He looked up in the end, and caught the look on her face, the look that a woman bestows on one man only in her life. In a moment he was on his knees beside her, holding her hands, covering them with kisses, vowing to save her, to save her—or to die with her!
CHAPTER XX.
IN THE DARKENED ROOM.
Claude flung the cloak from his head and shoulders, and sat up. It was morning—morning, after that long, dear sitting together—and he stared confusedly about him. He had been dreaming; all night he had slept uneasily. But the cry that had roused him, the cry that had started that quick beating of the heart, the cry that still rang in his waking ears and frightened him, was no dream.
As he rose to his feet, his senses began to take in the scene; he remembered what had happened and where he was. The shutters were lowered and open. The cold grey light of the early morning at this deadest season of the year fell cheerlessly on the living-room; in which for the greater safety of the house he had insisted on passing the night. Anne, whose daily task it was to open the shutters, had been down then: she must have been down, or whence the pile of fresh cones and splinters that crackled, and spirted flame about the turned log. Perhaps it was her mother's cry that had roused him; and she had re-ascended to her room.
He strode to the staircase door, opened it softly and listened. No, all was silent above; and then a new notion struck him, and he glanced round. Her hood was gone. It was not on the table on which he had seen it last night.
It was so unlikely, however, that she had gone out without telling him, that he dismissed the notion; and, something recovered from the strange agitation into which the cry had cast him, he yawned. He returned to the hearth and knelt and re-arranged the sticks so that the air might have freer access to the fire. Presently he would draw the water for her, and fill the great kettle, and sweep the floor. The future might be gloomy, the prospect might lower, but the present was not without its pleasures.
All his life his slowness to guess the truth on this occasion was a puzzle to him. For the materials were his. Slowly, gradually, as he crouched sleepily before the fire, it grew upon him that there was a noise in the air; a confused sound, not of one cry, but of many, that came from the street, from the rampart. A noise, now swelling a little, now sinking a little, that seemed as he listened not so distant as it had sounded a while ago. Not distant at all, indeed; quite close—now! A sound of rushing water, rather soothing; or, as it swelled, a sound of a crowd, a gibing, mocking crowd. Yes, a crowd. And then in one instant the change was wrought.
He was on his feet; he was at the door. He, who a moment before had nodded over the fire, watching the flames grow, was transformed in five seconds into a furious man, tugging at the door, wrestling madly with the unyielding oak. Wrestling, and still the noise rose! And still he strained in vain, back and sinew, strained until with a cry of despair he found that he could not win. The door was locked, the key was gone! He was a prisoner!