The Battle Of The Strong

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:

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.