Clon did not return with her, and when I went into the garden five minutes later Louis also had vanished. Save for two women who sat sewing at an upper window, the house seemed to be deserted. Not a sound broke the afternoon stillness of room or garden, and yet I felt that more was happening in this silence than appeared on the surface. I began to grow curious--suspicious; and presently slipped out myself by way of the stables, and, skirting the wood at the back of the house, gained with a little trouble the bridge which crossed the stream and led to the village.
Turning round at this point, I could see the house, and I moved a little aside into the underwood, and stood gazing at the windows, trying to unriddle the matter. It was not likely that M. de Cocheforêt would repeat his visit so soon; and, besides, the women's emotions had been those of pure dismay and grief, unmixed with any of the satisfaction to which such a meeting, though snatched by stealth, would give rise. I discarded my first thought, therefore--that he had returned unexpectedly--and I sought for another solution.
But none was on the instant forthcoming. The windows remained obstinately blind, no figures appeared on the terrace, the garden lay deserted, and without life. My departure had not, as I half expected it would, drawn the secret into light.
I watched a while, at times cursing my own meanness; but the excitement of the moment and the quest tided me over that. Then I determined to go down into the village and see whether anything was moving there. I had been down to the inn once, and had been received half sulkily, half courteously, as a person privileged at the great house, and therefore to be accepted. It would not be thought odd if I went again; and after a moment's thought, I started down the track.
This, where it ran through the wood, was so densely shaded that the sun penetrated to it little, and in patches only. A squirrel stirred at times, sliding round a trunk, or scampering across the dry leaves. Occasionally a pig grunted and moved farther into the wood. But the place was very quiet, and I do not know how it was that I surprised Clon instead of being surprised by him.
He was walking along the path before me with his eyes on the ground--walking so slowly, and with his lean frame so bent that I might have supposed him ill if I had not remarked the steady movement of his head from right to left, and the alert touch with which he now and again displaced a clod of earth or a cluster of leaves. By-and-bye he rose stiffly, and looked round him suspiciously; but by that time I had slipped behind a trunk, and was not to be seen; and after a brief interval he went back to his task, stooping over it more closely, if possible, than before, and applying himself with even greater care.
By that time I had made up my mind that he was tracking some one. But whom? I could not make a guess at that. I only knew that the plot was thickening, and began to feel the eagerness of the chase. Of course, if the matter had not to do with Cocheforêt, it was no affair of mine; but though it seemed unlikely that anything could bring him back so soon, he might still be at the bottom of this. And, besides, I felt a natural curiosity. When Clon at last improved his pace, and went on to the village, I took up his task. I called to mind all the wood-lore I had ever known, and scanned trodden mould and crushed leaves with eager eyes. But in vain. I could make nothing of it at all, and rose at last with an aching back and no advantage.
I did not go on to the village after that, but returned to the house, where I found Madame pacing the garden. She looked up eagerly on hearing my step; and I was mistaken if she was not disappointed--if she had not been expecting some one else. She hid the feeling bravely, however, and met me with a careless word; but she turned to the house more than once while we talked, and she seemed to be all the while on the watch, and uneasy. I was not surprised when Clon's figure presently appeared in the doorway, and she left me abruptly, and went to him. I only felt more certain than before that there was something strange on foot. What it was, and whether it had to do with M. de Cocheforêt, I could not tell. But there it was, and I grew more curious the longer I remained alone.
She came back to me presently, looking thoughtful and a trifle downcast. "That was Clon, was it not?" I said, studying her face.
"Yes," she answered. She spoke absently, and did not look at me.
"How does he talk to you?" I asked, speaking a trifle curtly.
As I intended, my tone roused her. "By signs," she said.
"Is he--is he not a little mad?" I ventured. I wanted to make her talk and forget herself.
She looked at me with sudden keenness, then dropped her eyes.
"You do not like him?" she said, a note of challenge in her voice. "I have noticed that, Monsieur."
"I think he does not like me," I replied.
"He is less trustful than we are," she answered naïvely. "It is natural that he should be. He has seen more of the world."
That silenced me for a moment, but she did not seem to notice it. "I was looking for him a little while ago, and I could not find him," I said, after a pause.
"He has been into the village," she answered.
I longed to pursue the matter farther; but though she seemed to entertain no suspicion of me, I dared not run the risk. I tried her, instead, on another tack. "Mademoiselle de Cocheforêt does not seem very well to-day?" I said.
"No?" she answered carelessly. "Well, now you speak of it, I do not think she is. She is often anxious about--my husband."
She uttered the last two words with a little hesitation, and looked at me quickly when she had spoken them. We were sitting at the moment on a stone seat which had the wall of the house for a back; and, fortunately, I was toying with the branch of a creeping plant that hung over it, so that she could not see more than the side of my face. For I knew that it altered. Over my voice, however, I had more control, and I hastened to answer, "Yes, I suppose so," as innocently as possible.
"He is at Bosost--in Spain. You knew that, I conclude?" she said, with a certain sharpness. And she looked me in the face again very directly.
"Yes," I answered, beginning to tremble.
"I suppose you have heard, too, that he--that he sometimes crosses the border?" she continued, in a low voice, but with a certain ring of insistence in her tone. "Or, if you have not heard it, you guess it?"
I was in a quandary, and grew, in one second, hot all over. Uncertain what amount of knowledge I ought to admit, I took refuge in gallantry. "I should be surprised if he did not," I answered, with a bow, "being, as he is, so close, and having such an inducement to return, Madame."
She drew a long, shivering sigh--at the thought of his peril, I fancied, and sat back against the wall. Nor did she say any more, though I heard her sigh again. In a moment she rose. "The afternoons are growing chilly," she said; "I will go in and see how Mademoiselle is. Sometimes she does not come to supper. If she cannot descend this evening, I am afraid you must excuse me too, Monsieur."
I said what was right, and watched her go in; and, as I did so, I loathed my errand, and the mean contemptible curiosity which it had planted in my mind, more than at any former time. These women--I could find it in my heart to hate them for their frankness, for their foolish confidence, and the silly trustfulness that made them so easy a prey!
Nom de Dieu! What did the woman mean by telling me all this? To meet me in such a way, to disarm one by such methods, was to take an unfair advantage. It put a vile--ay, the vilest--aspect, on the work I had to do.
Yet it was very odd! What could M. de Cocheforêt mean by returning so soon, if M. de Cocheforêt was here? And, on the other hand, if it was not his unexpected presence that had so upset the house, what was the secret? Whom had Clon been tracking? And what was the cause of Madame's anxiety? In a few minutes I began to grow curious again; and, as the ladies did not appear at supper, I had leisure to give my brain full license, and in the course of an hour thought