A FOOL AND HIS FOLLY
I
At last there came a morning when Fernande felt free from Laurent's
untiring vigilance. Since the day when she had thrown out the vague hint
to de Maurel that she would resume her walks in the wood, Laurent had
never wearied of keeping an eye on every one of her movements.
Morning after morning, when the sun irradiated the distant slopes with
gold, she had started out at an hour when even old Matthieu was not yet
about; she had tiptoed out of the house, certain that she would not wake
anyone; she had stolen out into the garden by way of the veranda, her
soft, heelless shoes gliding noiselessly along the parquet floors as
well as upon the flagged stones. She had then skirted the château, in
order to reach the park gates, only to find Laurent pacing up and down
the avenue of limes, ostensibly engaged in reading a book, quite
self-possessed and unconcerned, and exhibiting only the very slightest
show of surprise at seeing her abroad so early in the day. He then
suggested a walk round the park, or even at times a stroll as far as the
woods, and she, inwardly exasperated at her own discomfiture, had
perforce to appear gay and unconcerned too.
Once she thought that she would try to cross the park as far as the
postern gate and to slip out into the orchard that way and thence to
the woods; but she had not yet reached the park wall before she heard
Laurent's voice calling her by name. The avenue of limes commanded an
extensive view of the gardens, and he had caught sight of her white
dress flitting in among the trees.
She did not wish to be caught stealing out of the precincts of the
château like some country wench tripping to a rendezvous, so she had
perforce to give up her matutinal excursions for a while, and to be
content with an inward vision of poor Laurent getting up at break of day
and cooling his heels morning after morning under the lime-trees while
she lay snugly in bed, breaking her little head in order to devise some
means of eluding his watchfulness.
Why she should have wished to meet de Maurel again--alone in the
woods--she herself could not have said. Encouraged by Madame la
Marquise, she had certainly come to look upon her final subjugation of
the Maurel bear as a work of selfless patriotism, and even an actual
duty to her King and his cause. At the same time, the subjugation was
already so complete, that it lay well within her power--this she
knew--to precipitate the crisis at any moment when she felt so inclined.
At a word, a look now, she could bring de Maurel to his knees and force
from his untutored lips the avowal of his love which he himself was at
no pains to conceal. One word from her--a message sent by courier to the
foundries--would bring him to her side, even though the factories were
on fire or the workmen in open revolt. She knew all that, and felt at
the same time that she would sooner cut off her right hand or cut out
her tongue than pen the message or speak the word. And yet she could not
conquer the desire to meet him once again--alone--there where the
romance of the pool, the song of birds, the murmur of the trees would
all help to bring about that very avowal which she dreaded.
Of Madame la Marquise's more serious intentions with regard to herself
and Ronnay de Maurel she knew nothing as yet. Had she known of them, she
would have fought against them with her whole might. She had far too
much ardent hatred for the man to think of him as anything but a mere
tool for the success of her own cause--a tool to be speedily cast aside
once it had served its purpose.
That her coquetry with the man was not only capricious and thoughtless,
but also wantonly cruel, she did not realize for a moment. Just now she
felt more amused than thrilled by the thought that she had aroused
tender feelings in the heart of a man of de Maurel's calibre; and she
was only eighteen, and had no one to guide her in the somewhat tortuous
path in which she had embarked. Madame la Marquise encouraged her
openly. Her father was indulgently detached, and Laurent somewhat
ridiculously jealous, whilst all the while she never brought herself to
believe that de Maurel had it in him to love--sincerely, tenderly,
unendingly. To her he was--he still remained--the enemy and the traitor;
the man who perhaps had had no actual hand in the atrocities and the
murders of the Revolution, but who had, nevertheless, countenanced them
by openly professing democratic principles. Such a man was, therefore,
fair prey for any loyal subject of His Majesty the King who had it in
her power to make him suffer--as those of his kind had made the innocent
suffer--and to make him weep tears of longing or of shame, that those
very principles which he professed had shut him out for ever from the
heart of his kindred, from their family circle, from home life and from
happiness.
Yet, hating the man as she did, detesting all that he loved and
despising all that he worshipped, Fernande--such are the contradictions
of a woman's heart--manoeuvred day after day, at great risk to her own
comfort and to her reputation, for the chance of meeting that same man
alone and on the self-same spot where in his deep and ardent eyes she
had already more than once read the secret of a passion which he himself
had not yet probed to its depths.
II
Fernande was not at all surprised when she saw de Maurel sitting beside
the silent pool--obviously waiting for her.
Laurent and M. de Courson had gone to Avranches the previous day in
answer to a summons from their chief; they were not expected home till
the late afternoon. And that morning Fernande was free--free to steal
out of the park gates while the morning sun tipped the distant hills
with rose and made each dewdrop upon the leaves of beech and alder
glisten like a diamond. She was free to wander through the orchards,
where the apples were beginning to ripen, and where the cherry-trees
were already stripped of their rich spoil; she was free to plunge into
the cool and shady wood, to flit between the larches and the pines,
feeling the cones crackling under her feet and the exhalation of warm
earth rising to her nostrils and sending a delicious intoxication
through her veins.
The moment she saw de Maurel she was ready to run away. But it was
already too late. He had spied her white dress, and in a moment he was
on his feet, and a look of strange, exultant happiness lit up his entire
face. Before she could move he had reached her side and taken her hand.
"I knew that you would come, my beloved," he said simply.
She tried to be flippant, or else wrathful, but somehow the words died
on her lips. Such an extraordinary change had come over him, that she
caught herself looking intently into his face--studying wherein lay that
subtle transformation of his whole personality which made him seem like
a triumphant lover. Indeed, the manner in which he had greeted her had
taken her breath completely away, and it was quite mechanically that
she allowed him to lead her to her favourite bank of moss, there where
the broken stump of a tree trunk made a comfortable seat whereon to
rest, and where the wild iris grew thickest and the meadowsweet in full
flower sent its delicious fragrance through the air.
She sat down on the tree trunk and arranged the folds of her gown primly
round her feet, and he half sat, half lay, on the moss beside her, and
all the while that she fumbled with her gown he sat quite still, with
his elbow resting on the stump of the tree, his head leaning upon his
hand. She felt restless and not a little nervy, and was vastly vexed
with herself because--strive how she may--she could not steady the
slight tremor of her fingers, and she could see that he was watching
them.
"I did not think of meeting you here, _mon cousin_," she contrived to
say after a while.
"Ah! but I think you did," he rejoined quietly. "How could you think not
to meet me once you gave me hope that you would come? Every morning I
have lain in wait for you until the hour when I knew that it would be
too late for you to venture out so far without being seen. Then I have
gone back to my work. If I had not seen you to-day, I would have come
again to-morrow, and the day after, and the day after that--for a month
or for a year--or for ten years--until you came."
"You talk at random, _mon cousin_," she said coldly, choosing to ignore
the intense passion which vibrated in his voice, and the ardent look
wherewith he seemed to hold her, just as he had held her once in his
strong arms. "You talk at random," she reiterated. "Your words seem to
imply that my desire was to meet you here, without being seen by others,
whereas it is my custom to walk here often, sometimes alone, but more
often with Laurent."
"Ah! that was a long while ago," he said, with that same smile which was
wont to light up his bronzed face with a strange air of youth and of
joy. "You used to walk in the woods with Laurent in the olden days, but
not of late. Of late you sometimes started in the early morning, hoping
to steal from out the park unperceived. But Laurent has always been on
the watch, and you could not come. To-day he is absent...."
"Indeed, _mon cousin_," broke in Fernande vehemently, "your imagination
carries you far. I do not know whence you have gleaned this fantastic
information, but...."
The smile still lingered round his firm lips as he rejoined quietly:
"Every morning at break of day I have prowled around the park of
Courson. Every morning, until a week ago, I saw your white dress
gleaming amongst the trees. I also saw Laurent wandering, disconsolate,
under the lime-trees until he caught sight of you and turned you from
your purpose."
"You have, indeed, a vivid imagination, _mon cousin_," she retorted,
somewhat abashed, "if you connect my early morning walks in the park of
Courson in the company of Laurent with any desire on my part to meet you
here."
"For the past week," he went on, wholly unperturbed, "I have only seen
Laurent, still walking dolefully under the limes. You did not come. But
yesterday Laurent went to Avranches and this morning I saw you from
afar. I saw your white dress, which looked like an exquisite white cloud
on which the sun had imprinted a kiss and covered it with a rosy glow. I
saw your hair like a golden aureole and the outline of your shoulders
and your arms as you flitted like a sprite in and out amongst the trees.
Then I knew that you were on your way hither; I soon outdistanced you.
How I walked I cannot tell. Meseems that fairies must have carried me."
"Meseems that your work cannot of late have been very absorbing, _mon
cousin_," she rejoined with well-assumed flippancy, "if you have spent
every morning spying on my movements ten kilomètres away from your
home."
"I would walk fifty on the chance of catching sight of you for five
minutes in the distance," he said, "but not because I am idle. Work at
the foundries and in the factory has been arduous and heavy. Rumour will
have told you that some of our men have been troublesome...."
She looked straight down into his eyes and said earnestly:
"Those for whose sake you and yours became false to your King and to
your caste are turning against you now, _mon cousin_. Yes! Rumour hath
told me that."
"And you have rejoiced?"
"And I have rejoiced."
"Because in your thoughts you still hate me?"
"Because in my thoughts I condemn you as false to your country and false
to your King."
"But in your heart, Fernande," he said slowly, "in your heart you no
longer hate me."
"_Mon cousin_," she protested.
"Do you hate me, Fernande?" he insisted.
She would have given worlds for the power to jump up then and there and
to run away. But some invisible bond kept her chained to the spot. She
could not move. There was a clump of meadowsweet close to her feet, all
interwoven with marguerites, and overhead a mountain-ash was in full
bloom and the pungent scent went to her head like wine. Her cheeks felt
glowing with heat, and there were tiny beads of perspiration at the
roots of her hair, but her hands felt cold and her feet numb, and her
throat was dry and parched.
She had just enough strength left to try and hide her confusion from
him. She stooped and picked a marguerite, and thoughtfully,
mechanically, her delicate fingers began to pull the white petals off
one by one.
"An that flower does not lie," he said, with the same quiet earnestness,
"it will tell you that I love you ... passionately...."
The word, the look which accompanied it--above all, his hand which had
without any warning seized her own--suddenly dispelled the witchery
which up to now had so unaccountably held her will and her spirit in
bondage. With a brusque movement she jumped to her feet and wrenched her
hand out of his grasp, and now stood before him, tall, stately, with
flaming cheeks and wrath-filled eyes, whilst a laugh of infinite scorn
broke from her lips.
"_Ah çà!_" she exclaimed, "you have methinks taken leave of your senses,
_Monsieur mon cousin_. Or hath rumour lied again, when it averred that
you led an abstemious life? The cellars of La Vieuville are well stocked
with wine apparently, and its fumes have overclouded your brain, or you
had not dared to insult me with such folly."
He, too, had risen and stood facing her, his cheeks pale beneath their
bronze, his hands tightly clenched.
"There is no insult," he said quietly, as soon as she had finished
speaking, "in the offer of an honest man's love."
"An honest man's love?" she retorted. "The love of a man whose hands are
stained with the blood of all those I care for!"
"A truce on this childishness, Fernande," he rejoined almost roughly.
"Are we puppets, you and I, to dance to the piping of political
wirepullers? I say, that when a man and a woman love one another,
political aims and ideals soon sink into insignificance. What matters it
if you desire to see this nation governed by a descendant of the
Bourbons, or I by a newly-risen military genius? What matters it, dear
heart, if one loves?..."
"Aye! if one loves!" she exclaimed, with a derisive laugh. "But you see,
I do not love you, _mon cousin_."
"That is where you are wrong, Fernande," he riposted, still speaking
calmly, even though his voice had now become quite hoarse and choked.
"You do not know your own heart, my dear ... you are too young to know
it. But I knew that you loved me the day that first you came to meet me
here! You remember? It was a lovely day in May; the sun shone golden
between the branches of the trees, the mating birds were building their
nests, the woods were fragrant with the scent of violets and lilies of
the valley. You had gathered a bunch of wild hyacinths and they lay
scattered at your feet, and I knelt down and picked them up for you, and
for one instant your hand came in contact with mine. You loved me then,
Fernande! you loved me when you nestled in my arms, and I carried you
through the woods and out in the fields beneath the clear blue sky, less
blue than your eyes. And from below a skylark rose heavenwards and sang
a hosanna in the empyrean above. Your eyes were closed, but you did not
sleep. You loved me then, Fernande! I felt it in every fibre of my
heart, in every aspiration of my soul. My entire being thrilled with the
knowledge that you loved me. You love me now, my dear," he added with
ineffable tenderness, "else you were not here to-day."
"M. de Maurel!" cried Fernande, "this is an outrage!" Her voice was
choked with tears--tears of shame and of remorse for the past, tears of
wrath and of misery at her own helplessness. She buried her face in her
hands, lest he should see her tears; her feet were rooted to the ground;
she dared not move, she dared not fly! she was only conscious of an
awful, an overwhelming sense of fear.
"It is the truth, Fernande," he rejoined calmly. "Ah! you may scorn me,
your beautiful eyes may flash hatred upon me. No doubt that I deserve
both your scorn and your hate. I am rough, uneducated, illiterate,
common, vulgar--what you will; but I am a man, a creature of flesh and
blood, with a mind and a soul and a heart. That soul and that heart are
yours--yours because you filched them from me with your blue eyes and
your enchanting smile. You may turn away from me now--and we may part
to-day never perhaps to meet again! We may each go our ways--you to
sacrifice your youth, your beauty, your life to a degenerate cause; I,
to eat my heart out in mad longing for you; but what has passed between
us will never be forgotten. My words will ring in your ears long after
an assassin's hand, which your kinsfolk have armed against me, has done
its work and sent me to fall obscurely in a ditch with a Royalist bullet
between my shoulders...."
Her hands dropped away from her face. She drew herself up and looked at
him with large, puzzled, inquiring eyes.
"What do you mean?" she asked slowly.
With a careless laugh and a shrug of the shoulders, he pointed to the
thicket immediately behind her.
"I mean that day after day an assassin lurks in the undergrowth, dogging
my footsteps, watching his opportunity. I mean that three times in the
past week I have caught a man in there with a musket in his hand--a
musket which was aimed at me. Three times I dragged a man out into the
light of day, and the terror of being handed to the hangman forced an
avowal from his lips. An avowal! always the same! He had been paid by an
agent of Joseph de Puisaye to put a bullet into my back."
"It is false!" she cried.
"It is true!" he retorted. "Why should the hands that pillaged the home
of M. de Ris, that murdered the Bishop of Quimper and outraged the
Bishop of Cannes--why should they hesitate to strike a de Maurel who
happens to be an inconvenient foe?"
"It is false!" she reiterated vehemently.
"False, think you? Then I pray you listen."
He put up his hand, and instinctively she obeyed. The wood lay quite
still under the heat of this July forenoon. There was not a rustle among
the trees; the birds were silent, and from the mysterious pool there
only came the gentle lapping of lazy waters against the mossy bank.
Fernande strained her ears to listen, and soon she heard a stealthy,
furtive movement in the undergrowth close by, and she was conscious of
that curious, unerring sense which in the midst of Nature's silence
proclaims the presence of a hidden human being. She felt more than she
heard that somewhere amidst the tangled chestnut a creature was
lurking, who was neither bird nor beast--a creature who might, indeed,
be hiding there with sinister intent, his hand upon a musket which he
had been paid to wield.
A shudder of horror went right through her. She knew well enough that
the Chouan leaders nowadays openly boasted of the reprisals which they
meant to take; she had often heard fanatics, like Madame la Marquise,
declare that in this coming war they would stick neither at murder, nor
pillage, nor outrage, and an icy terror overcame her lest, indeed, some
malcontent had been bribed to strike at this dangerous opponent from
behind and in the dark.
De Maurel moved toward the thicket, and she, with an impulse that was
almost crazy, caught at his arm and clung to it, carried away by that
same agonizing and nameless terror which in a swift vision had shown her
the lurking assassin, and this splendid soldier of France lying murdered
in a ditch.
"Where are you going?" she cried wildly.
"To find the assassin," he replied with a loud laugh. "Those Normandy
peasants are vastly unapt with their muskets. God forgive him, but in
aiming at me he might succeed in hitting you."
"You must not go. It is madness to go."
"It were madness not to go, Fernande. I entreat you take your dear hand
from off my arm...."
"You shall not go," she reiterated half deliriously.
He could not have wrenched himself free from her grasp without hurting
her delicate hands. "Dear heart," he said more gently, "I'll return in a
trice."
"You shall not go."
"Fernande!"
"You shall not go."
Then suddenly he yielded. With a quick movement he turned and caught her
in his arms.
"Ah, Fernande!" he said exultantly, "can you tell me now that you do not
love me?" And as she, suddenly brought back to her senses, tried to drag
herself away from him, he seized both her wrists and held her there one
moment firmly, almost brutally, so that she was forced to look him
straight in the eyes--his deep-set, passionate eyes, wherein love,
triumph, joy, a mad jubilation had kindled a glowing light.
"It was all a ruse, Fernande," he said, and the words came with vast
rapidity, tumbling through his lips, "a ruse to catch you unawares. Do
you think that I care if an assassin doth lurk behind a thicket? Our
fate is in God's hands, and I have affronted Prussian or Austrian cannon
too often to think twice of a peasant's musket. But I wanted you to
know, to realize what love means. And just now, when you thought my life
in danger, there came a call from your heart, Fernande, the hearing of
which I would not barter for the highest place in paradise."
"It is false," she cried. "Let me go!"
"You love me, Fernande."
"I hate you. Let me go!"
"Not until you understand. Ah, my dear, my dear, if you only realized
what it means, you would not fight--like the shy young bird that you
are--against the most glorious, the most magnificent, the most
overpowering joy that God can grant to his miserable creatures. You
would understand, Fernande, how paltry a thing are country, kindred,
friends, King or Emperor, life or death? You love me, Fernande, and in
love you would forget aught but love. Together we would forget, together
we would live, my arms around you, your sweet head upon my breast. Look
up to Heaven now, my dear, there where through the branches of that
delicate birch you can see glints of blue and of gold, and swear now
before God that you still hate me ... swear it, Fernande, if you can."
She remained silent, numbed, bewildered, her very senses aching with the
intensity of her emotion, her gaze held by the fascination of that
transcendental passion which glowed from out his eyes. Just for a moment
they remained thus, hand in hand, whilst the murmurings of the woods
were hushed, and a soft breeze stirred the delicate tendrils of her
golden hair--just for one moment--that supreme second which in the life
of God's elect spells immortality!
III
Then, as when in the midst of a master's touch upon a perfectly tuned
violin, a string suddenly snaps with a harsh and grating sound, so did a
strident laugh break upon the exquisite silence of the woods.
"Well done, Fernande! well done!" came in ringing accents from out the
thicket. "You have, indeed, won your wager. The bear is dancing to your
piping, and I am just in time to see that he doth not commence to
growl."
At the first sound of that laugh and of those words de Maurel had
suddenly dropped Fernande's hands; he drew away from her and staggered
almost as if that shot from the assassin's musket had struck him in the
back. He put his hand up to his forehead and gazed out into the depths
of the undergrowth close by, where Laurent de Mortain's slim form could
be seen with outstretched arms pushing aside the thick branches of the
young chestnut, his face--set and pale with passion--peering out from
amongst the leaves.
Fernande had not moved; only the tender glow of a while ago had suddenly
fled from her cheeks and left them pale as ashes, and her eyes--which
looked preternaturally large and dark with their dilated pupils--were
fixed upon the approaching figure of Laurent. And de Maurel gazed from
one to the other, from Laurent to Fernande, in a dazed, uncomprehending
manner. He could not speak, he could not confront his young brother with
the taunt that he was lying. He had looked on Fernande, and, God help
him! he could not understand.
But already Laurent had extricated himself out of the tangled coppice,
and was striding rapidly toward them both.
"It was very well done," he said as he approached. "Many a time these
past two months we all thought that you would fail. But you were so
sure, were you not? Ah!" he added, as with a nervy gesture he flicked
his boot with the riding whip which he carried, "how well I remember
your boast, after that day when de Maurel and I quarrelled so hotly that
we all feared he never would come nigh us again. 'The Maurel bear,' you
said, 'will dance to my piping on the faith of Fernande de Courson!' No
offence, dear brother," continued the young man with well-affected
unconcern; "our fair cousin's innocent coquetry must have vastly pleased
your vanity. But there's no harm done, is there? We all have to go
through the mill of women's wiles, and are none the worse for it in
after life. You'll learn that, too, my good de Maurel, when you become
better acquainted with the world. Shall we go now, Fernande?"
With an air of proprietorship as well as of perfect courtesy he bowed
before his young cousin and held out his arm to her. She appeared to be
in a dream, all the life seemed to have gone out of her, and she stood
there like a wooden doll, motionless and with wide-open eyes still fixed
upon Laurent. Now, when he seemed to expect her to place her hand on his
arm, she obeyed with a mechanical, automatic gesture.
That half-crazy vacancy which had descended on de Maurel's mind when
first Laurent's derisive words had hit him as with a blow, was gradually
lifted from him. Sober common-sense, of which he had an abundant fund,
had soon begun to whisper insidiously that here was no misunderstanding,
no arrogance or perversion on the part of Laurent, since Fernande had
not by word or gesture attempted to deny the truth of what he said. She
had been ready enough to cry out: "It is false!" when those whom she
loved were being indirectly attacked. That cry had come from her heart,
whereas now she did not deny. She gave no word, no look. She allowed
Laurent to lead her away. She had had her fun--her game with the
besotted rustic, who had dared to raise his eyes to her unapproachable
beauty--she had had her fun with him; now she was in a hurry to get
home, in order to laugh at her ease.
But to see her go away like that was something past the endurance of any
man. De Maurel felt that even a word of torturing cruelty from her would
be more bearable than this icy silence. And, after all--who knows?--the
magic of her voice might dispel even this horrible dream. And so just as
she was about to move away, he spoke to her, slowly, deliberately,
forcing his rough voice to tones of courtesy.
"One moment, I pray you, Mademoiselle Fernande," he said. "Surely, ere
you go, you will at least deign to confirm the truth of what my brother
hath said?"
"You need no confirmation from Mademoiselle Fernande," broke in Laurent
harshly. "I am not in the habit of lying."
"'Tis to Mademoiselle Fernande I was speaking," rejoined de Maurel
quietly. "I would humbly beg her to answer for herself."
Then only did she turn and look at him, and at sight of the hopeless
shame and misery which were imprinted on his face, she felt the hot
tears welling up from her heart, and she had to close her eyes, lest he
should read in them all the agonizing remorse which she felt.
But she could not speak; every word she uttered would have choked her.
And he, seeing her coldness, that proud aloofness which seemed to have
descended upon her like a mantle the moment Laurent de Mortain appeared
upon the scene, could have cried out in his humiliation and his
wretchedness like some poor animal that has been wounded unto death. Not
to these two proud aristocrats, however, would he show how terribly he
was suffering. She--Fernande--held him in ridicule, it seemed--in
contempt and derision. With cruel scorn she had toyed with his tenderest
heart-strings, and laughed at his coming misery with those who would
gladly sweep him off this earth. How she must have hated him, he
thought, to have planned his abasement so thoughtfully, so deliberately.
That first day in the woods, the sheaf of bluebells, her exquisite bare
toes ... all a trick! a trick! and he stood before her now--before
Laurent his brother--shamed to the innermost depths of his being--openly
denounced as a self-deluded fool--an unpardonably vain, besotted,
unjustifiable fool!!
For the moment he could do nothing, save to try and rescue a few
tattered shreds of his own self-respect; so now, when after a second or
two of silence, Laurent made as if he would speak again, Ronnay
interposed firmly:
"I have had my answer," he said, as calmly as the hoarseness of his
voice would allow, "and there is nothing left for me to do, meseems,
save to tender to Mademoiselle Fernande de Courson my humble apologies
for the annoyance which this present scene must have caused her. I may
be a rustic--and I know that I am a fool--still, I am not quite such an
one as not to realize how very unpleasant even a chance meeting with me
in the future would be to her. I should like to assure her, therefore,
as well as Madame la Marquise, my mother, that I shall be leaving for
Poland soon to join the Emperor, and that the sight of my soiled blouse
and unkempt hair will not offend their eyes for many months to come."
Laurent, vaguely stirred by shame at his own attitude at this moment,
felt that he ought to say something amicable or conciliatory, but with a
decided gesture of the hand, de Maurel repelled any further argument. He
remained undoubtedly the master of the situation, a curiously dignified
figure despite his rough clothes and the humiliation which had been put
upon him. He remained standing close by the mossy bank whereon he had
first dreamed--a foolish fond dream of happiness. The exquisite vision
of loveliness and of grace who, with small, cruel hands had oped for him
the secret door and shown him a glimpse of paradise, was even now
turning away from him, without a word, without a look, arm in arm with
the man for whom she had reserved her kisses, her fond embrace, the
mere thought of which had sent fire through his own veins.
She went right round the lake, her hand resting on Laurent's arm; then
they struck the woodland path which led straight to Courson. For a while
de Maurel could see her white dress gleaming amongst the trees, and once
a ray of sunshine caught the top of her tiny head and made her hair
shine like living gold. Then the thicket gradually enveloped them, and
in the next few minutes they were hidden from his view.
The breeze of a while ago had begun to rustle more insistently through
the trees; the birds flew back to their nests. Overhead a squirrel
looked down with beady, inquisitive eyes on that motionless figure of a
human foe. And wafted upon the breeze, there came from out the depths of
the silent pool the sustained, dulcet cooing of wood-pigeons. The soft
and melancholy sound rose up like the wail of a broken heart; it floated
through the leaves of the wild iris and the clumps of meadowsweet, until
it soared up finally among the quivering leaves of birch and
mountain-ash, and then was still.
And with a cry like that of a dumb animal in pain, de Maurel fell upon
his knees, and burying his face in the dewy moss, he sobbed his poor,
overburdened heart out in desolation and utter loneliness.