THE LUNATIC.
The night kept its promise. Betty, slipping from the sleeping house
into the quiet darkness, seemed to slip into a poppy-fringed pool of
oblivion. The night laid fresh, cold hands on her tired eyes, and shut
out many things. She paused for a minute on the bridge to listen to
the restful restless whisper of the water against the rough stone.
Her eyes growing used to the darkness discerned the white ribbon of
road unrolling before her. The trees were growing thicker. This must
be the forest. Certainly it was the forest.
"How dark it is," she said, "how dear and dark! And how still! I
suppose the trams are running just the same along the Boulevard
Montparnasse,--and all the lights and people, and the noise. And I've
been there all these months--and all the time this was here--this!"
Paris was going on--all that muddle and maze of worried people. And
she was out of it all; here, alone.
Alone? A quick terror struck at the heart of her content. An abrupt
horrible certainty froze her--the certainty that she was not alone.
There was some living thing besides herself in the forest, quite near
her--something other than the deer and the squirrels and the quiet
dainty woodland people. She felt it in every fibre long before she
heard that faint light sound that was not one of the forest noises.
She stood still and listened.
She had never been frightened of the dark--of the outdoor dark. At
Long Barton she had never been afraid even to go past the church-yard
in the dark night--the free night that had never held any terrors,
only dreams.
But now: she quickened her pace, and--yes--footsteps came on behind
her. And in front the long straight ribbon of the road unwound, gray
now in the shadow. There seemed to be no road turning to right or
left. She could not go on forever. She would have to turn,
sometime--if not now, yet sometime--in this black darkness, and then
she would meet this thing that trod so softly, so stealthily behind
her.
Before she knew that she had ceased to walk, she was crouched in the
black between two bushes. She had leapt as the deer leaps, and
crouched, still as any deer.
Her dark blue linen gown was one with the forest shadows. She breathed
noiselessly--her eyes were turned to the gray ribbon of road that had
been behind her. She had heard. Now she would see.
She did see--something white and tall and straight. Oh, the relief of
the tallness and straightness and whiteness! She had thought of
something dwarfed and clumsy--dark, misshapen, slouching beast-like on
two shapeless feet. Why were people afraid of tall white ghosts?
It passed. It was a man--in a white suit. Just an ordinary man. No,
not ordinary. The ordinary man in France does not wear white. Nor in
England, except for boating and tennis and--
Flannels. Yes. The lunatic who boiled his brains in the sun!
Betty's terror changed colour as the wave changes from green to white,
but it lost not even so much of its force as the wave loses by the
change. It held her moveless till the soft step of the tennis shoes
died away. Then softly and hardly moving at all, moving so little that
not a leaf of those friendly bushes rustled, she slipped off her
shoes: took them in her hand, made one leap through the crackling,
protesting undergrowth and fled back along the road, fleet as a
greyhound.
She ran and she walked, very fast, and then she ran again and never
once did she pause to look or listen. If the lunatic caught her--well,
he would catch her, but it should not be _her_ fault if he did.
The trees were thinner. Ahead she saw glimpses of a world that looked
quite light, the bridge ahead. With one last spurt she ran across it,
tore up the little bit of street, slipped through the door, and
between the garden trees to her pavilion.
She looked very carefully in every corner--all was still and empty.
She locked the door, and fell face downward on her bed.
Vernon in his studio was "thinking things over" after the advice of
Miss Voscoe in much the same attitude.
"Oh," said Betty, "I will never go out at night again! And I will
leave this horrible, horrible place the very first thing to-morrow
morning!"
But to-morrow morning touched the night's events with new colours from
its shining palette.
"After all, even a lunatic has a right to walk out in the forest if it
wants to," she told herself, "and it didn't know I was there, I
expect, really. But I think I'll go and stay at some other hotel."
She asked, when her "complete coffee" came to her, what the mad
gentleman did all day.
"He is not so stupid as Mademoiselle supposes," said Marie. "All the
artists are insane, and he, he is only a little more insane than the
others. He is not a real mad, all the same, see you. To-day he makes
drawings at Montigny."
"Which way is Montigny?" asked Betty. And, learning, strolled, when
her coffee was finished, by what looked like the other way.
It took her to the river.
"It's like the Medway," said Betty, stooping to the fat cowslips at
her feet, "only prettier; and I never saw any cowslips here--You
dears!"
Betty would not look at her sorrow in this gay, glad world. But she
knew at last what her sorrow's name was. She saw now that it was love
that had stood all the winter between her and Vernon, holding a hand
of each. In her blindness she had called it friendship,--but now she
knew its real, royal name.
She felt that her heart was broken. Even the fact that her grief was a
thing to be indulged or denied at will brought her no doubts. She had
always wanted to be brave and noble. Well, now she was being both.
A turn of the river brought to sight a wide reach dotted with green
islands, each a tiny forest of willow saplings and young alders.
There was a boat moored under an aspen, a great clumsy boat, but it
had sculls in it. It would be pleasant to go out to the islands.
She got into the boat, loosened the heavy rattling chain and flung it
in board, took up the sculls and began to pull. It was easy work.
"I didn't know I was such a good oar," said Betty as the boat crept
swiftly down the river.
As she stepped into the boat, she noticed the long river reeds
straining down stream like the green hair of hidden water-nixies.
She would land at the big island--the boat steered easily and lightly
enough for all its size--but before she could ship her oars and grasp
at a willow root she shot past the island.
Then she remembered the streaming green weeds.
"Why, there must be a frightful current!" she said. What could make
the river run at this pace--a weir--or a waterfall?
She turned the boat's nose up stream and pulled. Ah, this was work!
Then her eyes, fixed in the exertion of pulling, found that they saw
no moving banks, but just one picture: a willow, a clump of irises,
three poplars in the distance--and the foreground of the picture did
not move. All her pulling only sufficed to keep the boat from going
with the stream. And now, as the effort relaxed a little it did not
even do this. The foreground did move--the wrong way. The boat was
slipping slowly down stream. She turned and made for the bank, but the
stream caught her broadside on, whirled the boat round and swept it
calmly and gently down--towards the weir--or the waterfall.
Betty pulled two strong strokes, driving the boat's nose straight for
the nearest island, shipped the sculls with a jerk, stumbled forward
and caught at an alder stump. She flung the chain round it and made
fast. The boat's stern swung round--it was thrust in under the bank
and held there close; the chain clicked loudly as it stretched taut.
"Well!" said Betty. The island was between her and the riverside path.
No one would be able to see her. She must listen and call out when she
heard anyone pass. Then they would get another boat and come and fetch
her away. She would not tempt fate again alone in that boat. She was
not going to be drowned in any silly French river.
She landed, pushed through the saplings, found a mossy willow stump
and sat down to get her breath.
It was very hot on the island. It smelt damply of wet lily leaves and
iris roots and mud. Flies buzzed and worried. The time was very long.
And no one came by.
"I may have to spend the day here," she told herself. "It's not so
safe in the boat, but it's not so fly-y either."
And still no one passed.
Suddenly the soft whistling of a tune came through the hot air. A tune
she had learned in Paris.
"_C'etait deux amants_."
"Hi!" cried Betty in a voice that was not at all like her voice.
"Help!--_Au secours_!" she added on second thoughts.
"Where are you?" came a voice. How alike all Englishmen's voices
seemed--in a foreign land!
"Here--on the island! Send someone out with a boat, will you? I can't
work my boat a bit."
Through the twittering leaves she saw something white waving. Next
moment a big splash. She could see, through a little gap, a white
blazer thrown down on the bank--a pair of sprawling brown boots; in
the water a sleek wet round head, an arm in a blue shirt sleeve
swimming a strong side stroke. It was the lunatic; of course it was.
And she had called to him, and he was coming. She pushed back to the
boat, leaped in, and was fumbling with the chain when she heard the
splash and the crack of broken twigs that marked the lunatic's
landing.
She would rather chance the weir or the waterfall than be alone on
that island with a maniac. But the chain was stretched straight and
stiff as a lance,--she could not untwist it. She was still struggling,
with pink fingers bruised and rust-stained, when something heavy
crashed through the saplings and a voice cried close to her:
"Drop it! What are you doing?"--and a hand fell on the chain.
Betty, at bay, raised her head. Lunatics, she knew, could be quelled
by the calm gaze of the sane human eye.
She gave one look, and held out both hands with a joyous cry.
"Oh,--it's _you_! I _am_ so glad! Where did you come from? Oh, how wet
you are!"
Then she sat down on the thwart and said no more, because of the
choking feeling in her throat that told her very exactly just how
frightened she had been.
"You!" Temple was saying very slowly. "How on earth? Where are you
staying? Where's your party?"
He was squeezing the water out of sleeves and trouser legs.
"I haven't got a party. I'm staying alone at a hotel--just like a man.
I know you're frightfully shocked. You always are."
"Where are you staying?" he asked, drawing the chain in hand over
hand, till a loose loop of it dipped in the water.
"Hotel Chevillon. How dripping you are!"
"Hotel Chevillon," he repeated. "Never! Then it was _you_!"
"What was me?"
"That I was sheep-dog to last night in the forest."
"Then it was _you_? And I thought it was the lunatic! Oh, if I'd only
known! But why did you come after me--if you didn't know it _was_ me?"
Temple blushed through the runnels of water that trickled from his
hair.
"I--well, Madame told me there was an English girl staying at the
hotel--and I heard some one go out--and I looked out of the window and
I thought it was the girl, and I just--well, if anything had gone
wrong--a drunken man, or anything--it was just as well there should be
someone there, don't you know."
"That's very, very nice of you," said Betty. "But oh!"--She told him
about the lunatic.
"Oh, that's me!" said Temple. "I recognise the portrait, especially
about the hat."
He had loosened the chain and was pulling with strong even strokes
across the river towards the bank where his coat lay.
"We'll land here if you don't mind."
"Can't you pull up to the place where I stole the boat?"
He laughed:
"The man's not living who could pull against this stream when the
mill's going and the lower sluice gates are open. How glad I am that
I--And how plucky and splendid of you not to lose your head, but just
to hang on. It takes a lot of courage to wait, doesn't it?"
Betty thought it did.
"Let me carry your coat," said Betty as they landed. "You'll make it
so wet."
He stood still a moment and looked at her.
"Now we're on terra cotta," he said, "let me remind you that we've not
shaken hands. Oh, but it's good to see you again!"
* * * * *
"Look well, my child," said Madame Chevillon, "and when you see
approach the Meess, warn me, that I may make the little omelette at
the instant."
"Oh, la, la, madame!" cried Marie five minutes later. "Here it is that
she comes, and the mad with her. He talks with her, in laughing. She
carries his coat, and neither the one nor the other has any hat."
"I will make a double omelette," said Madame. "Give me still more of
the eggs. The English are all mad--the one like the other; but even
mads must eat, my child. Is it not?"