“That is better,” said the gardener, encouragingly. He had kicked off his shoes and stockings before Mme. Léon came out, and ran all the easier, his steps falling with a soft thud. That, the croaking of frogs, the soft hoot of owls, and the rush of the river were the only sounds, and to the wife’s strained ears the silence seemed full of strange significance.
Suddenly Jacques stopped.
“Go round by the bridge, madame. I shall take the bank.”
“I am coming with you,” she said, determinedly.
He raised no further objection, and they went where she and Jean had followed Raoul not so long ago, down a dark abyss of underwood which snatched at them as they pushed through it, slipping and sliding on the wet ground, her dress torn by briars and sharp twigs. Here and there, as they parted the branches, they caught a gleam of the river running, fiercely swollen, below, the moon striking the swift current, and leaving the darkness on either side more impenetrable. Several times Nathalie fell, but she repelled her companion’s help almost angrily, catching at the branches, and trying to add her feeble voice to the gardener’s shouts. When they reached the river it was like coming out into the day, the freakish moonlight falling in a flood of light on the grass, and bringing into clear distinctness the broad burdocks and mulleins which spread themselves near the water, while it left a fringe of poplars lower down on the other side in misty shadow. Jacques knew the river well, and had hastily made up his mind. Close to the spot where they were was a shallow into which he could wade, a spot where, when the river was in flood, things brought down by the current were often recoverable, caught as they were by a few stakes driven in at that point. It might be—But how the river ran, how it ran! What a slender hope was here! Their thoughts, though they had sprung together to this point, might be all unfounded; they might already be too late, or Léon might be lying, stiff and ghastly, in some gloomy shadow close to which they had passed unknowing. Jacques stood for a moment considering, and with the foolish inconsequence of misery Nathalie found herself noticing how white his bare feet looked in the moonlight, sunk as they were in the wet grass.
“I will stay here with the pole, madame,” he said. “Will you go up towards the bridge, and whistle for me if there is need?”
She was gone before he had finished, stumbling along, her staring eyes devouring the waters as they rushed by her; and she had not gone twenty yards before Jacques heard a scream, a splash, and, running to the spot, found her up to her knees in the water among the flags, clutching something which rose and fell, and, when it rose, turned a white face to the moonlight.