THE VV'OODCUTTER
Théophraste ended his discourse, and, pleasantly parting,
sauntered
off with his mistress, arm-in-arm.
Neither
of
them gave their victim another thought.
Out of the wood
they went, and (thank God 1) out of the story.
But Placide leant upon his axe and stared after them.
In his brain one thought only remained, which Theophraste
might have formulated logically as “ Some men do not chop
wood.”
And in his heart and eye was a dull animal lust.
Two strangers had come to his soul's Inn.
There being only
one room, he put them to bed together, in this form or some-
thing like it:
“ Chop—chop—chop—chop;
I’m sick of it.
Even in had a fine girl from Paris like that, what could I
do but chop—chop—chop—chop? "
For the first time in his
life he went home half an
hour earlier than his custom, to the accompaniment of a
terrific thunderstorm that rolled up from the valley of the
Loing and fell like night upon the forest, like a dark winter's
night that afternoon of May.
He was
wet to the skin before
he
reached his hut.
Opening the door, he glowered with dull surprise.
Equally
wet, standing in one corner and wringing out a blouse, was a
girl of about twenty years old, an Amazon maid.
He could
see that she was a lady—that is, that she was not a villager;
but he had no means of knowing that she was the Honourable
Diana Vi11iers-Jernyngham—Ketteringham.
Placide
spoke a
patois
that
a Parisian might have
surmised to be Cherokee, and Diana’s boarding—school French
would have been given up by that Parisian as no earthly
language at all.
85