XVII
Of how François, escaping, lives in the wood; of how he sees the daughter of the marquis dying, and knows not then, or ever after, what it was that hurt him; of how he becomes homesick for Paris.
The forest was of great extent, and intersected by wood roads. Along one of these François ran for an hour or more, until he was tired, and had put, as he believed, some miles between himself and the citizen with the wart. The way became more narrow, the forest more dense. At last there was only a broad path. Now and then he saw the north star, and knew that he was traveling southward. He came out at dawn on an open space, rocky and barren, a great rabbit-warren, as he knew by the sudden stampede of numberless rabbits. He turned aside into the woods, and a few hundred yards away found a bit of marsh, and beyond it a brook, with leaf-covered space beneath tall plane-trees, now bare of foliage. He drank deep of the welcome water, and sat down with Toto to rest and think.
“Mon ami,” he said, “we like adventures; but this was a little too much.” Then he laughed at the thought of Pierre’s terror; but the man with the wart was not so funny, and the poor lady who was St. Cecilia, and that cold-blooded devil of a marquis—“What a man!”
Here were rabbits for food, and only a forest bed, but, on the whole, better than the Conciergerie or the Châtelet. He slept long, and was cold, fearing to make a fire. About eleven next morning he left Toto, and went with care to the edge of the wood. He heard noises, and saw boys setting traps; for now my lord’s rabbits were anybody’s rabbits. The traps pleased him. He slipped away. At evening, being dreadfully hungry, he went to the warren, took two rabbits out of the traps, and went back. The man’s patience was amazing: not until late at night did he make a fire to cook his meat; but Toto, less exacting, was fed at once with the raw flesh.
A week went by, with no more of incident than I have mentioned. He explored the woods day after day, and a half-mile away found a farm, whence at night he took toll of milk, having stolen a pail to aid him. It was all sadly monotonous, but what else could he do? Once, after a fortnight, he was bold enough to wander in daylight within the woods near the château. It was apparently deserted; at least, he saw no signs of habitation; nor, later at night, when he went back, were there lights, except in one room on the ground floor.
Francis approached with caution, and, looking through a window, saw an old man seated by the fire. Making sure that he was alone, the wanderer tapped on the pane. The man at the hearthside looked up, and François saw, as he had suspected, that he was the majordomo. Again François tapped, and observing the inmate move toward the door, he hurried thither. As they met, François hastened to say that he was the man who aided the marquis, having himself had the luck to escape. Once reassured, the old majordomo urged François to enter. But this he would not do. He had had enough of house-traps. In the forest they would be secure. To this the servant agreed, and followed him at once. When at last in the woodland shelter, François asked: “What of the marquis?” He had been taken by Grégoire toward Paris, but was said to have made his escape. “A hard man to hold is my master; and as to the village, it has had to pay right dearly, too.” Pierre had been arrested, but was soon set free. And the little gentleman? He had been taken to a cousin’s house in eastern Normandy. François hesitated over his final question; he himself could not have told why.
“And Mme. Renée?” he exclaimed, and bent forward, intent.
“The countess?”
“I did not know. Is she a countess? Mme. Renée—what of her?—she who was hurt. I passed her; she lay on the upper stair. There was blood—blood. The little boy cried to me to help her. My God! I could not. I—tell me, was she badly hurt?”
“She is dying, monsieur. Something—a gauntlet, they say—struck her head. She has known no one since.”
“Where is she?”
“In the château, with a maid and her aunt. She was too ill to be taken away. She is dying to-night. They say she cannot last long. God rest her soul! ’T is the end of everything.”
The thief stood still a minute; then he said resolutely, “I must see her.” This the old servant declared impossible; but when François swore that he would go alone, he finally consented to show him the way, insisting all the time that he would not be let in.
In a few minutes they were moving down a long corridor on the second floor. All was dark until the majordomo paused at a door under which a line of light was to be seen. Here he knocked, motioning his companion to keep back a little. The door opened, and a gaunt middle-aged lady came forth.
“What is it?” she said.
“This man—this gentleman would see the countess.”
“What do you want?” she said, facing François. “My niece is dying—murdered. You have done your cruel work. Would you trouble the dead?”
“Madame,” said François, “I am he who held the stair with the marquis. I am no Jacobin. I shot the man who wounded the countess.”
“You! He is dead.”
“Thank God! May I see the lady?”
“She is dying; why should you see her?”
“Madame, I am a poor unhappy thief. Once this lady offered me help—a chance, a better life. I was a fool; I let it go by. I—let me see her.”
“Come in,” said the gentlewoman; and, with no more words, he entered after her, and approached the bed, leaving his dog outside. What he beheld he neither forgot nor, I believe, save in his memoirs, ever spoke of to any one.
He saw a white face on the pillow; a deep-red spot on each cheek; eyes with the glaze of swift-coming death. He fell on his knees beside her, and stayed motionless, watching the sweat on the brow, the breath quicken and then stop as if it would not come again. At last he touched the hand. It was cold, and he withdrew his own hand, shrinking back. He had seen death, but no death like this. He said, “Madame.” There was no answer. He looked up at the older woman. “She is dying; she does not hear.”
“No; nor ever will in this world.”
He turned, bent down, and kissed the fringe of the coverlet. Then he arose, shaken by the strongest emotion life had brought to him.
“I thank you,” he said, and moved to the door. He paused outside.
“Are you sure the beast is dead—the man who did that—that?”
“Yes.”
“I am sorry—sorry.” He shook his long arms in the air. “I should like now to kill him again—again!” He walked swiftly away, and, not waiting for the servant, left the house and found his way back to his forest shelter.
All night long he sat without a fire, indifferent to poor Toto’s efforts to get a little notice, not feeling the cold, a sorely wounded man, with a scar on his memory which no after happiness could ever erase.
The next night he found the majordomo, and learned that the countess was dead. He took away blankets and the provisions bountifully supplied, and once more rejoined his dog.
In this manner the last days of February were passed; and in March the spring began to appear, but with it a new peril. The woodmen went here and there at work, and thrice he narrowly escaped being seen. Early in April his friend the majordomo disappeared, and the great château was infested with men who came and went—for what he knew not.
He began to be troubled with a feverish desire to see the streets of Paris. At last he made up his mind to leave his forest shelter; and sometime in April, having hesitated long, he set out. He hid all day in woods, and walked at night, until he reached the Seine. With this as a guide, he went on, robbing hen-houses of eggs, and milking cows, until he was close to Paris. How to enter it he did not know. The times were doubly dangerous. Spies and suspicion were everywhere to be dreaded. His papers had no certifications from the places he was presumed to have visited. Formidable in the background he saw the man Grégoire, the commissioner with the wart of ill luck.
How the thief and his dog lived near to Paris in woods and fields, there is no need to tell in detail. The month of June was come in this year of 1793. Marat was ill, and Charlotte Corday on her way to forestall the decree of nature. La Vendée was up. The Girondists had fallen, the great cities of the South were in uproar, the enemy was on the frontier, and the rule of France in the competent and remorseless hands of the Committee of Public Safety. All around Paris the country was infested with wandering people who, for the most part, like François, had good reason to fear. There were beggars, thieves, persecuted nobles, those who had no mind to face the foe as volunteers. Now and then François, ever cautious, picked up a little news on a scrap of gazette found by the wayside. He read that Citizen Amar was of the Great Committee of General Security. François laughed.
“Toto, dost thou think this will add to thy master’s security? That was the gentleman with the emigrative mouth. Ami, he is still alive. They must be tough, these Jacobins. What fun, Toto! I can see him pinned to the door like a beetle, and that marquis with a face, Toto, like a white plaster cast those Italians used to sell.
“I like not M. Amar. Toto, we are unhappy in our acquaintances. But the man of the wart is the worst.” This was François’s black beast; why, he could not have said. Amar, le farouche, was really a more fatal foe. The citizen who dressed neatly, and wore spectacles over green eyes, and was in debt to the conjurer for a not desirable forecast of fortune, was a yet more sinister acquaintance. Yet it was Citizen Grégoire who came to François in dreams, and the bare thought of whom could chop short a laugh as surely as Mother Guillotine, the merciless.