The Battle of the Strong. Gilbert Parker

running to the front door, threw it open. As he did so a young man, with blood flowing from a cut on the temple, stepped inside.

CHAPTER VIII

       Table of Contents

It was M. Savary dit Detricand.

       Table of Contents

      “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:

      “From Lucillien du Champsavoys, Comte de Chanier, by the hand of a

       faithful friend, who goeth hence from among divers dangers, unto my

       cousin, the Chevalier du Champsavoys de Beaumanoir, late Gentleman

       of the Bedchamber to the best of monarchs, Louis XV, this writing:

       “MY DEAR AND HONOURED Cousin”—The chevalier paused, frowned a

       trifle, and tapped his lips with his finger in a little lyrical

       emotion—“My dear and honoured cousin, all is lost. The France we