The doctor came next day, a rotund man of benevolent aspect, with little smiling slits of eyes slightly turned up at the outer end, like a Chinaman’s. He was familiarly known in the village as Le Chinois. But it did not take Paul long to learn that, in spite of the nickname, he was idolized by every inhabitant of the district for miles round. He was a man of private income, and all his professional earnings were spent upon his poor. In a fortnight Paul and he were thick as thieves. Le Chinois had travelled extensively, and appeared to be on terms of intimacy with the literature of every European people. He had not the faintest idea of the pronunciation of the English language, but he wrote it currently and with some approach to elegance, and his knowledge of English letters put Paul to shame. With all his learning and his philosophic agnosticism, he was as simple-hearted as a child. Annette took the greatest fancy to him and welcomed his visits, and played round him with a sprightliness her husband had never before observed in her. ‘She is changing,’ he thought, ‘and changing for the better.’ The new conditions seemed as if they brought new life and developed a novel character. But he noticed that her outbursts of gaiety were followed invariably by deep depression. She would sit in the garden in the dusk of the early summer evenings alone, and if her solitude were intruded upon would wave him away without a word. It irritated her at such times even to be looked at, and Paul, deeply anxious for the time being to fall in with her every whim, would betake himself to the little café opposite, and chat there with the simple village folk. Sometimes M. le Prince, a scion of one of the noblest houses of Europe, who lived in retirement on an income of some three hundred sterling per annum, would drop in and sip his little glass of orgeat, and chatter with the peasants about crops and weather. Sometimes the doctor would spend a spare half-hour there in the evening, and sometimes the venerable doyen himself, though he never actually entered the house except upon a pastoral visit, would take a seat outside and drink his after-dinner coffee amongst the members of his flock.
Always after these quiet dissipations when Paul went home he found Annette asleep, and in a very little while each day became like another, and a routine was established. Annette was invariably a little fatigued in the morning, but brightened as the day went on. She was vivacious in the afternoon; by dinner-time she was in feverish high spirits. After dinner she became depressed and moody. Paul, observing these symptoms with tender interest, attributed them all to her condition, and assumed that they were natural.
But one evening in mid-June an incident happened which for a time gave him genuine concern. Since he had resolved to settle in the village for some time, he had rented a small office in the hotel, which he had transformed into a study, and there he spent most of his waking time at work. On this particular day he had gone to his den immediately after luncheon, and had grown so absorbed in his labours that the dinner-bell had sounded unheard. He was aroused from his work by the apple-cheeked maid, and was told that dinner was already served. He dashed upstairs two steps at a time, laved his hands and face, and descended to the dining-room. Annette was not there. He inquired for her, and learned that she had gone out an hour or two before and had not yet returned. This caused him no anxiety, for she had made some acquaintances in the place, and had one or two houses at which she was accustomed to visit But when the meal was over and there was still no sign of her, he began to be vaguely inquiet, and, taking up his hat, he walked out into the tranquil brightness of the summer evening, and called from house to house to ask after her. But Madame Bulot had not seen her, nor had Madame Gerard, nor had the doctor, nor had little Mademoiselle Coquelin, the dressmaker. Madame Armstrong had been observed on the road which led to the Bois de Falaise some four hours ago, and that was the latest news of her. The vague inquiet began to deepen into serious misgiving. Paul walked rapidly to the Terre de Falaise, scoured the broad carriage-drive which had been cut through the wood, beat up one or two favourite little haunts of Annette’s, and found no trace of her. He returned to the hotel, only to learn that she had not been seen. A terror of a thousand imagined accidents took hold of him, and he flew to the gendarmerie with intent to organize a search. But while he was discussing ways and means with the Juge d’Instruction, who had been hastily sent for from next door, a stable-keeper from the hotel ran up to inform him that Madame had been found, that she had been evidently dreadfully frightened, and was in hysterics. When he reached the hotel, breathless, he found a group of startled people in the corridor, and from the bedroom he could hear Annette’s voice shrieking that they were dancing in the wood, and that their bones were white. He pushed eagerly through the knot of listeners, and made his way into the bedroom. The doctor was there, and warned him away at once.
‘You can do no good here,’ he said; ‘you will only distress yourself.’
‘There is no danger?’ he asked, panting after his homeward run.
‘There is not the slightest atom of danger,’ said the doctor.
CHAPTER XVI
Here, in the wakeful night, high up in the monstrous hills, with this everlasting torrent raging in his ears, and the camp-fire out of doors there flaring, flickering, glowing, dying down—here in the fog of the forest fires and the solitude of the mountains, it is so easy to see things as they truly were. A shrug, a smile, a word, a silence, the lift of an eyebrow—things which had no apparent meaning a dozen years ago, which were either unnoticed or forgotten in an instant—are alive with monitions now. Not to have seen! Not to have guessed ‘It looks incredible. A mule might have begun to read the riddle.
Paul read nothing.