Sir Isumbras at the Ford

by D. K. Broster

He sat down, puzzled, to the bread and meat and wine ready on the table, and the Breton, after a moment's hesitation, did the same. As a matter of fact, La Vireville was passably hungry, and not a little exhausted by his painful walk. But he could scarcely eat for watching the slim hands that cut the bread and poured his wine. They were brown enough, but the shape and the well-tended nails betrayed them. At last he began to feel annoyed with Grain d'Orge for keeping him in the dark as to the identity of his hostess, since to believe for a moment that she was a fisherman's wife was impossible. If not a lady of great quality she was no woman of the people. And, seizing an opportunity when she was gone from the room, he addressed his guide.

"What the devil do you mean by foisting me upon a gentlewoman in this fashion? Who is she?"

Grain d'Orge went on stolidly eating.

"As I told Monsieur Augustin, she is the agent for the Jersey correspondence of the late M. Alexis. She passes here as Mme. Rozel, a fisherman's——"

"Fisherman's fiddlestick!" interrupted his leader impatiently. "Do you think I am as blind as the people of Porhoët?"

"But I do not know her other name, if she have another," said the Breton. "I do not even know that of the late M. Alexis, but doubtless Monsieur Augustin knows it."

La Vireville did know it, or thought he did. Under that cognomen, he believed, had been concealed the identity of a gentleman from the St. Pol de Léon country, a M. de Kérouan or something of the sort. This, however, did not help him much, and when Mme. Rozel came back he found himself observing her for the next few minutes with an increasing interest. Her face was rather pale, with an intense clear pallor that was accentuated rather than reduced by the lamplight, and she had wide, beautiful brows. The mouth was sad and resolute; her whole expression was sad, but it was resolute too, and when suddenly she lifted her eyes and looked her guest full in the face he received, for the second time since his entrance, an unmistakable shock. They were, unquestionably, the most expressive eyes he had ever seen in a woman. The Chevalier de la Vireville divined in his hostess depths which it had been interesting to explore had not both leisure and inclination been lacking to him.

Mme. Rozel, however, veiled those eyes again and said very little, and after a time Grain d'Orge rose, wiped his mouth with the back of his hand, crossed himself, muttered a prayer, and announced that he was going out to watch the roads and would not be back till morning. But La Vireville still sat on at the table, the lamplight beating full on his own lean, strongly-marked features, with their look of humour and daring, on the cleft in his determined chin, and on his dark hair, clubbed and ribboned indeed, but somewhat disordered from the sea-wind. Yet it was curiosity, not hunger, which kept him there, his half-emptied glass between his fingers, engaging his hostess in talk almost perceptibly against her will. Her replies were very brief, and at first he himself made wary conversational moves; for though he really placed almost absolute reliance on Grain d'Orge's knowledge and discretion in a matter of this kind, yet there existed always in this business, a need for caution, and there was just the hundredth part of a chance that she was not, after all, what that astute old Chouan asserted her to be—the agent de la correspondance. But Mme. Rozel's prudence, if anything, exceeded his own; indeed, after a little fencing on both sides it began to seem to La Vireville that she was—necessary circumspection apart—a trifle hostile to him. Possibly she, on her side, felt that he might not be what Grain d'Orge, when he made arrangements for her to receive him, had given him out to be. And yet, from the trend of their guarded converse, it seemed rather that she tacitly resented his coming to take the dead leader's place—for so much she allowed him to gather that she knew of his purpose. But why should she resent it?

He suddenly fired a direct question at her.

"Have you any reason to believe, Madame, that the death of the late M. Alexis was due to anything other than the fortunes of war? I have heard a rumour of treachery. It is true, at any rate, is it not, that he was surprised?"