Presently he said, "I love your uncle, Angelot, much better than he loves me, and I am sorry that he should run such useless risks."

"What risks, monsieur?" the young man said, glancing up quickly; and somehow it was difficult to meet the Prefect's eyes.

"Ah, you know very well. Believe me, your father is right, and your uncle is wrong. The old régime cannot be reëstablished. The path of France is marked out for her; a star has arisen to guide her, and she is foolish, suicidal, not to follow where it leads. I do not defend or admire the Emperor in everything: but see what he has done for France. She lay ruined, distracted. She took the mountain path of liberty, made a few wrong turns, and was dashed over the precipice. See how the Emperor has built her up into a great nation again; look at the laws and the civilisation; look at the military glory which has cost much blood, it is true, but has raised her so high in Europe that the nations who were ready to devour her are mostly crouching at her feet. Would our Bourbons have done all this for us, Angelot? Are they, after all, worth the devotion of men like your uncle and—for instance—Monsieur des Barres? Does not true patriotism lead a man to think of his country's good and glory, not of the advantage of one special family? Your uncle can hardly believe in that mediæval fiction of divine right, I suppose?"

Angelot smiled. "My uncle belongs to the days of Saint Louis," he said.

"But you do not," the Prefect replied. "I find it hard to forgive him. He is free, of course, to put his own neck in danger. One of these days he will drive me to extremities, and will find himself and his friends in a state prison—lucky if nothing worse happens. But he has no right to involve you in these treasonous tricks of his. It is selfish and immoral. Your father should see to it. You ought not to have been there to-day."

The Prefect spoke low and earnestly. It was impossible to misunderstand him. Angelot felt something like a cold shiver running over him. But he smiled and answered bravely.

"If my uncle has been foolish, so have I, and I will share the consequences with him. But as to to-day, monsieur?"

"I know all," the Prefect said. "Your uncle had visitors this morning, who were spirited away out of our sight. Their horses were hidden in an inner stable; they themselves in a hovel in the wood—and if they have waited there till we were gone, they must be tired of it. That famous breakfast we enjoyed was not prepared on such miraculously short notice. Your little cousin, poor child, was employed to carry food to the fugitives hidden in the wood. With all my heart I pity her; a life of political plots is not happiness. But if Monsieur de la Marinière does not hesitate to sacrifice his daughter, it is no wonder that he lightly runs his nephew into danger! You acted well, you and he. But I almost think it might have been safer to carry on that first breakfast-party, and not show its character by absurd attempts at concealment. You cannot contradict a word I have been saying, Angelot. I do not ask you to tell me the names of your uncle's guests."

"If you did, monsieur," the young fellow answered, "I should consider that an uncomfortable day had punished them enough, and so I should respectfully decline to answer you. I don't know how you made all these wonderful discoveries."

The Prefect looked at him and laughed. "You take it lightly!"

"I am speaking to a friend," Angelot said.

"That is all very well. Yes—too good a friend, I fear, from the point of view of duty. But I shall not repent, if you will be warned into prudence yourself, and will warn your uncle."

"I am rather afraid, monsieur, that my father has all the prudence of the family."

The Prefect would have argued further, but suddenly a sound like low thunder, still distant, echoed down the lane.

"What is that?" he said, looking round.

"Cattle, monsieur. Pull right into the bank and give them room to pass," said Angelot.

The gendarmes, who knew the country, had already taken this precaution. They were drawing up in single file by the side of the road, close under the steep bank, pressing into it, in the dark shadow of the pollards. But General Ratoneau, in advance, was riding stolidly forward, clanking along at a quick foot's pace in the very middle of the narrow lane, with all that swaggering air of a conqueror, which was better suited to German fields than to the quiet woody ways of France. Angelot hurried forward.

"Monsieur le Général!" he called out; but Ratoneau, though he must have heard, did not turn his head or take any notice.

"Insolent animal! I might as well leave him to fight it out with the cows," the young fellow muttered; but for the Prefect's sake he ran on, his dog scampering after him, caught up the General, and stretched out a hand to his bridle.

"What the devil do you want!" said the General, lifting his whip.

"There is a herd of cows coming," Angelot shouted, though the blood rushed into his face at the man's involuntary movement. "You must get out of their way, or they will knock you down and trample on you. This is their way home. Draw up under the bank at once."

"I shall get out of nobody's way," roared the General. "But you had better get out of mine, little ape of a Chouan, or—"

The whip quivered in the air; another moment would have brought it down on Angelot's bare hand. He cried out, "Take care!" and in that moment snatched the whip and threw it over the horse's head. It fell into a mass of blackberry briars which made a red and green thicket under the bank just here. The lane turned slightly and was very narrow at this place, with a stony slope upwards. It was a little more than usual like the dry bed of a torrent. Only under the right-hand bank there was a yard of standing-room, where it was possible to draw aside while the crowd of horned beasts rushed past. The thunder of their hoofs was drawing near. The Prefect, fifty yards behind, called out advice to his angry colleague, which fell on deaf ears. Angelot was pelted with some choice specimens of a soldier's vocabulary, as he seized the bridle and tried to pull the horse to the side of the road. But the rider's violent resistance made this impossible. The horse plunged: the General, swearing furiously, did his best to throw Angelot down under its feet. For a minute the young fellow did his best to save the obstinate man in spite of himself, but then he was obliged to let the bridle go, and stepped to the shelter of the bank, while man and horse filled up the roadway with prancing and swearing.

"Give me back my whip, you—" the various epithets which followed were new to Angelot's country ears, but their tone made them serious.

Still, there was something so ridiculous in the General's fury that Angelot could scarcely help laughing in his face as he called out in answer, "When the cows are gone, monsieur, if you ask me civilly! I had to take it, or you would have struck me, and that was out of the question."

Even as he spoke, the cattle were coming. The lane was filled with a solid mass of padding feet, panting hides, low heads, and long fierce horns. An old bull of unfriendly aspect led the way, and one or two younger bulls came pushing and lowing among the quieter cows. Behind the large horned creatures came a few goats and sheep; then a dog, sharply barking, and a woman, shouting and flourishing her stick. But in this narrow space she had no control over the herd, which poured along like water in a stream's bed, irresistible, unresisted. They knew their own way home from pasture to the yards at La Marinière. This was their own road, worn hollow by no trampling but theirs and that of their ancestors. Anything or anybody they happened to meet always drew aside to let them pass, and they were not as a rule ill-tempered.

General Ratoneau thought he could ride through them, and spurred his restless horse, fresh from Monsieur Joseph's corn, straight at the wedged heads and shoulders of the advancing herd. The horse plunged, shied, tried to bolt; and there were a few moments of inextricable confusion. Angelot shouted to the woman in charge of the cows; she screamed to the dog, which dived among them, barking. Frightened, they scrambled and crushed together so that Angelot was pressed up by their broad sides against the bank, and only lifted himself out of their way by climbing to the trunk of a tree. The sun was setting; the dazzling light, in a sky all gold and red and purple, lay right across the lane: the General's uniform, his horse's smart trappings, flashed and swayed above the brown mass for a moment or two as it pushed down the slope. Then the horse fell, either slipping on a stone or pushed over by the cattle, but fortunately not under their feet. He and his master rolled over together into the briars on the farther side of the lane, and there lay struggling till the beasts had crowded by, hurrying on past the rest of the party, drawn prudently aside in the shelter of the bank.

As soon as they were gone, the Prefect and the gendarmes rode up to help Angelot, who had already pulled the General out of the briars, unhurt, except by scratches. The horse had at once struggled to its feet, and stood trembling in the road.

It was impossible for any one but the sufferer to take such an adventure seriously. Two of the gendarmes were convulsed with laughter; it was only Simon whose native cleverness and keen sense of his own advantage kept his face grave and sympathising, as he handed the General his hat and the other objects which his tumble had sent flying. The Prefect was smiling as he asked anxiously whether any bones were broken. Angelot trembled with hardly restrained laughter. It had seized him with an overpowering force, when he saw the General's fat figure rise in the air with a most undignified jerk, then being deposited in the thicket with a fine pair of riding boots and shining spurs uppermost. This was so exactly the accident that suited the man's swaggering airs of superiority, Angelot felt that he could almost forgive him his insolent words and looks, could almost bear the incomprehensible language of five minutes ago, the threatened stroke with the whip—ah, by the by, here lay the precious whip, with its silver handle, safely deposited in the bushes out of the cows' way. Angelot magnanimously picked it up and presented it to the General with a bow. He grunted a word meant for thanks, but the eyes that met Angelot's flashed with a dark fury that startled the careless boy and came back to his mind afterwards.

"Whose beasts were those?" the General asked hoarsely.

"They were my father's beasts, monsieur," Angelot answered. "They did not realize, unfortunately—" He broke off under a warning look from the Prefect, who went on with the sentence for him—"No one would regret such a tiresome accident more than your father, I am sure."

"I was going to say so," Angelot murmured softly. "Now if they had been my uncle's cattle—"

The General turned his back and mounted his horse. "The owner does not signify," he growled. "He cannot be punished. But it was either foolishness or malice that brought us along such a road."

"Come, come, General, that was my fault, after all!" the Prefect said pleasantly. "And you must acknowledge that our young friend did his best to save you. We all knew this country and its ways better than you did—it is a pity, but there is no more to be said."

The General seemed to be of the same opinion, for he rode off without a word. Angelot, looking after him, thought that one of these days there might be a good deal more to be said.

But now the Prefect was asking a last direction as to the road, and wishing Angelot good-night, for the sun was actually setting. His last words were: "Adieu, my friend! Be prudent—and make my best compliments to your parents. No doubt we shall meet soon at Lancilly."

"And perhaps without Monsieur le Général!" said Angelot, smiling.

"Possibly! We are not inseparable," the Prefect replied, and waved his hand kindly as he rode away.

"How was it that I did not strike that reptile? he tried to strike me," Angelot reflected as he walked down the quiet lane. "Well! the Prefect and my father would have been vexed, and he had his little punishment. Some day we shall meet independently, and then we shall see, Monsieur Ratoneau, we shall see! But what a somersault the creature made! If the bushes had not broken his fall, he would have been hurt, or killed, perhaps."

He laughed at the remembrance of the scene, and thought how he would describe it to his mother. Then he became grave, remembering all that had gone before. The Prefect was a friend, and a gentleman, neither of which the General could ever be. But it was a serious thought that the Prefect was at present by far the most dangerous person of the two. Uncle Joseph's life and liberty were in his hands, at his mercy. Angelot frowned and whistled as he strode along. How did the Prefect find out all that? Why, of course, those men of his were not mere gendarmes; they were police spies. Especially that one with the villanous face who was lurking round the woods!

"We are all in their hands; they are the devil's own regiment," Angelot said to himself. "How can Monsieur de Mauves bring himself to do such work among his old friends, in his old country! It is inconceivable."

Another rough lane brought Angelot into the rough road that led past the Manor of La Marinière to the church and village lying beneath it, and so on into the valley and across the bridge to Lancilly.

The home of his family was one of those large homesteads, half farm, half castle, which are entirely Angevin in character; and it had not yet crumbled down into picturesque decay. Its white walls, once capable of defence, covered a large space on the eastern slope of the valley; it was much shaded all about by oak, beech, and fir trees, and a tall row of poplars bordered the road between its gateway and the church spire.

The high white arch of the gateway, where a gate had once been, opened on a paved road crossing the lower end of a farmyard, and up to the right were lines of low buildings where the cows, General Ratoneau's enemies, were now being safely housed for the night, and a dove-cote tower, round which a few late pigeons were flapping. To the left another archway led into a square garden with lines of tall box hedges, where flowers and vegetables grew all together wildly, and straight on, through yet a third gate, Angelot came into a stone court in front of the house, white, tall, and very ancient, with a quaint porch opening straight upon its wide staircase, which seemed a continuation of the broad outside steps where Madame de la Marinière was now giving her chickens their evening meal.

In spite of the large cap and apron that smothered her, it was plain to see where Angelot got his singular beauty. His little mother, once upon a time, had been the loveliest girl in Brittany. Her small, fine, delicate features, clear dark skin, beautiful velvet eyes and cloud of dusky hair that curled naturally,—all this still remained, though youth and freshness and early happiness were gone. Her cheeks were thin, her eyes and mouth were sad, and yet there was hardly a grey hair in that soft mass which she covered and hid so puritanically. She had been married as almost a child, and was still under forty. Her family, very old but very poor, had married her to Urbain de la Marinière, quite without consulting any wishes of hers. He was well off and well connected, though his old name had never belonged exactly to the grande noblesse. The Pontvieux were too anxious to dispose of their daughter to consider his free opinions, which, after all, were the fashion in France before 1789, though never in Brittany. And probably Madame de la Marinière's life was saved by her marriage, for she was and remained just as ardently Catholic and Royalist as her relations who died one by one upon the scaffold.

She lived at La Marinière through the Revolution, in outward obedience to a husband whose opinions she detested, and most of whose actions she cordially disapproved, though it was impossible not to love him personally. Gratitude, too, there might very well have been; for Urbain's popularity had not only guarded his wife and son; it had enabled her to keep the old Curé of the village safe at La Marinière till some little liberty was restored to the Church and he was able to return to his post without danger. When madame used hard words of the Empire—and she was frank in her judgments—monsieur would point to the Curé with a smile. And the old man, come back from mass to breakfast at the manor, and resting in the chimney corner, would say, "Not so bad—not so bad!" rubbing his thin hands gently.

"Little mother!" Angelot said, and stepped up into the porch among the chickens.

His eyes, quick to read her face, saw a shadow on it, and he wondered who had done wrong, himself or his father.

"Enfin, te voilà!" said Madame de la Marinière. "Have you brought us any game? Ah, I am glad—" as he showed her his well-filled bag. "Your father came home two hours ago; he expected to find you here; he wanted you to do some service or other for these cousins."

"I am sorry," said Angelot. "I could not leave Uncle Joseph. I have a hundred things to tell you. Some rather serious, and some will make you die of laughing, as they did me."

"Mon Dieu! I should be glad to laugh," said his mother.

Angelot had taken the basket from her hand, and was throwing the chickens their last grain. She stood on the highest step, with a little sigh which might have been of fatigue or of disgust, and her eyes, as she gazed across the valley, were half angry, half melancholy. The sun had gone down behind the opposite hills, and the broad front of the Château de Lancilly, in full view of La Marinière, looked grey and cold against the woods, even in the warm twilight of that rosy evening.

"Strange, that it should be inhabited again!" Angelot had emptied the basket, and stood beside his mother; the chickens bustled and scrambled about the foot of the steps.

"Yes, and as I hear, by all the perfections," said Madame de la Marinière. "Hervé de Sainfoy is more friendly than ever—and well he may be—his wife is supremely pretty and agreeable, his younger girls are most amiable, and as for Hélène, nothing so enchantingly beautiful has ever set foot in Anjou. Take care, my poor Ange, I beseech you."

Angelot laughed. "Then I suppose my father's next duty will be to find a husband for her. I hear she is difficult—or her parents for her, perhaps."

"Who told you so?"

"Monsieur de Mauves."

"What? the Prefect?"

"Yes. He sent his respectful compliments to you. I have been spending the day at Les Chouettes with him and the new General. He—oh, mon Dieu, mon Dieu!"

Angelot burst into a violent fit of laughing, and leaned, almost helpless, against a pillar of the porch.

"Are you mad?" said his mother.

"Ah—" he struggled to say—"if only you had seen the cows—our cows—and the General in the air—oh!"

A faint smile dawned in the depths of her eyes. "You have certainly lost your senses," she said, and slipped her hand into his arm. "Come down into the garden: I like it in the twilight—and that pile of stones over there will not weigh upon our eyes; the trees hide it. Come, my Ange: tell me all your news, serious and laughable. I am glad you were helping your uncle; but I do not like you to be away all day."

"I could not help it, mother," Angelot said. "Yes; I have indeed a great deal to tell you."

They strolled down together into the garden, where the vivid after-glow flushed all the flowers with rose. His mother leaned upon his arm, and they paced along by the tall box hedges. The serious part of the story was long, and interested her far more than the General's comic adventure, at which Angelot could only make her smile, though the telling of it sent him off into another fit of laughter.

"Poor Monsieur de Mauves, to go about with such a strange animal!" she said. "As for you, my child, you grow more childish every day. When will you be a man? Now be serious, for I hear your father coming."