CHAPTER X.

THE LOVER’S PARTING.

Many times after drill, and that followed nights spent in learning the tactics, Pitou would wander in the skirts of Boursonne Wood to see how faithful Catherine was to her love-trysts.

Stealing an hour or two from her farm and house duties, the girl would go to a little hunting-box, in a rabbit warren belonging to Boursonne Manor, to meet the happy Isidore, the mortal more than ever proud and handsome, when all the country was in suffering around him.

What anguish devoured poor Pitou, what sad reflections he was driven to make on the inequality of men as regards happiness.

He whom the pretty maids were ogling, preferred to come and mope like a dog whipped for following the master too far from home, at the door of the summerhouse where the amorous pair were billing and cooing.

All because he adored Catherine and the more as he deemed her vastly superior to him. He did not regard her as loving another, for Isidore Charny had ceased to be an object of jealousy. He was a lord, handsome and worthy of being loved: but Catherine as a daughter of the lower orders ought not for that reason disgrace her family or drive Pitou to despair.

Meditation on this cut him with sharp edges and keen points.

“She showed no proper feeling in letting me go from the farm,” he mused, “and since I went off, she has not inquired whether I starved to death or not. What would Father Billet say if he knew how his friends are thus cast off, and his business neglected? What would he say if he heard that, instead of looking after the working people, his daughter goes to keep appointments with the aristocrat, Lord Charny? He would not say much, but he would kill her. It is something to have the means of revenge in one’s hand,” thought Pitou.

But it is grander not to use them.

Still, Pitou had learnt that there is no benefit in doing good unless the actions are known to the person befriended.

Would it be possible to let Catherine know that he was helping her?

He knew that she came through the woods to go to the hunting-box, and it was very easy for him to plant himself under the trees, a book in hand as if he were studying, where she would be sure to come along.

Indeed, as he was pretending to pore over the “Perfect National Guardsman,” after having watched her to her rendezvous, he heard the soft shutting of a door. The rustle of a dress in the brush came next. Catherine’s head appeared above the bushes, looking with an apprehensive air all round for fear somebody would see her.

She was ten paces from her rustic worshipper, who kept still with the book on his knee. But he no longer looked on it but at the girl so that she should mark that he saw her.

She uttered a slight faint, stifled scream, recognized him, became pale as though death had flitted by and grazed her, and, after a short indecision betrayed in her trembling and the shrug of her shoulders, she flew wildly into the underwood and found her hitched-up horse in the forest. She mounted and fled.

Pitou’s plot was well laid and she had fallen into it.

He went home, half-frightened, half delighted.

He perceived a number of details most alarming in the accomplished trick.

The following Sunday was appointed for a grand military parade at Haramont. Sufficiently drilled, the Haramontese meant to give warlike exercises. Several rival villages also making military studies, were to contest with them in the career of arms.

The announcement drew a great crowd, and the people in holiday attire gathered on the green, where they feasted frugally on homemade cake and fruit, washed down with spring water.

Some of the spectators were the gentry and squires, come to laugh at the clowns playing at soldiers.

Haramont had become a centre, for four corps of other Guards came hither, headed by fife and drum.

Among the farmers, came Catherine and Mother Billet on horseback.

This was at the same time as the Haramont National Guard marched up, with fife and drum, with Commander Pitou on a borrowed white horse, in order that the likeness should be complete to General Lafayette reviewing the National Guards at Paris.

Without joking, if he did not look stylish and aristocratic, he was noble and valiant and pleasant to behold.

This company of Guards had shining muskets, the national cockades, and marched with most satisfactory time in two files. It had won the tribute before reaching the parade ground.

Out of the corner of his eye, Pitou saw that Catherine changed color. From that moment the review had more interest to him than anything in the world.

He passed his men through the simple manual of arms, and they did it so smartly and neatly that it elicited applause.

Not so with the competitors, who were irregularly armed and had not been trained steadily. Others exaggerated from their conceit what they could have done properly.

On the whole imperfect results.

For the grand array, Pitou was outranked in seniority by an army sergeant who took the general command; but unhappily he had grasped more than he could hold: he bunched his men, lost grip of some files, let a company meander under the surrounding trees, and finally lost his head so that his own soldiers began to grumble.

From the Haramont side rose a shout:

“Let Pitou try!”

“Yes, yes Pitou!” caught up the other villagers, furious at their inferiority being manifested through their own instructors.

Pitou jumped on his white charger, and replacing himself at the head of his troop, become the rallying point of the little army, uttered a word of command so superbly that the oaks shivered. On the instant, and as by miracle, order was re-established: the movements fitted in with one another with such uniformity that the enthusiasm did not disturb the regularity. Pitou so well applied the theory of the instruction books and the practice of old Clovis that he obtained immense success.

Formed into a hollow square, the whole army raised but one voice and proclaimed him Colonel on the spot.

Bathed in perspiration and drunk with glory, Pitou got down off his horse and received the people’s felicitations when he alighted.

But at the same time he glanced round for Catherine. He heard her voice by his side; he had no need to hunt for her, as she had come to him. Great was this triumph.

“Have you not a word for us, Captain Pitou?” she demanded, with a laughing air belied by her pale face; “I suppose you have grown proud since you are a great general?”

“Oh, no,” responded he, saluting, “I am not that, but just a poor fellow who loves his country and desires to serve her.”

This reply was carried away on the waves of the multitude and was proclaimed sublime by the acclamation in unison.

“Ange, I want to speak with you,” whispered Catherine. “Do come back to the farm with mother and me.”

“All right.”

Catherine had already arranged that they should be alone together on the road. She had switched her mother into the train of several neighbors and gossips who held her in talk so that the girl could walk through the woods with the National Guardsman.

“Why have you kept aloof from the farm so long?” began Catherine when they were beneath the hoary oaks. “It is bad behavior on your part.”

Pitou was silent, for it hurt him to hear Catherine tell lies.

“But, I have something else to speak about,” she continued, seeing that he was avoiding her with his usually straight and loyal glance. “The other day I saw you in the copse. Did you know me?”

“Not at first, but I did know you.”

“What were you doing there in hiding?”

“Why should I be in hiding? I was studying a military book.”

“I only thought that curiosity----“

“I am not a Peeping Tom.”

She stamped testily with her small foot.

“You are always stuck there and it is not a regular place for students.”

“It is very secluded--nothing disturbs one there.”

“Nothing? do you stay there any length of time?”

“Sometimes whole days.”

“And have you been in the habit of making that your resort?” she inquired quickly.

“Since a good while back.”

“It is astonishing that I should not have seen you before,” she said, lying so boldly that Pitou was almost convinced.

But he was ashamed for her sake; he was timid from being in love and this led him to be guarded.

“I may have dozed off,” he replied; “it has happened when I have taxed my brain too much.”

“Then in your sleep you would not have noticed where I strayed for shade--I would go as far as the walls of the old shooting-lodge.”

“What lodge?” questioned Pitou.

“The Charny Hunting-lodge,” replied she, blushing from his innocence being too thickly laid on not to be suspicious. “It is there grow the finest houseleeks in the section. I burnt myself while ironing and wanted to make a poultice of them.”

As if willing to believe her, he looked at her hands.

“No, not my hand, my foot,” she said quickly. “I--I dropped the iron: but it has done me good; you see, that I do not limp.”

“She did not limp either when she scampered through the wood like a fawn,” thought Ange.

She imagined she had succeeded and that Pitou had seen and heard nothing. Giving way to delight, mean in so fine a spirit, she said:

“So Captain Pitou is riding his high horse; proud of his new rank, he scorns us rustics from being a military officer.”

Pitou felt wounded. Even a dissimulated sacrifice almost requires some reward, and as Catherine only mystified Pitou or jested at him, no doubt contrasting him with the intelligent Charny, all his good intentions vanished. Self-esteem is a charmed serpent, on which it is perillous to step unless you crush it once for all.

“It seems to me that you are the haughty one,” he returned, “for you drove me off the farm on the grounds that there was no work for me. I haven’t told Master Billet so far I have arms for earning my bread, thank God! However, you are the mistress under your own roof. In short, you sent me away. Hence, as you saw me at the Charny Lodge, and we were not enemies, it was your place to speak to me instead of running away like a boy stealing apples.”

The viper had bitten; Catherine dropped out of her calm.

“I, run away?” she exclaimed.

“As though fire had broken out on the farm. I had not time to shut up my book before you were on the back of Younker, where he was concealed in the foliage, after barking an ashtree, and ruining it.”

“What do you mean by ruining?”

“That is right enough,” continued Pitou: “while you were gathering houseleeks, Younker was browsing, and in an hour a horse eats a heap of stuff. It must have taken quite an hour for him to strip that sized tree of bark. You must have collected enough plants to cure all the wounds inflicted in taking the Bastile--it is a great thing for poultices!”

Pale and in despair, Catherine could not find a word to speak. Pitou was silent also, as he had said quite enough.

Mother Billet, stopping at the road forks, was bidding adieu to her cronies.

“What does the officer say?” queried the woman.

“He says goodnight to you, Mother Billet.”

“Not yet,” cried Catherine with a desperate tone. “Tell me the truth--are we no longer friends?”

Pitou felt his secret well up to his lips: but it was all over with him if he spoke; so he bowed mutely with respect which touched her heart; gave Mother Billet a pleasant smile, and disappeared in the dense wood.

“Is that what is called love?” Pitou monologued to himself; “it is sweet at times and then again bitter.”

He returned to Haramont, singing the most doleful of rural ballads to the mournfullest tunes.

Luckily he did not find his warriors in any such mood. On the contrary, they were preparing for a feast and they had set aside the chair of honor for their Caesar who had overcome the other villages’ Pompeys.

Dragged by his officers into the banquet room, he saluted in silence in return for the greetings, and with the calmness we know as his, attacked the roast veal and potatoes. His action lasted so long that his “digester” was filled while his heart was freed of gall. At the end of a couple of hours he perceived that his grief was no worse.

He stood up when his brother revellers could not stand, while the ladies had fled before the dessert. He made a speech on the sobriety of the Spartans--when all were dead drunk. He said that it was healthier to take a stroll than sleep under the table.

Alone he set the example; he asked of the shadows beneath the glades, why he should be so stern towards a young woman, made for love, grace and sweetness; one who might also cherish a fancy at the outset of life? Alas, why had she not fancied him?

Why should an ugly, uncouth bear like him inspire amorous sentiments in a pretty girl, when a handsome young nobleman--a very peacock beside him--was there to glitter and enchant?

He reasoned that, dazzled by Charny’s brilliancy, she would not see Pitou’s real value if he acted harshly towards her. Consequently, he ought to behave nicely to her.

The good soul, heated white hot by wine and love, vowed to make Catherine ashamed of having scorned the affection of such a sterling lover as he was.

He could not admit that the fair, chaste and proud Catherine was anything like a plaything to the dashing gallant, or a bright flirt, smiling on the lace ruffles and spurred boots.

Some day Master Isidore would go to the city to marry a countess, and the romance would end by his never looking at Catherine again.

To prove to the maid that he was not ugly, he resolved to take back any harsh words he had used; to do which it was necessary for him to see her.

He started through the woods for the Billet Farm, slashing the bushes with his stick--which blows the shrubs returned with usury.

During this time Catherine was pensively following her mother.

A few steps from the farm was a swamp. The road narrows there so that two horses can hardly go abreast. Mother Billet had gone through and the girl was about to follow when she heard a whistle.

In the shadow she spied the laced cap of Isidore’s groom. She let her mother ride on and waited for the messenger.

“Master wants to see you very particular this evening at eleven, wherever you like,” said the man.

“Good gracious, has anything bad happened to him?” she said.

“I do not know; but he had a letter from town sealed with black wax. I have been waiting an hour for you.”

Ten o’clock struck on the village church bell. Catherine looked round her.

“This place is dark and out of the way,” she said; “I will await your Master here.”

At the fixed time she ran out to the spot, warned by the sound of a galloping horse. It was Isidore, attended by the groom, who stood at a space while the noble advanced, without getting off his horse.

He held out his arms to her, lifted her on the stirrup, kissed her and said:

“My brother Valence was killed yesterday at Versailles and my brother the count calls me. I am off, Catherine!”

“Oh,” she moaned painfully, as she furiously embraced him, “if they have killed him, they will kill you as well.”

“Catherine, whatever betides, my eldest brother awaits me; Catherine, you know that I love you.”

“Oh, stay, stay,” she cried, only knowing one thing--that her beloved talked of leaving her.

“But, honor, Catherine--my murdered brother! vengeance!”

“Oh, what an unhappy girl I am,” moaned she, collapsing, palpitating but rigid in the horseman’s arms.

Resigned, for she at last comprehended that the brother’s summons was an order, she glided to the ground after a farewell kiss.

He turned his eyes, sighed and wavered for a time; but, attracted by the imperative order received, he set his horse to the gallop, and flung Catherine a final farewell.

The lackey followed him across the country.

Catherine remained on the ground, where she had dropped, barring the way with her body.

Almost immediately a man appeared on the hill, striding towards the farm. In his rapid course he could not fail to stumble on the body. He staggered and rolled in the fall, and his groping hands touched the inert form.

“Catherine--dead!” he yelled so that the farm dogs’ took up the howling. “Who has killed Catherine?”

He knelt down, pale and ice-cold, beside the inanimate body with its head across his knee.