Under the Red Robe Part 21

But there was no path, and night was come, and the men's nerves were shaken. The lanthorns had to be lit, and the way to be retraced; by the time we reached the dark pool which lay below, the last bubbles were gone from the surface, the last ripples had beaten themselves out against the banks. The pool still rocked sullenly, and the yellow light showed a man's hat floating, and near it a glove three parts submerged.

But that was all. The mute's dying grip had known no loosening, nor his hate any fear. I heard afterwards that when they dragged the two out next day, his fingers were in the other's eye-sockets, his teeth in his throat. If ever man found death sweet, it was he!

As we turned slowly from the black water, some shuddering, some crossing themselves, the Lieutenant looked at me.

'Curse you!' he said pa.s.sionately. 'I believe that you are glad.'

He deserved his fate,' I answered coldly. 'Why should I pretend to be sorry? It was now or in three months. And for the other poor devil's sake I am glad.'

He glared at me for a moment in speechless anger.

At last, 'I should like to have you tied up!' he said between his teeth.

'I should think that you had had enough of tying up for one day!' I retorted. 'But there,' I went on contemptuously, 'it comes of making officers out of the canaille. Dogs love blood. The teamster must lash something if he can no longer lash his horses.'

We were back, a sombre little procession, at the wooden bridge when I said this. He stopped.

'Very well,' he replied, nodding viciously. 'That decides me. Sergeant, light me this way with a lanthorn. The rest of you to the village. Now, Master Spy,' he continued, glancing at me with gloomy spite, 'Your road is my road. I think I know how to spoil your game.'

I shrugged my shoulders in disdain, and together, the sergeant leading the way with the light, we crossed the dim meadow, and pa.s.sed through the gate where Mademoiselle had kissed my hand, and up the ghostly walk between the rose bushes. I wondered uneasily what the Lieutenant would be at, and what he intended; but the lanthorn-light which now fell on the ground at our feet, and now showed one of us to the other, high-lit in a frame of blackness, discovered nothing in his grizzled face but settled hostility. He wheeled at the end of the walk to go to the main door, but as he did so I saw the flutter of a white skirt by the stone seat against the house, and I stepped that way.

'Mademoiselle?' I said softly. 'Is it you?'

'Clon?' she muttered, her voice quivering. 'What of him?'

'He is past pain,' I answered gently. 'He is dead--yes, dead, Mademoiselle, but in his own way. Take comfort.'

She stifled a sob; then before I could say more, the Lieutenant, with his sergeant and light, were at my elbow. He saluted Mademoiselle roughly. She looked at him with shuddering abhorrence.

'Are you come to flog me too, sir?' she said pa.s.sionately. 'Is it not enough that you have murdered my servant?'

'On the contrary, it was he who killed my Captain,' the Lieutenant answered, in another tone than I had expected. 'If your servant is dead so is my comrade.'

'Captain Larolle?' she murmured, gazing with startled eyes, not at him but at me.

I nodded.

'How?' she asked.

'Clon flung the Captain and himself--into the river pool above the bridge,' I said.

She uttered a low cry of awe and stood silent; but her lips moved and I think that she prayed for Clon, though she was a Huguenot. Meanwhile, I had a fright. The lanthorn, swinging in the sergeant's hand, and throwing its smoky light now on the stone seat, now on the rough wall above it, showed me something else. On the seat, doubtless where Mademoiselle's hand had lain as she sat in the dark, listening and watching and shivering, stood a pitcher of food. Beside her, in that place, it was d.a.m.ning evidence, and I trembled least the Lieutenant's eye should fall upon it, lest the sergeant should see it; and then, in a moment, I forgot all about it. The Lieutenant was speaking and his voice was doom. My throat grew dry as I listened; my tongue stuck to my mouth I tried to look at Mademoiselle, but I could not.

'It is true that the Captain is gone,' he said stiffly, 'but others are alive, and about one of them a word with you, by your leave, Mademoiselle. I have listened to a good deal of talk from this fine gentleman friend of yours. He has spent the last twenty-four hours saying "You shall!" and "You shall not!" He came from you and took a very high tone because we laid a little whip-lash about that dumb devil of yours. He called us brutes and beasts, and but for him I am not sure that my friend would not now be alive. But when he said a few minutes ago that he was glad--glad of it, d--him!--then I fixed it in my mind that I would be even with him. And I am going to be!'

'What do you mean?' Mademoiselle asked, wearily interrupting him. 'If you think that you can prejudice me against this gentleman--'

'That is precisely what I am going to do! And a little more than that!'

he answered.

'You will be only wasting your breath!' she retorted.

'Wait! Wait, Mademoiselle---until you have heard,' he said. 'For I swear to you that if ever a black-hearted scoundrel, a dastardly sneaking spy trod the earth, it is this fellow! And I am going to expose him. Your own eyes and your own ears shall persuade you. I am not particular, but I would not eat, I would not drink, I would not sit down with him! I would rather be beholden to the meanest trooper in my squadron than to him! Ay, I would, so help me Heaven!'

And the Lieutenant, turning squarely on his heel, spat on the ground.

CHAPTER XI. THE ARREST

It had come, and I saw no way of escape. The sergeant was between us and I could not strike him. And I found no words. A score of times I had thought with shrinking how I should reveal my secret to Mademoiselle--what I should say, and how she would take it; but in my mind it had been always a voluntary act, this disclosure, it had been always I who unmasked myself and she who listened--alone; and in this voluntariness and this privacy there had been something which took from the shame of antic.i.p.ation. But here--here was no voluntary act on my part, no privacy, nothing but shame. And I stood mute, convicted, speechless, under her eyes--like the thing I was.

Yet if anything could have braced me it was Mademoiselle's voice when she answered him.

'Go on, Monsieur,' she said calmly, 'you will have done the sooner.'

'You do not believe me?' he replied. 'Then, I say, look at him! Look at him! If ever shame--'

'Monsieur,' she said abruptly--she did not look at me, 'I am ashamed of myself.'

'But you don't hear me,' the Lieutenant rejoined hotly. 'His very name is not his own! He is not Barthe at all. He is Berault, the gambler, the duellist, the bully; whom if you--'

Again she interrupted him.

'I know it,' she said coldly. 'I know it all; and if you have nothing more to tell me, go, Monsieur. Go!' she continued in a tone of infinite scorn. 'Be satisfied, that you have earned my contempt as well as my abhorrence.'

He looked for a moment taken aback. Then,--

'Ay, but I have more,' he cried, his voice stubbornly triumphant.

'I forgot that you would think little of that. I forgot that a swordsman has always the ladies' hearts---but I have more. Do you know, too, that he is in the Cardinal's pay? Do you know that he is here on the same errand which brings us here--to arrest M. de Cocheforet? Do you know that while we go about the business openly and in soldier fashion, it is his part to worm himself into your confidence, to sneak into Madame's intimacy, to listen at your door, to follow your footsteps, to hang on your lips, to track you--track you until you betray yourselves and the man? Do you know this, and that all his sympathy is a lie, Mademoiselle? His help, so much bait to catch the secret? His aim blood-money--blood-money? Why, MORBLEU!' the Lieutenant continued, pointing his finger at me, and so carried away by pa.s.sion, so lifted out of himself by wrath and indignation, that I shrank before him--'you talk, lady, of contempt and abhorrence in the same breath with me, but what have you for him--what have you for him--the spy, the informer, the hired traitor? And if you doubt me, if you want evidence, look at him.

Only look at him, I say.'

And he might say it; for I stood silent still, cowering and despairing, white with rage and hate. But Mademoiselle did not look. She gazed straight at the Lieutenant.

'Have you done?' she said.

'Done?' he stammered; her words, her air, bringing him to earth again.

'Done? Yes, if you believe me.'

'I do not,' she answered proudly. 'If that be all, be satisfied, Monsieur. I do not believe you.'

'Then tell me this,' he retorted, after a moment of stunned surprise.

'Answer me this! Why, if he was not on our side, do you think that we let him remain here? Why did we suffer him to stay in a suspected house, bullying us, annoying us, thwarting us, taking your part from hour to hour?'

'He has a sword, Monsieur,' she answered with fine contempt.

'MILLE DIABLES!' he cried, snapping his fingers in a rage. 'That for his sword! It was because he held the Cardinal's commission, I tell you, because he had equal authority with us. Because we had no choice.'

'And that being so, Monsieur, why are you now betraying him?' she asked.