She tried to pick out in her mind that one most friendly to her, that one who was to destroy her. She heard in spirit her cry: "f.a.n.n.y _isn"t there!_"
She thought of Stewart who would have woken early, planning anxiously to save her. The faces of the Guardians of the Honour of the Section began to visit her one by one, and horror spread in her. Then, pushing them from her, attempting to escape: "They are not all the world--" But they _were_ all the world--if in a strange land they were all to frown together. The thought was horrible. Time to get there yet! Alas, that the car was not facing _towards_ Chantilly--so early in the morning!
"Foss, Foss, don"t you see him coming?"
"The road is full of people."
A car rushed by them, yet never seemed to pa.s.s. The engine slowed down and a voice called: "What"s up? Anything you want?"
It was the voice of Roland Vauclin. Ah, she knew him--that fat, childish man, who loved gossip as he loved his food. To f.a.n.n.y it seemed but a question of seconds before he would lift the rug, say gravely, "Good morning, mademoiselle," before he would rush back to his village spreading the news like a fall of fresh snow over the roofs. She lay still from sheer inertia. Had Foss answered? She could not hear.
Then she heard him clear his throat and speak.
"The Captain asked me to get a bit of wood for his fire, sir. I have a man in there gathering branches, while I do a bit of "business" with the car."
"Oh, right!... Go on!" said Vauclin to his own chauffeur. Again they were left alone. Talk between them was almost impossible; f.a.n.n.y was so m.u.f.fled, Foss so anxiously watched for Alfred. The reedy singing between the boards where the wind attacked her occupied all her attention. The very core of warmth seemed extinguished in her body, never to be lit again. She remembered their last _fourier_, or special body-servant, who had gone on leave upon an open truck, and who had grown colder and colder--"and he never got warm again and he died, madame," the letter from his wife had told them.
"I think he is coming! There is no one else on the road, mademoiselle.
Will you look? I don"t see very well--"
She tried to throw off the rug and sit up, but her frozen elbow slipped and she fell again on the floor of the car. Pulling herself up she stared with him through the gla.s.s. Far up the white road a little figure toiled towards them, carrying something, wavering as though the ice-ruts were deep, picking its way from side to side. Neither of them was sure whether it was Alfred; they watched in silence. Before she knew it was upon her a car went by; she dived beneath the rug, striking her forehead on the corner of the folding seat.
"Did they see? Was any one inside?"
"It was an empty car. Please be careful."
Foss was cold with rebuke. After that she lay still, isolated even from Foss. Ten minutes went by and suddenly Foss spoke--"Did you have to go far?"
And Alfred"s hard voice answered "Yes."
Then she heard the two men working, tools clattering, murmured voices, and in ten minutes Foss said: "Try the starting handle."
She heard the efforts, the labour of Alfred at the handle.
"He will kill himself--he will break a blood-vessel," she thought as she listened to him. Every few minutes someone seized the handle and wound and wound--as she had never wound in her life--on and on, past the very limit of endurance. And under her ear, in the cold bones of the car, not a sign of life! Not a sign of life, and, as though she could hear them, all the clocks in the world struck nine.
The Guardians of the Honour would be in at breakfast now! they would be sitting, sitting--discussing her absence. Stewart, upstairs, would be looking out of the window, watching the river, perhaps answering questions indifferently with her cool look. "Oh, in the garage--or walking in the forest. I don"t know." Cough! She jumped as the bones in the bottom of the car moved under her, and the engine breathed. The noise died out, Foss leapt to the handle and wound and wound, fiercely, like a man who meant to make her breathe again or die. Again she struggled to life, lived for a few minutes, choked and was silent.
"How is the handle?"
"Pretty stiff," said Foss, "but getting better. Give me the oil squirt."
Alfred took his place at the handle. Suddenly the car sprang to life again on a full deep note. f.a.n.n.y lifted her head a little. Foss was leaning over the carburettor with his thin anxious look: Alfred stood in the snow, dark red in the face, and covered with oil. Soon they were moving along the road, slowly at first, and with difficulty: then faster and more freely. A little thin warmth began to creep up through the boards and play about her legs.
She was carried along under her dark rug for another twenty minutes, then fell against the seat as the car turned sharply into the forsaken road that led to the broken bridge. In five minutes more the car had stopped and Alfred was at the door saying: "At last, mademoiselle!" She stammered her thanks as she tried to step from the car to the ground --but fell on her knees on the dashboard.
"Have you hurt your foot?" said Alfred, who was hot.
"I am only cold," she said humbly, unwilling to intrude her puny endurances on their gigantic labours.
She sat on the step of the car rubbing her ankles, and stared at the meadows of thawing snow, at the open porches of stone which led the road straight into the river, at the church and the sunlit houses on the other side.
Bidding them good-bye she reached the bank, and climbed down it, stumbling in the frozen mud and pits of ice till she reached the stiff reeds at the bank.
The river had floes of ice upon it, green ice which swung and caught among the reeds at the edge. "It is thin," she thought, pushing her shoe through it, "it can"t prevent the boat from crossing the river."
Yet she was anxious.
There on the other side was the little hut, the steps, the boat tied to the stone and held rigid in the ice. A s.h.a.ggy dog ran by her feet to the river"s edge and barked. Feet came clambering down the bank and a workman followed the dog, with a bag of tools and a basket. He walked up to the river, and putting his hands in a trumpet to his mouth called in a huge voice: "Un pa.s.sant, Margot! Margot!" f.a.n.n.y remembered her whistle and blew that too.
There was no sign of life, and the little hut looked as before, like a brown dog asleep in the sun. f.a.n.n.y turned to the man, ready to share her anxiety with him, but he had sat down on the bank and was retying a bootlace that had come undone.
Margot never showed herself at the hut window, at the hut door. When f.a.n.n.y turned back to whistle again she saw her standing up in the boat, which, freed, was drifting out towards them--saw her scatter the ice with her oar--and the boat, pushed upstream, came drifting down towards them in a curve to hit the bank at their feet. The girl stepped out, smiling, happy, pretty, undimmed by the habit of trade. The man got in and sat down, the dog beside him.
"I would stand," said Margot to f.a.n.n.y, "it"s so wet."
She made no allusion to the broken appointment for the night before.
f.a.n.n.y, noticing the dripping boards of the boat, stood up, her hand upon Margot"s shoulder to steady herself. The thin, illusory ice shivered and broke and sank as the oar dipped in sideways.
c.o.c.ks were crowing on the other side--the sun drew faint colours from the ice, the river clattered at the side of the boat, wind twisted and shook her skirt, and stirred her hair. All was forgotten in the glory of the pa.s.sage of the river.
Margot, smiling up under her damp, brown hair, took her five sous, pressed her town boots against the wooden bar, and shot the boat up against the bank.
f.a.n.n.y went up the bank, over the railway lines, and out into the road.
Two hundred yards of road lay before her, leading straight up to the house. On the left was a high wall, on the right the common covered with snow--should some one come out of the house there was no chance of hiding. She glanced down at her tell-tale silk stockings; yet she could not hurry on those stiff and painful feet. She was near the door in the wall.
She pa.s.sed in--the dog did not bark; came to the foot of the steps--n.o.body looked out of the window; walked into the hall among their hanging coats and macintoshes, touched them, moved them with her shoulder; heard voices behind the door of the breakfast room, was on the stairs, up out of sight past the first bend, up, up, into Stewart"s room.
"_Do you know_...?"
"_No one knows_!"
"Oh ... oh...." All her high nerves came scudding and shuddering down into the meadows of content. Eternal luck.... She crept under Stewart"s eiderdown and shivered.
"Here"s the chocolate. I will boil it again on my cooker. Oh, you have a sort of ague...."
Good friend ... kind friend! She had pictured her like that, anxious, unquestioning and warm!
Later she went downstairs and opened the door of the breakfast room upon the Guardians of the Honour.
As she stood looking at them she felt that her clothes were the clothes of some one who had spent hours in the forest--that her eyes gave out a gay picture of all that was behind them--her adventures must shout aloud from her hands, her feet.
"Had your breakfast?" said some one.
"Upstairs," said f.a.n.n.y, contentedly, and marvelled.
She had only to open and close her lips a dozen times, bid them form the words: "I have been out all night," to turn those browsing herds of benevolence into an ambush of threatening horns, lowered at her.
Almost ... she would _like_ to have said the sentence.
But basking in their want of knowledge she sat down and ate her third breakfast.