This was Crècy! The last halt of the journey, so Chauvelin had said. The party had drawn rein in front of a small one-storied building that had a wooden verandah running the whole length of its front.
The usual low narrow room greeted Armand and Marguerite as they entered; the usual mildewed walls, with the colour wash flowing away in streaks from the unsympathetic beam above; the same device, “Liberte, Egalite, Fraternite!” scribbled in charcoal above the black iron stove; the usual musty, close atmosphere, the usual smell of onion and stale cheese, the usual hard straight benches and central table with its soiled and tattered cloth.
Marguerite seemed dazed and giddy; she had been five hours in that stuffy coach with nothing to distract her thoughts except the rain-sodden landscape, on which she had ceaselessly gazed since the early dawn.
Armand led her to the bench, and she sank down on it, numb and inert, resting her elbows on the table and her head in her hands.
“If it were only all over!” she sighed involuntarily. “Armand, at times now I feel as if I were not really sane—as if my reason had already given way! Tell me, do I seem mad to you at times?”
He sat down beside her and tried to chafe her little cold hands.
There was a knock at the door, and without waiting for permission Chauvelin entered the room.
“My humble apologies to you, Lady Blakeney,” he said in his usual suave manner, “but our worthy host informs me that this is the only room in which he can serve a meal. Therefore I am forced to intrude my presence upon you.”
Though he spoke with outward politeness, his tone had become more peremptory, less bland, and he did not await Marguerite’s reply before he sat down opposite to her and continued to talk airily.
“An ill-conditioned fellow, our host,” he said—“quite reminds me of our friend Brogard at the Chat Gris in Calais. You remember him, Lady Blakeney?”
“My sister is giddy and overtired,” interposed Armand firmly. “I pray you, citizen, to have some regard for her.”
“All regard in the world, citizen St. Just,” protested Chauvelin jovially. “Methought that those pleasant reminiscences would cheer her. Ah! here comes the soup,” he added, as a man in blue blouse and breeches, with sabots on his feet, slouched into the room, carrying a tureen which he incontinently placed upon the table. “I feel sure that in England Lady Blakeney misses our excellent croûtes-au-pot, the glory of our bourgeois cookery—Lady Blakeney, a little soup?”
“I thank you, sir,” she murmured.
“Do try and eat something, little mother,” Armand whispered in her ear; “try and keep up your strength for his sake, if not for mine.”
She turned a wan, pale face to him, and tried to smile.
“I’ll try, dear,” she said.
“You have taken bread and meat to the citizens in the coach?” Chauvelin called out to the retreating figure of mine host.
“H’m!” grunted the latter in assent.
“And see that the citizen soldiers are well fed, or there will be trouble.”
“H’m!” grunted the man again. After which he banged the door to behind him.
“Citizen Héron is loath to let the prisoner out of his sight,” explained Chauvelin lightly, “now that we have reached the last, most important stage of our journey, so he is sharing Sir Percy’s midday meal in the interior of the coach.”
He ate his soup with a relish, ostentatiously paying many small attentions to Marguerite all the time. He ordered meat for her—bread, butter—asked if any dainties could be got. He was apparently in the best of tempers.
After he had eaten and drunk he rose and bowed ceremoniously to her.
“Your pardon, Lady Blakeney,” he said, “but I must confer with the prisoner now, and take from him full directions for the continuance of our journey. After that I go to the guardhouse, which is some distance from here, right at the other end of the city. We pick up a fresh squad here, twenty hardened troopers from a cavalry regiment usually stationed at Abbeville. They have had work to do in this town, which is a hotbed of treachery. I must go inspect the men and the sergeant who will be in command. Citizen Héron leaves all these inspections to me; he likes to stay by his prisoner. In the meanwhile you will be escorted back to your coach, where I pray you to await my arrival, when we change guard first, then proceed on our way.”
Marguerite was longing to ask him many questions; once again she would have smothered her pride and begged for news of her husband, but Chauvelin did not wait. He hurried out of the room, and Armand and Marguerite could hear him ordering the soldiers to take them forthwith back to the coach.
As they came out of the inn they saw the other coach some fifty mètres further up the street. The horses that had done duty since leaving Abbeville had been taken out, and two soldiers in ragged shirts, and with crimson caps set jauntily over their left ear, were leading the two fresh horses along. The troopers were still mounting guard round both the coaches; they would be relieved presently.
Marguerite would have given ten years of her life at this moment for the privilege of speaking to her husband, or even of seeing him—of seeing that he was well. A quick, wild plan sprang up in her mind that she would bribe the sergeant in command to grant her wish while citizen Chauvelin was absent. The man had not an unkind face, and he must be very poor—people in France were very poor these days, though the rich had been robbed and luxurious homes devastated ostensibly to help the poor.
She was about to put this sudden thought into execution when Héron’s hideous face, doubly
