"He is asleep," muttered Réal. But the thought "I am lost" which he formulated in his mind had no reference to Scevola.
"He is afraid," said Arlette contemptuously in an undertone. "But that means little. He would quake with fright one moment and rush out to do murder the next."
Slowly, as if drawn by the irresistible authority of the old woman, they had been moving towards the door. Réal thought with the sudden enlightenment of passion: "If she does not go now I won't have the strength to part from her in the morning." He had no image of death before his eyes but of a long and intolerable separation. A sigh verging upon a moan reached them from the other side of the door and made the air around them heavy with sorrow against which locks and keys will not avail.
"You had better go to her," he whispered in a penetrating tone.
"Of course I will," said Arlette with some feeling. "Poor old thing. She and I have only each other in the world, but I am the daughter here, she must do what I tell her." With one of her hands on Réal's shoulder she put her mouth close to the door and said distinctly:
"I am coming directly. Go back to your room and wait for me," as if she had no doubt of being obeyed.
A profound silence ensued. Perhaps Catherine had gone already. Réal and Arlette stood still for a whole minute as if both had been changed into stone.
"Go now," said Réal in a hoarse, hardly audible voice.
She gave him a quick kiss on the lips and again they stood like a pair of enchanted lovers bewitched into immobility.
"If she stays on," thought Réal, "I shall never have the courage to tear myself away, and then I shall have to blow my brains out." But when at last she moved he seized her again and held her as if she had been his very life. When he let her go he was appalled by hearing a very faint laugh of her secret joy.
"Why do you laugh?" he asked in a scared tone.
She stopped to answer him over her shoulder.
"I laughed because I thought of all the days to come. Days and days and days. Have you thought of them?"
"Yes," Réal faltered, like a man stabbed to the heart, holding the door half open. And he was glad to have something to hold on to.
She slipped out with a soft rustle of her silk skirt, but before he had time to close the door behind her she put back her arm for an instant. He had just time to press the palm of her hand to his lips. It was cool. She snatched it away and he had the strength of mind to shut the door after her. He felt like a man chained to the wall and dying of thirst, from whom a cold drink is snatched away. The room became dark suddenly. He thought, "A cloud over the moon, a cloud over the moon, an enormous cloud," while he walked rigidly to the window, insecure and swaying as if on a tight rope. After a moment he perceived the moon in a sky on which there was no sign of the smallest cloud anywhere. He said to himself, "I suppose I nearly died just now. But no," he went on thinking with deliberate cruelty, "Oh, no, I shall not die. I shall only suffer, suffer, suffer. . . ."
"Suffer, suffer." Only by stumbling against the side of the bed did he discover that he had gone away from the window. At once he flung himself violently on the bed with his face buried in the pillow, which he bit to restrain the cry of distress about to burst through his lips. Natures schooled into insensibility when once overcome by a mastering passion are like vanquished giants ready for despair. He, a man on service, felt himself shrinking from death and that doubt contained in itself all possible doubts of his own fortitude. The only thing he knew was that he would be gone to-morrow morning. He shuddered along his whole extended length, then lay still gripping a handful of bedclothes in each hand to prevent himself from leaping up in panicky restlessness. He was saying to himself pedantically, "I must lie down and rest, I must rest to have strength for to-morrow, I must rest," while the tremendous struggle to keep still broke out in waves of perspiration on his forehead. At last sudden oblivion must have descended on him because he turned over and sat up suddenly with the sound of the word "Ecoutez" in his ears.
A strange, dim, cold light filled the room; a light he did not recognize for anything he had known before, and at the foot of his bed stood a figure in dark garments with a dark shawl over its head, with a fleshless predatory face and dark hollows for its eyes, silent, expectant, implacable. . . . Is this death?" he asked himself, staring at it terrified. It resembled Catherine. It said again: "Ecoutez." He took away his eyes from it and glancing down noticed that his clothes were torn open on his chest. He would not look up at that thing, whatever it was, spectre or old woman, and said:
"Yes, I hear you."
"You are an honest man." It was Catherine's unemotional voice. "The day has broken. You will go away."
"Yes," he said without raising his head.
"She is asleep," went on Catherine or whoever it was, "exhausted, and you would have to shake her hard before she would wake. You will go. You know," the voice continued inflexibly, "she is my niece, and you know that there is death in the folds of her skirt and blood about her feet. She is for no man."
Réal felt all the anguish of an unearthly experience. This thing that looked like Catherine and spoke like a cruel fate had to be faced. He raised his head in this light that seemed to him appalling and not of this world.
"Listen well to me, you too," he said. "If she had all the madness of the world and the sin of all the murders of the Revolution on her shoulders, I would still hug her to my breast. Do you understand?"
The apparition which resembled Catherine lowered and raised its hooded head slowly. "There was a time when I could have hugged l'enfer même to my breast. He went away. He had his vow. You have only your honesty. You will go."
"I have my duty," said Lieutenant Réal in measured tones, as if calmed by the excess of horror that old woman inspired him with.
"Go without disturbing her, without looking at her."
"I will carry my shoes in my hand," he said. He sighed deeply and felt as if sleepy. "It is very early," he muttered.
"Peyrol is already down at the well," announced Catherine. "What can he be doing there all this time?" she added in a troubled voice. Réal, with his feet now on the ground, gave her a side glance; but she was already gliding away, and when he looked again she had vanished from the room and the door was shut.
XV
CATHERINE, going downstairs, found Peyrol still at the well. He seemed to be looking into it with extreme interest.
"Your coffee is ready, Peyrol," she shouted to him from the doorway.
He turned very sharply like a man surprised and came along smiling.
"That's pleasant news, Mademoiselle Catherine," he said. "You are down early."
"Yes," she admitted, "but you too, Peyrol. Is Michel about? Let him come and have some coffee too."
"Michel's at the tartane. Perhaps you don't know that she is going to make a little voyage." He drank a mouthful of coffee and took a bite out of a slice of bread. He was hungry. He had been up all night and had even had a conversation with Citizen Scevola. He had also done some work with Michel after daylight; however, there had not been much to do because the tartane was always kept ready for sea. Then after having again locked up Citizen Scevola, who was extremely concerned as to what was going to happen to him but was left in a state of uncertainty, he had come up to the farm, had gone upstairs where he was busy with various things for a time, and then had stolen down very cautiously to the well, where Catherine, whom he had not expected downstairs so early, had seen him before she went into Lieutenant Réal's room. While he enjoyed his coffee he listened without any signs of surprise to Catherine's comments upon the disappearance of Scevola. She had looked into his den. He had not slept on his pallet last night, of that she was certain, and he was nowhere to be seen, not even in the most distant field, from the points of vantage around the farm. It was inconceivable that he should have slipped away to Madrague, where he disliked to go, or to the village, where he was afraid to go. Peyrol remarked that whatever happened to him he was no great loss, but Catherine was not to be soothed.