Part 22

“Mademoiselle,” said the peasant-woman, hastily, “hush, I hear steps in the passage.”

“Ah! not his steps!” said Marie, listening. “But you are evading an answer; well, well, I’ll wait for it, or guess it.”

Francine was right, however. Three taps on the door interrupted the conversation. Captain Merle appeared, after receiving Mademoiselle de Verneuil’s permission to enter.

With a military salute to the lady, whose beauty dazzled him, the soldier ventured on giving her a glance, but he found nothing better to say than: “Mademoiselle, I am at your orders.”

“Then you are to be my protector, in place of the commander, who retires; is that so?”

“No, my superior is the adjutant-major Gerard, who has sent me here.”

“Your commandant must be very much afraid of me,” she said.

“Beg pardon, mademoiselle, Hulot is afraid of nothing. But women, you see, are not in his line; it ruffled him to have a general in a mob-cap.”

“And yet,” continued Mademoiselle de Verneuil, “it was his duty to obey his superiors. I like subordination, and I warn you that I shall allow no one to disobey me.”

“That would be difficult,” replied Merle, gallantly.

“Let us consult,” said Mademoiselle de Verneuil. “You can get fresh troops here and accompany me to Mayenne, which I must reach this evening. Shall we find other soldiers there, so that I might go on at once, without stopping at Mayenne? The Chouans are quite ignorant of our little expedition. If we travel at night, we can avoid meeting any number of them, and so escape an attack. Do you think this feasible?”

“Yes, mademoiselle.”

“What sort of road is it between Mayenne and Fougeres?”

“Rough; all up and down, a regular squirrel-wheel.”

“Well, let us start at once. As we have nothing to fear near Alencon, you can go before me; we’ll join you soon.”

“One would think she had seen ten years’ service,” thought Merle, as he departed. “Hulot is mistaken; that young girl is not earning her living out of a feather-bed. Ten thousand carriages! if I want to be adjutant-major I mustn’t be such a fool as to mistake Saint-Michael for the devil.”

During Mademoiselle de Verneuil’s conference with the captain, Francine had slipped out for the purpose of examining, through a window of the corridor, the spot in the courtyard which had excited her curiosity on arriving at the inn. She watched the stable and the heaps of straw with the absorption of one who was saying her prayers to the Virgin, and she presently saw Madame du Gua approaching Marche-a-Terre with the precaution of a cat that dislikes to wet its feet. When the Chouan caught sight of the lady, he rose and stood before her in an attitude of deep respect. This singular circumstance aroused Francine’s curiosity; she slipped into the courtyard and along the walls, avoiding Madame du Gua’s notice, and trying to hide herself behind the stable door. She walked on tiptoe, scarcely daring to breathe, and succeeded in posting herself close to Marche-a-Terre, without exciting his attention.

“If, after all this information,” the lady was saying to the Chouan, “it proves not to be her real name, you are to fire upon her without pity, as you would on a mad dog.”

“Agreed!” said Marche-a-Terre.

The lady left him. The Chouan replaced his red woollen cap upon his head, remained standing, and was scratching his ear as if puzzled when Francine suddenly appeared before him, apparently by magic.

“Saint Anne of Auray!” he exclaimed. Then he dropped his whip, clasped his hands, and stood as if in ecstasy. A faint color illuminated his coarse face, and his eyes shone like diamonds dropped on a muck-heap. “Is it really the brave girl from Cottin?” he muttered, in a voice so smothered that he alone heard it. “You are fine,” he said, after a pause, using the curious word, “godaine,” a superlative in the dialect of those regions used by lovers to express the combination of fine clothes and beauty.

“I daren’t touch you,” added Marche-a-Terre, putting out his big hand nevertheless, as if to weigh the gold chain which hung round her neck and below her waist.

“You had better not, Pierre,” replied Francine, inspired by the instinct which makes a woman despotic when not oppressed. She drew back haughtily, after enjoying the Chouan’s surprise; but she compensated for the harshness of her words by the softness of her glance, saying, as she once more approached him: “Pierre, that lady was talking to you about my young mistress, wasn’t she?”

Marche-a-Terre was silent; his face struggled, like the dawn, between clouds and light. He looked in turn at Francine, at the whip he had dropped, and at the chain, which seemed to have as powerful an attraction for him as the Breton girl herself. Then, as if to put a stop to his own uneasiness, he picked up his whip and still kept silence.

“Well, it is easy to see that that lady told you to kill my mistress,” resumed Francine, who knew the faithful discretion of the peasant, and wished to relieve his scruples.

Marche-a-Terre lowered his head significantly. To the Cottin girl that was answer enough.

“Very good, Pierre,” she said; “if any evil happens to her, if a hair of her head is injured, you and I will have seen each other for the last time; for I shall be in heaven, and you will go to hell.”

The possessed of devils whom the Church in former days used to exorcise with great pomp were not more shaken and agitated than Marche-a-Terre at this prophecy, uttered with a conviction that gave it certainty. His glance, which at first had a character of savage tenderness, counteracted by a fanaticism as powerful in his soul as love, suddenly became surly, as he felt the imperious manner of the girl he had long since chosen. Francine interpreted his silence in her own way.