第43章
When the travellers were about three miles beyond Mayenne they heard a horseman riding after them with great rapidity.When he reached the carriage he leaned towards it to look at Mademoiselle de Verneuil, who recognized Corentin.That offensive personage made her a sign of intelligence, the familiarity of which was deeply mortifying; then he turned away, after chilling her to the bone with a look full of some base meaning.The young /emigre/ seemed painfully affected by this circumstance, which did not escape the notice of his pretended mother;but Marie softly touched him, seeming by her eyes to take refuge in his heart as thought it were her only haven.His brow cleared at this proof of the full extent of his mistress's attachment, coming to him as it were by accident.An inexplicable fear seemed to have overcome her coyness, and her love was visible for a moment without a veil.
Unfortunately for both of them, Madame du Gua saw it all; like a miser who gives a feast, she seemed to count the morsels and begrudge the wine.
Absorbed in their happiness the lovers arrived, without any consciousness of the distance they had traversed, at that part of the road which passed through the valley of Ernee.There Francine noticed and showed to her companions a number of strange forms which seemed to move like shadows among the trees and gorse that surrounded the fields.When the carriage came within range of these shadows a volley of musketry, the balls of which whistled above their heads, warned the travellers that the shadows were realities.The escort had fallen into a trap.
Captain Merle now keenly regretted having adopted Mademoiselle de Verneuil's idea that a rapid journey by night would be a safe one,--an error which had led him to reduce his escort from Mayenne to sixty men.He at once, under Gerard's orders, divided his little troop into two columns, one on each side of the road, which the two officers marched at a quick step among the gorse hedges, eager to meet the assailants, though ignorant of their number.The Blues beat the thick bushes right and left with rash intrepidity, and replied to the Chouans with a steady fire.
Mademoiselle de Verneuil's first impulse was to jump from the carriage and run back along the road until she was out of sight of the battle;but ashamed of her fears, and moved by the feeling which impels us all to act nobly under the eyes of those we love, she presently stood still, endeavoring to watch the combat coolly.
The marquis followed her, took her hand, and placed it on his breast.
"I was afraid," she said, smiling, "but now--"Just then her terrified maid cried out: "Marie, take care!"But as she said the words, Francine, who was springing from the carriage, felt herself grasped by a strong hand.The sudden weight of that enormous hand made her shriek violently; she turned, and was instantly silenced on recognizing Marche-a-Terre.
"Twice I owe to chance," said the marquis to Mademoiselle de Verneuil, "the revelation of the sweetest secrets of the heart.Thanks to Francine I now know you bear the gracious name of Marie,--Marie, the name I have invoked in my distresses,--Marie, a name I shall henceforth speak in joy, and never without sacrifice, mingling religion and love.There can be no wrong where prayer and love go together."They clasped hands, looked silently into each other's eyes, and the excess of their emotion took away from them the power to express it.
"There's no danger for /the rest of you/," Marche-a-Terre was saying roughly to Francine, giving to his hoarse and guttural voice a reproachful tone, and emphasizing his last words in a way to stupefy the innocent peasant-girl.For the first time in her life she saw ferocity in that face.The moonlight seemed to heighten the effect of it.The savage Breton, holding his cap in one hand and his heavy carbine in the other, dumpy and thickset as a gnome, and bathed in that white light the shadows of which give such fantastic aspects to forms, seemed to belong more to a world of goblins than to reality.
This apparition and its tone of reproach came upon Francine with the suddenness of a phantom.He turned rapidly to Madame du Gua, with whom he exchanged a few eager words, which Francine, who had somewhat forgotten the dialect of Lower Brittany, did not understand.The lady seemed to be giving him a series of orders.The short conference ended by an imperious gesture of the lady's hand pointing out to the Chouan the lovers standing a little distance apart.Before obeying, Marche-a-Terre glanced at Francine whom he seemed to pity; he wished to speak to her, and the girl was aware that his silence was compulsory.The rough and sunburnt skin of his forehead wrinkled, and his eyebrows were drawn violently together.Did he think of disobeying a renewed order to kill Mademoiselle de Verneuil? The contortion of his face made him all the more hideous to Madame du Gua, but to Francine the flash of his eye seemed almost gentle, for it taught her to feel intuitively that the violence of his savage nature would yield to her will as a woman, and that she reigned, next to God, in that rough heart.
The lovers were interrupted in their tender interview by Madame du Gua, who ran up to Marie with a cry, and pulled her away as though some danger threatened her.Her real object however, was to enable a member of the royalist committee of Alencon, whom she saw approaching them, to speak privately to the Gars.
"Beware of the girl you met at the hotel in Alencon; she will betray you," said the Chevalier de Valois, in the young man's ear; and immediately he and his little Breton horse disappeared among the bushes from which he had issued.
The firing was heavy at that moment, but the combatants did not come to close quarters.
"Adjutant," said Clef-des-Coeurs, "isn't it a sham attack, to capture our travellers and get a ransom.""The devil is in it, but I believe you are right," replied Gerard, darting back towards the highroad.