IX
Fleurette was too young, too ignorant for self-analysis. She could not have told you what had made her act in the way she did, nor what had caused her so to mistrust Bibi as not to share her precious secret with him. All she knew was that she had had a wild desire to get away from him.
A cart track led from the postern gate across a couple of fields where it joined the main road; one or two isolated farm buildings belonging to M. de Frontenac, and the open fields on both sides, made the track fairly safe from footpads. The main road too which led through the village would be safer after dark, than the shortcut over the mountains. Fleurette hastened along, hugging her treasures, hoping that she would not fall in with the soldiers on their return from the château.
The weather had not fulfilled the promise made by the beauty of the sunset: heavy clouds hung over the sky; only one or two streaks of pale lemon-coloured light, like great gashes through the leaden clouds, still lingered in the West. Through the gloom farm-sheds and isolated trees loomed out like great immobile giants, and, on the right, the dense mass of the avenue of acacias and elder and the great gates of the château.
Fleurette was already well on her way along the high road and in sight of the first house of the village, the cottage where Adèle lived with her aunt, the widow Tronchet, when she heard the all too familiar sound behind her of the heavy tramping of feet and of horses’ hoofs raising the dust of the road. The night was so still that the sounds reached her ears distinctly. She heard the lieutenant’s harsh voice giving a brief word of command: the creaking of the château gates, as they swung upon their hinges. Just then Roy, Monsieur’s dog, set up a dismal howl, and from one of the tall poplar-trees that bordered the road an owl gave a hoot and fluttered out into the night.
Fleurette broke out into a run. She knew that she could ask for shelter in the widow Tronchet’s cottage and wait there until the soldiers had gone by. Perhaps Adèle would walk home with her after that. Fortunately she could already perceive the light glimmering in one of the tiny windows, and just at the moment Adèle came out of the front door, probably to see for herself what the unusual sounds were about.
She was mightily surprised to see Fleurette come running along.
“They are the same soldiers, Adèle,” Fleurette explained breathlessly, as she followed her foster-sister into the cottage, “who were at Lou Mas this afternoon. Close the door, do, and I’ll tell you all about them.”
The widow Tronchet came out of her kitchen, and looked disapprovingly at Fleurette. She did not like the girl, and discouraged all intercourse between her and Adèle. She was a thrifty, hard-featured, hardhearted peasant—older than her sister Louise by a couple of years—who had exacted every ounce of work and obedience from Adèle in payment for the shelter of her roof and for her daily bread. She had never forgiven her sister for leaving Adèle on her hands, though the girl had always worked her fingers to the bone, grudgingly no doubt, but diligently, in order to bring additional comfort into the cottage. But it was a poor, ill-furnished cottage, wherein food was none too plentiful, and beds hard, whereas Louise at Lou Mas lived in the lap of luxury; and envy had fostered dislike until it had almost become hatred.
She listened, with a frown on her hard wrinkled face, to Fleurette’s breathless tale of what had happened at the château. It would be the gossip of the village by tomorrow, that the soldiers of the Republic had arrested Monsieur, and that Madame and Mademoiselle had fled no one knew whither.
“Oh, Ma’ame Tronchet,” Fleurette concluded, her fresh voice hoarse with sobs, “dear Ma’ame Tronchet, you don’t think they’re really going to harm Monsieur, do you?”
The widow Tronchet shrugged her shoulders and gave a short, harsh laugh.
“I’m not thinking about it at all one way or the other,” she said dryly. “What difference does it make to us poor people,” she went on, grumbling, while she busied herself about the room, “what happens to all those aristos? They never cared what happened to us.”
For the moment Fleurette could do no more than stare at the widow Tronchet, in horror. Never had she heard anyone say anything so wicked. She was quite ready to defend Monsieur and Madame against any accusation of hardheartedness, and would have done so at risk of offending the disagreeable, ill-natured old woman, but for the moment her attention, as well as that of Adèle’s, was riveted on the sounds outside. The soldiers had just come round the bend of the road; they were quite close to the cottage already, with the two horsemen walking their mounts in the van.
“They are going on to Serres,” Fleurette whispered. In her heart she was wondering what Bibi was going to do. He was evidently not going to Orange, as he had said he would. Would he spend the night at Lou Mas after all? If he did, was there any danger of Fleurette’s secret leaking out? Of Bibi chéri finding out something about the casket and the precious wallet? Fleurette was still hugging the casket, she could see the widow Tronchet’s hard, steely eyes, gazing curiously at the bulge underneath her shawl, and then at the fullness in her kirtle where the wallet and the moneybag lay hidden in the pockets: Fleurette felt the blood rush up to her cheeks, and then had the mortification of seeing Adèle’s pinched-up little face break into a smile. Of what were those two women thinking? Surely not that she, Fleurette, had been stealing. Their faces were so inscrutable: the older woman’s hard and set, and Adèle’s ratlike and furtive, as if determined to conceal her thoughts.
The next moment they all heard the horsemen go by. Adèle ran to the door and peered out into the night. Over her shoulder she said to Fleurette:
“There’s your father riding with the soldiers. Shall I shout to him and tell him you are here?”
Instinctively Fleurette shook her head, and with that same inscrutable smile still on her face, Adèle deliberately closed the door again.
“They’ve got Monsieur walking between them,” she commented dryly.
“It would have been better,” the widow said acidly to Fleurette, “for Citizen Armand to know that you are here. It won’t be safe for women to be alone on the high road this night, I am thinking.”
Then, as Fleurette remained silent, debating within herself what she had best do, the old woman went on curtly: “The sooner you get home now, my girl, the better. Adèle has got to put in an hour’s work at Citizen Colombe’s up at the village; it is miserable pay enough,” she continued muttering to herself, “and a shame that one girl should have to work so hard, whilst another lives a pampered life of luxury. But anyway,” she concluded abruptly, “I can’t be wasting any lamp-oil on you.”
“No—no—of course not, Ma’ame Tronchet,” Fleurette stammered. But the widow, still muttering under her breath, was paying no more attention to her. She had climbed on to a chair, and reaching up to the lamp that hung from the ceiling, she turned out the light. The room was now in darkness except for the light that came in through the open kitchen door. The widow with a curt: “Don’t be late, Adèle,” went off into the kitchen, and a moment or two later could be heard busy with her pots and pans.
Adèle had picked up her shawl, and equally unceremoniously gone as far as the door, when Fleurette called her shyly back.
“Adèle!”
The girl turned without speaking, her hand on the door which she was holding open.
“If you are going to M’sieur Colombe, could you—”
Fleurette stammered, “I mean, would you tell Monsieur Amédé, that—that I am here, and perhaps—”
“Why don’t you come along with me?” Adèle retorted dryly, “and tell him what you want.”
Of course Fleurette could not tell her that she did not want Monsieur and Madame Colombe to know that she had something important to say to M’sieu’ Amédé. So all she said was: “Oh, Adèle, please!”
Adèle retorted with a shrug of the shoulders and an ugly little sneer:
“You don’t want his papa and mama to know, I suppose.”
Fleurette whispered: “No!”
“Very well!” was all that Adèle said in reply. “I’ll tell him.”
And in her usual, furtive, noiseless way she went out of the house, closing the door behind her.