The Happy Foreigner Part 27

"Look in here!"

A flickering light issued from a small window, and having climbed the steps they could see inside. Two boys, about sixteen, a soldier and an old man, sat round a table beneath a hanging lamp, and sang from sc.r.a.ps of paper which they held in their hands. Behind the old man a girl stood cleaning a cup with a cloth.

"They are practising something. Knock!"

But there was no need, for a dog chained in a barrel close to them set up a wild barking.

"Is he chained? Keep this side. The old man is coming."

The door opened. The voices ceased; the girl stood by the old man's side.

"Yes, it could be arranged. People still crossed that way; their boat was a sort of ferry and there was a charge.

"There might be a little fog to-night, but it didn't matter. Margot knows the way across blindfold--Margot would row the lady. She would be waiting with a lantern at five minutes to seven; and again at half-past nine. Not too late at all! But Margot would not wait on the other side, it was too cold. They would lend the lady a whistle, and she must blow on it from the far bank."

"There's romance!" said f.a.n.n.y, as they came away.

"Not if you are caught."

"There's my magic luck!"

"How dare you ask like that? Even if you are not superst.i.tious, even if you don't believe a word of it, why be so defiant--why not set the signs right!"

"Oh, my dear Stewart, I hardly care! And to the creature who doesn't care no suspicion clings. Haven't I an honest face? Would you think it was me, me, of all the Section, to cross the river to-night, in a little boat with a lantern, to creep out of the house, out of the village, to dine forbidden in Chantilly, with some one who enchants me! You wouldn't. Why, do you know, if I lived up in their house, under their eyes, I would go out just the same, to cross the river. I wouldn't climb by windows or invent a wild tale to soothe them, but open the door and shut the door, and be gone. And would anybody say: 'Where's f.a.n.n.y?'"

"They might."

"They might. But they would answer their own question: 'Innocently sleeping. Innocently working. Innocently darning, reading, writing.'

I don't suspect myself so why should any one else suspect me!"

f.a.n.n.y broke off and laughed.

"Come along and cut wood!"

They moved off into the woods as people with not a care in the world, and coming upon a snow-covered stack of great logs which had been piled by some one else, began to steal one or two and drag them away into a deep woodland drive where they could cut them up without fear of being noticed.

They worked on for an hour, and then Stewart drew a packet of cake from her coat pocket, and sitting upon the logs they had their tea.

Soon f.a.n.n.y, wringing her hands, cried:

"I'm blue again, stiff again, letting the cold in, letting the snow gnaw. Where's the hatchet?"

For a time she chopped and hacked, and Stewart, shepherding the splinters which flew into the snow, piled them--splinters, most precious of all--_pet.i.t bois_ to set a fire alight; and the afternoon grew bluer, deeper. Stewart worked in a reverie--f.a.n.n.y in a heat of expectation. One mused reposedly on life--the other warmly of the immediate hours before her.

"Now I'm going to fetch the car," said Stewart at last. "Will you stay here and go on cutting till I come? There are two more logs."

She walked away up the drive, and f.a.n.n.y picked the hatchet out of the snow and started on the leathery, damp end of a fresh log. It would not split, the tapping marred the white silence, and yet again she let the hatchet fall and sat down on the log instead. It was nearly six--they had spent the whole afternoon splitting up the logs, and making a fine pile of short pieces for firewood; the forest was darkening rapidly, blue deepened above the trees to indigo, and black settled among the trunks. Only the snow sent up its everlasting s.h.i.+ne. Her thoughts fell and rose. Now they were upon the ground busy with a mult.i.tude of small gleams and sparkles--now they were up and away through the forest tunnels to Chantilly. What would he say first? How look when he met her?

"Ah, I am a silly woman in a fever! Yet happy--for I see beauty in everything, in the world, upon strange faces, in nights and days. Upon what pa.s.ses behind the gla.s.sy eyes" (she pressed her own) "depends sight, or no sight. There is a life within life, and only I" (she thought arrogantly, her peopled world bounded by her companions) "am living in it. We are afraid, we are ashamed, but when one dares talk of this strange ecstasy, other people nod their heads and say: 'Ah, yes, we know about that! They are in love.' And they smile. But what a convention--tradition--that smile!"

There was no sound in the forest at all--not the cry of a bird, not the rustle of snow falling from a branch--but there was something deeper and remoter than sound, the approach of night. There was a change on the face of the forest--an effective silence which was not blankness--a voiceless expression of attention as the Newcomer settled into his place. f.a.n.n.y looked up and saw the labyrinth of trees in the very act of receiving a guest.

"Oh, what wretched earnest I am in," she thought, suddenly chilled. "And it can only have one end--parting." But she had a power to evade these moods. She could slip round them and say to herself: "I am old enough--I have learnt again and again--that there is only one joy--the Present; only one Perfection--the Present. If I look into the future it is lost."

She heard the returning car far up the forest drive, and in a moment saw the gleam of its two lamps as they rocked and swayed. It drew up, and Stewart put out the lamps, ever remembering that their logs were stolen.

There was still light enough by which they could pack the car with wood.

As they finished Stewart caught her arm: "Look, a fire!" she said, pointing into the forest. Through a gap in the trees they could see a red glow which burst up over the horizon.

"And look behind the trees--the whole sky is illumined--What a fire!" As they watched, the glare grew stronger and brighter, and seemed about to lift the very tongue of its flame over the horizon.

"It's the moon!" they cried together.

The cold moon it was who had come up red and angry from some Olympic quarrel and hung like a copper fire behind the forest branches. Up and up she sailed, but paling as she rose from red to orange, from orange to the yellow of hay; and at yellow she remained, when the last branch had dropped past her face of light, and she was drifting in the height of the sky.

CHAPTER XIII

THE INN

They drove back to the village and down to their isolated villa, and here on the road they pa.s.sed ones and twos of the Section walking into supper.

"How little we have thought out your evasion!" whispered Stewart at the wheel, as they drew up at the door: "Get out, and go and dress. I will take the car up to the garage and come back."

f.a.n.n.y slipped in through the garden. What they called "dressing" was a clean skirt and silk stockings--but silk stockings she dared not put on before her brief appearance at supper. Stuffing the little roll into her pocket she determined to change her stockings on the boat.

Soon, before supper was ended, she had risen from the table, unquestioned by the others, had paused a moment to meet Stewart's eye full of mystery and blessing, had closed the door and was gone.

She slipped down the road and across the field to the railway. There was a train standing, glowing and breathing upon the lines, and the driver called to her as she ran round the buffers of the engine. Soon she was down by the riverside and looking for Margot. Though there was moonlight far above her the river banks were wrapped in fog that smelt of water, and Margot's face at the hut window was white, and her wool dress white, too. She came down and they rowed out into the fog, in an upward circle because of the stream. f.a.n.n.y could just see her companion's little blunt boots, the stretched laces across her instep, and above, her pretty face and slant eyes. Hurriedly, in the boat she pulled off the thick stockings, rolled them up, and drew on the silk. A chill struck her feet. She wrapped the ends of her coat lightly round her knees and as she did so the roll of thick stockings sprang out of her lap and fell overboard into the fog and the river.

"Mademoiselle goes to a party?" said Margot, who had not noticed. The soft sympathetic voice was as full of blessing as Stewart's eyes had been.

"Yes, to a party. And you will fetch me back to-night when I whistle?"

"Yes. Blow three times, for sometimes in the singing at home I lose the sound."

The opposite bank seemed to drift in under the motionless boat, and she sprang out.

"A tout a l'heure, mademoiselle."

At the top of the bank the road ran out into the fog, which was thicker on this side. She walked along it and was lost to Margot's incurious eyes. Here it was utterly deserted: since the bridge had been blown up the road had become disused and only the few who pa.s.sed over by Margot's boat ever found their way across these fields. She strayed along by the road's edge and could distinguish the blanched form of a tree.

Strange that the fog should reach so much further inland on this side of the river. Perhaps the ground was lower. Standing still her ear caught a rich, high, throaty sound, a choking complaint which travelled in the air.

"It is the car," she thought. Far away a patch of light floated in the sky, like an uprooted searchlight.

"That is the fog, bending the headlights upward."