The Hero of the People
Copyright© 2024 by Alexandre Dumas
Chapter 30: Under the Window.
ON the surface all was calm and almost smiling on the Billet Farm.
As before, Billet, on his strong horse, trotted all over the land keeping his hands up to the mark. But a sharp observer would have noticed that on whatever part he was he tried to get a look at his daughter’s room window.
Though his face had a little softened toward her, Catherine felt that paternal distrust hovered over her.
Mother Billet was vegetating as formerly; she did not know that her husband harbored suspicion in his bosom, and her daughter anguish in hers.
Pitou, after his glory as captain of the uniformed National Guards, had fallen back into his habitual state of sweet and kindly melancholy. By the postmark on Isidore’s letters he noticed that he had returned to Paris.
He concluded that he would not be long before returning to his estate. Pitou’s heart shrank at this prospect.
Under pretence of snaring rabbits to give his friend more succulent food than farm fare, he haunted the wood until he saw Catherine. She was seeking him, too, for she had a word for him.
He need not trouble about her letters as she would not be receiving any for some days.
He guessed that the writer was coming in person to repeat his vows.
“Have you noticed,” he said, “how gloomy the master has become of late?”
Catherine turned pale.
“I tell you as a sure thing that whoever is the cause of this change in such a hearty good fellow, will have an unpleasant time with him when he meets him.”
“You say, ‘him,’” said Catherine; “why may he not have quarrelled with a woman, against whom he nurses this sullen rage?”
“You have seen something? have you any reason to fear?”
“I have to fear all that a girl may fear when she loves above her station and has an irritated father.”
“It seems to me that in your place,” Pitou ventured to give advice, “I should—no, it nearly killed you to part with him, and to give him up altogether would be your death. Oh, all this is very unfortunate!”
“Hush, speak of something else—here comes father.”
Indeed, seeing his daughter with a man, the farmer rode up at speed: but recognizing Pitou, he asked him in to dinner with less gloom on his face.
“Gracious,” muttered Catherine at the door, “can he know?”
“What?” whispered Pitou.
“Nothing,” replied the girl, going up to her room and closing the shutters.
When she came down, dinner was ready, but she ate little.
“You might tell us what brought you our way to-day,” asked the morose farmer of Pitou.
The latter showed some brass wire loops.
“The rabbits over our way are getting shy of me. I am going to lay some snares on your farm, if you do not mind. Yours are so tender from the grain they get.”
“I did not know you had so sweet a tooth.”
“Oh, not for me but for Miss Catherine.”
“Yes, she has no appetite, lately, that is a fact.”
At this moment, Pitou felt a touch to his foot. It was Catherine directing his attention to the window past which a man was making for the door where he entered with the farmer’s gun on his shoulder.
“Father Clovis,” he was hailed by the master.
Clovis was the old soldier who had taught Pitou to drill.
“Yes, Papa Billet, a bargain is a bargain. You paid me to pick out a dozen bullets to suit your rifle and here they are.”
He handed the farmer his gun and a bag of bullets. Calm as the veteran was, he inspired terror in Catherine as he sat at table.
“By the way I cast thirteen bullets instead of a dozen so I squandered one on the hare you see. Your gun carries fine.”
“Is there a prize for shooting offered anywhere?” asked Pitou simply. “You will win it, I guess like you did that silver cup and the bowl you are drinking of, Miss Catherine. Why, what is the matter?”
“Nothing,” replied the girl opening her eyes which she had half closed and leaning back in her chair.
“All I know is,” said Billet, “that I am going to lay in wait. It is a wolf, I think.”
Clovis turned the bullets out on a plate. Had Pitou looked from them to Catherine he would have seen that she nearly swooned.
“Wolf?” repeated he. “I am astonished that before the snowfalls we should see them here.”
“The shepherd says one is prowling round, out Boursonne way.”
Pitou looked from the speaker to Catherine.
“Yes, he was spied last year, I was told; but he went off, and it was thought forever; but he has turned up again. I mean to turn him down!”
This was all the girl could endure; she uttered a cry and staggered out of the door. Pitou followed her to offer his arm and found her in the kitchen.
“What ails you?”
“Can you not guess? he knows that Isidore has arrived at Boursonne this morning, and he is going to shoot him.”
“I will put him on his guard——”
The voice of Billet interrupted the pair.
“If you are going to lay snares, Master Pitou, it seems to me it is time you were jogging. Father Clovis is going your way.”
“I am off,” and he went out by the kitchen door, while Catherine went up to her room, where she bolted the door.
The forest was Pitou’s kingdom and when he had left Clovis to go home, he felt easy about what he had undertaken to do.
He thought of running to Boursonne and warning Viscount Isidore; but he might not be believed and the warning might not be heeded.
He considered he had better wait.