"Then what on earth induced you to do it? Heavens! man," he continued bluntly, and speaking with greater freedom than he had before used, "Nature never intended you for a tipstaff. What was it then?"
I rose. It was very late, and the room was empty, the fire low.
"I will tell you--to-morrow," I said. "I shall have something to say to you then, of which that will be part."
He looked at me in great astonishment, and with a little suspicion.
But I called for a light, and by going at once to bed, cut short his questions. In the morning we did not meet until it was time to start.
Those who know the south road to Agen, and how the vineyards rise in terraces north of the town, one level of red earth above another, green in summer, but in late autumn bare and stony, may remember a particular place where the road, two leagues from the town, runs up a steep hill.
At the top of the hill four roads meet; and there, plain to be seen against the sky, is a finger-post indicating which way leads to Bordeaux, and which to old tiled Montauban, and which to Perigueux.
This hill had impressed me greatly on my journey south; perhaps because I had enjoyed from it my first extended view of the Garonne Valley, and had there felt myself on the verge of the south country where my mission lay. It had taken root in my memory, so that I had come to look upon its bare rounded head, with the guide-post and the four roads, as the first outpost of Paris, as the first sign of return to the old life.
Now for two days I had been looking forward to seeing it again, That long stretch of road would do admirably for something I had in my mind. That sign-post, with the roads pointing north, south, east, and west--could there be a better place for meetings and partings?
We came to the bottom of the ascent about an hour before noon, M. de Cocheforet, Mademoiselle, and I. We had reversed the order of yesterday, and I rode ahead; they came after at their leisure. Now, at the foot of the hill I stopped, and letting Mademoiselle pa.s.s on, detained M. de Cocheforet by a gesture.
"Pardon me, one moment," I said. "I want to ask a favour."
He looked at me somewhat fretfully; with a gleam of wildness in his eyes that betrayed how the iron was, little by little, eating into his heart.
He had started after breakfast as gaily as a bridegroom, but gradually he had sunk below himself; and now he had much ado to curb his impatience.
"Of me?" he said bitterly. "What is it?"
"I wish to have a few words with Mademoiselle--alone," I said.
"Alone?" he exclaimed in astonishment.
"Yes," I replied, without blenching, though his face grew dark. "For the matter of that, you can be within call all the time, if you please. But I have a reason for wishing to ride a little way with her."
"To tell her something?"
"Yes."
"Then you can tell it to me," he retorted suspiciously. "Mademoiselle, I will answer for it, has no desire to--"
"See me or speak to me? No," I said. "I can understand that. Yet I want to speak to her."
"Very well, you can speak in my presence," he answered rudely. "If that be all, let us ride on and join her." And he made a movement as if to do so.
"That will not do, M. de Cocheforet," I said firmly, stopping him with my hand. "Let me beg you to be more complaisant. It is a small thing I ask, a very small thing; but I swear to you that if Mademoiselle does not grant it, she will repent it all her life."
He looked at me, his face growing darker and darker.
"Fine words," he said, with a sneer. "Yet I fancy I understand them."
And then with a pa.s.sionate oath he broke out. "But I will not have it!
I have not been blind, M. de Berault, and I understand. But I will not have it. I will have no such Judas bargain made. PARDIEU! do you think I could suffer it and show my face again?"
"I don"t know what you mean," I said, restraining myself with difficulty. I could have struck the fool.
"But I know what you mean," he replied, in a tone of suppressed rage.
"You would have her sell herself; sell herself to you to save me. And you would have me stand by and see the thing done. No, sir, never; never, though I go to the wheel. I will die a gentleman, if I have lived a fool."
"I think that you will do the one as certainly as you have done the other," I retorted in my exasperation. And yet I admired him.
"Oh, I am not quite a fool!" he cried, scowling at me. "I have used my eyes."
"Then be good enough to favour me with your ears!" I answered drily.
"For just a moment. And listen when I say that no such bargain has ever crossed my mind. You were kind enough to think well of me last night, M.
de Cocheforet. Why should the mention of Mademoiselle in a moment change your opinion? I wish simply to speak to her. I have nothing to ask from her, nothing to expect from her, either favour or anything else. What I say she will doubtless tell you. CIEL man! what harm can I do to her, in the road in your sight?"
He looked at me sullenly, his face still flushed, his eyes suspicious.
"What do you want to say to her?" he asked jealously. He was quite unlike himself. His airy nonchalance, his careless gaiety were gone.
"You know what I do not want to say to her, M. de Cocheforet," I answered. "That should be enough."
He glowered at me a moment, still ill content. Then, without a word, he made me a gesture to go to her.
She had halted a score of paces away; wondering, doubtless, what was on foot. I rode towards her. She wore her mask, so that I missed the expression of her face as I approached; but the manner in which she turned her horse"s head uncompromisingly towards her brother and looked past me was full of meaning. I felt the ground suddenly cut from under me. I saluted her, trembling.
"Mademoiselle," I said, "will you grant me the privilege of your company for a few minutes as we ride?"
"To what purpose?" she answered; surely, in the coldest voice in which a woman ever spoke to a man.
"That I may explain to you a great many things you do not understand," I murmured.
"I prefer to be in the dark," she replied. And her manner was more cruel than her words.
"But, Mademoiselle," I pleaded--I would not be discouraged--"you told me one day, not so long ago, that you would never judge me hastily again."
"Facts judge you, not I," she answered icily. "I am not sufficiently on a level with you to be able to judge you--I thank G.o.d."
I shivered though the sun was on me, and the hollow where we stood was warm.
"Still, once before you thought the same," I exclaimed after a pause, "and afterwards you found that you had been wrong. It may be so again, Mademoiselle."
"Impossible," she said.
That stung me.
"No," I cried. "It is not impossible. It is you who are impossible. It is you who are heartless, Mademoiselle. I have done much in the last three days to make things lighter for you, much to make things more easy; now I ask you to do something in return which can cost you nothing."
"Nothing?" she answered slowly--and she looked at me; and her eyes and her voice cut me as if they had been knives. "Nothing? Do you think, Monsieur, it costs me nothing to lose my self-respect, as I do with every word I speak to you? Do you think it costs me nothing to be here when I feel every look you cast upon me an insult, every breath I take in your presence a contamination? Nothing, Monsieur?" she continued with bitter irony. "Nay, something! But something which I could not hope to make clear to you."
I sat for a moment confounded, quivering with pain. It had been one thing to feel that she hated and scorned me, to know that the trust and confidence which she had begun to place in me were transformed to loathing. It was another to listen to her hard, pitiless words, to change colour under the lash of her gibing tongue. For a moment I could not find voice to answer her. Then I pointed to M. de Cocheforet.
"Do you love him?" I said hoa.r.s.ely, roughly. The gibing tone had pa.s.sed from her voice to mine.