第45章 CHAPTER X(5)

He glared at me for a moment in speechless anger.

At last, 'I should like to have you tied up!' he said between his teeth.

'I should think that you had had enough of tying up for one day!'

I retorted. 'But there,' I went on contemptuously, 'it comes of making officers out of the canaille. Dogs love blood. The teamster must lash something if he can no longer lash his horses.'

We were back, a sombre little procession, at the wooden bridge when I said this. He stopped.

'Very well,' he replied, nodding viciously. 'That decides me.

Sergeant, light me this way with a lanthorn. The rest of you to the village. Now, Master Spy,' he continued, glancing at me with gloomy spite, 'Your road is my road. I think I know how to spoil your game.'

I shrugged my shoulders in disdain, and together, the sergeant leading the way with the light, we crossed the dim meadow, and passed through the gate where Mademoiselle had kissed my hand, and up the ghostly walk between the rose bushes. I wondered uneasily what the Lieutenant would be at, and what he intended; but the lanthorn-light which now fell on the ground at our feet, and now showed one of us to the other, high-lit in a frame of blackness, discovered nothing in his grizzled face but settled hostility. He wheeled at the end of the walk to go to the main door, but as he did so I saw the flutter of a white skirt by the stone seat against the house, and I stepped that way.

'Mademoiselle?' I said softly. 'Is it you?'

'Clon?' she muttered, her voice quivering. 'What of him?'

'He is past pain,' I answered gently. 'He is dead--yes, dead, Mademoiselle, but in his own way. Take comfort.'

She stifled a sob; then before I could say more, the Lieutenant, with his sergeant and light, were at my elbow. He saluted Mademoiselle roughly. She looked at him with shuddering abhorrence.

'Are you come to flog me too, sir?' she said passionately. 'Is it not enough that you have murdered my servant?'

'On the contrary, it was he who killed my Captain,' the Lieutenant answered, in another tone than I had expected. 'If your servant is dead so is my comrade.'

'Captain Larolle?' she murmured, gazing with startled eyes, not at him but at me.

I nodded.

'How?' she asked.

'Clon flung the Captain and himself--into the river pool above the bridge,' I said.

She uttered a low cry of awe and stood silent; but her lips moved and I think that she prayed for Clon, though she was a Huguenot.

Meanwhile, I had a fright. The lanthorn, swinging in the sergeant's hand, and throwing its smoky light now on the stone seat, now on the rough wall above it, showed me something else.

On the seat, doubtless where Mademoiselle's hand had lain as she sat in the dark, listening and watching and shivering, stood a pitcher of food. Beside her, in that place, it was damning evidence, and I trembled least the Lieutenant's eye should fall upon it, lest the sergeant should see it; and then, in a moment, I forgot all about it. The Lieutenant was speaking and his voice was doom. My throat grew dry as I listened; my tongue stuck to my mouth I tried to look at Mademoiselle, but I could not.

'It is true that the Captain is gone,' he said stiffly, 'but others are alive, and about one of them a word with you, by your leave, Mademoiselle. I have listened to a good deal of talk from this fine gentleman friend of yours. He has spent the last twenty-four hours saying "You shall!" and "You shall not!" He came from you and took a very high tone because we laid a little whip-lash about that dumb devil of yours. He called us brutes and beasts, and but for him I am not sure that my friend would not now be alive. But when he said a few minutes ago that he was glad--glad of it, d--him!--then I fixed it in my mind that I would be even with him. And I am going to be!'

'What do you mean?' Mademoiselle asked, wearily interrupting him. 'If you think that you can prejudice me against this gentleman--'

'That is precisely what I am going to do! And a little more than that!' he answered.

'You will be only wasting your breath!' she retorted.

'Wait! Wait, Mademoiselle---until you have heard,' he said.

'For I swear to you that if ever a black-hearted scoundrel, a dastardly sneaking spy trod the earth, it is this fellow! And I am going to expose him. Your own eyes and your own ears shall persuade you. I am not particular, but I would not eat, I would not drink, I would not sit down with him! I would rather be beholden to the meanest trooper in my squadron than to him! Ay, I would, so help me Heaven!'

And the Lieutenant, turning squarely on his heel, spat on the ground.