THE COOING OF THE PIGEONS
I
But it was close on a fortnight before Ronnay de Maurel saw Fernande
again. He went every morning to the silent pool, soon after break of
day, and every morning he waited for her until the sun was high in the
heavens, and he was obliged to go back to his work. He spent his time in
gazing into the pool or listening to the murmur of the woods. He knew
the note of every bird, he knew where each tiny couple had built its
nest; he watched the crimson tips of the young chestnut unfold and turn
to bronze and then to green; he read every morning in the book which God
hath laid out in springtime for every one of His creatures to read. He
also spent a considerable amount of time in gazing at a silk stocking
and a tiny sandal shoe, which happily he thought Fernande had forgotten
to claim. He would draw these treasures from out the breast pocket of
his blouse and hold them in his hands and toy with them, and gaze till a
mist would come to his eyes and a curious, impatient sigh would come
through his parted lips.
But he never tired while he lay in wait for the beautiful fairy-like
creature who had so graciously intimated to him that one day she would
come. It never occurred to him to give up waiting for her; that was not
his nature. The same dogged obstinacy of the de Maurels, which had
driven Denise de Courson well-nigh distraught, brought Ronnay daily to
the spot where he knew that he must one day meet Fernande.
Often he would wax impatient and at times anxious, but never weary; nor
did he ever lose hope. He would grow anxious when two days went by and
he could glean no news of her; then perhaps that self-same afternoon he
would tramp over after work as far as Courson and hear from one or other
of the villagers that they had seen Mademoiselle walking to church or in
the orchard, or else, mayhap, he himself would catch a glimpse of her
through the gates of the park or in the carriole of Père Lebrun, and he
would go home satisfied.
And he would wax impatient when the sun was specially bright overhead
and glinted through the trees till every tender fibre of moss looked
like a tiny emerald, and the wings of the dragon-flies glistened with
myriads of iridescent colours as they skimmed the surface of the pool.
Then he would long for Fernande with a longing which was akin to
physical pain; he longed to point out to her the play of the sun upon
the tender leaves of the alder, and show her just where the
white-throats had built their nest.
Then one day the sun rose behind a veil of rain-clouds, and all morning
the sky was overcast. It had rained heavily during the night, and a
boisterous wind stirred the branches of the trees and shook down from
them the cold showers of raindrops that had lingered on the leaves. De
Maurel had started out later than usual. He had no hope of meeting
Fernande on such a grey day, when the clouds overhead still threatened
and no gleam of sunshine came to cheer.
Yet this was the very day which she had selected for her walk in the
wood. He saw her the moment he reached the clearing. She was moving
slowly between the trees towards the pool. She had thrown a shawl over
her shoulders and a hood over her hair; from between its folds her fair
young face peeped out somewhat sober and demure.
Directly she saw him she gave a little cry of surprise and held out her
hand to him.
"'Tis strange to meet again, _mon cousin_," she said lightly, "and on
such a day as this. Brr!" she added, with a little shiver as with the
other hand she drew the shawl more closely round her shoulders, "I am
perished with cold. It seems more like December than May."
She noticed, with a little smile of satisfaction, that he was not slow
this time in taking her hand, or clumsy in raising it to his lips.
"From what you said, Mademoiselle Fernande," he said in his abrupt way,
"I knew that you would come one morning. Was I like to stay away?"
"From what I said?" she retorted with perfect surprise. "Why! What did I
say, _mon cousin_?"
His direct and searching look brought a hot flush to her cheeks. Yet she
did not know why she should blush, and was greatly angered with herself
for letting him see that she was, of a truth, covered with confusion.
"_Ma tante_ gave me leave to visit the foundries of La Frontenay," she
said, with a quaint assumption of dignity, "so I came this morning,
thinking, mayhap, that you would remember your promise to conduct me
round the workshops ... and that perchance I might meet you here."
"I came here every morning for the past fortnight," he rejoined simply.
"I hoped that you would come."
"I had to wait," she said unblushingly, "till _ma tante_ gave me leave."
"I am sorry," he said curtly.
"Sorry? Why?"
"I loved the idea of meeting you here ... in secret ... unknown to any
one...."
For some reason which she could not have accounted for, this--his first
really bold speech--angered her, and she retorted coldly:
"I would not have come at all, if Laurent had not approved."
"Ah! It was Laurent then who gave you leave?"
"Yes," she replied, "it was Laurent."
Somehow she felt strangely out of tune this morning, and wished heartily
that she had not come. For one thing, she hated to see him in that
odious blouse which he wore; it seemed to have the effect of making him,
not only clumsy and loutish, but dictatorial and arrogant. The other
afternoon, when he came to Courson, she had thought him passable--in a
rough and picturesque way. The faded and tarnished uniform had lent, she
grudgingly admitted, a certain look of grandeur to his fine physique.
To-day he looked positively ugly--one of "the great unwashed," she
thought, and despised him for a demagogue--he who bore one of the finest
names in France.
"Are you prepared to come to the foundry this morning?" he asked
abruptly.
For the moment she had a mind to say "No!" then remembered her folk at
home and the boast she had made about taming this bear. It would have
been passing foolish to give up the enterprise at the first check.
"Yes, I'll come," she said, as graciously as she felt able.
He, too, felt the constraint which seemed to stand like a solid wall
between her and him, and in his rough, untutored way he was seized with
a sudden, wild desire to pick her up again, as he had done that other
morning a fortnight ago, and to carry her through the woods which were
dripping wet with the rain. He wanted to carry her through the tangled
undergrowth, so that her little feet brushed against the low branches of
the trees, and caused them to send down a shower of cool drops over his
head, which felt hot and aching all of a sudden, as if some unseen and
heavy hand had dealt him a blow between the eyes.
The exquisite fairy of two sennights ago looked like a haughty and
unapproachable woman to-day, sedate and grave, with that dark shawl
folded primly round her shoulders, and the folds of her hood hiding her
golden hair and casting a shadow over her limpid blue eyes.
"Will you not give me your arm, _mon cousin_?" she asked after a while,
just as he was beginning to wonder whether he would not turn on his heel
and run away as the simplest way out of his present misery. He looked at
her--puzzled at the sudden graciousness of her mood, and then he
encountered her blue eyes, from whence all sternness had vanished as
swiftly as does a snowflake under the warm kiss of the sun. He held out
his arm and she placed her hand on it.
II
For a brief moment their eyes met, with strange, inward questioning on
both sides. Even she--Fernande--with all her hatred, all her contempt
for this traitor to his King, this enemy to his kindred and his caste,
could not help but feel that here was no ordinary man with whose
passions and whose feelings she could toy with impunity. That subtle
intuition which comes to every woman even before she has stepped over
the threshold of childhood, had told her before now that Ronnay de
Maurel's rough and unbridled nature had already been stirred to its
depths by her beauty, and that he loved her at this moment with a love
all the more ardent that he himself was as yet scarce conscious of its
glow.
A sense of triumph chased all other thoughts from her mind. She had it
in her power--she, Fernande de Courson, who had seen kindred, friends,
her own father, driven to poverty and exile by the brutal excesses of
these democrats--she had it in her power to bring this protagonist of
those revolutionary ideals to humiliation and suffering. Not one spark
of pity did she feel for the man who was doomed to suffer for her sake.
That he would suffer--keenly, grievously--was plainly writ in those
deep-set eyes of his which, she now noticed for the first time, were of
that mysterious violet colour which reveals a passionate soul. It was
writ, too, on that sensitive mouth round which the lines of pleasure
and of pain were wont to chase one another so swiftly. Yes, he would
suffer and at her hands--suffer quite as much, mayhap, as her father had
suffered when he had to flee from his home at dead of night, leaving his
one motherless baby to the care of a sister as helpless, as homeless as
himself. He would suffer less, at any rate, than did the martyred Queen,
when her royal husband was torn brutally from her arms by that
revolutionary mob whose ideals Ronnay de Maurel would uphold.
It was, indeed, the law of reprisals which was pursuing its course with
ruthless impartiality, and Fernande, with the fire of an ardent
patriotism filling her entire soul, could not find a spark of pity for
the enemy of her cause. She hated him as she never thought that she had
it in her to hate any man; she longed for that freedom of thought and of
action when she need no longer dissemble, when she need not endure the
look of boundless admiration wherewith he dared to envelop her as with a
caress, and when she could tell him to his face, the utter contempt, the
hopeless loathing wherewith he inspired her.
The intensity of her feelings at the moment literally swept her off her
feet. Her heart was so full that tears of self-pity welled up to her
eyes; and he, seeing her tears, was clumsy enough to misinterpret them.
"Mademoiselle Fernande," he said, with a soft tone of entreaty in his
rugged voice, "meseems that you are sad to-day. Will you not tell me if
aught hath angered you, or caused you distress?"
Then, as she made no reply--for, of a truth, she felt that the next
words which she uttered would choke her--he added more gruffly: "Will
you believe me, I wonder, when I say that I would give my life to save
you a moment's pain?"
She would have liked to withdraw her hand from his arm, for she was
afraid that he would perceive how it trembled. But he held her close,
and she felt too numbed to struggle. But he--poor wretch!--once again
felt that wild, mad longing to pick her off the ground, and to carry
her away--away out of this world of sordid quarrels and of strife, away
to a land of which his ignorant, uneducated soul had only vaguely
dreamed--a land where the trees were always of a tender green, wherein
the mating birds sang a never-ending anthem--a land where there were no
tears, no clouds, and wherein the sunlight danced for ever on the golden
tendrils of her hair and the flower-like tips of her toes ... away to a
lonely spot where only fairies and angels dwelt, and where he could lay
her down on a bed of dewy moss and kiss away the tears that hung upon
her lashes ... one by one.
And as with a sigh that came from the depths of his overfull heart, he
made a motion to lead her away from this enchanted spot, wherein he had
tasted the first bitter-sweet fruit of unending love, it seemed to him
that from out the limpid mirror of the silent pool there came a call as
of many living, breathing creatures in pain. The call rose and fell as
if on the unseen bosom of gently lapping water, and overhead the tender
branches of birch and chestnut whispered softly to one another, stirred
by a newly-awakened breeze. Fernande, too, had paused--she, too,
evidently had heard, for she turned inquiring, almost frightened eyes up
at de Maurel. The call was so like the cooing of innumerable
wood-pigeons--mournful, soul-stirring, and with a tender wail in it that
spoke of sorrow, of heart-ache and of farewells.
"The pigeons of St. Front!" she murmured under her breath.
For a moment both stood still, until the melancholy plaint was wafted
away on the wings of the wind. A strange feeling of awe had descended
upon them. It seemed as if the Fates sitting in their eyrie far away had
taken up the threads of their destiny, and were weaving and weaving,
until their spindles came into a tangle which nothing but godlike hands
could ever straighten out again.
"It was fancy, of course," said de Maurel after a while, seeing that
Fernande had turned very white and that she clung with a pathetic
unspoken appeal for support to his arm. "I have often heard this
melancholy call when the wind stirred among the trees. 'Tis no wonder
the poor folk of the country-side fly from this place in terror! There
is something spectral in the sound."
"You don't believe," murmured Fernande, "you don't believe in the
pigeons of St. Front?"
"What is there to believe in such an ancient legend?"
"That the cooing of the pigeons foretells disaster to those that hear
it?"
"No," he replied decisively. "I do not believe it in this case,
Mademoiselle Fernande. The world would be topsy-turvy, indeed, and God
asleep in the heavens, if disaster were to overtake so perfect a
creature as you."
She broke into a low, little laugh, which to a more sophisticated ear
would have sounded mirthless and forced.
"Eh, _mon cousin_," she said, "you attribute to the world certain
desires for my welfare which, of a truth, scarcely concern it, and God,
I imagine, when He endowed us with free-will, left us to be the
architects of our own destiny."
"With an overseer, mayhap," he added with earnest significance, "to
watch over the safety of the building."
She chose to misinterpret his meaning and not to see the look which
accompanied his words.
"Is it not time we went to the foundry?" she asked.
The spell was broken. Fernande de Courson became the self-possessed
young woman of the world once more, and Ronnay de Maurel the clumsy
rustic, who is greatly honoured by the condescension of a great lady
infinitely above him in station. They turned away from the pool, which
seemed more absolutely silent now that the cooing of the pigeons had
been merged in the ceaseless murmurings of the woods. Fernande leaned on
Ronnay's arm, and he guided her along the paths and through the
clearings, walking silently by her side.
When they reached the open, he pointed to the left where the main
country road wound its smooth ribbon at the foot of the distant hills.
Here a small one-horsed vehicle was standing, some few metres away from
the edge of the wood.
"It is another five or six kilomètres to the foundries from here,
Mademoiselle," he said, "so every morning, always hoping that you would
come, I ventured to order a carriole to await you here; one of our men
will drive you by the road."
Fernande was conscious of a slight feeling of vexation. "But you, _mon
cousin_?" she asked.
"I walk across the fields," he replied curtly, "they are ploughed and
ankle-deep in mud; but I will be at the foundry in time to await your
coming."
She had it on the tip of her tongue to demand that he should sit beside
her in the carriole, or to insist on walking across the ploughed fields
with him, but her pride would not permit her to do either. Perhaps,
also, she thought that having been intermittently out of tune in the
woods, an hour's jolting in a rickety carriole would shake away the
cobwebs that clung persistently round her mood. The carriole proved to
be of very modern build, high and comfortable; a perfect English
cob--priceless in value these days--was in the shafts, looking a picture
of gloss and experienced grooming. A young man in sombre livery coat sat
with the reins in his hand.
De Maurel lifted Fernande into the vehicle, then stood by, giving a
comprehensive glance to the turn-out with an obviously experienced and
critical eye. Then, as the driver gave a click of the tongue and the cob
started off at a smart trot, he turned brusquely on his heel, and
Fernande for a long time could see his tall figure making its way, with
its peculiar, halting gait, across the ploughed fields, till a group of
trees that marked a homestead hid him from her view.