Historical Romances: Under the Red Robe, Count Hannibal, A Gentleman of France Part 8

"Mademoiselle, then?" I muttered.

"Is Madame!" she cried. "Yes, and I am Mademoiselle de Cocheforet. And in that character, and in all others, I beg from this moment to close our acquaintance, Sir. When we meet again--if we ever do meet--which G.o.d forbid!" she cried, her eyes sparkling, "do not presume to speak to me, or I will have you flogged by the grooms. And do not stain our roof by sleeping under it again. You may lie to-night in the inn. It shall not be said that Cocheforet," she continued proudly, "returned even treachery with inhospitality; and I will give orders to that end.

To-morrow begone back to your master, like the whipped cur you are!

Spy and coward!"

With the last fierce words she moved away. I would have said something, I could almost have found it in my heart to stop her and make her hear. Nay, I had dreadful thoughts; for I was the stronger, and I might have done with her as I pleased. But she swept by me so fearlessly--as I might pa.s.s some loathsome cripple in the road--that I stood turned to stone. Without looking at me--without turning her head to see whether I followed or remained, or what I did--she went steadily down the track until the trees and the shadow and the growing darkness hid her grey figure from me; and I found myself alone.

CHAPTER V.

REVENGE.

And full of black rage! Had she only reproached me, or, turning on me in the hour of _my_ victory, said all she had now said in the moment of her own, I could have borne it. She might have shamed me then, and I might have taken the shame to myself, and forgiven her. But, as it was, I stood there in the gathering dusk, between the darkening hedges, baffled, tricked, defeated! And by a woman! She had pitted her wits against mine, her woman's will against my experience, and she had come off the victor. And then she had reviled me. As I took it all in, and began to comprehend, also, the more remote results, and how completely her move had made further progress on my part impossible, I hated her. She had tricked me with her gracious ways and her slow-coming smile. And, after all--for what she had said--it was this man's life or mine. What had I done that another man would not do?

_Mon Dieu!_ In the future there was nothing I would not do. I would make her smart for those words of hers! I would bring her to her knees!

Still, hot as I was, an hour might have restored me to coolness. But when I started to return, I fell into a fresh rage, for I remembered that I did not know my way out of the maze of rides and paths into which she had drawn me; and this and the mishaps which followed kept my rage hot. For a full hour I wandered in the wood, unable, though I knew where the village lay, to find any track which led continuously in one direction. Whenever, at the end of each attempt, the thicket brought me up short, I fancied I heard her laughing on the farther side of the brake; and the ignominy of this chance punishment, the check which the confinement placed on my rage, almost maddened me. In the darkness, I fell, and rose cursing; I tore my hands with thorns; I stained my suit, which had suffered sadly once before. At length, when I had almost resigned myself to lie in the wood, I caught sight of the lights of the village, and trembling between haste and anger, pressed towards them. In a few minutes I stood in the little street.

The lights of the inn shone only fifty yards away; but before I could show myself even there pride suggested that I should do something to repair my clothes. I stopped, and sc.r.a.ped and brushed them; and, at the same time, did what I could to compose my features. Then I advanced to the door and knocked. Almost on the instant the landlord's voice cried from the inside, "Enter, Monsieur!"

I raised the latch and went in. The man was alone, squatting over the fire, warming his hands A black pot simmered on the ashes: as I entered, he raised the lid and peeped inside. Then he glanced over his shoulder.

"You expected me?" I said defiantly, walking to the hearth, and setting one of my damp boots on the logs.

"Yes," he answered, nodding curtly. "Your supper is just ready. I thought you would be in about this time."

He grinned as he spoke, and it was with difficulty I suppressed my wrath "Mademoiselle de Cocheforet told you," I said, affecting indifference, "where I was?"

"Ay, Mademoiselle--or Madame," he replied, grinning afresh.

So she had told him where she had left me, and how she had tricked me!

She had made me the village laughing-stock! My rage flashed out afresh at the thought, and, at the sight of his mocking face, I raised my fist.

But he read the threat in my eyes, and was up in a moment, snarling, with his hand on his knife. "Not again, Monsieur!" he cried, in his vile _patois_, "My head is sore still. Raise your hand, and I will rip you up as I would a pig!"

"Sit down, fool," I said. "I am not going to harm you. Where is your wife?"

"About her business."

"Which should be getting my supper," I retorted sharply.

He rose sullenly, and, fetching a platter, poured the mess of broth and vegetables into it. Then he went to a cupboard and brought out a loaf of black bread and a measure of wine, and set them also on the table. "You see it," he said laconically.

"And a poor welcome!" I exclaimed.

He flamed into sudden pa.s.sion at that. Leaning with both his hands on the table, he thrust his rugged face and blood-shot eyes close to mine. His mustachios bristled; his beard trembled. "Hark ye, Sirrah!"

he muttered, with sullen emphasis--"be content! I have my suspicions.

And if it were not for my lady's orders I would put a knife into you, fair or foul, this very night. You would lie snug outside, instead of inside, and I do not think any one would be the worse. But, as it is, be content. Keep a still tongue; and when you turn your back on Cocheforet to-morrow keep it turned."

"Tut! tut!" I said--but I confess I was a little out of countenance.

"Threatened men live long, you rascal!"

"In Paris!" he answered significantly. "Not here, Monsieur."

He straightened himself with that, nodded once, and went back to the fire, and I shrugged my shoulders and began to eat, affecting to forget his presence. The logs on the hearth burned sullenly, and gave no light. The poor oil-lump, casting weird shadows from wall to wall, served only to discover the darkness. The room, with its low roof and earthen floor, and foul clothes flung here and there, reeked of stale meals and garlic and vile cooking. I thought of the parlour at Cocheforet, and the dainty table, and the stillness, and the scented pot-herbs; and, though I was too old a soldier to eat the worse because my spoon lacked washing, I felt the change, and laid it savagely at Mademoiselle's door.

The landlord, watching me stealthily from his place by the hearth, read my thoughts, and chuckled aloud. "Palace fare, palace manners!"

he muttered scornfully. "Set a beggar on horseback, and he will ride--back to the inn!"

"Keep a civil tongue, will you!" I answered, scowling at him.

"Have you finished?" he retorted.

I rose, without deigning to reply, and, going to the fire, drew off my boots, which were wet through. He, on the instant, swept off the wine and loaf to the cupboard, and then, coming back for the platter I had used, took it, opened the back door, and went out, leaving the door ajar. The draught which came in beat the flame of the lamp this way and that, and gave the dingy, gloomy room an air still more miserable.

I rose angrily from the fire, and went to the door, intending to close it with a bang.

But when I reached it, I saw something, between door and jamb, which stayed my hand. The door led to a shed in which the housewife washed pots and the like. I felt some surprise, therefore, when I found a light there at this time of night; still more surprise when I saw what she was doing.

She was seated on the mud floor, with a rushlight before her, and on either side of her a high-piled heap of refuse and rubbish. From one of these, at the moment I caught sight of her, she was sorting things--horrible, filthy sweepings of road or floor--to the other; shaking and sifting each article as she pa.s.sed it across, and then taking up another and repeating the action with it, and so on: all minutely, warily, with an air of so much patience and persistence that I stood wondering. Some things--rags--she held up between her eyes and the light, some she pa.s.sed through her fingers, some she fairly tore in pieces. And all the time her husband stood watching her greedily, my platter still in his hand, as if her strange occupation fascinated him.

I stood looking, also, for half a minute, perhaps; then the man's eye, raised for a single second to the doorway, met mine. He started, muttered something to his wife, and, quick as thought, kicked the light out, leaving the shed in darkness. Cursing him for an ill-conditioned fellow, I walked back to the fire, laughing. In a twinkling he followed me, his face dark with rage.

"_Ventre saint gris!_" he exclaimed, thrusting it close to mine. "Is not a man's house his own?"

"It is, for me," I answered coolly, shrugging my shoulders. "And his wife: if she likes to pick dirty rags at this hour, that is your affair."

"Pig of a spy!" he cried, foaming with rage.

I was angry enough at bottom, but I had nothing to gain by quarrelling with the fellow; and I curtly bade him remember himself. "Your mistress gave you your orders," I said contemptuously. "Obey them!"

He spat on the floor, but at the same time he grew calmer. "You are right there," he answered spitefully. "What matter, after all, since you leave to-morrow at six? Your horse has been sent down, and your baggage is above."

"I will go to it," I retorted. "I want none of your company. Give me a light, fellow!"

He obeyed reluctantly, and, glad to turn my back on him, I went up the ladder, still wondering faintly, in the midst of my annoyance, what his wife was about that my chance detection of her had so enraged him.

Even now he was not quite himself. He followed me with abuse, and, deprived by my departure of any other means of showing his spite, fell to shouting through the floor, bidding me remember six o'clock, and be stirring; with other taunts, which did not cease until he had tired himself out.

The sight of my belongings--which I had left a few hours before at the Chateau--strewn about the floor of this garret, went some way towards firing me again. But I was worn out. The indignities and mishaps of the evening had, for once, crushed my spirit, and after swearing an oath or two I began to pack my bags. Vengeance I would have; but the time and manner I left for daylight thought. Beyond six o'clock in the morning I did not look forward; and if I longed for anything it was for a little of the good Armagnac I had wasted on those louts of merchants in the kitchen below. It might have done me good now.

I had wearily strapped up one bag, and nearly filled the other, when I came upon something which did, for the moment, rouse the devil in me.

This was the tiny orange-coloured sachet which Mademoiselle had dropped the night I first saw her at the inn, and which, it will be remembered, I picked up. Since that night I had not seen it, and had as good as forgotten it. Now, as I folded up my other doublet, the one I had then been wearing, it dropped from the pocket.

The sight of it recalled all--that night, and Mademoiselle's face in the lanthorn light, and my fine plans, and the end of them; and, in a fit of childish fury, the outcome of long suppressed pa.s.sion, I s.n.a.t.c.hed up the sachet from the floor and tore it across and across, and flung the pieces down. As they fell, a cloud of fine pungent dust burst from them, and with the dust something heavier, which tinkled sharply on the boards. I looked down to see what this was--perhaps I already repented of my act--but for the moment I could see nothing.

The floor was grimy and uninviting, and the light bad.

In certain moods, however, a man is obstinate about small things, and I moved the taper nearer. As I did so, a point of light, a flashing sparkle that shone for a second among the dirt and refuse on the floor, caught my eye. It was gone in a moment, but I had seen it. I stared, and moved the light again, and the spark flashed out afresh, this time in a different place. Much puzzled, I knelt, and, in a twinkling, found a tiny crystal. Hard by lay another--and another; each as large as a fair-sized pea. I took up the three, and rose to my feet again, the light in one hand, the crystals in the palm of the other.