Presently she turned the corner and was gone again, and I had to repeat my manoeuvre. This time, surely, I should find a change. But no! Another green ride stretched away into the depths of the forest, with hedges of varying shades--here light and there dark, as hazel and elder, or thorn, and yew and box prevailed--but always high and stiff and impervious.
Halfway down the ride Madame"s figure tripped steadily on, the only moving thing in sight. I wondered, stood, and, when she vanished, followed-only to find that she had entered another track, a little narrower but in every other respect alike.
And so it went on for quite half an hour. Sometimes Madame turned to the right, sometimes to the left. The maze seemed to be endless. Once or twice I wondered whether she had lost her way, and was merely seeking to return. But her steady, purposeful gait, her measured pace, forbade the idea. I noticed, too, that she seldom looked behind her--rarely to right or left. Once the ride down which she pa.s.sed was carpeted not with green, but with the silvery, sheeny leaves of some creeping plant that in the distance had a shimmer like that of water at evening. As she trod this, with her face to the low sun, her tall grey figure had a pure air that for the moment startled me--she looked unearthly. Then I swore in scorn of myself, and at the next corner I had my reward. She was no longer walking on. She had stopped, I found, and seated herself on a fallen tree that lay in the ride.
For some time I stood in ambush watching her, and with each minute I grew more impatient. At last I began to doubt--to have strange thoughts.
The green walls were growing dark. The sun was sinking; a sharp, white peak, miles and miles away, which closed the vista of the ride, began to flush and colour rosily. Finally, but not before I had had leisure to grow uneasy, she stood up and walked on more slowly. I waited, as usual, until the next turning hid her. Then I hastened after her, and, warily pa.s.sing round the corner came face to face with her!
I knew all in a moment saw all in a flash: that she had fooled me, tricked me, lured me away. Her face was white with scorn, her eyes blazed; her figure, as she confronted me, trembled with anger and infinite contempt.
"You spy!" she cried. "You hound! You--gentleman! Oh, MON DIEU! if you are one of us--if you are really not of the CANAILLE--we shall pay for this some day! We shall pay a heavy reckoning in the time to come! I did not think," she continued, and her every syllable was like the lash of a whip, "that there was anything so vile as you in this world!"
I stammered something--I do not know what. Her words burned into me--into my heart! Had she been a man, I would have struck her dead!
"You thought that you deceived me yesterday," she continued, lowering her tone, but with no lessening of the pa.s.sion, the contempt, the indignation, which curled her lip and gave fullness to her voice. "You plotter! You surface trickster! You thought it an easy task to delude a woman--you find yourself deluded. G.o.d give you shame that you may suffer!" she continued mercilessly. "You talked of Clon, but Clon beside you is the most spotless, the most honourable of men!"
"Madame," I said hoa.r.s.ely--and I know that my face was grey as ashes--"let us understand one another."
"G.o.d forbid!" she cried on the instant. "I would not soil myself!"
"Fie! Madame," I said, trembling. But then, you are a woman. That should cost a man his life!"
She laughed bitterly.
"You say well," she retorted. "I am not a man--and if you are one, thank G.o.d for it. Neither am I Madame. Madame de Cocheforet has spent this afternoon--thanks to your absence and your imbecility--with her husband.
Yes, I hope that hurts you!" she went on, savagely snapping her little white teeth together. "I hope that stings you; to spy and do vile work, and do it ill, Monsieur Mouchard--Monsieur de Mouchard, I should say--I congratulate you!"
"You are not Madame de Cocheforet?" I cried, stunned, even in the midst of my shame and rage, by this blow.
"No, Monsieur!" she answered grimly. "I am not! I am not. And permit me to point out--for we do not all lie easily--that I never said I was. You deceived yourself so skilfully that we had no need to trick you."
"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 went on, 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. But to-morrow begone back to your master, like the whipped cur you are! Spy and coward!"
With those last 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 on 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 that 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 that I heard her laughing on the farther side of the brake; and the ignominy of this chance punishment, and 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 that 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.
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 replied.
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 moustachios 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 anyone 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 that 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-lamp, 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.