Upright and deliberate, Catherine left the kitchen, and in the passage
outside found Arlette waiting for her with a lighted candle in her hand.
Her heart was filled with sudden desolation by the beauty of that young
face enhaloed in the patch of light, with the profound darkness as of a
dungeon for a background. At once her niece led the way upstairs
muttering savagely through her pretty teeth: “He thinks I could go to
sleep. Old imbecile!”
Peyrol did not take his eyes off Catherine’s straight back till the door
had closed after her. Only then he relieved himself by letting the air
escape through his pursed lips and rolling his eyes freely about. He
picked up the lamp by the ring on the top of the central rod and went
into the salle, closing behind him the door of the dark kitchen. He
stood the lamp on the very table on which Lieutenant Réal had had his
midday meal. A small white cloth was still spread on it, and there was
his chair askew as he had pushed it back when he got up. Another of the
many chairs in the salle was turned round conspicuously to face the
table. These things made Peyrol remark to himself bitterly: “She sat and
stared at him as if he had been gilt all over, with three heads and
seven arms on his body”--a comparison reminiscent of certain idols he
had seen in an Indian temple. Though not an iconoclast, Peyrol felt
positively sick at the recollection, and hastened to step outside. The
great cloud had broken up and the mighty fragments were moving to the
westward in stately flight before the rising moon. Scevola, who had been
lying extended full length on the bench, swung himself up suddenly, very
upright.
“Had a little nap in the open?” asked Peyrol, letting his eyes roam
through the luminous space under the departing rearguard of the clouds
jostling each other up there.
“I did not sleep,” said the sans-culotte. “I haven’t closed my eyes--not
for one moment.”
“That must be because you weren’t sleepy,” suggested the deliberate
Peyrol, whose thoughts were far away with the English ship. His mental
eye contemplated her black image against the white beach of the Salins
describing a sparkling curve under the moon; and meantime he went on
slowly, “for it could not have been noise that kept you awake.” On the
level of Escampobar the shadows lay long on the ground while the side of
the lookout hill remained yet black but edged with an increasing
brightness. And the amenity of the stillness was such that it softened
for a moment Peyrol’s hard inward attitude towards all mankind,
including even the captain of the English ship. The old rover savoured a
moment of serenity in the midst of his cares.
“This is an accursed spot,” declared Scevola suddenly.
Peyrol, without turning his head, looked at him sideways. Though he had
sprung up from his reclining posture smartly enough, the citizen had
gone slack all over and was sitting all in a heap. His shoulders were
hunched up, his hands reposed on his knees. With his staring eyes he
resembled a sick child in the moonlight.
“It’s the very spot for hatching treacheries. One feels steeped in them
up to the neck.”
He shuddered and yawned a long irresistible nervous yawn with the gleam
of unexpected long canines in a retracted, gaping mouth giving away the
restless panther lurking in the man.
“Oh yes, there’s treachery about right enough. You couldn’t conceive
that, citoyen?”
“Of course I couldn’t,” assented Peyrol with serene contempt. “What is
this treachery that you are concocting?” he added carelessly, in a
social way, while enjoying the charm of a moonlit evening. Scevola, who
did not expect that turn, managed, however, to produce a rattling sort
of laugh almost at once.
“That’s a good one, ha! ha! ha!... Me!... concocting!... Why me?”
“Well,” said Peyrol carelessly, “there are not many of us to carry out
treacheries about here. The women are gone upstairs; Michel is down at
the tartane. There’s me, and you would not dare suspect me of treachery.
Well, there remains only you.”
Scevola roused himself. “This is not much of a jest,” he said. “I have
been a treason-hunter. I....”
He checked that strain. He was full of purely emotional suspicions.
Peyrol was talking like this only to annoy him and to get him out of the
way; but in the particular state of his feelings Scevola was acutely
aware of every syllable of these offensive remarks. “Aha,” he thought
to himself, “he doesn’t mention the lieutenant.” This omission seemed to
the patriot of immense importance. If Peyrol had not mentioned the
lieutenant it was because those two had been plotting some treachery
together, all the afternoon on board that tartane. That’s why nothing
had been seen of them for the best part of the day. As a matter of fact,
Scevola too had observed Peyrol returning to the farm in the evening,
only he had observed him from another window than Arlette. This was a
few minutes before his attempt to open the lieutenant’s door, in order
to find out whether Réal was in his room. He had tiptoed away,
uncertain, and going into the kitchen had found only Catherine and
Peyrol there. Directly Arlette joined them a sudden inspiration made him
run upstairs and try the door again. It was open now! A clear proof that
it was Arlette who had been locked up in there. The discovery that she
made herself at home like this in the lieutenant’s room gave Scevola
such a sickening shock that he thought he would die of it. It was beyond
doubt now that the lieutenant had been conspiring with Peyrol down on
board that tartane; for what else could they have been doing there. But
why had not Réal come up in the evening with Peyrol? Scevola asked
himself, sitting on the bench with his hands clasped between his
knees.... “It’s their cunning,” he concluded suddenly. “Conspirators
always avoid being seen together. Ha!”
It was as if somebody had let off a lot of fireworks in his brain. He
was illuminated, dazzled, confused, with a hissing in his ears and
showers of sparks before his eyes. When he raised his head he saw he
was alone. Peyrol had vanished. Scevola seemed to remember that he had
heard somebody pronounce the word “Good-night” and the door of the salle
slam. And sure enough the door of the salle was shut now. A dim light
shone in the window that was next to it. Peyrol had extinguished three
of the lamp flames, and was now reclining on one of the long tables with
that faculty of accommodating himself to a plank an old sea-dog never
loses. He had decided to remain below simply to be handy, and he didn’t
lie down on one of the benches along the wall because they were too
narrow. He left one wick burning, so that the lieutenant should know
where to look for him, and he was tired enough to think that he would
snatch a couple of hours’ sleep before Réal could return from Toulon. He
settled himself with one arm under his head as if he were on the deck of
a privateer, and it never occurred to him that Scevola was looking
through the panes; but they were so small and dusty that the patriot
could see nothing. His movement had been purely instinctive. He wasn’t
even aware that he had looked in. He went away from there, walked to the
end of the building, spun round and walked back again to the other end;
and it was as if he had been afraid of going beyond the wall against
which he reeled sometimes. Conspiracy, conspiracy, he thought. He was
now absolutely certain that the lieutenant was still hiding in that
tartane, and was only waiting till all was quiet to sneak back to his
room in which Scevola had proof positive that Arlette was in the habit
of making herself at home. To rob him of his right to Arlette was part
of the conspiracy, no doubt.
“Have I been a slave to those two women, have I waited all those years,
only to see that corrupt creature go off infamously with a ci-devant,
with a conspiring aristocrat?”
He became giddy with virtuous fury. There was enough evidence there for
any revolutionary tribunal to cut all their heads off. Tribunal! There
was no tribunal! No revolutionary justice! No patriots! He hit his
shoulder against the wall in his distress with such force that he
rebounded. This world was no place for patriots.
“If I had betrayed myself in the kitchen they would have murdered me in
there.”
As it was he thought that he had said too much. Too much. “Prudence!
Caution!” he repeated to himself, gesticulating with both arms. Suddenly
he stumbled, and there was an amazing metallic clatter made by something
that fell at his feet.
“They are trying to kill me now,” he thought, shaking with fright. He
gave himself up for dead. Profound silence reigned all round. Nothing
more happened. He stooped fearfully to look and recognized his own
stable fork lying on the ground. He remembered he had left it at noon
leaning against the wall. His own foot had made it fall. He threw
himself upon it greedily. “Here’s what I need,” he muttered feverishly.
“I suppose that by now the lieutenant would think I am gone to bed.”
He flattened himself upright against the wall with the fork held along
his body like a grounded musket. The moon clearing the hill-top flooded
suddenly the front of the house with its cold light, but he didn’t know
it; he imagined himself still to be ambushed in the shadow and remained
motionless, glaring at the path leading towards the cove. His teeth
chattered with savage impatience.
He was so plainly visible in his deathlike rigidity that Michel, coming
up out of the ravine, stopped dead short, believing him an apparition
not belonging to this earth. Scevola, on his side, noticed the moving
shadow cast by a man--that man!--and charged forward without reflection,
the prongs of the fork lowered like a bayonet. He didn’t shout. He came
straight on, growling like a dog, and lunged headlong with his weapon.
Michel, a primitive untroubled by anything so uncertain as intelligence,
executed an instantaneous sideways leap with the precision of a wild
animal; but he was enough of a man to become afterwards paralysed with
astonishment. The impetus of the rush carried Scevola several yards down
the hill, before he could turn round and assume an offensive attitude.
Then the two adversaries recognized each other. The terrorist exclaimed:
“Michel!” and Michel hastened to pick up a large stone from the ground.
“Hey, you, Scevola,” he cried, not very loud but very threatening. “What
are these tricks?... Keep away, or I will heave that piece of rock at
your head, and I am good at that.”
Scevola grounded the fork with a thud. “I didn’t recognize you,” he
said.
“That’s a story. Who did you think I was? Not the other! I haven’t got a
bandaged head, have I?”
Scevola began to scramble up. “What’s this?” he asked. “What head did
you say?”
“I say that if you come near I will knock you over with that stone,”
answered Michel. “You aren’t to be trusted when the moon is full. Not
recognize! There’s a silly excuse for flying at people like this. You
haven’t got anything against me, have you?”
“No,” said the ex-terrorist in a dubious tone and keeping a watchful eye
on Michel, who was still holding the stone in his hand.
“People have been saying for years that you are a kind of lunatic,”
Michel criticized fearlessly, because the other’s discomfiture was
evident enough to put heart into the timid hare. “If a fellow cannot
come up now to get a snooze in the shed without being run at with a
fork, well....”
“I was only going to put this fork away,” Scevola burst out volubly. “I
had left it leaning against the wall, and as I was passing along I
suddenly saw it, so I thought I would put it in the stable before I went
to bed. That’s all.”
Michel’s mouth fell open a bit.
“Now what do you think I would want with a stable fork at this time of
night, if it wasn’t to put it away?” argued Scevola.
“What indeed!” mumbled Michel, who began to doubt the evidence of his
senses.
“You go about mooning like a fool and imagine a lot of silly things, you
great stupid imbecile. All I wanted to do was to ask whether everything
was all right down there, and you, idiot, bound to one side like a goat
and pick up a stone. The moon has affected your head, not mine. Now drop
it.”
Michel, accustomed to do what he was told, opened his fingers slowly,
not quite convinced but thinking there might be something in it.
Scevola, perceiving his advantage, scolded on:
“You are dangerous. You ought to have your feet and hands tied every
full moon. What did you say about a head just now? What head?”
“I said that I didn’t have a broken head.”
“Was that all?” said Scevola. He was asking himself what on earth could
have happened down there during the afternoon to cause a broken head.
Clearly, it must have been either a fight or an accident, but in any
case he considered that it was for him a favourable circumstance, for
obviously a man with a bandaged head is at a disadvantage. He was
inclined to think it must have been some silly accident, and he
regretted profoundly that the lieutenant had not killed himself
outright. He turned sourly to Michel.
“Now you may go into the shed. And don’t try any of your tricks with me
any more, because next time you pick up a stone I will shoot you like a
dog.”
He began to move towards the yard gate which stood always open, throwing
over his shoulder an order to Michel: “Go into the salle. Somebody has
left a light in there. They all seem to have gone crazy to-day. Take the
lamp into the kitchen and put it out, and see that the door into the
yard is shut. I am going to bed.” He passed through the gateway, but he
did not penetrate into the yard very far. He stopped to watch Michel
obeying the order. Scevola, advancing his head cautiously beyond the
pillar of the gate, waited till he had seen Michel open the door of the
salle and then bounded out again across the level space, and down the
ravine path. It was a matter of less than a minute. His fork was still
on his shoulder. His only desire was not to be interfered with, and for
the rest he did not care what they all did, what they would think and
how they would behave. The fixed idea had taken complete possession of
him. He had no plan, but he had a principle on which to act; and that
was to get at the lieutenant unawares, and if the fellow died without
knowing what hand had struck him, so much the better. Scevola was going
to act in the cause of virtue and justice. It was not to be a matter of
personal contest at all. Meantime, Michel, having gone into the salle,
had discovered Peyrol fast asleep on a table. Though his reverence for
Peyrol was unbounded, his simplicity was such that he shook his master
by the shoulder as he would have done any common mortal. The rover
passed from a state of inertia into a sitting posture so quickly that
Michel stepped back a pace and waited to be addressed. But as Peyrol
only stared at him, Michel took the initiative in a concise phrase:
“He’s at it!”
Peyrol did not seem completely awake: “What is it you mean?” he asked.
“He is making motions to escape.”
Peyrol was wide awake now. He even swung his feet off the table.
“Is he? Haven’t you locked the cabin door?”
Michel, very frightened, explained that he had never been told to do
that.
“No?” remarked Peyrol placidly. “I must have forgotten.” But Michel
remained agitated, and murmured: “He is escaping.”
“That’s all right,” said Peyrol. “What are you fussing about? How far
can he escape, do you think?”
A slow grin appeared on Michel’s face. “If he tries to scramble over the
top of the rocks, he will get a broken neck in no time,” he said. “And
he certainly won’t get very far, that’s a fact.”
“Well--you see,” said Peyrol.
“And he doesn’t seem strong either. He crawled out of the cabin door and
got as far as the little water cask and he dipped and dipped into it. It
must be half empty by now. After that he got on to his legs. I cleared
out ashore directly I heard him move,” he went on in a tone of intense
self-approval. “I hid myself behind a rock and watched him.”
“Quite right,” observed Peyrol. After that word of commendation,
Michel’s face wore a constant grin.
“He sat on the after-deck,” he went on as if relating an immense joke,
“with his feet dangling down the hold, and may the devil take me if I
don’t think he had a nap with his back against the cask. He was nodding
and catching himself up, with that big white head of his. Well, I got
tired of watching that, and as you told me to keep out of his way, I
thought I would come up here and sleep in the shed. That was right,
wasn’t it?”
“Quite right,” repeated Peyrol. “Well, you go now into the shed. And so
you left him sitting on the after-deck?”
“Yes,” said Michel. “But he was rousing himself. I hadn’t got away more
than ten yards when I heard an awful thump on board. I think he tried to
get up and fell down the hold.”
“Fell down the hold?” repeated Peyrol sharply.
“Yes, notre maître. I thought at first I would go back and see, but you
had warned me against him, hadn’t you? And I really think that nothing
can kill him.”
Peyrol got down from the table with an air of concern which would have
astonished Michel, if he had not been utterly incapable of observing
things.
“This must be seen to,” murmured the rover, buttoning the waistband of
his trousers. “My cudgel there, in the corner. Now you go to the shed.
What the devil are you doing at the door? Don’t you know the way to the
shed?” This last observation was caused by Michel remaining in the
doorway of the salle with his head out and looking to right and left
along the front of the house. “What’s come to you? You don’t suppose he
has been able to follow you so quick as this up here?”
“Oh no, notre maître, quite impossible. I saw that sacré Scevola
promenading up and down here. I don’t want to meet him again.”
“Was he promenading outside,” asked Peyrol, with annoyance. “Well, what
do you think he can do to you? What notions have you got in your silly
head? You are getting worse and worse. Out you go.”
Peyrol extinguished the lamp and, going out, closed the door without the
slightest noise. The intelligence about Scevola being on the move did
not please him very much, but he reflected that probably the
sans-culotte had fallen asleep again, and after waking up was on his way
to bed when Michel caught sight of him. He had his own view of the
patriot’s psychology and did not think the women were in any danger.
Nevertheless he went to the shed and heard the rustling of straw as
Michel settled himself for the night.
“Debout,” he cried low. “Sh, don’t make any noise. I want you to go
into the house and sleep at the bottom of the stairs. If you hear
voices, go up, and if you see Scevola about, knock him down. You aren’t
afraid of him, are you?”
“No, if you tell me not to be,” said Michel, who, picking up his shoes,
a present from Peyrol, walked barefoot towards the house. The rover
watched him slipping noiselessly through the salle door. Having thus, so
to speak, guarded his base, Peyrol proceeded down the ravine with a very
deliberate caution. When he got as far as the little hollow in the
ground from which the mastheads of the tartane could be seen, he
squatted and waited. He didn’t know what his prisoner had done or was
doing, and he did not want to blunder into the way of his escape. The
day-old moon was high enough to have shortened the shadows almost to
nothing and all the rocks were inundated by a yellow sheen, while the
bushes by contrast looked very black. Peyrol reflected that he was not
very well concealed. The continued silence impressed him in the end. “He
has got away,” he thought. And yet he was not sure. Nobody could be
sure. He reckoned it was about an hour since Michel had left the
tartane; time enough for a man, even on all fours, to crawl down to the
shore of the cove. Peyrol wished he had not hit so hard. His object
could have been attained with half the force. On the other hand all the
proceedings of his prisoner, as reported by Michel, seemed quite
rational. Naturally the fellow was badly shaken. Peyrol felt as though
he wanted to go on board and give him some encouragement, and even
active assistance.
The report of a gun from seaward cut his breath short as he lay there
meditating. Within a minute there was a second report, sending another
wave of deep sound among the crags and hills of the peninsula. The
ensuing silence was so profound that it seemed to extend to the very
inside of Peyrol’s head, and lull all his thoughts for a moment. But he
had understood. He said to himself that after this his prisoner, if he
had life enough left in him to stir a limb, would rather die than not
try to make his way to the seashore. The ship was calling to her man.
In fact those two guns had proceeded from the _Amelia_. After passing
beyond Cape Esterel, Captain Vincent dropped an anchor underfoot off the
beach just as Peyrol had surmised he would do. From about six o’clock
till nine the _Amelia_ lay there with her unfurled sails hanging in the
gear. Just before the moon rose the captain came up on deck and after a
short conference with his first lieutenant, directed the master to get
the ship under way and put her head again for the Petite Passe. Then he
went below, and presently word was passed on deck that the captain
wanted Mr. Bolt. When the master’s mate appeared in his cabin, Captain
Vincent motioned him to a chair.
“I don’t think I ought to have listened to you,” he said. “Still, the
idea was fascinating, but how it would strike other people it is hard to
say. The losing of our man is the worst feature. I have an idea that we
might recover him. He may have been captured by the peasants or have met
with an accident. It’s unbearable to think of him lying at the foot of
some rock with a broken leg. I have ordered the first and second cutters
to be manned, and I propose that you should take command of them and
enter the cove and, if necessary, advance a little inland to
investigate. As far as we know there have never been any troops on that
peninsula. The first thing you will do is to examine the coast.”
He talked for some time, giving more minute instructions, and then went
on deck. The _Amelia_, with the two cutters towing alongside, reached
about half-way down the Passe and then the boats were ordered to
proceed. Just before they shoved off two guns were fired in quick
succession.
“Like this, Bolt,” explained Captain Vincent, “Symons will guess that we
are looking for him; and if he is hiding anywhere near the shore he will
be sure to come down where he can be seen by you.”