She was standing in the middle of the room, talking with great
animation. Her look and gestures betrayed indignant scorn. There was an
expression of ill-disguised loathing upon her beautiful face.
Raoul was seated by the fire, stirring up the coals with a pair of
tongs. Every now and then, he would shrug his shoulders, like a man
resigned to everything he heard, and had no answer, except, “I cannot
help it. I can do nothing for you.”
M. Verdure would willingly have given the diamond ring on his finger to
be able to hear what was said; but the roaring wind completely drowned
their voices.
“They are evidently quarrelling,” he thought; “but it is not a lovers’
quarrel.”
Madeleine continued talking; and it was by closely watching the face
of Lagors, clearly revealed by the lamp on the mantel, that M. Verduret
hoped to discover the meaning of the scene before him.
At one moment Lagors would start and tremble in spite of his apparent
indifference; the next, he would strike at the fire with the tongs, as
if giving vent to his rage at some reproach uttered by Madeleine.
Finally Madeleine changed her threats into entreaties, and, clasping her
hands, almost fell at his knees.
He turned away his head, and refused to answer save in monosyllables.
Several times she turned to leave the room, but each time returned, as
if asking a favor, and unable to make up her mind to leave the house
till she had obtained it.
At last she seemed to have uttered something decisive; for Raoul quickly
rose and opened a desk near the fireplace, from which he took a bundle
of papers, and handed them to her.
“Well,” thought M. Verduret, “this looks bad. Can it be a compromising
correspondence which the fair one wants to secure?”
Madeleine took the papers, but was apparently still dissatisfied. She
again entreated him to give her something else. Raoul refused; and then
she threw the papers on the table.
The papers seemed to puzzle M. Verduret very much, as he gazed at them
through the window.
“I am not blind,” he said, “and I certainly am not mistaken; those
papers, red, green, and yellow, are pawnbroker’s tickets!”
Madeleine turned over the papers as if looking for some particular ones.
She selected three, which she put in her pocket, disdainfully pushing
the others aside.
She was evidently preparing to take her departure, for she said a few
words to Raoul, who took up the lamp as if to escort her downstairs.
There was nothing more for M. Verduret to see. He carefully descended
the ladder, muttering to himself. “Pawnbroker’s tickets! What infamous
mystery lies at the bottom of all this?”
The first thing he did was to remove the ladder.
Raoul might take it into his head to look around the garden, when he
came to the door with Madeleine, and if he did so the ladder could
scarcely fail to attract his attention.
M. Verduret and Prosper hastily laid it on the ground, regardless of
the shrubs and vines they destroyed in doing so, and then concealed
themselves among the trees, whence they could watch at once the front
door and the outer gate.
Madeleine and Raoul appeared in the doorway. Raoul set the lamp on the
bottom step, and offered his hand to the girl; but she refused it with
haughty contempt, which somewhat soothed Prosper’s lacerated heart.
This scornful behavior did not, however, seem to surprise or hurt
Raoul. He simply answered by an ironical gesture which implied, “As you
please!”
He followed her to the gate, which he opened and closed after her; then
he hurried back to the house, while Madeleine’s carriage drove rapidly
away.
“Now, monsieur,” said Prosper, “you must tell me what you saw. You
promised me the truth no matter how bitter it might be. Speak; I can
bear it, be it what it may!”
“You will only have joy to bear, my friend. Within a month you will
bitterly regret your suspicions of to-night. You will blush to think
that you ever imagined Mlle. Madeleine to be intimate with a man like
Lagors.”
“But, monsieur, appearances----”
“It is precisely against appearances that we must be on our guard.
Always distrust them. A suspicion, false or just, is always based on
something. But we must not stay here forever; and, as Raoul has fastened
the gate, we shall have to climb back again.”
“But there is the ladder.”
“Let it stay where it is; as we cannot efface our footprints, he will
think thieves have been trying to get into the house.”
They scaled the wall, and had not walked fifty steps when they heard the
noise of a gate being unlocked. The stood aside and waited; a man soon
passed on his way to the station.
“That is Raoul,” said M. Verduret, “and Joseph will report to us that
he has gone to tell Clameran what has just taken place. If they are only
kind enough to speak French!”
He walked along quietly for some time, trying to connect the broken
chain of his deductions.
“How in the deuce,” he abruptly asked, “did this Lagors, who is devoted
to gay society, come to choose a lonely country house to live in?”
“I suppose it was because M. Fauvel’s villa is only fifteen minutes’
ride from here, on the Seine.”
“That accounts for his staying here in the summer; but in winter?”
“Oh, in winter he has a room at the Hotel du Louvre, and all the year
round keeps an apartment in Paris.”
This did not enlighten M. Verduret much; he hurried his pace.
“I hope our driver has not gone. We cannot take the train which is about
to start, because Raoul would see us at the station.”
Although it was more than an hour since M. Verduret and Prosper left the
hack at the branch road, they found it waiting for them in front of the
tavern.
The driver could not resist the desire to change his five-franc piece;
he had ordered dinner, and, finding his wine very good, was calling for
more, when he looked up and saw his employers.
“Well, you are in a strange state!” he exclaimed.
Prosper replied that they had gone to see a friend, and, losing their
way, had fallen into a pit; as if there were pits in Vesinet forest.
“Ah, that is the way you got covered with mud, is it?” exclaimed the
driver, who, though apparently contented with this explanation, strongly
suspected that his two customers had been engaged in some nefarious
transaction.
This opinion seemed to be entertained by everyone present, for they
looked at Prosper’s muddy clothes and then at each other in a knowing
way.
But M. Verduret stopped all comment by saying:
“Come on.”
“All right, monsieur: get in while I settle my bill; I will be there in
a minute.”
The drive back was silent and seemed interminably long. Prosper at
first tried to draw his strange companion into conversation, but, as he
received nothing but monosyllables in reply, held his peace for the rest
of the journey. He was again beginning to feel irritated at the absolute
empire exercised over him by this man.
Physical discomfort was added to his other troubles. He was stiff and
numb; every bone in him ached with the cold.
Although mental endurance may be unlimited, bodily strength must in the
end give way. A violent effort is always followed by reaction.
Lying back in a corner of the carriage, with his feet upon the front
seat, M. Verduret seemed to be enjoying a nap; yet he was never more
wide awake.
He was in a perplexed state of mind. This expedition, which, he had
been confident, would resolve all his doubts, had only added mystery to
mystery. His chain of evidence, which he thought so strongly linked, was
completely broken.
For him the facts remained the same, but circumstances had changed. He
could not imagine what common motive, what moral or material complicity,
what influences, could have existed to make the four actors in his
drama, Mme. Fauvel, Madeleine, Raoul, and Clameran, seem to have the
same object in view.
He was seeking in his fertile mind, that encyclopaedia of craft and
subtlety, for some combination which would throw light on the problem
before him.
The midnight bells were ringing when they reached the Archangel, and for
the first time M. Verduret remembered that he had not dined.
Fortunately Mme. Alexandre was still up, and in the twinkling of an eye
had improvised a tempting supper. It was more than attention, more than
respect, that she showed her guest. Prosper observed that she gazed
admiringly at M. Verduret all the while he was eating his supper.
“You will not see me to-morrow,” said M. Verduret to Prosper, when
he had risen to leave the room; “but I will be here about this time
to-morrow night. Perhaps I shall discover what I am seeking at MM.
Jandidier’s ball.”
Prosper was dumb with astonishment. What! would M. Verduret think of
appearing at a ball given by the wealthiest and most fashionable bankers
in Paris? This accounted for his sending to the costumer.
“Then you are invited to this ball?”
The expressive eyes of M. Verduret danced with amusement.
“Not yet,” he said, “but I shall be.”
Oh, the inconsistency of the human mind! Prosper was tormented by the
most serious preoccupations. He looked sadly around his chamber, and, as
he thought of M. Verduret’s projected pleasure at the ball, exclaimed:
“Ah, how fortunate he is! To-morrow he will have the privilege of seeing
Madeleine.”