St. Martin's Summer Part 15

"Oh, very well," cried poor Garnache in his despair. "Anything to save time; anything! In G.o.d's name fetch your friend, and I hope you and he and every man here will get his fill of fighting for once."

Gaubert departed on his errand, and there were fresh murmurs in the mob until the reason of his going was understood. Five minutes sped; ten minutes, and yet he returned not. Grouped together were Sanguinetti and his two friends, in easy, whispered talk. At a little distance from them, Garnache paced up and down to keep himself warm. He had thrown his cloak over his shoulders again, and with sword tucked under arm and head thrust forward, he stamped backwards and forwards, the very picture of ill-humour. Fifteen minutes pa.s.sed; twelve o'clock boomed from the Church of Saint Francois d'a.s.sisi and still Monsieur Gaubert returned not. Garnache stood still a moment, in angry thought. This must not go on. There must be an end, and at once. The tastes and inclinations of brawlers were no concern of his. He had business of State--however unworthy--to dispatch. He turned, intending to demand of Monsieur Sanguinetti that they should engage at once and be done, when suddenly a fellow roughly dressed, with dirty face and a shock head of fair hair, pushed his way through the throng and advanced towards Monsieur Sanguinetti and his friends. Garnache checked in his movement to look at the fellow, for he recognized in him the ostler of the Auberge de France: He spoke at that moment, and Garnache overheard the words he uttered.

"Monsieur Sanguinetti," said he, addressing that gentleman, "my master sends to inquire if you shall want the carriage you ordered for to-day.

It has been standing for an hour at the door of the Auberge de France, awaiting you, and if you don't want it--"

"Standing where?" asked Sanguinetti harshly.

"At the door of the Auberge de France."

"Peste, fool!" cried the foreigner, "why is it there, when I bade it be sent to the Sucking Calf?"

"I don't know, sir. I know no more than Monsieur l'Hote told me."

"Now, a plague on Monsieur l'Hote," swore Sanguinetti, and in that moment his eye fell upon Garnache, standing there, attentive. At sight of the Parisian he seemed lost in confusion. He dropped his glance and appeared on the point of turning aside. Then to the ostler: "I shall want the carriage, and I shall come for it anon. Carry that message to your master." And with that he turned and advanced to Garnache. His whilom arrogance was all fallen from him; he wore instead an air of extreme contrition.

"Monsieur, what shall I say to you?" he asked in a voice that was rather small. "It seems there has been an error. I am deeply grieved, believe me--"

"Say no more, I beg," cried Garnache, immensely relieved that at last there should be a conclusion to an affair which had threatened to be interminable. "Let me but express my regrets for the treatment you received at my hands."

"I accept your expressions, and I admire their generosity," returned the other as courteous now as subservient, indeed, in his courtesy--as he had been erstwhile fierce and intractable. "As for the treatment I received, I confess that my mistake and my opinionativeness deserved it me. I deplore to deprive these gentlemen of the entertainment to which they were looking forward, but unless you should prove of an excessive amiability I am afraid they must suffer with me the consequences of my error."

Garnache a.s.sured him very briefly, and none too politely that he did not intend to prove of any excessive amiability. He spoke whilst struggling into his doublet. He felt that he could cheerfully have caned the fellow for the inconvenience he had caused him, and yet he realized that he had other more pressing matters to attend to. He sheathed his sword, took up his cloak and hat, made those gentlemen the compliments that became the occasion, in terms a trifle more brief, perhaps, than were usual, and, still wondering why Monsieur de Gaubert had not yet returned, he stalked briskly away. Followed by the booings of the disappointed crowd, he set out for the Sucking Calf at a sharp pace, taking the shorter way behind the Church and across the graveyard of Saint Francois.

CHAPTER VIII. THE CLOSING OF THE TRAP

Upon leaving the Champs aux Capuchins, hawk-faced Monsieur Gaubert had run every foot of the way to the Sucking Calf, and he had arrived there within some five minutes, out of breath and wearing every appearance of distress--of a distress rather greater than his haste to find his friend should warrant.

At the door of the inn he found the carriage still waiting; the post-boy, however, was in the porch, leaning in talk with one of the drawers. The troopers sat their horses in stolid patience, keeping guard, and awaiting, as they had been bidden, the return of Monsieur de Garnache. Rabecque, very watchful, lounged in the doorway, betraying in his air none of the anxiety and impatience with which he looked for his master.

At sight of Monsieur Gaubert, running so breathlessly, he started forward, wondering and uneasy. Across the street, from the Palais Seneschal, came at that same moment Monsieur de Tressan with rolling gait. He reached the door of the inn together with Monsieur Gaubert.

Full of evil forebodings, Rabecque hailed the runner.

"What has happened?" he cried. "Where is Monsieur de Garnache?"

Gaubert came to a staggering halt; he groaned and wrung his hands.

"Killed!" he panted, rocking himself in a pa.s.sion of distress. "He has been butchered! Oh! it was horrible!"

Rabecque gripped him by the shoulder, and steadied him with a hand that hurt. "What do you say?" he gasped, his face white to the lips.

Tressan halted, too, and turned upon Gaubert, a look of incredulity in his fat countenance. "Who has been killed?" he asked. "Not Monsieur de Garnache?"

"Helas! yes," groaned the other. "It was a snare, a guet-apens to which they led us. Four of them set upon us in the Champs aux Capuchins. As long as he lived, I stood beside him. But seeing him fallen, I come for help."

"My G.o.d!" sobbed Rabecque, and loosed his grasp of Monsieur Gaubert's shoulder.

"Who did it?" inquired Tressan, and his voice rumbled fiercely.

"I know not who they were. The man who picked the quarrel with Monsieur de Garnache called himself Sanguinetti. There is a riot down there at present. There was a crowd to witness the combat, and they have fallen to fighting among themselves. Would to Heaven they had stirred in time to save that poor gentleman from being murdered."

"A riot, did you say?" cried Tressan, the official seeming to awaken in him.

"Aye," answered the other indifferently; "they are cutting one another's throats."

"But... But... Are you sure that he is dead, monsieur?" inquired Rabecque; and his tone was one that implored contradiction.

Gaubert looked and paused, seeming to give the matter a second's thought. "I saw him fall," said he. "It may be that he was no more than wounded."

"And you left him there?" roared the servant. "You left him there?"

Gaubert shrugged his shoulders. "What could I do against four? Besides, the crowd was interfering already, and it seemed best to me to come for help. These soldiers, now--"

"Aye," cut in Tressan, and he turned about and called the sergeant.

"This becomes my affair." And he announced his quality to Monsieur Gaubert. "I am the Lord Seneschal of Dauphiny."

"I am fortunate in finding you," returned Gaubert, and bowed. "I could place the matter in no better hand."

But Tressan, without heeding him, was already ordering the sergeant to ride hard with his troopers for the Champs aux Capuchins. Rabecque, however, thrust himself suddenly forward.

"Not so, Monsieur le Seneschal," he interposed in fresh alarm, and mindful of his charge. "These men are here to guard Mademoiselle de La Vauvraye. Let them remain. I will go to Monsieur de Garnache."

The Seneschal stared at him with contemptuously pouting underlip. "You will go?" said he. "And what can you do alone? Who are you?" he asked.

"I am Monsieur de Garnache's servant."

"A lackey? Ah!" And Tressan turned aside and resumed his orders as if Rabecque did not exist or had never spoken. "To the Champs aux Capuchins!" said he. "At the gallop, Pommier! I will send others after you."

The sergeant rose in his stirrups and growled an order. The troopers wheeled about; another order, and they were off, their cantering hoofs thundering down the narrow street.

Rabecque clutched at the Lord Seneschal's arm.

"Stop them, monsieur!" he almost screamed in his excitement. "Stop them!

There is some snare, some trick in this."

"Stop them?" quoth the Seneschal. "Are you mad?" He shook off Rabecque's detaining hand, and left him, to cross the street again with ponderous and sluggish haste, no doubt to carry out his purpose of sending more troopers to the scene of the disturbance.

Rabecque swore angrily and bitterly, and his vexation had two entirely separate sources. On the one hand his anxiety and affection for his master urged him to run at once to his a.s.sistance, whilst Tressan's removal of the troopers rendered it impossible for him to leave Mademoiselle de La Vauvraye unguarded--though what he should do with her if Garnache came not back at all, he did not at this stage pause to consider. On the other hand, an instinctive and growing suspicion of this Monsieur Gaubert--who was now entering the inn--inspired him with the opinion that the fat Seneschal had been duped by a wild tale to send the troopers from the spot where they might presently become very necessary.

Full of fears, anxiety, and mistrust, it was a very dispirited Rabecque that now slowly followed Monsieur Gaubert into the inn. But as he set his foot across the threshold of the common-room, a sight met his eyes that brought him to a momentary standstill, and turned to certainty all his rising suspicions. He found it tenanted by a half-dozen fellows of very rude aspect, all armed and bearing an odd resemblance in air and accoutrements to the braves he had seen at Condillac the day before.

As to how they came there, he could only surmise that they had entered through the stable-yard, as otherwise he must have observed their approach. They were grouped now at the other end of the long, low chamber, by the door leading to the interior of the inn. A few paces distant the landlord watched them with uneasy eyes.

But what dismayed Garnache's servant most of all was to see the man who called himself Gaubert standing in talk with a slender, handsome youth, magnificently arrayed, in whom he recognized Marius de Condillac.

Rabecque checked in his advance, and caught in that moment from Marius the words: "Let her be told that it is Monsieur de Garnache wishes her to descend."