Flinging myself fiercely away from the crowd, I rushed to look into a detached two-story outbuilding which had but now got fairly burning. I wondered if there were no stuff in it which I might rescue. The smoke and flame were pouring so hotly from the door that I could not see what was inside. But as I peered in, my face shaded with my hand from the scorching glare, I heard a faint, pitiful mewing just above me, and looked up.
There, on the sill of a window of the second story, a window from which came volumes of smoke, but of flame only a slender, darting tongue, crouched a white kitten. With a curious gripping at my heart I recognized it as one which I had seen playing at Yvonne’s feet the evening before. I remembered how it was forever pouncing with wild glee upon the tip of her little slipper, forever being gently rolled over and tickled into fresh ecstasies. The scene cut itself upon my brain as I ran for a yet undamaged ladder, which I noticed leaning against a shed near by.
The action doubtless filled the crowd with amazement, but no one raised a hand to help me. The ladder was long and very awkward to manage, but in little more than the time it takes to tell of it I got it up beside the window and sprang to the rescue. By this time, however, the flames were spouting forth. The moment I came within reach of it the little animal leapt upon me and clung with frantic claws. A vivid sheet of flame burst out in my very face, hurling me from the ladder; yet I succeeded in alighting on my feet, jarred, but whole. There was a smell of burnt hair in my nostrils, and I saw that the kitten’s coat, no longer white, was finely crisped. But what I smelt was not all kitten’s hair. Lifting my hand to my bitterly smarting face, I found my own locks, over my forehead, seriously diminished, while my once fairly abundant eyebrows and eyelashes were clean gone. My moustache, however, had escaped—and even at that moment, when my mind was surely well occupied with matters of importance, I could feel a thrill of satisfaction. A man’s vanity is liable to assert itself at almost any crisis; and it did not occur to me that a man lacking eyebrows and eyelashes could not hope to be redeemed from the ridiculous by the most luxuriant moustache that ever grew.
Half dazed, I stared about me, wondering what was next to be done. Suddenly I thought—“Why, of course; they have gone to Father Fafard’s!”
The kitten clung to me, mewing piteously, and I was embarrassed by it. First I dropped it into a large currant bush, where, as I thought, it would not be trodden upon. Then, remembering that it was Yvonne’s, I snatched it up, and with a grim laugh at the folly of my solicitude over so small a matter strode off with it toward the parsonage. I passed in front of the swaying crowd; and some one, out of sight, tittered. I had begun to forget the fool rabble of villagers,—to regard them as a painted mob in a picture, or as wooden puppets,—but their reality was borne back upon me at that giggle. I walked on, scowling upon the faces which shrank into gravity under my eye, till at last I noticed a kind-looking girl. Into her arms, without ceremony, I thrust the little animal; and as she took it I said:
“It belongs to Mademoiselle de Lamourie. Take care of it for her.”
Not waiting to hear her answer, I was off across the fields for the parsonage.
Chapter XV
Ashes as it were Bread
All this had come and gone as it were in a dream, and it seemed to me that I yet panted from my long race. I had seen nothing, meanwhile, of the Black Abbé or of his painted pack. Spies, however, he had doubtless in plenty among those gaping onlookers; and his devilish work yet lighted me effectually on my way across the wet fields. The glow was like great patches of blood upon the apple-trees, where the masses of bloom fairly fronted the light. The hedgerow thickets took on a ruddy bronze, a sparkle here and there as a wet leaf set the unwonted rays rebounding. The shadows were sharply black, and strangely misleading when they found themselves at odds with those cast by the moon. The scene, as I hastened over the quiet back lots, was like the unreal phantasmagoria of a dream. I found myself playing with the idea that it all was a dream, from my meeting with old Mother Pêche here—yes, in this very field—the night before to the present breathless haste and wild surmising. Then the whole bitter reality seemed to topple over, and fall upon me and crush me down. Not only was Yvonne pledged to another, but through grossest over-confidence I had failed her in her need, and worst of all, the thought that made my heart beat shakingly, she believed me a traitor. It forced a groan to my lips, but I ran on, and presently emerged upon the lane a few paces from Father Fafard’s gate.
As I turned in the good priest came and stood in the doorway, peering down the lane with anxious eyes. Seeing me, he sprang forward and began to speak, but I interrupted him, crying: