CHAPTER VII. A MASTER STROKE
I have a way with me which commonly commands respect; and when thelandlord's first terror was over and he would serve me, I managed to getmy supper--the first good meal I had had in two days--pretty comfortablyin spite of the soldiers' presence. The crowd, too, which filled theroom, soon began to melt. The men strayed off in groups to water theirhorses, or went to hunt up their quarters, until only two or three wereleft. Dusk had fallen outside; the noise in the street grew less. Thefirelight began to glow and flicker on the walls, and the wretched roomto look as homely as it was in its nature to look. I was pondering forthe twentieth time what step I should take next, and questioning whythe soldiers were here, and whether I should let the night pass beforeI moved, when the door, which had been turning on its hinges almostwithout pause for an hour, opened again, and a woman came in.
She paused a moment on the threshold looking round, and I saw that shehad a shawl on her head and a milk-pitcher in her hand, and that herfeet and ankles were bare. There was a great rent in her coarse stuffpetticoat, and the hand which held the shawl together was brown anddirty. More I did not see: for, supposing her to be a neighbour stolenin, now that the house was quiet, to get some milk for her child orthe like, I took no farther heed of her. I turned to the fire again andplunged into my thoughts.
But to get to the hearth where the goodwife was fidgeting the woman hadto pass in front of me; and as she passed I suppose that she stole alook at me from under her shawl. For just when she came between me andthe blaze she uttered a low cry and shrank aside--so quickly that shealmost stepped on the hearth. The next moment she turned her back tome, and was stooping whispering in the housewife's ear. A stranger mighthave thought that she had trodden on a hot ember.
But another idea, and a very strange one, came into my mind; and Istood up silently. The woman's back was towards me, but something in herheight, her shape, the pose of her head hidden as it was by her shawl,seemed familiar. I waited while she hung over the fire whispering, andwhile the goodwife slowly filled her pitcher out of the great black pot.But when she turned to go, I took a step forward so as to bar her way.And our eyes met.
I could not see her features; they were lost in the shadow of the hood.But I saw a shiver run through her from head to foot. And I knew thenthat I had made no mistake.
'That is too heavy for you, my girl,' I said familiarly, as I might havespoken to a village wench. 'I will carry it for you.'
One of the men, who remained lolling at the table, laughed, and theother began to sing a low song. The woman trembled in rage or fear; butshe kept silence and let me take the jug from her hands; and when I wentto the door and opened it, she followed mechanically. An instant, andthe door fell to behind us, shutting off the light and glow, and we twostood together in the growing dusk.
'It is late for you to be out, Mademoiselle,' I said politely. 'Youmight meet with some rudeness, dressed as you are. Permit me to see youhome.'
She shuddered, and I thought that I heard her sob, but she did notanswer. Instead, she turned and walked quickly through the village inthe direction of the Chateau, keeping in the shadow of the houses. Icarried the pitcher and walked close to her, beside her; and in the darkI smiled. I knew how shame and impotent rage were working in her. Thiswas something like revenge!
Presently I spoke.
'Well, Mademoiselle,' I said, 'where are your grooms?'
She gave me one look, her eyes blazing with anger, her face like hateitself; and after that I said no more, but left her in peace, andcontented myself with walking at her shoulder until we came to the endof the village, where the track to the great house plunged into thewood. There she stopped, and turned on me like a wild creature at bay.
'What do you want?' she cried hoarsely, breathing as if she had beenrunning.
'To see you safe to the house,' I answered coolly. 'Alone you might beinsulted.'
'And if I will not?' she retorted.
'The choice does not lie with you, Mademoiselle,' I answered sternly,'You will go to the house with me, and on the way you will give me aninterview--late as it is; but not here. Here we are not private enough.We may be interrupted at any moment, and I wish to speak to you atlength.'
'At length?' she muttered.
'Yes, Mademoiselle.'
I saw her shiver. 'What if I will not?' she said again.
'I might call to the nearest soldiers and tell them who you are,' Ianswered coolly. 'I might do that, but I should not. That were a clumsyway of punishing you, and I know a better way. I should go to theCaptain, Mademoiselle, and tell him whose horse is locked up in the innstable. A trooper told me--as someone had told him--that it belongedto one of his officers; but I looked through the crack, and I knew thehorse again.'
She could not repress a groan. I waited; still she did not speak.
'Shall I go to the Captain?' I said ruthlessly.
She shook the hood back from her face and looked at me.
'Oh, you coward! you coward!' she hissed through her teeth. 'If I had aknife!'
'But you have not, Mademoiselle,' I answered, unmoved. 'Be good enough,therefore, to make up your mind which it is to be. Am I to go with mynews to the captain, or am I to come with you?'
'Give me the pitcher,' she said harshly.
I did so, wondering. In a moment she flung it with a savage gesture farinto the bushes.
'Come!' she said, 'if you will. But some day God will punish you!'
Without another word she turned and entered the path through the trees,and I followed her. I suppose that every one of its windings, everyhollow and broken place in it had been known to her from childhood, forshe followed it swiftly and unerringly, barefoot as she was. I had towalk fast through the darkness to keep up with her. The wood was quiet,but the frogs were beginning to croak in the pool, and their persistentchorus reminded me of the night when I had come to the house-door, hurtand worn out, and Clon had admitted me, and she had stood under thegallery in the hall. Things had looked dark then. I had seen but a verylittle way ahead then. Now all was plain. The commandant might be herewith all his soldiers, but it was I who held the strings.
We came to the little wooden bridge and saw beyond the dark meadows thelights of the house. All the windows were bright. Doubtless the trooperswere making merry.
'Now, Mademoiselle,' I said quietly, 'I must trouble you to stop here,and give me your attention for a few minutes. Afterwards you may go yourway.'
'Speak!' she said defiantly. 'And be quick! I cannot breathe the airwhere you are! It poisons me!'
'Ah!' I said slowly. 'Do you think that you make things better by suchspeeches as those?'
'Oh!' she cried and I heard her teeth click together. 'Would you have mefawn on you?'
'Perhaps not,' I answered. 'Still you make one mistake.'
'What is it?' she panted.
'You forget that I am to be feared as well as--loathed, Mademoiselle!Ay, Mademoiselle, to be feared!' I continued grimly. 'Do you think thatI do not know why you are here in this guise? Do you think that I do notknow for whom that pitcher of broth was intended? Or who will now haveto fast to-night? I tell you I know all these things. Your house wasfull of soldiers; your servants were watched and could not leave. Youhad to come yourself and get food for him?'
She clutched at the handrail of the bridge, and for an instant clungto it for support. Her face, from which the shawl had fallen, glimmeredwhite in the shadow of the trees. At last I had shaken her pride. Atlast!
'What is your price?' she murmured faintly.
'I am going to tell you,' I replied, speaking so that every word mightfall distinctly on her ears, and sating my eyes the while on her proudface. I had never dreamed of such revenge as this! 'About a fortnightago, M. de Cocheforet left here at night with a little orange-colouredsachet in his possession.'
She uttered a stifled cry, and drew herself stiffly erect.
'It contained--but there, Mademoiselle, you know its contents,' I wenton. 'What
ever they were, M. de Cocheforet lost it and them at starting.A week ago he came back--unfortunately for himself--to seek them.'
She was looking full in my face now. She seemed scarcely to breathe inthe intensity of her surprise and expectation.
'You had a search made, Mademoiselle,' I continued quietly. 'Yourservants left no place unexplored The paths, the roads, the very woodswere ransacked, But in vain, because all the while the orange sachet laywhole and unopened in my pocket.'
'No!' she cried impetuously. 'There, you lie sir, as usual! The sachetwas found, torn open, many leagues from this place!'
'Where I threw it, Mademoiselle,' I replied, 'that I might mislead yourrascals and be free to return to you. Oh! believe me,' I continued,letting something of my true self, something of my triumph, appear atlast in my voice. 'You have made a mistake! You would have done betterhad you trusted me. I am no bundle of sawdust, Mademoiselle, though onceyou got the better of me, but a man; a man with an arm to shield and abrain to serve, and--as I am going to teach you--a heart also!'
She shivered.
'In the orange-coloured sachet that you lost I believe that there wereeighteen stones of great value?'
She made no answer, but she looked at me as if I fascinated her. Hervery breath seemed to pause and wait on my words. She was so littleconscious of anything else, of anything outside ourselves, that a scoreof men might have come up behind her, unseen and unnoticed.