D A Novel (George Right) - By George Right Page 0,84

is necessary to stop this growing fear..."

"I'm leaving, Jacques, I will leave immediately. If you don't want to go, I'm going alone."

Dubois lost his patience.

"You may go anywhere. I don't need hysterical women. If you leave now, everything will be over between us."

"Jacques, don't speak so... I want to be with you... but only not in this house. I am scared, Jacques... so scared..."

"You are under my protection!"

"There are things over which even you have no control..."

"Well, enough of this superstitious bullshit! I ask... I demand that you stay. No? Have you thought about what you are losing? Still no?"

He stepped closer to her and slapped her cheek. He had done it before, though very seldom, when it was necessary to correct her. Previously it had helped.

Jeannette turned away in tears.

"Farewell, monsieur Dubois," she said.

"Leroi! Leroi!" the enraged businessman cried. The alarmed majordomo arrived.

"Go to the village and hire somebody who will take the mademoiselle to the city. Right now."

"It's useless, monsieur. Now, at night, nobody will agree to render you services. Maybe, we'll wait till the morning?"

"I said now! If you can't hire anybody, you will drive her yourself! Enough, get out of my sight! Both of you!"

Dubois remained in the huge house alone. Black moonless night shrouded the estate, the gloomy forest, the road passing through the forest... The candle crackled and went out, leaving the owner of the house alone with darkness. Again from afar a wolf howl reached; this time, as it seemed to Dubois, not in anxiety but in triumph and at the same time a dreary threat sounded in it. He imagined how it would be for a lonely traveler to listen to this howl in the cold and unfriendly night, and that made him shudder.

The carriage rolled through the night forest. On the left and on the right, huge trunks of old trees, which probably remembered yet the first count de Montreux, towered in gloom; their long clumsy branches here and there intertwined over the road. The cold night breeze whispered in foliage and moved in bushes; suddenly somewhere an eagle owl dully screeched. Leroi, who handled the reins, involuntarily shivered. It seemed improbable that somewhere there was Paris decked by lights, that in cabarets and restaurants people were having fun, that it was the pragmatic nineteenth century in the outer world. Here, in the forest, everything was as if impregnated with the spirit of antiquity, the spirit of times gone long ago–or more likely, of non-time at all, of a stiffened and hardened eternity. Leroi, probably, would not have been surprised much if from the nearest turn a knight in armor or a medieval monk in a hooded cowl had appeared. He already regretted that he had agreed to bring his master's concubine to the city at night—or, as he suspected, the former concubine; if he had simply informed Dubois that nobody would undertake this task, then, probably, his master would have told Jeannette: "Reach Paris yourself as best you can." She, facing such a prospect, probably would have tried for a reconciliation–maybe the master expected exactly that? Anyway, it was too late already for such thought, unless Jeannette herself would ask to turn back...

At this moment, a wolf howl distinctly sounded from behind. Here, in the forest, it sounded much more ominous than in the house. Jeannette put her head out of the window.

"Faster, Leroi! Do you hear?"

"Nothing to worry about. In these parts usually people hunt wolves, not vice versa," he answered, whipping up the horses, however.

In a few minutes the howl sounded again, this time much closer. Leroi marveled; if it was not a hearing deception, the animal moved with tremendous speed. Then he decided that it was, most likely, another wolf. The horses began to show appreciable anxiety.

The wolf raised a howl a third time–very close, literally just behind a turn. "Faster, faster!" Jeannette shouted, but the horses didn't need further urging. Leroi felt that he couldn't cope with them. Spurred on by ancient horror, the horses galloped at full speed; the coach groaned and shook on its springs. A low leaning branch scratched the carriage top, like a hand trying to hold the escaping prey.

"What are you doing, we will crash!" Jeannette cried. At the next moment a spasm seized her throat: having looked back, she saw the predators.

Seven or eight large wolves chased the carriage; they seemed terribly huge to the frightened Jeannette. The biggest one ran ahead of the others; it was a magnificent beast