The Battle Of The Strong: Chapter 8

Chapter 8

It was M. Savary dit Detricand.

"Whew--what fools there are in the world! Pish, you silly apes!" the
young man said, glancing through the open doorway again to where the
connetable's men were dragging two vile-looking ruffians into the Vier
Prison.

"What's happened, monsieur?" said Ranulph, closing the door and bolting
it.

"What was it, monsieur?" asked Guida anxiously, for painful events had
crowded too fast that morning. Detricand was stanching the blood at his
temple with the scarf from his neck.

"Get him some cordial, Guida--he's wounded!" said de Mauprat.

Detricand waved a hand almost impatiently, and dropped upon the veille,
swinging a leg backwards and forwards.

"It's nothing, I protest--nothing whatever, and I'll have no cordial, not
a drop. A drink of water--a mouthful of that, if I must drink."

Guida caught up a hanap of water from the dresser, and passed it to him.
Her fingers trembled a little. His were steady enough as he took the
hanap and drank off the water at a gulp. Again she filled it and again he
drank. The blood was running in a tiny little stream down his cheek. She
caught her handkerchief from her girdle impulsively, and gently wiped it
away.

"Let me bandage the wound," she said eagerly. Her eyes were alight with
compassion, certainly not because it was the dissipated French invader,
M. Savary dit Detricand,--no one knew that he was the young Comte de
Tournay of the House of Vaufontaine, but because he was a wounded
fellow-creature. She would have done the same for the poor beganne, Dormy
Jamais, who still prowled the purlieus of St. Heliers.

It was clear, however, that Detricand felt differently. The moment she
touched him he became suddenly still. He permitted her to wash the blood
from his temple and forehead, to stanch it first with brandied
jeru-leaves, then with cobwebs, and afterwards to bind it with her own
kerchief.

Detricand thrilled at the touch of the warm, tremulous fingers. He had
never been quite so near her before. His face was not far from hers. Now
her breath fanned him. As he bent his head for the bandaging, he could
see the soft pulsing of her bosom, and hear the beating of her heart. Her
neck was so full and round and soft, and her voice--surely he had never
heard a voice so sweet and strong, a tone so well poised, so resonantly
pleasant.

When she had finished, he had an impulse to catch the hand as it dropped
away from his forehead, and kiss it; not as he had kissed many a hand,
hotly one hour and coldly the next, but with an unpurchasable kind of
gratitude characteristic of this especial sort of sinner. He was just
young enough, and there was still enough natural health in him, to know
the healing touch of a perfect decency, a pure truth of spirit. Yet he
had been drunk the night before, drunk with three noncommissioned
officers--and he a gentleman, in spite of all, as could be plainly seen.

He turned his head away from the girl quickly, and looked straight into
the eyes of her grandfather.

"I'll tell you how it was, Sieur de Mauprat," said he. "I was crossing
the Place du Vier Prison when a rascal threw a cleaver at me from a
window. If it had struck me on the head--well, the Royal Court would have
buried me, and without a slab to my grave like Rullecour. I burst open
the door of the house, ran up the stairs, gripped the ruffian, and threw
him through the window into the street. As I did so a door opened behind,
and another cut-throat came at me with a pistol. He fired--fired wide. I
ran in on him, and before he had time to think he was out of the window
too. Then the other brute below fired up at me. The bullet gashed my
temple, as you see. After that, it was an affair of the connetable and
his men. I had had enough fighting before breakfast. I saw your open
door, and here I am--monsieur, monsieur, monsieur, mademoiselle!" He
bowed to each of them and glanced towards the table hungrily.

Ranulph placed a seat for him. He viewed the conger eel and limpets with
an avid eye, but waited for the chevalier and de Mauprat to sit. He had
no sooner taken a mouthful, however, and thrown a piece of bread to
Biribi the dog, than, starting again to his feet, he said:

"Your pardon, monsieur le chevalier, that brute in the Place has knocked
all sense from my head! I've a letter for you, brought from Rouen by one
of the refugees who came yesterday." He drew from his breast a packet and
handed it over. "I went out to their ship last night."

The chevalier looked with surprise and satisfaction at the seal on the
letter, and, breaking it, spread open the paper, fumbled for the
eye-glass which he always carried in his waistcoat, and began reading
diligently.

Meanwhile Ranulph turned to Guida. "To-morrow Jean Touzel and his wife
and I go to the Ecrehos Rocks in Jean's boat," said he. "A vessel was
driven ashore there three days ago, and my carpenters are at work on her.
If you can go and the wind holds fair, you shall be brought back safe by
sundown--Jean says so too."

Of all boatmen and fishermen on the coast, Jean Touzel was most to be
trusted. No man had saved so many shipwrecked folk, none risked his life
so often; and he had never had a serious accident. To go to sea with Jean
Touzel, folk said, was safer than living on land. Guida loved the sea;
and she could sail a boat, and knew the tides and currents of the south
coast as well as most fishermen.

M. de Mauprat met her inquiring glance and nodded assent. She then said
gaily to Ranulph: "I shall sail her, shall I not?"

"Every foot of the way," he answered.

She laughed and clapped her hands. Suddenly the little chevalier broke
in. "By the head of John the Baptist!" said he.

Detricand put down his knife and fork in amazement, and Guida coloured,
for the words sounded almost profane upon the chevalier's lips.

Du Champsavoys held up his eye-glass, and, turning from one to the other,
looked at each of them imperatively yet abstractedly too. Then, pursing
up his lower lip, and with a growing amazement which carried him to
distant heights of reckless language, he said again:

"By the head of John the Baptist on a charger!" He looked at Detricand
with a fierceness which was merely the tension of his thought. If he had
looked at a wall it would have been the same. But Detricand, who had an
almost whimsical sense of humour, felt his neck in affected concern as
though to be quite sure of it. "Chevalier," said he, "you shock us--you
shock us, dear chevalier."

"The most painful things, and the most wonderful too," said the
chevalier, tapping the letter with his eye-glass; "the most terrible and
yet the most romantic things are here. A drop of cider, if you please,
mademoiselle, before I begin to read it to you, if I may--if I may--eh?"

They all nodded eagerly. Guida handed him a mogue of cider. The little
grey thrush of a man sipped it, and in a voice no bigger than a bird's
began:

   "From Lucillien du Champsavoys, Comte de Chanier, by the hand of a
   faithful friend, who goeth hence from among divers dangers, unto my
   cousin, the Chevalier du Champsavoys de Beaumanoir, late Gentleman
   of the Bedchamber to the best of monarchs, Louis XV, this writing:
   "MY DEAR AND HONOURED Cousin"--The chevalier paused, frowned a
   trifle, and tapped his lips with his finger in a little lyrical
   emotion--"My dear and honoured cousin, all is lost. The France we
   loved is no more. The twentieth of June saw the last vestige of
   Louis's power pass for ever. That day ten thousand of the
   sans-culottes forced their way into the palace to kill him. A faithful
   few surrounded him. In the mad turmoil, we were fearful, he was
   serene. 'Feel,' said Louis, placing his hand on his bosom, 'feel
   whether this is the beating of a heart shaken by fear.' Ah, my
   friend, your heart would have clamped in misery to hear the Queen
   cry: 'What have I to fear? Death? it is as well to-day as
   to-morrow; they can do no more!' Their lives were saved, the day
   passed, but worse came after.
   "The tenth of August came. With it too, the end-the dark and bloody
   end-of the Swiss Guard. The Jacobins had their way at last. The
   Swiss Guard died in the Court of the Carrousel as they marched to
   the Assembly to save the King. Thus the last circle of defence
   round the throne was broken. The palace was given over to flame and
   the sword. Of twenty nobles of the court I alone escaped. France
   is become a slaughter-house. The people cried out for more liberty,
   and their liberators gave them the freedom of death. A fortnight
   ago, Danton, the incomparable fiend, let loose his assassins upon
   the priests of God. Now Paris is made a theatre where the people
   whom Louis and his nobles would have died to save have turned every
   street into a stable of carnage, every prison and hospital into a
   vast charnel-house. One last revolting thing alone remains to be
   done--the murder of the King; then this France that we have loved
   will have no name and no place in our generation. She will rise
   again, but we shall not see her, for our eyes have been blinded with
   blood, for ever darkened by disaster. Like a mistress upon whom we
   have lavished the days of our youth and the strength of our days,
   she has deceived us; she has stricken us while we slept. Behold a
   Caliban now for her paramour!
   "Weep with me, for France despoils me. One by one my friends have
   fallen beneath the axe. Of my four sons but one remains. Henri was
   stabbed by Danton's ruffians at the Hotel de Ville; Gaston fought
   and died with the Swiss Guard, whose hacked and severed limbs were
   broiled and eaten in the streets by these monsters who mutilate the
   land. Isidore, the youngest, defied a hundred of Robespierre's
   cowards on the steps of the Assembly, and was torn to pieces by the
   mob. Etienne alone is left. But for him and for the honour of my
   house I too would find a place beside the King and die with him.
   Etienne is with de la Rochejaquelein in Brittany. I am here at
   Rouen.
   "Brittany and Normandy still stand for the King. In these two
   provinces begins the regeneration of France: we call it the War of
   the Vendee. On that Isle of Jersey there you should almost hear the
   voice of de la Rochejaquelein and the marching cries of our loyal
   legions. If there be justice in God we shall conquer. But there
   will be joy no more for such as you or me, nor hope, nor any peace.
   We live only for those who come after. Our duty remains, all else
   is dead. You did well to go, and I do well to stay.
   "By all these piteous relations you shall know the importance of the
   request I now set forth.
   "My cousin by marriage of the House of Vaufontaine has lost all his
   sons. With the death of the Prince of Vaufontaine, there is in
   France no direct heir to the house, nor can it, by the law, revert
   to my house or my heirs. Now of late the Prince hath urged me to
   write to you--for he is here in seclusion with me--and to unfold to
   you what has hitherto been secret. Eleven years ago the only nephew
   of the Prince, after some naughty escapades, fled from the Court
   with Rullecour the adventurer, who invaded the Isle of Jersey. From
   that hour he has been lost to France. Some of his companions in
   arms returned after a number of years. All with one exception
   declared that he was killed in the battle at St. Heliers. One,
   however, maintains that he was still living and in the prison
   hospital when his comrades were set free.
   "It is of him I write to you. He is--as you will perchance
   remember--the Comte de Tournay. He was then not more than seventeen
   years of age, slight of build, with brownish hair, dark grey eyes,
   and had over the right shoulder a scar from a sword thrust. It
   seemeth little possible that, if living, he should still remain in
   that Isle of Jersey. He may rather have returned to obscurity in
   France or have gone to England to be lost to name and remembrance
   --or even indeed beyond the seas.
   "That you may perchance give me word of him is the object of my
   letter, written in no more hope than I live; and you can well guess
   how faint that is. One young nobleman preserved to France may yet
   be the great unit that will save her.
   "Greet my poor countrymen yonder in the name of one who still waits
   at a desecrated altar; and for myself you must take me as I am, with
   the remembrance of what I was, even
          "Your faithful friend and loving kinsman,
                    "CHANIER."
   "All this, though in the chances of war you read it not till
   wintertide, was told you at Rouen this first day of September 1792."

During the reading, broken by feeling and reflective pauses on the
chevalier's part, the listeners showed emotion after the nature of each.
The Sieur de Mauprat's fingers clasped and unclasped on the top of his
cane, little explosions of breath came from his compressed lips, his
eyebrows beetled over till the eyes themselves seemed like two glints of
flame. Delagarde dropped a fist heavily upon the table, and held it there
clinched, while his heel beat a tattoo of excitement upon the floor.
Guida's breath came quick and fast--as Ranulph said afterwards, she was
"blanc comme un linge." She shuddered painfully when the slaughter and
burning of the Swiss Guards was read. Her brain was so swimming with the
horrors of anarchy that the latter part of the letter dealing with the
vanished Count of Tournay passed by almost unheeded.

But this particular matter greatly interested Ranulph and de Mauprat.
They leaned forward eagerly, seizing every word, and both instinctively
turned towards Detricand when the description of de Tournay was read.

As for Detricand himself, he listened to the first part of the letter
like a man suddenly roused out of a dream. For the first time since the
Revolution had begun, the horror of it and the meaning of it were brought
home to him. He had been so long expatriated, had loitered so long in the
primrose path of daily sleep and nightly revel, had fallen so far, that
he little realised how the fiery wheels of Death were spinning in France,
or how black was the torment of her people. His face turned scarlet as
the thing came home to him now. He dropped his head in his hand as if to
listen more attentively, but it was in truth to hide his emotion. When
the names of Vaufontaine and de Tournay were mentioned, he gave a little
start, then suddenly ruled himself to a strange stillness. His face
seemed presently to clear; he even smiled a little. Conscious that de
Mauprat and Delagarde were watching him, he appeared to listen with a
keen but impersonal interest, not without its effect upon his
scrutinisers. He nodded his head as though he understood the situation.
He acted very well; he bewildered the onlookers. They might think he
tallied with the description of the Comte de Tournay, yet he gave the
impression that the matter was not vital to himself. But when the little
Chevalier stopped and turned his eye-glass upon him with sudden startled
inquiry, he found it harder to keep composure.

"Singular--singular!" said the old man, and returned to the reading of
the letter.

When he ended there was absolute silence for a moment. Then the chevalier
lifted his eye-glass again and looked at Detricand intently.

"Pardon me, monsieur," he said, "but you were with Rullecour--as I was
saying."

Detricand nodded with a droll sort of helplessness, and answered: "In
Jersey I never have chance to forget it, Chevalier."

Du Champsavoys, with a naive and obvious attempt at playing counsel,
fixed him again with the glass, pursed his lips, and with the importance
of a greffier at the ancient Cour d'Heritage, came one step nearer to his
goal.

"Have you knowledge of the Comte de Tournay, monsieur?"

"I knew him--as you were saying, Chevalier," answered Detricand lightly.

Then the Chevalier struck home. He dropped his fingers upon the table,
stood up, and, looking straight into Detricand's eyes, said:

"Monsieur, you are the Comte de Tournay!"

The Chevalier involuntarily held the silence for an instant. Nobody
stirred. De Mauprat dropped his chin upon his hands, and his eyebrows
drew down in excitement. Guida gave a little cry of astonishment. But
Detricand answered the Chevalier with a look of blank surprise and a
shrug of the shoulder, which had the effect desired.

"Thank you, Chevalier," said he with quizzical humour. "Now I know who I
am, and if it isn't too soon to levy upon the kinship, I shall dine with
you today, chevalier. I paid my debts yesterday, and sous are scarce, but
since we are distant cousins I may claim grist at the family mill, eh?"

The Chevalier sat, or rather dropped into his chair again.

"Then you are not the Comte de Tournay, monsieur," said he hopelessly.

"Then I shall not dine with you to-day," retorted Detricand gaily.

"You fit the tale," said de Mauprat dubiously, touching the letter with
his finger.

"Let me see," rejoined Detricand. "I've been a donkey farmer, a
shipmaster's assistant, a tobacco pedlar, a quarryman, a wood merchant,
an interpreter, a fisherman--that's very like the Comte de Tournay! On
Monday night I supped with a smuggler; on Tuesday I breakfasted on soupe
a la graisse with Manon Moignard the witch; on Wednesday I dined with
Dormy Jamais and an avocat disbarred for writing lewd songs for a
chocolate-house; on Thursday I went oyster-fishing with a native who has
three wives, and a butcher who has been banished four times for not
keeping holy the Sabbath Day; and I drank from eleven o'clock till
sunrise this morning with three Scotch sergeants of the line--which is
very like the Comte de Tournay, as you were saying, Chevalier! I am five
feet eleven, and the Comte de Tournay was five feet ten--which is no
lie," he added under his breath. "I have a scar, but it's over my left
shoulder and not over my right--which is also no lie," he added under his
breath. "De Tournay's hair was brown, and mine, you see, is almost a dead
black--fever did that," he added under his breath. "De Tournay escaped
the day after the Battle of Jersey from the prison hospital, I was left,
and here I've been ever since--Yves Savary dit Detricand at your service,
chevalier."

A pained expression crossed over the Chevalier's face. "I am most sorry;
I am most sorry," he said hesitatingly. "I had no wish to wound your
feelings."

"Ah, it is de Tournay to whom you must apologise," said Detricand
musingly, with a droll look.

"It is a pity," continued the Chevalier, "for somehow all at once I
recalled a resemblance. I saw de Tournay when he was fourteen--yes, I
think it was fourteen--and when I looked at you, monsieur, his face came
back to me. It would have made my cousin so happy if you had been the
Comte de Tournay and I had found you here." The old man's voice trembled
a little. "We are growing fewer every day, we Frenchmen of the ancient
families. And it would have made my cousin so happy, as I was saying,
monsieur."

Detricand's manner changed; he became serious. The devil-may-care,
irresponsible shamelessness of his face dropped away like a mask.
Something had touched him. His voice changed too.

"De Tournay was a much better fellow than I am, chevalier," said he--
"and that's no lie," he added under his breath. "De Tournay was a fiery,
ambitious, youngster with bad companions. De Tournay told me he repented
of coming with Rullecour, and he felt he had spoilt his life--that he
could never return to France again or to his people."

The old Chevalier shook his head sadly. "Is he dead?" he asked.

There was a slight pause, and then Detricand answered: "No, still
living."

"Where is he?"

"I promised de Tournay that I would never reveal that."

"Might I not write to him?" asked the old man. "Assuredly, Chevalier."

"Could you--will you--despatch a letter to him from me, monsieur?"

"Upon my honour, yes."

"I thank you--I thank you, monsieur; I will write it to-day."

"As you will, Chevalier. I will ask you for the letter to-night,"
rejoined Detricand. "It may take time to reach de Tournay; but he shall
receive it into his own hands."

De Mauprat trembled to his feet to put the question he knew the Chevalier
dreaded to ask:

"Do you think that monsieur le comte will return to France?"

"I think he will," answered Detricand slowly.

"It will make my cousin so happy--so happy," quavered the little
Chevalier. "Will you take snuff with me, monsieur?" He offered his silver
snuff-box to his vagrant countryman. This was a mark of favour he showed
to few.

Detricand bowed, accepted, and took a pinch. "I must be going," he said.

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