Sir Percy Hits Back · Chapter 7 (2/2)

Tramp! tramp! tramp! and now a loud banging as if pieces of furniture, chairs, tables were being overturned, and then a crash, as of broken china!

“Holy Virgin!” Papa Mathieu exclaimed with a loud groan; “to think of Madame’s beautiful things! Those brigands are furious at not finding Madame and Mademoiselle, and are venting their wrath on inanimate things.”

It was these words of old Mathieu that sent Fleurette’s thoughts flying in another direction⁠—back to the early afternoon of this memorable day⁠—back to the first visit of these awful soldiers, and to the faggot-carrier with his bundle tied up in sacking. From thence to the voice! The mysterious voice that had told her where valuables and papers were to be found. It was such a flash of recollection that her whole face became transfigured; anxiety and superstitious awe gave place to that same fervour which had animated her when she met the eyes of the faggot-carrier: eyes that conveyed a message, which at last she was beginning to understand.

“Papa!” she cried impulsively.

“Yes, Mam’zelle?” Mathieu asked with another sigh.

“Did anything else happen?⁠—I mean anything unusual?⁠—Did Madame⁠—or Monsieur⁠—receive a letter? a message? or⁠—or did any other stranger come to the château this afternoon?”

“Oh think, Papa Mathieu, think,” she implored with tears of agitation choking her voice. “I cannot tell you how important it is. Try to remember⁠—was there anything?⁠—anybody?⁠—”

Papa persistently shook his head, until Pierre, who was the gatekeeper, reminded him that Monsieur had gone down the avenue as far as the gate, just ten minutes before dinner was served.

“There’s nothing very unusual in that,” Mathieu retorted. “Monsieur is often out just before dinner is served.”

“Yes!” Pierre insisted. “But what did he do this evening? He walked straight to the gate, which I had closed half an hour before. I saw him. He walked straight to the gate, he did, and you know the old acacia tree just the other side? Well! Monsieur put his foot on a bar of the gate and reached over to the forked branch of the old tree. I saw him quite plainly, I tell you. And when he walked back to the house he had a piece of paper in his hand with some writing on it, which he was reading. And I think, papa,” Pierre concluded triumphantly, “you’ll have to admit that there was something unusual in that.”

But Mathieu, with the obstinacy of old age and long service, would not admit it, even now.

“Monsieur,” he said, “met the mail-carrier at the gate, he often comes at this hour. He gave Monsieur a letter. Monsieur often gets letters⁠—”

But here André interposed. Old André⁠—they were all of them old⁠—worked in the stables, and it was he who had taken the two horses from the soldiers when ordered to do so, and walked them round to the stables. It was then that he noticed two beggars hanging about in the yard: a man and a woman. He had peremptorily ordered them off the premises.

“Beggars!” Fleurette exclaimed eagerly. “What were they like?”

André said that as the sun was in his eyes he couldn’t see them very well. There was a man and a woman. He was busy with the horses and upset by the arrival of all these brigands. The woman he couldn’t see at all because of the shawl which covered her head, but he recollected that the man was a big fellow, bent nearly double under a huge bundle tied up in sacking.

“When I spoke to him,” André went on, “he mumbled something or other, but I just told him to clear out, he and his woman; we’d enough of vagabonds, I said, in the place with all these soldiers.”

“And did he go?” Fleurette asked.

“Yes. I must admit that he went off quite quietly after that. I did not think he meant any evil, because when he first caught sight of me he did not attempt to hide or to run away.”

“If he had,” André went on after a moment or two, “I would have been after him pretty quickly, and wanted to know what was in that big bundle.”

He paused, a look of perplexity and of shamefacedness came over his wrinkled old face while he thoughtfully scratched his head: “Now I think of it,” he said, “I ought to have inspected that bundle. It looked mighty heavy for faggots or for rags. Perhaps he had been up to no good after all⁠—And directly after I lost sight of him and his woman I saw a whole lot of faggots lying in a heap close by the stable door.”

The other old men and the maids had gathered closer round André and Fleurette. This was the first they had heard of the old vagabond and his woman, and the bundle which appeared so heavy.

“You certainly ought to have inspected that bundle, André,” Mathieu said sententiously. He felt that there was a chance of recapturing his dignity which seemed to have been slightly impaired through his argument with Pierre. He could reassert his authority at any rate by rebuking André. “It looks,” he went on, “as if the old vagabond had brought a lot of faggots with him, then turned them out of the sacking and replaced them by God knows what valuables he may have stolen.”

“I was so upset, you understand, papa!” André murmured ruefully.

“We were all of us upset, as you call it, André,” papa rebuked sternly, “but that is no excuse for neglect of duty.”

“Don’t scold André, papa,” Fleurette broke in excitedly. “My belief is that the old vagabond, as you call him, was a messenger from the Holy Virgin, sent on purpose to get Madame and Mademoiselle safely out of the way.”

“Oh, Mam’zelle!”

“From the Holy Virgin!”

“Sainte Marie, mere de Dieu, priez pour nous!” came in chorus from the maids. Even the cook, an elderly woman, jealous of her own dignity, was unable to conceal her excitement. The old men shook their heads, looked wise and sceptical.

“What makes you say that, Mam’zelle Fleurette?” Mathieu asked in an awed whisper.

But Fleurette was silent now. Already she had repented of having said so much. Discretion would have been so much wiser. That was the worst of her: she always allowed her tongue to run away with her. She looked eagerly from one anxious face to the other: well she knew that the little she had said would be talked over and commented on and be made the subject of gossip until it reached the village and possibly even Serres and Sisteron; and God only knew what harm this might do to Madame and Mademoiselle. She bit the tip of her tongue hard just to punish it for having wagged too freely, and seized with a sudden impulse, which she found irresistible, she snatched up a candle from the table, and incontinently turned and fled out of the hall, leaving the others to gape and stare after her, to scratch their heads, and to conjecture.

Aye! and to gossip too.