"Rudolf," he said, bawling into his ear, "come with me! Our birds will
not fly away to-night."
The two sentries came to the front of the house and stared at the
red-litten blinds.
"What a night!" cried Rudolf. "Not a citizen would thrust his nose out
of doors."
"Not even the little Chateaudoux's sweetheart," replied the other, with
a grin.
They stared again at the red blinds, and in a lull of the wind a clock
struck nine.
"There is an hour before the magistrate comes," said Rudolf.
"You take that hour," said his companion; "I will have the hour after
the magistrate has gone."
Rudolf ran across to the inn. The sentinel at the door remained behind.
Both men were pleased,--Rudolf because he had his hour immediately, his
fellow-soldier because once the magistrate had come and gone, he would
take as long as he pleased.
Meanwhile the man and woman hand in hand drew nearer to the villa, but
very slowly. For, apart from the weather's hindrances, the woman's anger
had grown. She stopped, she fell down when there was no need to fall,
she wept, she struggled to free her hand, and finally, when they had
taken shelter beneath a portico, she sank down on the stone steps, and
with many oaths and many tears refused to budge a foot. Strangely
enough, it was not so much the inclemency of the night or the danger of
the enterprise which provoked this obstinacy, as some outrage and
dishonour to her figure.
"You may talk all night," she cried between her sobs, "about O'Toole and
his beautiful German. They can go hang for me! I am only a servant, I
know. I am poor, I admit it. But poverty isn't a crime. It gives no one
the right to make a dwarf of me. No, no!"--this as Wogan bent down to
lift her from the ground--"plague on you all! I will sit here and die;
and when I am found frozen and dead perhaps you will be sorry for your
cruelty to a poor girl who wanted nothing better than to serve you."
Here Jenny was so moved by the piteousness of her fate that her tears
broke out again. She wept loudly. Wogan was in an extremity of alarm
lest someone should pass, or the people of the house be aroused. He
tried most tenderly to comfort her. She would have none of the
consolations. He took her in his arms and raised her to her feet. She
swore more loudly than she had wept, she kicked at his legs, she struck
at his head with her fist. In another moment she would surely have cried
murder. Wogan had to let her sink back upon the steps, where she fell to
whimpering.