Chapter VII: The Chevalier Du Guet

The eyes of Mademoiselle de Lâge were a merciless grey; her face was gold-white, like a dying maple-leaf. She wore no cap on her tumbled hair, and a coarse bistre-coloured _jupon_ was her prominent article of attire. I knew her at once, nevertheless, though her cheeks were a little fallen and her under-lids dashed with violet. She stared at me as she knelt; but she made no sign that she was afraid.

“Mademoiselle is in tribulation?”

“You need not speak a swineherd so fair,” she said.

“But I honour pork with all my heart.”

She rose to her feet. She seemed to hesitate. But she never took her eyes off me.

“Whence do you come?” she said, in her soft, deliberate voice.

“From the woods--from the wastes--from anywhere. I am proscribed and in hiding. I am hungry, also,--and mademoiselle will give me to eat?”

“Why do you call me ‘mademoiselle’? Do you not see I am a swineherd?”

The little pig still screeched fitfully underground.

“Oh!” she cried, in sudden anguish. “Kill it, monsieur, if you know the way, and let us dine!”

I was pleased with that “us.”

“I have no technical knowledge,” I said. “But, let us see. It is injured?”

“_Mon Dieu!_ I hope not. I had so longed to taste meat once more, and I had heard of pitfalls. There was a hole in the ground. I covered it over with branches, that one of these might step thereon and tumble in and be killed. But when I heard his cries I was sorry.”

“That was a bold thought for a swineherd. And how would you tell your tale, with one devoured? or get the little pig out of the pit? or skin and dismember and cook it when hauled to the surface?”

“All that I had not considered.”

“But you desired to eat pork? And what would you say now to a pig’s foot _à la_ St Menehould?”

The jest bubbled out of me; I could not withhold it. Her mind was as quick as her speech was measured.

“Ah!” she cried, “but I remember. And you were in Février’s, monsieur?”

“At the table next to yours.”

“That is strange, is it not!”

She gave a little scornful shift to her shoulders.

“It is all nothing in these mad days. The question is, monsieur, if you can put the little beast out of his pain?”

I looked into the pit. Two beady eyes, withdrawn into a fat neck, peered up at me.

“The hole is not six feet deep, mademoiselle. His pain is all upon his nerves.”

She gave a whimper of relief. Then her face fell cold again.

“It follows that we must forego our dinner. Will monsieur release the victim of my gluttony?”

I jumped into the hole--hoisted out the small squeaker--returned to the surface.

“_Bon jour_, monsieur!” said Carinne.

“You will dismiss me hungry, mademoiselle?”

“What claim have you upon me?”

“The claim of fraternity, citoyenne.”

She uttered a little laugh of high disdain.

“Well, rob me,” she said, “and prove yourself a true Republican.”

“I would steal nothing from you but your favour.”

“It is all bestowed on these animals. Take him you have rescued and make yourself my debtor and go.”

“Mademoiselle, is this to be, when I have spent days--nay, I know not how many--of hunger and thirst and weariness in the desperate pursuit of one to whom I had vowed to offer those services of protection she lacked elsewhere?”

Her pale eyes wondered at me.

“Do you speak of the swineherd, monsieur?” she said.

“I speak of Mademoiselle de Lâge.”

“She is very secure and in good company. And whence comes your knowledge of, or interest in, her?”

“Shall I tell you the story?”

“Nay,” she said, with a sudden swerve to indifference; “but how does it concern me?”

“Your uncle, mademoiselle!”

“I have none that I own.”

I was silent. She looked away from me, tapping a foot on the ground. It was all a fight between her bitterness and her pride. With a woman the first conquers.

“Tell me,” she said in a moment, turning upon me, “do you come from him?”

“I come from him.”

“Commissioned to beg me to return?”

“No, mademoiselle. Nor would I insult you with such a message.”

“I can dispense with your interest in me, sir.”

Again she averted her face. Decidedly she required some knowing. By-and-by she spoke again, without looking round and more gently--

“How does M. de Lâge bear the loss of--the loss of his treasures?”

“He is, I fear, demented by it.”

She gave a bad little laugh.

“One who would sell his honour should at least keep his wits. Well, monsieur, I have nothing with which to reward your service of runner, so----”

“A meal and a drink of water will repay me, mademoiselle.”

“You can help yourself. Do you think I keep a larder in the forest?”

“But you eat?”

“My table is spread under the chestnut-trees and over the bushes. I leave its selection to my friends yonder. Sometimes they will present me with a truffle for feast-days.”

I regarded the proud child with some quaintness of pity. This repelling manner was doubtless a mask over much unhappiness.

“I have still something left in my satchel,” I said. “Will mademoiselle honour me by sharing it?”

The light jumped in her eyes.

“I do not know,” she said. “What is its nature?”

“Only some raisins and a little hard bread.”

“But bread, monsieur! That I have not tasted for long. We will go to the brook-side and sit down.”

“And the herd?”

“They will not wander. When they come to a fruitful ground they stay there till it is stripped.”

She led the way round the hill to the little gushing stream and seated herself on a green stone. I would not even slake my thirst until I had spread my store on her lap. Then I lay down at her feet, like a dog, and waited for the fragments she could spare. She ate with relish, and took little notice of me. But presently she paused, in astonishment at herself.

“I am eating up your dinner!” she cried.

“It gives me more pleasure to watch than to share with you.”

“Oh, fie!” she exclaimed. “But am I not a true swineherd?”

She handed me the satchel.

“It is all yours, mademoiselle.”

“Eat!” she said peremptorily. “I will not touch another mouthful.”

She leaned an elbow on her knee and her chin upon her knuckles while I devoured what remained. Her eyes dreamed into the thronging tree-trunks. I thought the real softness of her soul was beginning to quicken like a February narcissus.

“But how I long for meat!” she said, suddenly.

I laughed.

“If mademoiselle will retain me in her service, I will make shift to provide her with a dish of pork.”

She turned and looked at me.

“Is it true you have sought me out? I have no knowledge of your face.”

“It will not, like mademoiselle’s, impress itself on the imagination. I have seen you, by chance, twice before, mademoiselle, and therefore it follows, in the logic of gallantry, that I am here.”

She drew herself up at that word I was foolish enough to utter.

“I perceive, monsieur, that you hold the licence of your tongue a recommendation to my service. Is this another message with the delivery of which you would not insult me?”

“Nay, mademoiselle, I spoke the common fashion of more trivial times than these; and I ask your pardon. It is to save you from the possibility of insult that I have wandered and starved these many days.”

She looked at me very gravely.

“I foresee no danger in these solitudes. I am sorry, monsieur; but I cannot accept your service.”

She rose to her feet and I to mine.

“Mademoiselle,” I cried, “be wise to reconsider the question! A delicate and high-born lady, solitary and defenceless amongst these barbarous hills! But I myself, on my journey hither, have encountered more than one perilous rogue!”

She shook her head.

“I take it as I find it. Besides, I have always a covert into which I can slip on menace of a storm.”

“But this is madness!”

“By monsieur’s account that is the present condition of our family,” she said, frigidly.

“See, mademoiselle--I ask nothing but that I may remain near you, to help and protect, your guard and your servant in one.”

She made as if to go.

“You fatigue me, monsieur. It is not the part of a gentleman to impose his company where it is not desired. You will not remain by my consent.”

“Then I shall remain nevertheless!” I cried, a little angrily. “I must not allow mademoiselle to constitute herself the victim to a false sentiment.”

She left me without another word, going off to her pigs; and I flung myself down again in a pet by the brookside.

* * * * * * *

All that afternoon and evening I wandered about in the neighbourhood of the little hill. I was hot and angry--after a humorous fashion--with myself rather than with Carinne. If I had chosen to invest my self-imposed knight-errantry with a purely fictitious order of merit, I could hardly blame the girl for declining to recognise its title to respect. At the same time, while I assured myself I detested her, I could not refrain from constantly speculating as to the nature of her present reflections. Was she still haughtily indignant at my insistence, or inclined to secret heart-searchings in the matter of her rather cavalier rejection of my services? Like a child, I wished her, I think, to be a little sorry, a little unaccountably sad over the memory of the stranger who had come and gone like a sunbeam shot through the melancholy of her days. I wished her to have reason to regret her unceremonious treatment of me. I did _not_ wish her to overlook my visit altogether--and this, it would appear, was just what she was doing.

For, when I once, somewhere about the fall of dusk, climbed softly to the top of the hillock to get view of her, perchance, from ambush, I was positively incensed to hear her voice coming up to me in a little placid song or chant that was in itself an earnest of her indifference and serenity. She sat against a tree at the foot of the slope, and all about her, uncouthly dumped on the fallen mast, were a score of drowsy pigs. She sang to them like Circe, while they twitched lazy ears or snapped their little springs of tails; and the sunset poured from the furnace-mouth of the valley and made her pale face glorious.

Now she did her beauty more justice by voice than by brush, though in each art she was supremely artless; but there was a note of nature in the first that was like the winter song of a robin. And presently she trilled a little childish _chansonnette_ of the peasants that touched me because I had some memory of it:--

The little bonne, Marie,
(_À moi, mon poupon!_)
Spoke to her doll so wee:
(_À moi, mon poupon!_)
“Hush, little son, sweet thing!
But wouldst thou be a king?”
(_À moi, mon poupon!_)

“Thy sceptre grows in the mere,”
(_À moi, mon poupon!_)
“Thy crown in the blossoming brere.”
(_À moi, mon poupon!_)
“For orb a grape shall stand
Clutched in thy tiny hand.”
(_À moi, mon poupon!_)

A rose she pinned at his side,
(_À moi, mon poupon!_)
And one to each foot she tied;
(_À moi, mon poupon!_)
His cot she lined with rue,
And she named him her _Jésus_.
(_À moi, mon poupon!_)

I lay amongst the branches that night, with the memory of the low, sweet voice and the strange picture in my brain. And, as I tossed, literally, on my timber couch, a weirder fancy would come to me of the elfish swineherd sleeping within her charmed circle of hogs--fearless and secure--mingling her soft expression of rest with their truculent breathings.

I was up (or rather down) early; washed in the brook; breakfasted fastidiously off beech-nuts. Then, quite undecided as to my course of action, I loitered awhile amongst the trees, and finally came round by the hill once more, and dwelt upon a thought to climb it and investigate. But, as I stood in uncertainty, a shrill cry came to my ears. It rang startlingly in that voiceless pit of green, and I hurried at my topmost speed round the base of the mound, and came suddenly upon a sight that met me like a blow.

Two savages, each with an arm of the girl brutally seized, were shouldering the poor swineherd towards the trees. She cried and struggled, disputing every step; the pigs streamed curiously in the wake of the group. There was an obvious ugly inference to be drawn from the sight, and I made no compromise with my discretion. I just rushed through the herd and charged straight at one of the ruffians.

He was aware of me--they both were--before I reached him. They twisted their heads about, and the one I made for dropped his hold of Carinne and jumped to meet my onset, while the other hooted “_O-he! bran de lui!_” and tightened his grip of the girl. I saw only that my assailant was a powerful coarse _bonnet-rouge_, little-eyed, hairy as Attila. The next instant I had dived, caught one of his ankles, and given his furious impetus an upward direction. He went over me in a parabola, like a ball sprung from a trap, and I heard his ribs thud on the ground. But I had no time to give him my further attention, for, seeing his comrade’s discomfiture, the second rascal came at me.

And now I was like to pay dearly for my temerity, for, though I was lithe and active enough, I had not that of substance on my bones to withstand the pounding of a couple of enraged and sanguinary giants. The poor Carinne had sunk, for the moment unnerved, upon the ground. I prayed God she had a knife to use on herself for a last resource. No doubt the ruffian I had thrown would take me in the rear in a moment. The other was bearing down upon me like a bullock. Suddenly, when come almost within my reach, he jerked himself to so quick a halt that his heels cut grooves in the mast. I saw his eyes dilate and glare beyond me, and on the instant a single vibrant scream, like the shrill neigh of a horse, rose from the ground at my back. It was the cue for an immediate quarrelling clamour, fierce and gluttonous, such as one hears when a bucket of wash is emptied into a sty; and if it was lifted again, bodiless and inhuman, it might not reach through the uproar.

I had turned to look--and away again in infinite horror. Upon the half-stunned wretch, as he lay prostrate on his back, an old ravening boar of the herd had flung itself in fury, and with one bestial clinch of its teeth and jerk of its powerful neck had torn out the very apple of the man’s throat. And there atop of his victim the huge brute sprawled, tossing its head and squeaking furiously; while the rest of the herd, smitten with the beast-lust, ran hither and thither, approaching, snuffing, retreating, and, through all, never ceasing in their guttural outcry.

Now in a moment came a pause in the tumult, and I read in my opponent’s eyes, as distinctly as though they were mirrors, that the triumphant brute behind me was showing itself alert with consciousness of the living prey that yet offered itself in reversion. I saw in the man’s face amazement resolve itself into sick terror; he slipped back into its sheath the _couteau-poignard_ he had half drawn. “_Adieu-va!_” I shouted at him, advancing--and on the word he wheeled about and pounded off amongst the trees as if the devil were at his heels.

When I ran to Mademoiselle de Lâge, she was regaining in a dazed manner her feet and her faculties.

“I must lift you--I must help you!” I cried. “Ah! do not look, but come away! My God, what peril, when the beast in man is made manifest to the beast in the beast!”

I put my right arm about her under hers. To touch the very stringy texture of the _jupon_ with my hand was to find my heart queerly lodged in my finger-tips. She came quietly with me a few paces; then suddenly she wrenched herself free, and, turning her back upon me, fumbled in her bosom.

“Monsieur,” she said on a little faint key, from the covert of her hair (_Bon Dieu!_ that admirable low huskiness in her voice that made of her every utterance a caress!),--“monsieur, he was the old brave of my little troop. I called him my _Chevalier du Guet_. It was inhuman--yes, it was inhuman; but he struck for his lady and rescued her. Wilt thou not be my ambassador to decorate him for a last token of gratitude?”

Heaven! the magnificence of her fancy! She had taken from her shoulders her scapular, together with a little heart of chalcedonyx that hung therefrom. This latter she detached and handed to me.

“Loop it to his ear, if thou darest,” said she.

I went quite gravely to do her bidding. What a _farceur_ of circumstance was I become! But my breast overflowed with deference as I approached the great pig. He had rolled from his victim and stood a little apart, evilly humouring with his chaps a certain recollection. He eyed me with wickedness as I advanced, and his obsequious following, something subsided from their hysteria, seemed awaiting their cue. I would not allow myself a second’s indecision. I walked straight up to him--“Monsieur,” I said, “_avec l’égard le plus profond_”--and flung the string over his ear.

Alas! the ingrate! As I retreated he threw down his head, dislodged the trinket, smelt at and swallowed it.

The eyes in Carinne’s yet shocked face looked a pale inquiry when I returned to her.

“Mademoiselle,” I said, “the honour would appear entirely to his taste.”

She nodded seriously.

“It is well,” she whispered; “and I hope none will rob him.”

“He shall be turned inside out first,” I said stoutly; and at that she nodded again, and bade me to a hurried retreat.

We may have walked a mile, or even two, in a solemn silence, before my comrade was fain to stop, in the heart of a woodland glen, and throw herself exhausted on a bank. Then she looked up at me, her fatigued eyes struggling yet with defiance.

“Why do you not upbraid me?” she said. “Why do you not say ‘I told you so’?”

“Because it does not occur to me.”

“Ah! you would make a fine virtue of forbearance; you would be the patient ass to my vanity, would you not, monsieur?”

“I would let mademoiselle ride me rough-shod till I fell dead.”

“And so leave me the living monument to your nobility. But it is not generous, monsieur, thus to rebuke me with silence.”

“I did not intend to----”

“And, after all, it was the hog that struck most effectively.”

“And that is conceded, mademoiselle; and the hog is generously decorated.”

She mused up at me rebelliously.

“I do not even know your name.”

“It is Citizen Thibaut.”

“Citizen----” (she made a wry mouth of it). “Then, if I can find the wherewithal to reward your gallantry, citizen, will you leave me to myself?”

“Mademoiselle, if only I could believe none other would impose himself on that sweet duet!”

She shrugged her shoulders fretfully.

“Monsieur, monsieur, you assume a father’s privilege. Has my misfortune placed me beyond the pale of courtesy? or has a swineherd no title to the considerations of decency?”

“Nay, mademoiselle; it is that your beauty and your proud innocence make so many appeals to both.”

My obstinacy seemed a goad to her anger.

“You exaggerate the importance of your service,” she cried. “Either of those great strong men could have crushed you like an old nut----”

She seemed to struggle a moment with herself--without avail.

“For you are very little,” she added.

I felt myself turn pale. I made her a most profound bow.

“I will leave mademoiselle,” I said gravely, “to the only company she can do justice to.”

“My own?” she asked. I did not answer, and I turned from her quivering all through. I had gone but a few paces when her voice came after me.

“Monsieur, I am dying of hunger!”

_Mon Dieu!_ What a speech to grapple at the soul! I hurried hither and thither, plucking her a meal from the earth, from the bushes. My heart bled with a double wound.

Presently I stood before her, stern and silent. Her face, hidden in her hands, was averted from me. Suddenly she looked up.

“The little pod holds the fattest pea,” she said, and burst into tears.

_Petite pluie abat grand vent._

She was very sweet and humble to me by-and-by. She made me the _amende honorable_ by calling my heart too great for my body. And at last said she--

“I take you for my knight, monsieur--to honour and protect, to bear with and respect me----” and I kissed her brown hand in allegiance.