From the outset there was no finesse, no pretence of propitiation in her tactics. She understood that it was a matter of now or never with her quarry, and aimed to bring him down sitting. A woman, even the best of her sex, never gives “law” in these matters. She goes out to kill.
The two together formed an opposition camp—quite flagrantly, out in the sunlight. I thought sometimes the boy looked unhappy; but the witch would never let me have him to myself, and I could not manœuvre her from under his guns. I would never have scrupled to roll her in the mud, could I once have got her alone. But she was too cunning for that; and, as for her companion, his warfare was, after all, an honourable warfare. And all the time I had my own particular Campaspe to safeguard, to console, to squire through the odious notoriety which her brother’s infatuation had conferred upon us all.
It was Carabas, of course, who in the end procured us a way, his own, out of the difficulty. The scandal being common property, there was no need for him to affect an ignorance of it. Yet we never knew, until the moment of his decision, how it had been occupying his mind from the beginning, or how, quietly and unobtrusively, he had been studying to qualify himself as our advocate. “Our advocate,” I say; but I knew his brief was for the bright eyes of Campaspe. He struck for the credit of the hotel, he declared; and mam’selle was associated with the best of that. Anyhow he struck, and daringly.
He had risen from his bed on the fourth day, as smiling, as complaisant as ever. His presence, like a genial thaw, ameliorated the little winter of our discontent. We greeted his reappearance with effusion, and dated, from the moment of it, our restoration to the social sanities.
It was a dusk, warm evening. The peaks of the Dent du Midi, thrust into a dewy sky, had been slowly cooling from pink to pearl-ash, like ingots of white-hot steel. Everything seemed one harmony of colour, except our thoughts, Campaspe’s and mine, as we strolled in the deserted garden. The Celestine and her victim had been out boating on the lake. We met them, unexpectedly returning. Mademoiselle was eating cherries out of a bag, and daintily spitting the stones right and left as she advanced. I don’t know how we should have faced the contretemps; I had no time, indeed, at the moment, to form a decision, before Carabas came softly and swiftly from a leafy ambush, and took command of the occasion.
We all, I believe, instinctively recognized it for a critical one. Mademoiselle’s bosom, though she laughed musically (she had managed to preserve, it must be owned, the unspoiled voice of a séductrice) began to rise and fall in spasms. The portier addressed her without a moment’s hesitation.
“I take the liberty to inform madame that she is in danger.”
She gave a little gasp.
“But is this comedy or melodrama?” she cried vehemently.
“That is,” said Carabas, “as madame shall decide. I have the plot up my sleeve.”