Rafael Sabatini - The Collected Works of Rafael Sabatini

“I thank you, Fresnel. Your advice accords with my intention. That is why I need the boat.”

“Ah, that, no,” said Fresnel, with determination. “I’ll hold my peace, but it’s as much as my skin is worth to help you.

“You need not have seen my face. Forget that you have seen it.”

“I’ll do that, monsieur. But that is all I will do. I cannot put you across the river.”

“Then give me the key of the boat, and I will put myself across.”

“That is the same thing. I cannot. I’ll hold my tongue, but I will not — I dare not — help you.”

Andre–Louis looked a moment into that sullen, resolute face, and understood. This man, living under the shadow of La Tour d’Azyr, dared exercise no will that might be in conflict with the will of his dread lord.

“Fresnel,” he said, quietly, “if, as you say, the gallows claim me, the thing that has brought me to this extremity arises out of the shooting of Mabey. Had not Mabey been murdered there would have been no need for me to have raised my voice as I have done. Mabey was your friend, I think. Will you for his sake lend me the little help I need to save my neck?”

The man kept his glance averted, and the cloud of sullenness deepened on his face.

“I would if I dared, but I dare not.” Then, quite suddenly he became angry. It was as if in anger he sought support. “Don’t you understand that I dare not? Would you have a poor man risk his life for you? What have you or yours ever done for me that you should ask that? You do not cross to-night in my ferry. Understand that, monsieur, and go at once — go before I remember that it may be dangerous even to have talked to you and not give information. Go!”

He turned on his heel to reenter his cottage, and a wave of hopelessness swept over Andre–Louis.

But in a second it was gone. The man must be compelled, and he had the means. He bethought him of a pistol pressed upon him by Le Chapelier at the moment of his leaving Rennes, a gift which at the time he had almost disdained. True, it was not loaded, and he had no ammunition. But how was Fresnel to know that?

He acted quickly. As with his right hand he pulled it from his pocket, with his left he caught the ferryman by the shoulder, and swung him round.

“What do you want now?” Fresnel demanded angrily. “Haven’t I told you that I . . . ”

He broke off short. The muzzle of the pistol was within a foot of his eyes.

“I want the key of the boat. That is all, Fresnel. And you can either give it me at once, or I’ll take it after I have burnt your brains. I should regret to kill you, but I shall not hesitate. It is your life against mine, Fresnel; and you’ll not find it strange that if one of us must die I prefer that it shall be you.”

Fresnel dipped a hand into his pocket, and fetched thence a key. He held it out to Andre–Louis in fingers that shook — more in anger than in fear.

“I yield to violence,” he said, showing his teeth like a snarling dog. “But don’t imagine that it will greatly profit you.”

Andre–Louis took the key. His pistol remained levelled.

“You threaten me, I think,” he said. “It is not difficult to read your threat. The moment I am gone, you will run to inform against me. You will set the marechaussee on my heels to overtake me.”

“No, no!” cried the other. He perceived his peril. He read his doom in the cold, sinister note on which Andre–Louis addressed him, and grew afraid. “I swear to you, monsieur, that I have no such intention.”

“I think I had better make quite sure of you.”

“O my God! Have mercy, monsieur!” The knave was in a palsy of terror. “I mean you no harm — I swear to Heaven I mean you no harm. I will not say a word. I will not . . . ”

“I would rather depend upon your silence than your assurances. Still, you shall have your chance. I am a fool, perhaps, but I have a reluctance to shed blood. Go into the house, Fresnel. Go, man. I follow you.”

In the shabby main room of that dwelling, Andre–Louis halted him again. “Get me a length of rope,” he commanded, and was readily obeyed.

Five minutes later Fresnel was securely bound to a chair, and effectively silenced by a very uncomfortable gag improvised out of a block of wood and a muffler.

On the threshold the departing Andre–Louis turned.

“Good-night, Fresnel,” he said. Fierce eyes glared mute hatred at him. “It is unlikely that your ferry will be required again to-night. But some one is sure to come to your relief quite early in the morning. Until then bear your discomfort with what fortitude you can, remembering that you have brought it entirely upon yourself by your uncharitableness. If you spend the night considering that, the lesson should not be lost upon you. By morning you may even have grown so charitable as not to know who it was that tied you up. Good-night.”

He stepped out and closed the door.

To unlock the ferry, and pull himself across the swift-running waters, on which the faint moonlight was making a silver ripple, were matters that engaged not more than six or seven minutes. He drove the nose of the boat through the decaying sedges that fringed the southern bank of the stream, sprang ashore, and made the little craft secure. Then, missing the footpath in the dark, he struck out across a sodden meadow in quest of the road.

Table of Contents Table of Contents Book I The Robe BOOK I THE ROBE Table of Contents Chapter 1 The Republican Chapter 2 The Aristocrat Chapter 3 The Eloquence of M. De Vilmorin Chapter 4 The Heritage Chapter 5 The Lord of Gavrillac Chapter 6 The Windmill Chapter 7 The Wind Chapter 8 Omnes Omnibus Chapter 9 The Aftermath Book II The Buskin BOOK II THE BUSKIN Table of Contents Chapter 1 The Trespassers Chapter 2 The Service of Thespis Chapter 3 The Comic Muse Chapter 4 Exit Monsieur Parvissimus Chapter 5 Enter Scaramouche Chapter 6 Climene Chapter 7 The Conquest of Nantes Chapter 8 The Dream Chapter 9 The Awakening Chapter 10 Contrition Chapter 11 The Fracas at the Theatre Feydau Book III The Sword BOOK III THE SWORD Table of Contents Chapter 1 Transition Chapter 2 Quos Deus Vult Perdere Chapter 3 President Le Chapelier Chapter 4 At Meudon Chapter 5 Madame De Plougastel Chapter 6 Politicians Chapter 7 The Spadassinicides Chapter 8 The Paladin of the Third Chapter 9 Torn Pride Chapter 10 The Returning Carriage Chapter 11 Inferences Chapter 12 The Overwhelming Reason Chapter 13 Sanctuary Chapter 14 The Barrier Chapter 15 Safe-Conduct Chapter 16 Sunrise

Chapter 1 The Trespassers

Chapter 2 The Service of Thespis

Chapter 3 The Comic Muse

Chapter 4 Exit Monsieur Parvissimus

Chapter 5 Enter Scaramouche

Chapter 6 Climene

Chapter 7 The Conquest of Nantes

Chapter 8 The Dream

Chapter 9 The Awakening

Chapter 10 Contrition

Chapter 11 The Fracas at the Theatre Feydau

Table of Contents

Coming presently upon the Redon road, Andre–Louis, obeying instinct rather than reason, turned his face to the south, and plodded wearily and mechanically forward. He had no clear idea of whither he was going, or of whither he should go. All that imported at the moment was to put as great a distance as possible between Gavrillac and himself.

He had a vague, half-formed notion of returning to Nantes; and there, by employing the newly found weapon of his oratory, excite the people into sheltering him as the first victim of the persecution he had foreseen, and against which he had sworn them to take up arms. But the idea was one which he entertained merely as an indefinite possibility upon which he felt no real impulse to act.

Meanwhile he chuckled at the thought of Fresnel as he had last seen him, with his muffled face and glaring eyeballs. “For one who was anything but a man of action,” he writes, “I felt that I had acquitted myself none so badly.” It is a phrase that recurs at intervals in his sketchy “Confessions.” Constantly is he reminding you that he is a man of mental and not physical activities, and apologizing when dire necessity drives him into acts of violence. I suspect this insistence upon his philosophic detachment — for which I confess he had justification enough — to betray his besetting vanity.