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.