The Grey Cloak - Page 213/256

Madame had wandered off by herself to view the scene from a distance;

but her interest soon died away and her thoughts became concerned with

her strange fate. She regretted her beauty; for she was conscious that

she possessed this physical attribute. It had been her undoing; she

had used it in play, to this miserable end. It was only when large

drops of rain splashed on her face that she realized where she was or

that a storm had burst upon the valley.

"Madame, will you do me the honor to accept my cloak?"

Drearily she inclined her head toward the voice, and became awake to

the actualities of the moment. For the speaker was D'Hérouville. It

was the first opportunity he had found to address her, and he was

determined to make the most of it.

"Will you accept my cloak, Madame?" he repeated. "It is raining."

"Accept your cloak? Touch anything which belongs to you? I think not,

Monsieur!" She went on. She even raised her face toward the cold,

sweet-smelling torrents.

"Madame!"

"Monsieur, is it not a grey cloak which you have to offer?" with sudden

inspiration. For madame had been thinking lately of that garment which

had played so large a part in her destiny. "Have you not the cloak to

offer which made me a widow? Monsieur, the sight of you makes me ill.

Pray, go about your affairs and leave me in peace. Love you? I abhor

you. I can not speak in plainer language."

He muttered an oath inarticulately.

"Take care, Madame!" standing in front of her. How easily he might

crush the life from that delicate throat! He checked his rage. Within

three hundred yards was the palisade. "I would not be here in these

cursed wilds but for your sake. You know the persistence of my love;

take heed lest you learn the quality of my hate."

"Neither your love nor your hate shall in the future disturb me. There

are men yonder. Do you wish me to shame you by calling them?"

"I have warned you!"

He stepped aside, and she passed on, the rain drenching her hair and

face. His gaze, freighted with love and hate and despair, followed

her. She was lost to him. He knew it. She had always been lost to

him, only her laughter and her smiles had blinded him to the truth.

Suddenly all that was good in him seemed to die. This woman should be

his; since not honestly, dishonestly. Revenge, upon one and all of

them, priests, soldiers, and women, and the other three fools whom

madame had tricked as she had him. One of his furies seized him. Some

men die of rage; D'Hérouville went mad. He looked wildly around for

physical relief, something upon which to vent his rage. The blood

gushed into his brain--something to break, to rend, to mangle. He

seized a small sapling, bore it to the ground, put his foot on it and

snapped it with ease. He did not care that he lacerated his hands or

that the branches flying back scratched his face. He laughed fiercely.

The Chevalier first, that meddling son of the left-hand whom his father

had had legitimatized; then the vicomte and the poet. As for

madame . . . Yes, yes! That would be it. That would wring her proud

heart. Agony long drawn out; agony which turns the hair grey in a

single night. That would be it. He could not return to the fort yet;

he must regain his calm. Money would buy what he wanted, and the ring

on his finger was worth many louis, the only thing of value he had this

side of France. But it was enough. A deer fled across his path, and a

partridge blundered into his face. They had played him the man in the

motley; let them beware of the fool's revenge.