THE LOVER’S PARTING.
Many times after drill, and that followed nights spent in learning the
tactics, Pitou would wander in the skirts of Boursonne Wood to see how
faithful Catherine was to her love-trysts.
Stealing an hour or two from her farm and house duties, the girl would
go to a little hunting-box, in a rabbit warren belonging to Boursonne
Manor, to meet the happy Isidore, the mortal more than ever proud and
handsome, when all the country was in suffering around him.
What anguish devoured poor Pitou, what sad reflections he was driven to
make on the inequality of men as regards happiness.
He whom the pretty maids were ogling, preferred to come and mope like a
dog whipped for following the master too far from home, at the door of
the summerhouse where the amorous pair were billing and cooing.
All because he adored Catherine and the more as he deemed her vastly
superior to him. He did not regard her as loving another, for Isidore
Charny had ceased to be an object of jealousy. He was a lord, handsome
and worthy of being loved: but Catherine as a daughter of the lower
orders ought not for that reason disgrace her family or drive Pitou to
despair.
Meditation on this cut him with sharp edges and keen points.
“She showed no proper feeling in letting me go from the farm,” he mused,
“and since I went off, she has not inquired whether I starved to death
or not. What would Father Billet say if he knew how his friends are thus
cast off, and his business neglected? What would he say if he heard
that, instead of looking after the working people, his daughter goes to
keep appointments with the aristocrat, Lord Charny? He would not say
much, but he would kill her. It is something to have the means of
revenge in one’s hand,” thought Pitou.
But it is grander not to use them.
Still, Pitou had learnt that there is no benefit in doing good unless
the actions are known to the person befriended.
Would it be possible to let Catherine know that he was helping her?
He knew that she came through the woods to go to the hunting-box, and it
was very easy for him to plant himself under the trees, a book in hand
as if he were studying, where she would be sure to come along.
Indeed, as he was pretending to pore over the “Perfect National
Guardsman,” after having watched her to her rendezvous, he heard the
soft shutting of a door. The rustle of a dress in the brush came next.
Catherine’s head appeared above the bushes, looking with an apprehensive
air all round for fear somebody would see her.
She was ten paces from her rustic worshipper, who kept still with the
book on his knee. But he no longer looked on it but at the girl so that
she should mark that he saw her.
She uttered a slight faint, stifled scream, recognized him, became pale
as though death had flitted by and grazed her, and, after a short
indecision betrayed in her trembling and the shrug of her shoulders, she
flew wildly into the underwood and found her hitched-up horse in the
forest. She mounted and fled.
Pitou’s plot was well laid and she had fallen into it.
He went home, half-frightened, half delighted.
He perceived a number of details most alarming in the accomplished
trick.
The following Sunday was appointed for a grand military parade at
Haramont. Sufficiently drilled, the Haramontese meant to give warlike
exercises. Several rival villages also making military studies, were to
contest with them in the career of arms.
The announcement drew a great crowd, and the people in holiday attire
gathered on the green, where they feasted frugally on homemade cake and
fruit, washed down with spring water.
Some of the spectators were the gentry and squires, come to laugh at the
clowns playing at soldiers.
Haramont had become a centre, for four corps of other Guards came
hither, headed by fife and drum.
Among the farmers, came Catherine and Mother Billet on horseback.
This was at the same time as the Haramont National Guard marched up,
with fife and drum, with Commander Pitou on a borrowed white horse, in
order that the likeness should be complete to General Lafayette
reviewing the National Guards at Paris.
Without joking, if he did not look stylish and aristocratic, he was
noble and valiant and pleasant to behold.
This company of Guards had shining muskets, the national cockades, and
marched with most satisfactory time in two files. It had won the tribute
before reaching the parade ground.
Out of the corner of his eye, Pitou saw that Catherine changed color.
From that moment the review had more interest to him than anything in
the world.
He passed his men through the simple manual of arms, and they did it so
smartly and neatly that it elicited applause.
Not so with the competitors, who were irregularly armed and had not been
trained steadily. Others exaggerated from their conceit what they could
have done properly.
On the whole imperfect results.
For the grand array, Pitou was outranked in seniority by an army
sergeant who took the general command; but unhappily he had grasped more
than he could hold: he bunched his men, lost grip of some files, let a
company meander under the surrounding trees, and finally lost his head
so that his own soldiers began to grumble.
From the Haramont side rose a shout:
“Let Pitou try!”
“Yes, yes Pitou!” caught up the other villagers, furious at their
inferiority being manifested through their own instructors.
Pitou jumped on his white charger, and replacing himself at the head of
his troop, become the rallying point of the little army, uttered a word
of command so superbly that the oaks shivered. On the instant, and as by
miracle, order was re-established: the movements fitted in with one
another with such uniformity that the enthusiasm did not disturb the
regularity. Pitou so well applied the theory of the instruction books
and the practice of old Clovis that he obtained immense success.
Formed into a hollow square, the whole army raised but one voice and
proclaimed him Colonel on the spot.
Bathed in perspiration and drunk with glory, Pitou got down off his
horse and received the people’s felicitations when he alighted.
But at the same time he glanced round for Catherine. He heard her voice
by his side; he had no need to hunt for her, as she had come to him.
Great was this triumph.
“Have you not a word for us, Captain Pitou?” she demanded, with a
laughing air belied by her pale face; “I suppose you have grown proud
since you are a great general?”
“Oh, no,” responded he, saluting, “I am not that, but just a poor fellow
who loves his country and desires to serve her.”
This reply was carried away on the waves of the multitude and was
proclaimed sublime by the acclamation in unison.
“Ange, I want to speak with you,” whispered Catherine. “Do come back to
the farm with mother and me.”
“All right.”
Catherine had already arranged that they should be alone together on the
road. She had switched her mother into the train of several neighbors
and gossips who held her in talk so that the girl could walk through
the woods with the National Guardsman.
“Why have you kept aloof from the farm so long?” began Catherine when
they were beneath the hoary oaks. “It is bad behavior on your part.”
Pitou was silent, for it hurt him to hear Catherine tell lies.
“But, I have something else to speak about,” she continued, seeing that
he was avoiding her with his usually straight and loyal glance. “The
other day I saw you in the copse. Did you know me?”
“Not at first, but I did know you.”
“What were you doing there in hiding?”
“Why should I be in hiding? I was studying a military book.”
“I only thought that curiosity----“
“I am not a Peeping Tom.”
She stamped testily with her small foot.
“You are always stuck there and it is not a regular place for students.”
“It is very secluded--nothing disturbs one there.”
“Nothing? do you stay there any length of time?”
“Sometimes whole days.”
“And have you been in the habit of making that your resort?” she
inquired quickly.
“Since a good while back.”
“It is astonishing that I should not have seen you before,” she said,
lying so boldly that Pitou was almost convinced.
But he was ashamed for her sake; he was timid from being in love and
this led him to be guarded.
“I may have dozed off,” he replied; “it has happened when I have taxed
my brain too much.”
“Then in your sleep you would not have noticed where I strayed for
shade--I would go as far as the walls of the old shooting-lodge.”
“What lodge?” questioned Pitou.
“The Charny Hunting-lodge,” replied she, blushing from his innocence
being too thickly laid on not to be suspicious. “It is there grow the
finest houseleeks in the section. I burnt myself while ironing and
wanted to make a poultice of them.”
As if willing to believe her, he looked at her hands.
“No, not my hand, my foot,” she said quickly. “I--I dropped the iron:
but it has done me good; you see, that I do not limp.”
“She did not limp either when she scampered through the wood like a
fawn,” thought Ange.
She imagined she had succeeded and that Pitou had seen and heard
nothing. Giving way to delight, mean in so fine a spirit, she said:
“So Captain Pitou is riding his high horse; proud of his new rank, he
scorns us rustics from being a military officer.”
Pitou felt wounded. Even a dissimulated sacrifice almost requires some
reward, and as Catherine only mystified Pitou or jested at him, no doubt
contrasting him with the intelligent Charny, all his good intentions
vanished. Self-esteem is a charmed serpent, on which it is perillous to
step unless you crush it once for all.
“It seems to me that you are the haughty one,” he returned, “for you
drove me off the farm on the grounds that there was no work for me. I
haven’t told Master Billet so far I have arms for earning my bread,
thank God! However, you are the mistress under your own roof. In short,
you sent me away. Hence, as you saw me at the Charny Lodge, and we were
not enemies, it was your place to speak to me instead of running away
like a boy stealing apples.”
The viper had bitten; Catherine dropped out of her calm.
“I, run away?” she exclaimed.
“As though fire had broken out on the farm. I had not time to shut up my
book before you were on the back of Younker, where he was concealed in
the foliage, after barking an ashtree, and ruining it.”
“What do you mean by ruining?”
“That is right enough,” continued Pitou: “while you were gathering
houseleeks, Younker was browsing, and in an hour a horse eats a heap of
stuff. It must have taken quite an hour for him to strip that sized tree
of bark. You must have collected enough plants to cure all the wounds
inflicted in taking the Bastile--it is a great thing for poultices!”
Pale and in despair, Catherine could not find a word to speak. Pitou was
silent also, as he had said quite enough.
Mother Billet, stopping at the road forks, was bidding adieu to her
cronies.
“What does the officer say?” queried the woman.
“He says goodnight to you, Mother Billet.”
“Not yet,” cried Catherine with a desperate tone. “Tell me the
truth--are we no longer friends?”
Pitou felt his secret well up to his lips: but it was all over with him
if he spoke; so he bowed mutely with respect which touched her heart;
gave Mother Billet a pleasant smile, and disappeared in the dense wood.
“Is that what is called love?” Pitou monologued to himself; “it is sweet
at times and then again bitter.”
He returned to Haramont, singing the most doleful of rural ballads to
the mournfullest tunes.
Luckily he did not find his warriors in any such mood. On the contrary,
they were preparing for a feast and they had set aside the chair of
honor for their Caesar who had overcome the other villages’ Pompeys.
Dragged by his officers into the banquet room, he saluted in silence in
return for the greetings, and with the calmness we know as his, attacked
the roast veal and potatoes. His action lasted so long that his
“digester” was filled while his heart was freed of gall. At the end of a
couple of hours he perceived that his grief was no worse.
He stood up when his brother revellers could not stand, while the ladies
had fled before the dessert. He made a speech on the sobriety of the
Spartans--when all were dead drunk. He said that it was healthier to
take a stroll than sleep under the table.
Alone he set the example; he asked of the shadows beneath the glades,
why he should be so stern towards a young woman, made for love, grace
and sweetness; one who might also cherish a fancy at the outset of life?
Alas, why had she not fancied him?
Why should an ugly, uncouth bear like him inspire amorous sentiments in
a pretty girl, when a handsome young nobleman--a very peacock beside
him--was there to glitter and enchant?
He reasoned that, dazzled by Charny’s brilliancy, she would not see
Pitou’s real value if he acted harshly towards her. Consequently, he
ought to behave nicely to her.
The good soul, heated white hot by wine and love, vowed to make
Catherine ashamed of having scorned the affection of such a sterling
lover as he was.
He could not admit that the fair, chaste and proud Catherine was
anything like a plaything to the dashing gallant, or a bright flirt,
smiling on the lace ruffles and spurred boots.
Some day Master Isidore would go to the city to marry a countess, and
the romance would end by his never looking at Catherine again.
To prove to the maid that he was not ugly, he resolved to take back any
harsh words he had used; to do which it was necessary for him to see
her.
He started through the woods for the Billet Farm, slashing the bushes
with his stick--which blows the shrubs returned with usury.
During this time Catherine was pensively following her mother.
A few steps from the farm was a swamp. The road narrows there so that
two horses can hardly go abreast. Mother Billet had gone through and the
girl was about to follow when she heard a whistle.
In the shadow she spied the laced cap of Isidore’s groom. She let her
mother ride on and waited for the messenger.
“Master wants to see you very particular this evening at eleven,
wherever you like,” said the man.
“Good gracious, has anything bad happened to him?” she said.
“I do not know; but he had a letter from town sealed with black wax. I
have been waiting an hour for you.”
Ten o’clock struck on the village church bell. Catherine looked round
her.
“This place is dark and out of the way,” she said; “I will await your
Master here.”
At the fixed time she ran out to the spot, warned by the sound of a
galloping horse. It was Isidore, attended by the groom, who stood at a
space while the noble advanced, without getting off his horse.
He held out his arms to her, lifted her on the stirrup, kissed her and
said:
“My brother Valence was killed yesterday at Versailles and my brother
the count calls me. I am off, Catherine!”
“Oh,” she moaned painfully, as she furiously embraced him, “if they have
killed him, they will kill you as well.”
“Catherine, whatever betides, my eldest brother awaits me; Catherine,
you know that I love you.”
“Oh, stay, stay,” she cried, only knowing one thing--that her beloved
talked of leaving her.
“But, honor, Catherine--my murdered brother! vengeance!”
“Oh, what an unhappy girl I am,” moaned she, collapsing, palpitating but
rigid in the horseman’s arms.
Resigned, for she at last comprehended that the brother’s summons was an
order, she glided to the ground after a farewell kiss.
He turned his eyes, sighed and wavered for a time; but, attracted by the
imperative order received, he set his horse to the gallop, and flung
Catherine a final farewell.
The lackey followed him across the country.
Catherine remained on the ground, where she had dropped, barring the way
with her body.
Almost immediately a man appeared on the hill, striding towards the
farm. In his rapid course he could not fail to stumble on the body. He
staggered and rolled in the fall, and his groping hands touched the
inert form.
“Catherine--dead!” he yelled so that the farm dogs’ took up the howling.
“Who has killed Catherine?”
He knelt down, pale and ice-cold, beside the inanimate body with its
head across his knee.