To escape from my companions on some pretext,which should enable me to ensure their safety without arousing their fears,was the one thought which possessed me on the subsidence of my first alarm.Probably it answered to that instinct in animals which bids them get away alone when wounded or attacked by disease;and with me it had the fuller play as the pain prevailed rather by paroxysms,than in permanence,and,coming and going,allowed intervals of ease,in which I was able to think clearly and consecutively,and even to sit firmly in the saddle.
The moment one of these intervals enabled me to control myself,Iused it to think where I might go without danger to others;and at once and naturally my thoughts turned to the last place we had passed;which happened to be the house in the gorge where we had received news of Bruhl's divergence from the road.The man who lived there alone had had the plague;therefore he did not fear it.The place itself was solitary,and I could reach it,riding slowly,in half an hour.On the instant and without more delay Idetermined on this course.I would return,and,committing myself to the fellow's good offices,bid him deny me to others,and especially to my friends--should they seek me.
Aware that I bad no time to lose if I would put this plan into execution before the pains returned to sap my courage,I drew bridle at once,and muttered some excuse to madame;if I remember rightly,that I had dropped my gauntlet.Whatever the pretext--and my dread was great lest she should observe any strangeness in my manner--it passed with her;by reason,chiefly,I think,of the grief which monopolised her.She let me go,and before anyone else could mark or miss me I was a hundred yards away on the back-track,and already sheltered from observation by a turn in the road.
The excitement of my evasion supported me for a while after leaving her;and then for another while,a paroxysm of pain deprived me of the power of thought.But when this last was over,leaving me weak and shaken,yet clear in my mind,the most miserable sadness and depression that can be conceived came upon me;and,accompanying me through the wood,filled its avenues (which doubtless were fair enough to others'eyes)with the blackness of despair.I saw but the charnel-house,and that everywhere.It was not only that the horrors of the first discovery returned upon me and almost unmanned me;nor only that regrets and memories,pictures of the past and plans for the future,crowded thick upon my mind,so that I could have wept at the thought of all ending here.But in my weakness mademoiselle's face shone where the wood was darkest,and,tempting and provoking me to return--were it only to tell her that,grim and dull as I seemed,I loved her--tried me with a subtle temptation almost beyond my strength to resist.All that was mean in me rose in arms,all that was selfish clamoured to know why I must die in the ditch while others rode in the sunshine;why I must go to the pit,while others loved and lived!
And so hard was I pressed that I think I should have given way had the ride been longer or my horse less smooth and nimble.But in the midst of my misery,which bodily pain was beginning to augment to such a degree that I could scarcely see,and had to ride gripping the saddle with both hands,I reached the mill.My horse stopped of its own accord.The man we had seen before came out.I had I just strength left to tell him what was the matter,and what I wanted and then a fresh attack came on,with sickness,and overcome by vertigo I fell to the ground.
I have but an indistinct idea what happened after that;until Ifound myself inside the house,clinging to the man's arm.He pointed to a box-bed in one corner of the room (which was,or seemed to my sick eyes,gloomy and darksome in the extreme),and would have had me lie down in it.But something inside me revolted against the bed,and despite the force he used,I broke away,and threw myself on a heap of straw which I saw in another corner.
'Is not the,bed good enough for you?'he grumbled.
I strove to tell him it was not that.
'It should be good enough to die on,'he continued brutally.
'There's five have died on that bed,I'd have you know!My wife one,and my son another,and my daughter another;and then my son again,and a daughter again.Five!Ay,five in that bed!'
Brooding in the gloom of the chimney-corner,where he was busied about a black pot,he continued to mutter and glance at me askance;but after a while I swooned away with pain.
When I opened my eyes again the room was darker.The man still sat where I had last seen him,but a noise,the same,perhaps,which had roused me,drew him as I looked to the unglazed window.
A voice outside,the tones of which I seemed to know,inquired if he had seen me;and so carried away was I by the excitement of the moment that I rose on my elbow to hear the answer.But the man was staunch.I heard him deny all knowledge of me,and presently the sound of retreating hoofs and the echo of voices dying in the distance assured me I was left.
Then,at that instant,a doubt of the man on whose compassion Ihad thrown myself entered my mind.Plague-stricken,hopeless as I was,it chilled me to the very heart;staying in a moment the feeble tears I was about to shed,and curing even the vertigo,which forced me to clutch at the straw on which I lay.Whether the thought arose from a sickly sense of my own impotence,or was based on the fellow's morose air and the stealthy glances he continued to cast at me,I am as unable to say as I am to decide whether it was well-founded,or the fruit of my own fancy.
Possibly the gloom of the room and the man's surly words inclined me to suspicion;possibly his secret thoughts portrayed themselves in his hang-dog visage.Afterwards it appeared that he had stripped me,while I lay,of everything of value;but he may have done this in the belief that I should die.
