III
It took Ronnay de Maurel two hours to reach the village of Courson. The château was half a kilomètre further on. Never had he cursed its circular, pointed roofs as heartily as he did to-day. He would have liked to push them to the outermost confines of the earth.
"Where are we now?" Fernande asked softly.
"Very near home," he replied.
"I must have been asleep."
"I hope you have."
"And you are not tired?"
"No, I am not tired," he said curtly.
All the while that he had tramped with his burden through the woods and across the fields, he had felt contented with only the squirrels and the birds around him to mock him for his heavy gait, his stained blouse and muddy boots. The sight of the first cottage of Courson suddenly took all the zest out of his spirit. Self-consciousness returned, and with it his full measure of wrath against his kinsfolk, whom of a truth he had no mind to meet again—not while his fatigue, of which he suddenly became conscious, and the additional mudstains on his clothes after the long tramp, placed him at such obvious disadvantage. Their presence, he felt, would jar upon his mood to a degree which he felt he could not endure.
Fernande, who had been silently watching him from behind the bunch of bluebells, saw the scowl which gradually gathered on his brow and chased away that strange rapt look and the sunny smile, which she had noted with such satisfaction every time that she contrived to catch a glimpse of his face. Her womanly instinct had been so unerring up to now, the success of her undertaking so assured, that she had no mind to mar it by a false move in the end.
"Mon cousin," she said suddenly, just as de Maurel, avoiding the main village street, had struck through an orchard and along a by-path, which led to a postern gate in the boundary wall of the château, "mon cousin, by your leave, an you'll take me as far as the Lodge, I could try and walk up the avenue to the château—alone."
"But there's no one at the Lodge," he said, "and the avenue is over long."
"Annette will be at the Lodge," she argued; "she goes thither every morning to air the rooms. The door will be open. I could slip in.... No one would see us...."
Now that she suggested just what he would have liked to do, he was ready with opposition.
"I should not like to leave you. You might be in pain again," he said.
"Oh, my ankle is much better! It has had two hours' rest. I can wait at the Lodge till Annette comes."
Mechanically he had obeyed, and turned back in the direction of the main gates of the park. The Lodge—a small stone pavilion—was just inside the gates.
"We don't want to be spied from the château, do we, mon cousin?" added the young girl, whilst a ripple of laughter, musical as the song of a lark, helped to chase away the last lingering remnant of de Maurel's moodiness. "Ma tante would be vastly shocked, for my hair is dishevelled, and my gown wet and stained. Laurent would be angry and father would scold...."
She paused and suddenly uttered an exclamation of dismay.
"Holy Virgin! what have I done?"
"What is it?" he asked. "Mademoiselle Fernande, what is it? Are you in pain?"
"No. No, it is not that. My foot is so much better ... but ... but...."
She seemed ready to cry, and just now he felt that he would curse loudly and long if he saw her in distress.
"In Heaven's name, Mademoiselle Fernande," he implored, "I entreat you to tell me what troubles you."
"My shoe and my stocking," she murmured in a weak, trembling voice. "I left them beside the pool."
Ronnay de Maurel literally gave a gasp of horror. A calamity such as this seemed to him to be beyond the confines of possibility.
"Beside the pool!" he exclaimed aghast. "Impossible!"
"How impossible?" she retorted impatiently. "I haven't my shoe and stocking on, have I?"
He took a peep at the bare, rosy toes, which vied in delicacy with the apple-blossom overhead.
"You certainly have not!" he replied.
"Well? And have you got them in your pocket, mon cousin?"
Sighing with regret, he vowed that he had not.
"Then I must have left them by the pool," she concluded.
"I'll go and fetch them," he said at once.
"And walk another dozen kilomètres to-day?"
"When shall I bring them?" was all that he said by way of rejoinder.
"Well, it will have to be soon ... that is if you really think that you wouldn't be too tired to go and fetch them.... But, you know, Mme. la Marquise is so rigid in the matter of decorum ... she will be so angry when she hears that I have lost my shoe ... and she will scold me ... and...."
We may take it that de Maurel was far too unversed in the usages of feminine amenities to notice how hopelessly the lovely creature in his arms was floundering in the mazes of her own rhetoric; he was obviously far too unsophisticated to suggest that if Mme. la Marquise was, indeed, so rigid in the matter of decorum, she would hardly approve of his walking in at Courson one day with her niece's shoe in one pocket and her stocking in the other. Just for a moment Fernande had a slight qualm of anxiety. She had engineered this final move in her campaign on the spur of the moment, and she had not had the time to think it out in detail. But, indeed, her fears were futile. De Maurel did not even notice the glaring discrepancy in the tale of Mme. la Marquise's supposed attitude towards the proprieties. As a matter of fact, the thought that Fernande should be scolded for having lost her stocking was so horrible, that his one idea now was a longing to get to the Lodge, to deposit his fair burden—if possible in Annette's charge—and then to start running at once, as fast as his wounded leg would allow—in search of the two precious articles.
The calamities which might overtake Fernande in the interval—her father's wrath, her aunt's reproaches—were so awful to contemplate, that poor Ronnay felt a cold sweat breaking out upon his forehead. Fortunately the incident did not weaken the power of his arms. He reached the Lodge without untoward accident; the gates, luckily, were open and there was no one about. Fernande declared that she was now not only able to stand, but also to hobble as far as the Lodge parlour, and to sit quietly there until Annette arrived, when she would forthwith proceed to the château, where, no doubt, every one was devoured with anxiety about her.
How thankful was de Maurel that the park of Courson was so lonely and deserted. He would have hated it if prying eyes had been nigh when, with infinite precaution, he lowered his precious burden to the ground. It was terrible to see how he had crushed her gown, and, alas! the bluebells hung their tiny heads in a very drooping fashion.
"I thank you, mon cousin," she said, as leaning against the stone pillar of the porch she held out her hand to him. He knew quite well that he ought then to have taken that little hand, which was as white and delicate as a snowflake, and that he ought to have kissed the tips of those flower-like fingers. But had he not boasted a brief while ago that he did not know the art of kissing a lady's hand? This was so true, that at this moment, when he would have bartered his life for the pleasure of pressing his lips against that hand, he could only murmur a few meaningless and clumsy words. His whole bearing became awkward and ungainly; he was self-conscious, furious with himself, angered against that world which had shut him out from its reserved precincts.
He threw one quick look of appeal to the young girl, encountered her glance of indulgent mockery, muttered a hasty farewell, and then turned abruptly on his heel.
Fernande remained standing in the porch until the tall, massive figure with the curious, dragging gait had disappeared beyond the gates of the park; then—oh, shame! unblushing shame!—she executed a pirouette upon that sadly injured foot. She stretched out her arms with a gesture of triumph, and threw back her head, filling her lungs with the intoxicating air of this glorious spring morning. Her eyes were dancing with glee, the quick breath came and went through her full, parted lips, and there was a glow of excitement upon her cheeks.