第50章 THE STRANGE EXPERIENCE OF ALKALI DICK(5)

In the single look he had cast behind, he had seen that the half-dark salon was now brilliantly lighted--where no doubt the whole terrified household was now assembled.He had no fear of being followed; since his confrontation with his own likeness in the mysterious portrait, he understood everything.The apparently supernatural character of his visitation was made plain; his ruffled vanity was soothed--his vindication was complete.He laughed to himself and rolled about, until in his suppressed merriment the rose fell from his bosom, and--he stopped! Its freshness and fragrance recalled the innocent young girl he had frightened.He remembered her gentle, pleading voice, and his cheek flushed.Well, he had done the best he could in bringing her back to the house--at the risk of being taken for a burglar--and she was safe now! If that stupid French parson didn't know the difference between a living man and a dead and painted one, it wasn't his fault.But he fell asleep with the rose in his fingers.

He was awake at the first streak of dawn.He again bathed his horse's shoulder, saddled, but did not mount him, as the beast, although better, was still stiff, and Dick wished to spare him for the journey to still distant Havre, although he had determined to lie over that night at the first wayside inn.Luckily for him, the disturbance at the chateau had not extended to the forest, for Dick had to lead his horse slowly and could not have escaped; but no suspicion of external intrusion seemed to have been awakened, and the woodland was, evidently, seldom invaded.

By dint of laying his course by the sun and the exercise of a little woodcraft, in the course of two hours he heard the creaking of a hay-cart, and knew that he was near a traveled road.But to his discomfiture he presently came to a high wall, which had evidently guarded this portion of the woods from the public.Time, however, had made frequent breaches in the stones; these had been roughly filled in with a rude abatis of logs and treetops pointing towards the road.But as these were mainly designed to prevent intrusion into the park rather than egress from it, Dick had no difficulty in rolling them aside and emerging at last with his limping steed upon the white high-road.The creaking cart had passed; it was yet early for traffic, and Dick presently came upon a wine-shop, a bakery, a blacksmith's shop, laundry, and a somewhat pretentious cafe and hotel in a broader space which marked the junction of another road.

Directly before it, however, to his consternation, were the massive, but timeworn, iron gates of a park, which Dick did not doubt was the one in which he had spent the previous night.But it was impossible to go further in his present plight, and he boldly approached the restaurant.As he was preparing to make his usual explanatory signs, to his great delight he was addressed in a quaint, broken English, mixed with forgotten American slang, by the white-trousered, black-alpaca coated proprietor.More than that--he was a Social Democrat and an enthusiastic lover of America--had he not been to "Bos-town" and New York, and penetrated as far west as "Booflo," and had much pleasure in that beautiful and free country? Yes! it was a "go-a-'ed" country--you "bet-your-lif'."One had reason to say so: there was your electricity--your street cars--your "steambots"--ah! such steambots--and your "r-rail-r-roads." Ah! observe! compare your r-rail-r-roads and the buffet of the Pullman with the line from Paris, for example--and where is one? Nowhere! Actually, positively, without doubt, nowhere!

Later, at an appetizing breakfast--at which, to Dick's great satisfaction, the good man had permitted and congratulated himself to sit at table with a free-born American--he was even more loquacious.For what then, he would ask, was this incompetence, this imbecility, of France? He would tell.It was the vile corruption of Paris, the grasping of capital and companies, the fatal influence of the still clinging noblesse, and the insidious Jesuitical power of the priests.As for example, Monsieur "the Booflo-bil" had doubtless noticed the great gates of the park before the cafe? It was the preserve,--the hunting-park of one of the old grand seigneurs, still kept up by his descendants, the Comtes de Fontonelles--hundreds of acres that had never been tilled, and kept as wild waste wilderness,--kept for a day's pleasure in a year! And, look you! the peasants starving around its walls in their small garden patches and pinched farms! And the present Comte de Fontonelles cascading gold on his mistresses in Paris; and the Comtesse, his mother, and her daughter living there to feed and fatten and pension a brood of plotting, black-cowled priests.Ah, bah! where was your Republican France, then? But a time would come.The "Booflo-bil" had, without doubt, noticed, as he came along the road, the breaches in the wall of the park?

Dick, with a slight dry reserve, "reckoned that he had.""They were made by the scythes and pitchforks of the peasants in the Revolution of '93, when the count was emigre, as one says with reason 'skedadelle,' to England.Let them look the next time that they burn not the chateau,--'bet your lif'!'""The chateau," said Dick, with affected carelessness."Wot's the blamed thing like?"It was an old affair,--with armor and a picture-gallery,--and bricabrac.He had never seen it.Not even as a boy,--it was kept very secluded then.As a man--you understand--he could not ask the favor.The Comtes de Fontonelles and himself were not friends.