Under the Red Robe

S >> Stanley Weyman >> Under the Red Robe

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'Madame!' I exclaimed; and there I stopped. I could say no
more. The rose garden, with its air of neglect, the shadow of the
quiet house that fell across it, the great yew hedge which backed
it, and was the pattern of one under which I had played in
childhood--all had points that pricked me. But the women's
kindness, their unquestioning confidence, the noble air of
hospitality which moved them! Against these and their placid
beauty in its peaceful frame I had no shield, no defence. I
turned away, and feigned to be overcome by gratitude.

'I have no words--to thank you!' I muttered presently. 'I am a
little shaken this morning. I--pardon me.'

'We will leave you for a while,' Mademoiselle de Cocheforet said
in gentle pitying tones. 'The air will revive you. Louis shall
call you when we go to dinner, M. de Barthe. Come, Elise.'

I bowed low to hide my face, and they nodded pleasantly--not
looking closely at me--as they walked by me to the house. I
watched the two gracious, pale-robed figures until the doorway
swallowed them, and then I walked away to a quiet corner where
the shrubs grew highest and the yew hedge threw its deepest
shadow, and I stood to think.

And, MON DIEU, strange thoughts. If the oak can think at the
moment the wind uproots it, or the gnarled thorn-bush when the
landslip tears it from the slope, they may have such thoughts, I
stared at the leaves, at the rotting blossoms, into the dark
cavities of the hedge; I stared mechanically, dazed and
wondering. What was the purpose for which I was here? What was
the work I had come to do? Above all, how--my God! how was I to
do it in the face of these helpless women, who trusted me, who
believed in me, who opened their house to me? Clon had not
frightened me, nor the loneliness of the leagued village, nor the
remoteness of this corner where the dread Cardinal seemed a name,
and the King's writ ran slowly, and the rebellion long quenched
elsewhere, still smouldered. But Madame's pure faith, the
younger woman's tenderness--how was I to face these?

I cursed the Cardinal--would he had stayed at Luchon. I cursed
the English fool who had brought me to this, I cursed the years
of plenty and scarceness, and the Quartier Marais, and Zaton's,
where I had lived like a pig, and--

A touch fell on my arm. I turned. It was Clon. How he had
stolen up so quietly, how long he had been at my elbow, I could
not tell. But his eyes gleamed spitefully in their deep sockets,
and he laughed with his fleshless lips; and I hated him. In the
daylight the man looked more like a death's-head than ever. I
fancied that I read in his face that he knew my secret, and I
flashed into rage at sight of him.

'What is it?' I cried, with another oath. 'Don't lay your
corpse-claws on me!'

He mowed at me, and, bowing with ironical politeness, pointed to
the house.

'Is Madame served?' I said impatiently, crushing down my anger.
'Is that what you mean, fool?'

He nodded,

'Very well,' I retorted. 'I can find my way then. You may go!'

He fell behind, and I strode back through the sunshine and
flowers, and along the grass-grown paths, to the door by which I
had come I walked fast, but his shadow kept pace with me, driving
out the unaccustomed thoughts in which I had been indulging.
Slowly but surely it darkened my mood. After all, this was a
little, little place; the people who lived here--I shrugged my
shoulders. France, power, pleasure, life, everything worth
winning, worth having, lay yonder in the great city. A boy might
wreck himself here for a fancy; a man of the world, never. When
I entered the room, where the two ladies stood waiting for me by
the table, I was nearly my old self again. And a chance word
presently completed the work.

'Clon made you understand, then?' the young woman said kindly,
as I took my seat.

'Yes, Mademoiselle,' I answered. On that I saw the two smile at
one another, and I added: 'He is a strange creature. I wonder
that you can bear to have him near you.'

'Poor man! You do not know his story?' Madame said.

'I have heard something of it,' I answered. 'Louis told me.'

'Well, I do shudder at him sometimes,' she replied, in a low
voice. 'He has suffered--and horribly, and for us. But I wish
that it had been on any other service. Spies are necessary
things, but one does not wish to have to do with them! Anything
in the nature of treachery is so horrible.'

'Quick, Louis!' Mademoiselle exclaimed, 'the cognac, if you have
any there! I am sure that you are--still feeling ill, Monsieur.'

'No, I thank you,' I muttered hoarsely, making an effort to
recover myself. 'I am quite well. It was--an old wound that
sometimes touches me.'

CHAPTER IV

MADAME AND MADEMOISELLE

To be frank, however, it was not the old wound that touched me so
nearly, but Madame's words; which, finishing what Clon's sudden
appearance in the garden had begun, went a long way towards
hardening me and throwing me back into myself. I saw with
bitterness--what I had perhaps forgotten for a moment--how great
was the chasm that separated me from these women; how impossible
it was that we could long think alike; how far apart in views, in
experience, in aims we were. And while I made a mock in my heart
of their high-flown sentiments--or thought I did--I laughed no
less at the folly which had led me to dream, even for a, moment,
that I could, at my age, go back--go back and risk all for a
whim, a scruple, the fancy of a lonely hour.

I daresay something of this showed in my face; for Madame's eyes
mirrored a dim reflection of trouble as she looked at me, and
Mademoiselle talked nervously and at random. At any rate, I
fancied so, and I hastened to compose myself; and the two, in
pressing upon me the simple dainties of the table soon forgot, or
appeared to forget, the incident.

Yet in spite of this CONTRETEMPS, that first meal had a strange
charm for me. The round table whereat we dined was spread inside
the open door which led to the garden, so that the October
sunshine fell full on the spotless linen and quaint old plate,
and the fresh balmy air filled the room with the scent of sweet
herbs. Louis served us with the mien of a major-domo, and set on
each dish as though it had been a peacock or a mess of ortolans.
The woods provided the larger portion of our meal; the garden did
its part; the confections Mademoiselle had cooked with her own
hand.

By-and-by, as the meal went on, as Louis trod to and fro across
the polished floor, and the last insects of summer hummed
sleepily outside, and the two gracious faces continued to smile
at me out of the gloom--for the ladies sat with their backs to
the door--I began to dream again, I began to sink again into
folly, that was half-pleasure, half-pain. The fury of the
gaming-house and the riot of Zaton's seemed far away. The
triumphs of the fencing-room--even they grew cheap and tawdry. I
thought of existence as one outside it, I balanced this against
that, and wondered whether, after all, the red soutane were so
much better than the homely jerkin, or the fame of a day than
ease and safety.

And life at Cocheforet was all after the pattern of this dinner.
Each day, I might almost say each meal, gave rise to the same
sequence of thoughts. In Clon's presence, or when some word of
Madame's, unconsciously harsh, reminded me of the distance
between us, I was myself. At other times, in face of this
peaceful and intimate life, which was only rendered possible by
the remoteness of the place and the peculiar circumstances in
which the ladies stood, I felt a strange weakness, The loneliness
of the woods that encircled the house, and only here and there
afforded a distant glimpse of snow-clad peaks; the absence of any
link to bind me to the old life, so that at intervals it seemed
unreal; the remoteness of the great world, all tended to sap my
will and weaken the purpose which had brought me to this place.

On the fourth day after my coming, however, something happened to
break the spell. It chanced that I came late to dinner, and
entered the room hastily and without ceremony, expecting to find
Madame and her sister already seated. Instead, I found them
talking in a low tone by the open door, with every mark of
disorder in their appearance; while Clon and Louis stood at a
little distance with downcast faces and perplexed looks.

I had time to see all this, and then my entrance wrought a sudden
change. Clon and Louis sprang to attention; Madame and her
sister came to the table and sat down, and all made a shallow
pretence of being at their ease. But Mademoiselle's face was
pale, her hand trembled; and though Madame's greater self-command
enabled her to carry off the matter better, I saw that she was
not herself. Once or twice she spoke harshly to Louis; she fell
at other times into a brown study; and when she thought that I
was not watching her, her face wore a look of deep anxiety.

I wondered what all this meant; and I wondered more when, after
the meal, the two walked in the garden for an hour with Clon.
Mademoiselle came from this interview alone, and I was sure that
she had been weeping. Madame and the dark porter stayed outside
some time longer; then she, too, came in, and disappeared.

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 begin 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
Cocheforet 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, must give rise. I discarded my first
thought therefore--that he had returned unexpectedly--and I
sought for another solution.

But no other 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 awhile, 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-by 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 someone.
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 Cocheforet,
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
learned, and scanned trodden mould and crushed leaves with eager
eyes. But in vain. I could make nothing of it 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 someone 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
Cocheforet, 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 naively. '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 further; 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 Cocheforet does not seem very well to-day?' I
said.

'No?' she answered carelessly. 'Well, now you speak of it, I do
not think that she is. She is often anxious about--one we love.'

She uttered the last 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 she sat back against the wall. Nor did she say any
more, though I heard her sigh again. Is 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 that 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 Cocheforet mean by
returning so soon, if M. de Cocheforet 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 licence,
and, in the course of an hour, thought of a hundred keys to the
mystery. But none exactly fitted the lock, or laid open the
secret.

A false alarm that evening helped to puzzle me still more. I was
sitting about an hour after supper, on the same seat in the
garden--I had my cloak and was smoking--when Madame came out like
a ghost, and, without seeing me, flitted away through the
darkness toward the stables. For a moment I hesitated, and then
I followed her. She went down the path and round the stables,
and, so far, I saw nothing strange in her actions; but when she
had in this way gained the rear of the west wing, she took a
track through the thicket to the east of the house again, and so
came back to the garden. This gained, she came up the path and
went in through the parlour door, and disappeared--alter making a
clear circuit of the house, and not once pausing or looking to
right or left! I confess I was fairly baffled. I sank back on
the seat I had left, and said to myself that this was the lamest
of all conclusions. I was sure that she had exchanged no word
with anyone. I was equally sure that she had not detected my
presence behind her. Why, then, had she made this strange
promenade, alone, unprotected, an hour after nightfall? No dog
had bayed, no one had moved, she had not once paused, or
listened, like a person expecting a rencontre. I could not make
it out. And I came no nearer to solving it, though I lay awake
an hour beyond my usual time.

In the morning, neither of the ladies descended to dinner, and I
heard that Mademoiselle was not so well. After a lonely meal,
therefore I missed them more than I should have supposed--I
retired to my favourite seat and fell to meditating.

The day was fine, and the garden pleasant. Sitting there with my
eyes on the old fashioned herb-beds, with the old-fashioned
scents in the air, and the dark belt of trees bounding the view
on either side, I could believe that I had been out of Paris not
three weeks, but three months. The quiet lapped me round. I
could fancy that I had never loved anything else. The wood-doves
cooed in the stillness; occasionally the harsh cry of a jay
jarred the silence. It was an hour after noon, and hot. I think
I nodded.

On a sudden, as if in a dream, I saw Clon's face peering at me
round the angle of the parlour door. He looked, and in a moment
withdrew, and I heard whispering. The door was gently closed.
Then all was still again.

But I was wide awake now, and thinking. Clearly the people of
the house wished to assure themselves that I was asleep and
safely out of the way. As clearly, it was to my interest to be
in the way. Giving place to the temptation, I rose quietly, and,
stooping below the level of the windows, slipped round the east
end of the house, passing between it and the great yew hedge.
Here I found all still and no one stirring; so, keeping a wary
eye about me, I went on round the house--reversing the route
which Madame had taken the night before--until I gained the rear
of the stables. Here I had scarcely paused a second to scan the
ground before two persons came out of the stable-court. They
were Madame and the porter.

They stood a brief while outside and looked up and down. Then
Madame said something to the man, and he nodded. Leaving him
standing where he was, she crossed the grass with a quick, light
step, and vanished among the trees.

In a moment my mind was made up to follow; and, as Clon turned at
once and went in, I was able to do so before it was too late.
Bending low among the shrubs, I ran hotfoot to the point where
Madame had entered the wood. Here I found a narrow path, and ran
nimbly along it, and presently saw her grey robe fluttering among
the trees before me. It only remained to keep out of her sight
and give her no chance of discovering that she was followed; and
this I set myself to do. Once or twice she glanced round, but
the wood was of beech, the light which passed between the leaves
was mere twilight, and my clothes were dark-coloured. I had
every advantage, therefore, and little to fear as long as I could
keep her in view and still remain myself at such a distance that
the rustle of my tread would not disturb her.

Assured that she was on her way to meet her husband, whom my
presence kept from the house, I felt that the crisis had come at
last, and I grew more excited with each step I took. I detested
the task of watching her; it filled me with peevish disgust. But
in proportion as I hated it I was eager to have it done and be
done with it, and succeed, and stuff my ears and begone from the
scene. When she presently came to the verge of the beech wood,
and, entering a little open clearing, seemed to loiter, I went
cautiously. This, I thought, must be the rendezvous; and I held
back warily, looking to see him step out of the thicket.

But he did not, and by-and-by she quickened her pace. She
crossed the open and entered a wide ride cut through a low, dense
wood of alder and dwarf oak--a wood so closely planted and so
intertwined with hazel and elder and box that the branches rose
like a solid wall, twelve feet high, on either side of the track.

Down this she passed, and I stood and watched her go, for I dared
not follow. The ride stretched away as straight as a line for
four or five hundred yards, a green path between green walls. To
enter it was to be immediately detected, if she turned, while the
thicket itself permitted no passage. I stood baffled and raging,
and watched her pass along. It seemed an age before she at last
reached the end, and, turning sharply to the right, was in an
instant gone from sight.

I waited then no longer. I started off, and, running as lightly
and quietly as I could, I sped down the green alley. The sun
shone into it, the trees kept off the wind, and between heat and
haste I sweated finely. But the turf was soft, and the ground
fell slightly, and in little more than a minute I gained the end.
Fifty yards short of the turning I stopped, and, stealing on,
looked cautiously the way she had gone.

I saw before me a second ride, the twin of the other, and a
hundred and fifty paces down it her grey figure tripping on
between the green hedges. I stood and took breath, and cursed
the wood and the heat and Madame's wariness. We must have come a
league, or two-thirds of a league, at least. How far did the man
expect her to plod to meet him? I began to grow angry. There is
moderation even in the cooking of eggs, and this wood might
stretch into Spain, for all I knew!

Presently she turned the corner and was gone again, and I had to
repeat my manoeuvre. This time, surely, I should find a change.
But no! Another green ride stretched away into the depths of the
forest, with hedges of varying shades--here light and there dark,
as hazel and elder, or thorn, and yew and box prevailed--but
always high and stiff and impervious. Halfway down the ride
Madame's figure tripped steadily on, the only moving thing in
sight. I wondered, stood, and, when she vanished, followed-only
to find that she had entered another track, a little narrower but
in every other respect alike.

And so it went on for quite half an hour. Sometimes Madame
turned to the right, sometimes to the left. The maze seemed to
be endless. Once or twice I wondered whether she had lost her
way, and was merely seeking to return. But her steady,
purposeful gait, her measured pace, forbade the idea. I noticed,
too, that she seldom looked behind her--rarely to right or left.
Once the ride down which she passed was carpeted not with green,
but with the silvery, sheeny leaves of some creeping plant that
in the distance had a shimmer like that of water at evening. As
she trod this, with her face to the low sun, her tall grey figure
had a pure air that for the moment startled me--she looked
unearthly. Then I swore in scorn of myself, and at the next
corner I had my reward. She was no longer walking on. She had
stopped, I found, and seated herself on a fallen tree that lay in
the ride.

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