“Meestair Touplon ees encaged for som time to kom,” he said; “I vill kom back early tomorrow morning.”
A sudden idea had struck the Alsacien, and he proceeded to put it into execution. Kolb had served in a cavalry regiment; he hurried off to see a livery stable-keeper, an acquaintance of his, picked out a horse, had it saddled, and rushed back to the Place du Mûrier. He found Madame Eve in the lowest depths of despondency.
“What is it, Kolb?” asked David, when the Alsacien’s face looked in upon them, scared but radiant.
“You have scountrels all arount you. De safest way ees to hide de master. Haf montame thought of hiding the master anywheres?”
When Kolb, honest fellow, had explained the whole history of Cérizet’s treachery, of the circle traced about the house, and of the fat Cointet’s interest in the affair, and given the family some inkling of the schemes set on foot by the Cointets against the master—then David’s real position gradually became fatally clear.
“It is the Cointet’s doing!” cried poor Eve, aghast at the news; “they are proceeding against you! that accounts for Métivier’s hardness. … They are papermakers—David! they want your secret!”
“But what can we do to escape them?” exclaimed Mme. Chardon.
“If de misdress had some liddle blace vere the master could pe hidden,” said Kolb; “I bromise to take him dere so dot nopody shall know.”
“Wait till nightfall, and go to Basine Clerget,” said Eve. “I will go now and arrange it all with her. In this case, Basine will be like another self to me.”
“Spies will follow you,” David said at last, recovering some presence of mind. “How can we find a way of communicating with Basine if none of us can go to her?”
“Montame kan go,” said Kolb. “Here ees my scheme—I go out mit der master, ve draws der vischtlers on our drack. Montame kan go to Montemoiselle Clerchet; nopody vill vollow her. I haf a horse; I take de master oop behint; und der teufel is in it if they katches us.”
“Very well; goodbye, dear,” said poor Eve, springing to her husband’s arms; “none of us can go to see you, the risk is too great. We must say goodbye for the whole time that your imprisonment lasts. We will write to each other; Basine will post your letters, and I will write under cover to her.”
No sooner did David and Kolb come out of the house than they heard a sharp whistle, and were followed to the livery stable. Once there, Kolb took his master up behind him, with a caution to keep tight hold.
“Veestle avay, mind goot vriends! I care not von rap,” cried Kolb. “You vill not katch an old trooper,” and the old cavalry man clapped both spurs to his horse, and was out into the country and the darkness not merely before the spies could follow, but before they had time to discover the direction that he took.
Eve meanwhile went out on the tolerably ingenious pretext of asking advise of Postel, sat awhile enduring the insulting pity that spends itself in words, left the Postel family, and stole away unseen to Basine Clerget, told her troubles, and asked for help and shelter. Basine, for greater safety, had brought Eve into her bedroom, and now she opened the door of a little closet, lighted only by a skylight in such a way that prying eyes could not see into it. The two friends unstopped the flue which opened into the chimney of the stove in the workroom, where the girls heated their irons. Eve and Basine spread ragged coverlets over the brick floor to deaden any sound that David might make, put in a truckle bed, a stove for his experiments, and a table and a chair. Basine promised to bring food in the night; and as no one had occasion to enter her room, David might defy his enemies one and all, or even detectives.
“At last!” Eve said, with her arms about her friend, “at last he is in safety.”
Eve went back to Postel to submit a fresh doubt that had occurred to her, she said. She would like the opinion of such an experienced member of the Chamber of Commerce; she so managed that he escorted her home, and listened patiently to his commiseration.
“Would this have happened if you had married me?”—all the little druggist’s remarks were pitched in this key.
Then he went home again to find Mme. Postel jealous of Mme. Séchard, and furious with her spouse for his polite attention to that beautiful woman. The apothecary advanced the opinion that little red-haired women were preferable to tall, dark women, who, like fine horses, were always in the stable, he said. He gave proofs of his sincerity, no doubt, for Mme. Postel was very sweet to him next day.
“We may be easy,” Eve said to her mother and Marion, whom she found still “in a taking,” in the latter’s phrase.
“Oh! they are gone,” said Marion, when Eve looked unthinkingly round the room.
One league out of Angoulême on the main road to Paris, Kolb stopped.
“Vere shall we go?”
“To Marsac,” said David; “since we are on the way already, I will try once more to soften my father’s heart.”
“I would rader mount to der assault of a pattery,” said Kolb, “your resbected fader haf no heart whatefer.”
The ex-pressman had no belief in his son; he judged him from the outside point of view, and waited for results. He had no idea, to begin with, that he had plundered David, nor did he make allowance for the very different circumstances under which they had begun life; he said to himself, “I set him up with a printing-house, just as I found it myself; and he, knowing a thousand times more than I did, cannot keep it going.” He was mentally incapable of understanding his son; he laid the blame of failure upon him, and even prided himself, as it were, on
