Under the Red Robe, Stanley Weyman [hardest books to read .txt] 📗

said passionately. 'Is it not enough that you have murdered my servant?'

'On the contrary, it was he who killed my Captain,' the Lieutenant answered, in another tone than I had expected. 'If your servant is dead so is my comrade.'

'Captain Larolle?' she murmured, gazing with startled eyes, not at him but at me.

I nodded.

'How?' she asked.

'Clon flung the Captain and himself--into the river pool above the bridge,' I said.

She uttered a low cry of awe and stood silent; but her lips moved and I think that she prayed for Clon, though she was a Huguenot. Meanwhile, I had a fright. The lanthorn, swinging in the sergeant's hand, and throwing its smoky light now on the stone seat, now on the rough wall above it, showed me something else. On the seat, doubtless where Mademoiselle's hand had lain as she sat in the dark, listening and watching and shivering, stood a pitcher of food. Beside her, in that place, it was damning evidence, and I trembled least the Lieutenant's eye should fall upon it, lest the sergeant should see it; and then, in a moment, I forgot all about it. The Lieutenant was speaking and his voice was doom. My throat grew dry as I listened; my tongue stuck to my mouth I tried to look at Mademoiselle, but I could not.

'It is true that the Captain is gone,' he said stiffly, 'but others are alive, and about one of them a word with you, by your leave, Mademoiselle. I have listened to a good deal of talk from this fine gentleman friend of yours. He has spent the last twenty-four hours saying "You shall!" and "You shall not!" He came from you and took a very high tone because we laid a little whip-lash about that dumb devil of yours. He called us brutes and beasts, and but for him I am not sure that my friend would not now be alive. But when he said a few minutes ago that he was glad--glad of it, d--him!--then I fixed it in my mind that I would be even with him. And I am going to be!'

'What do you mean?' Mademoiselle asked, wearily interrupting him. 'If you think that you can prejudice me against this gentleman--'

'That is precisely what I am going to do! And a little more than that!' he answered.

'You will be only wasting your breath!' she retorted.

'Wait! Wait, Mademoiselle---until you have heard,' he said. 'For I swear to you that if ever a black-hearted scoundrel, a dastardly sneaking spy trod the earth, it is this fellow! And I am going to expose him. Your own eyes and your own ears shall persuade you. I am not particular, but I would not eat, I would not drink, I would not sit down with him! I would rather be beholden to the meanest trooper in my squadron than to him! Ay, I would, so help me Heaven!'

And the Lieutenant, turning squarely on his heel, spat on the ground.


CHAPTER XI. THE ARREST

It had come, and I saw no way of escape. The sergeant was between us and I could not strike him. And I found no words. A score of times I had thought with shrinking how I should reveal my secret to Mademoiselle--what I should say, and how she would take it; but in my mind it had been always a voluntary act, this disclosure, it had been always I who unmasked myself and she who listened--alone; and in this voluntariness and this privacy there had been something which took from the shame of anticipation. But here--here was no voluntary act on my part, no privacy, nothing but shame. And I stood mute, convicted, speechless, under her eyes--like the thing I was.

Yet if anything could have braced me it was Mademoiselle's voice when she answered him.

'Go on, Monsieur,' she said calmly, 'you will have done the sooner.'

'You do not believe me?' he replied. 'Then, I say, look at him! Look at him! If ever shame--'

'Monsieur,' she said abruptly--she did not look at me, 'I am ashamed of myself.'

'But you don't hear me,' the Lieutenant rejoined hotly. 'His very name is not his own! He is not Barthe at all. He is Berault, the gambler, the duellist, the bully; whom if you--'

Again she interrupted him.

'I know it,' she said coldly. 'I know it all; and if you have nothing more to tell me, go, Monsieur. Go!' she continued in a tone of infinite scorn. 'Be satisfied, that you have earned my contempt as well as my abhorrence.'

He looked for a moment taken aback. Then,--

'Ay, but I have more,' he cried, his voice stubbornly triumphant.

'I forgot that you would think little of that. I forgot that a swordsman has always the ladies' hearts---but I have more. Do you know, too, that he is in the Cardinal's pay? Do you know that he is here on the same errand which brings us here--to arrest M. de Cocheforet? Do you know that while we go about the business openly and in soldier fashion, it is his part to worm himself into your confidence, to sneak into Madame's intimacy, to listen at your door, to follow your footsteps, to hang on your lips, to track you--track you until you betray yourselves and the man? Do you know this, and that all his sympathy is a lie, Mademoiselle? His help, so much bait to catch the secret? His aim blood-money--blood-money? Why, MORBLEU!' the Lieutenant continued, pointing his finger at me, and so carried away by passion, so lifted out of himself by wrath and indignation, that I shrank before him--'you talk, lady, of contempt and abhorrence in the same breath with me, but what have you for him--what have you for him--the spy, the informer, the hired traitor? And if you doubt me, if you want evidence, look at him. Only look at him, I say.'

And he might say it; for I stood silent still, cowering and despairing, white with rage and hate. But Mademoiselle did not look. She gazed straight at the Lieutenant.

'Have you done?' she said.

'Done?' he stammered; her words, her air, bringing him to earth again. 'Done? Yes, if you believe me.'

'I do not,' she answered proudly. 'If that be all, be satisfied, Monsieur. I do not believe you.'

'Then tell me this,' he retorted, after a moment of stunned surprise. 'Answer me this! Why, if he was not on our side, do you think that we let him remain here? Why did we suffer him to stay in a suspected house, bullying us, annoying us, thwarting us, taking your part from hour to hour?'

'He has a sword, Monsieur,' she answered with fine contempt.

'MILLE DIABLES!' he cried, snapping his fingers in a rage. 'That for his sword! It was because he held the Cardinal's commission, I tell you, because he had equal authority with us. Because we had no choice.'

'And that being so, Monsieur, why are you now betraying him?' she asked. He swore at that, feeling the stroke go home.

'You must be mad!' he said, glaring at her. 'Cannot you see that the man is what I tell you? Look at him! Look at him, I say! Listen to him! Has he a word to say for himself?'

Still she did not look.

'It is late,' she replied coldly. 'And I am not very well. If you have done, quite done--perhaps, you will leave me, Monsieur.'

'MON DIEU! he exclaimed, shrugging his shoulders, and grinding his teeth in impotent rage. You are mad! I have told you the truth, and you will not believe it. Well--on your head be it then, Mademoiselle. I have no more to say! You will see.'

And with that, without more, fairly conquered by her staunchness, he saluted her, gave the word to the sergeant, turned and went down the path.

The sergeant went after him, the lanthorn swaying in his hand. And we two were left alone. The frogs were croaking in the pool, a bat flew round in circles; the house, the garden, all lay quiet under the darkness, as on the night which I first came to it.

And would to Heaven I had never come that was the cry in my heart. Would to Heaven I had never seen this woman, whose nobleness and faith were a continual shame to me; a reproach branding me every hour I stood in her presence with all vile and hateful names. The man just gone, coarse, low-bred, brutal soldier as he was, manflogger and drilling-block, had yet found heart to feel my baseness, and words in which to denounce it. What, then, would she say, when the truth came home to her? What shape should I take in her eyes then? How should I be remembered through all the years then?

Then? But now? What was she thinking now, at this moment as she stood silent and absorbed near the stone seat, a shadowy figure with face turned from me? Was she recalling the man's words, fitting them to the facts and the past, adding this and that circumstance? Was she, though she had rebuffed him in the body, collating, now he was gone, all that he had said, and out of these scraps piecing together the damning truth? Was she, for all that she had said, beginning to see me as I was? The thought tortured me. I could brook uncertainty no longer. I went nearer to her and touched her sleeve.

'Mademoiselle,' I said in a voice which sounded hoarse and unnatural even in my own ears, 'do you believe this of me?'

She started violently, and turned.

'Pardon, Monsieur!' she murmured, passing her hand over her brow; 'I had forgotten that you were here. Do I believe what?'

'What that man said of me,' I muttered.

'That!' she exclaimed. And then she stood a moment gazing at me in a strange fashion. 'Do I believe that, Monsieur? But come, come!' she continued impetuously. 'Come, and I will show you if I believe it. But not here.'

She turned as she spoke, and led the way on the instant into the house through the parlour door, which stood half open. The room inside was pitch dark, but she took me fearlessly by the hand and led me quickly through it, and along the passage, until we came to the cheerful lighted hall, where a great fire burned on the hearth. All traces of the soldiers' occupation had been swept away. But the room was empty.

She led me to the fire, and there in the full light, no longer a shadowy creature, but red-lipped, brilliant, throbbing with life and beauty, she stood opposite me--her eyes shining, her colour high, her breast heaving.

'Do I believe it?' she said in a thrilling voice. 'I will tell you. M. de Cocheforet's hiding-place is in the hut behind the fern-stack, two furlongs beyond the village on the road to Auch. You know now what no one else knows, he and I and Madame excepted. You hold in your hands his life and my honour; and you know also, M. de Berault, whether I believe that tale.'

'My God!' I cried. And I stood looking at her until something of the horror in my eyes crept into hers, and she shuddered and stepped back from me.

'What is it? What is it?' she whispered, clasping her hands. And with all the colour gone suddenly from her cheeks she peered trembling into the corners and towards