Part 7 (1/2)
”So much the better,” said Goulard; ”but I care too much for the Cinq-Cygne and Simeuse families to let any harm come to them. Listen to me. If you have any compromising papers--”
”Papers!” repeated the old gentleman.
”Yes, if you have any, burn them at once,” said the mayor. ”I'll go and amuse the police agents.”
Goulard, whose object was to run with the royalist hare and hold with the republican hounds, left the room; at that moment the dogs barked violently.
”There is no longer time,” said the abbe, ”here they come! But who is to warn the countess? Where is she?”
”Catherine didn't come for her hat and whip to make relics of them,”
remarked Mademoiselle Goujet.
Goulard tried to detain the two agents for a few moments, a.s.suring them of the perfect ignorance of the family at Cinq-Cygne.
”You don't know these people!” said Peyrade, laughing at him.
The two agents, insinuatingly dangerous, entered the house at once, followed by the corporal from Arcis and one gendarme. The sight of them paralyzed the peaceful card-players, who kept their seats at the table, terrified by such a display of force. The noise produced by a dozen gendarmes whose horses were stamping on the terrace, was heard without.
”I do not see Mademoiselle de Cinq-Cygne,” said Corentin.
”She is probably asleep in her bedroom,” said Monsieur d'Hauteserre.
”Come with me, ladies,” said Corentin, turning to pa.s.s through the ante-chamber and up the staircase, followed by Mademoiselle Goujet and Madame d'Hauteserre. ”Rely upon me,” he whispered to the old lady. ”I am in your interests. I sent the mayor to warn you. Distrust my colleague and look to me. I can save every one of you.”
”But what is it all about?” said Mademoiselle Goujet.
”A matter of life and death; you must know that,” replied Corentin.
Madame d'Hauteserre fainted. To Mademoiselle Goujet's great astonishment and Corentin's disappointment, Laurence's room was empty. Certain that no one could have escaped from the park or the chateau, for all the issues were guarded, Corentin stationed a gendarme in every room and ordered others to search the farm buildings, stables, and sheds. Then he returned to the salon, where Durieu and his wife and the other servants had rushed in the wildest excitement. Peyrade was studying their faces with his little blue eye, cold and calm in the midst of the uproar. Just as Corentin reappeared alone (Mademoiselle Goujet remaining behind to take care of Madame d'Hauteserre) the tramp of horses was heard, and presently the sound of a child's weeping. The horses entered by the small gate; and the general suspense was put an end to by a corporal appearing at the door of the salon pus.h.i.+ng Gothard, whose hands were tied, and Catherine whom he led to the agents.
”Here are some prisoners,” he said; ”that little scamp was escaping on horseback.”
”Fool!” said Corentin, in his ear, ”why didn't you let him alone? You could have found out something by following him.”
Gothard had chosen to burst into tears and behave like an idiot.
Catherine took an att.i.tude of artless innocence which made the old agent reflective. The pupil of Lenoir, after considering the two prisoners carefully, and noting the vacant air of the old gentleman whom he took to be sly, the intelligent eye of the abbe who was still fingering the cards, and the utter stupefaction of the servants and Durieu, approached Corentin and whispered in his ear, ”We are not dealing with ninnies.”
Corentin answered with a look at the card-table; then he added, ”They were playing at boston! Mademoiselle's bed was just being made for the night; she escaped in a hurry; it is a regular surprise; we shall catch them.”
CHAPTER VII. A FOREST NOOK
A breach has always a cause and a purpose. Here is the explanation of how the one which led from the tower called that of Mademoiselle and the stables came to be made. After his installation as Laurence's guardian at Cinq-Cygne old d'Hauteserre converted a long ravine, through which the water of the forest flowed into the moat, into a roadway between two tracts of uncultivated land belonging to the chateau, by merely planting out in it about a hundred walnut trees which he found ready in the nursery. In eleven years these trees had grown and branched so as to nearly cover the road, hidden already by steep banks, which ran into a little wood of thirty acres recently purchased. When the chateau had its full complement of inhabitants they all preferred to take this covered way through the breach to the main road which skirted the park walls and led to the farm, rather than go round by the entrance. By dint of thus using it the breach in the sides of the moat had gradually been widened on both sides, with all the less scruple because in this nineteenth century of ours moats are no longer of the slightest use, and Laurence's guardian had often talked of putting this one to some other purpose. The constant crumbling away of the earth and stones and gravel had ended by filling up the ditch, so that only after heavy rains was the causeway thus constructed covered. But the bank was still so steep that it was difficult to make a horse descend it, and even more difficult to get him up upon the main road. Horses, however, seem in times of peril to share their masters' thought.
While the young countess was hesitating to follow Marthe, and asking explanations, Michu, from his vantage-ground watched the closing in of the gendarmes and understood their plan. He grew desperate as time went by and the countess did not come to him. A squad of gendarmes were marching along the park wall and stationing themselves as sentinels, each man being near enough to communicate with those on either side of them, by voice and eye. Michu, lying flat on his stomach, his ear to earth, gauged, like a red Indian, by the strength of the sounds the time that remained to him.
”I came too late!” he said to himself. ”Violette shall pay dear for this! what a time it took to make him drunk! What can be done?”
He heard the detachment that was coming through the forest reach the iron gates and turn into the main road, where before long it would meet the squad coming up from the other direction.