Under the Red Robe | Page 8

But--'
'But you are full, or you are out of food, or your wife is ill, or
something else is amiss,' I answered peevishly. 'All the same, I am
going to lie here. So you must make the best of it, and your wife too--if
you have one.'
He scratched his head, looking at me with an ugly glitter in his eyes.
But he said nothing, and I dismounted.
'Where can I stable my horse?' I asked.
'I'll put it up,' he answered sullenly, stepping forward and taking the
reins in his hand.
'Very well,' I said. 'But I go with you. A merciful man is merciful to his
beast, and wherever I go I see my horse fed.'

'It will be fed,' he said shortly. And then he waited for me to go into the
house. 'The wife is in there,' he continued, looking at me stubbornly.
'IMPRIMIS--if you understand Latin, my friend,' I answered. 'the horse
in the stall.'
He saw that it was no good, turned the sorrel slowly round, and began
to lead it across the village street. There was a shed behind the inn,
which I had already marked, and taken for the stable, I was surprised
when I found that he was not going there, but I made no remark, and in
a few minutes saw the horse made comfortable in a hovel which
seemed to belong to a neighbour.
This done, the man led the way back to the inn, carrying my valise.
'You have no other guests?' I said, with a casual air. I knew that he was
watching me closely.
'No,' he answered.
'This is not much in the way to anywhere, I suppose?'
'No.'
That was so evident, that I never saw a more retired place. The hanging
woods, rising steeply to a great height, so shut the valley in that I was
puzzled to think how a man could leave it save by the road I had come.
The cottages, which were no more than mean, small huts, ran in a
straggling double line, with many gaps--through fallen trees and
ill-cleared meadows. Among them a noisy brook ran in and out, and the
inhabitants--charcoal- burners, or swine-herds, or poor devils of the like
class, were no better than their dwellings. I looked in vain for the
Chateau. It was not to be seen, and I dared not ask for it.
The man led me into the common room of the tavern--a low-roofed,
poor place, lacking a chimney or glazed windows, and grimy with
smoke and use. The fire--a great half-burned tree--smouldered on a
stone hearth, raised a foot from the floor. A huge black pot simmered

over it, and beside one window lounged a country fellow talking with
the goodwife. In the dusk I could not see his face, but I gave the woman
a word, and sat down to wait for my supper.
She seemed more silent than the common run of her kind; but this
might be because her husband was present. While she moved about
getting my meal, he took his place against the door-post and fell to
staring at me so persistently that I felt by no means at my ease. He was
a tall, strong fellow, with a shaggy moustache and brown beard, cut in
the mode Henri Quatre; and on the subject of that king--a safe one, I
knew, with a Bearnais--and on that alone, I found it possible to make
him talk. Even then there was a suspicious gleam in his eyes that bade
me abstain from questions; so that as the darkness deepened behind
him, and the firelight played more and more strongly on his features,
and I thought of the leagues of woodland that lay between this remote
valley and Auch, I recalled the Cardinal's warning that if I failed in my
attempt I should be little likely to trouble Paris again.
The lout by the window paid no attention to me; nor I to him, when I
had once satisfied myself that he was really what he seemed to be. But
by-and-by two or three men--rough, uncouth fellows--dropped in to
reinforce the landlord, and they, too seemed to have no other business
than to sit in silence looking at me, or now and again to exchange a
word in a PATOIS of their own. By the time my supper was ready, the
knaves numbered six in all; and, as they were armed to a man with
huge Spanish knives, and made it clear that they resented my presence
in their dull rustic fashion--every rustic is suspicious--I began to think
that, unwittingly, I had put my head into a wasps' nest.
Nevertheless, I ate and drank with apparent appetite; but little that
passed within the circle of light cast by the smoky