Chapter V: The Golden Autumn

Sabron longed for a change with autumn, when the falling leaves made the roads golden roundabout the Château d'Esclignac. He thought he would like to go away. He rode his horse one day up to the property of the hard-hearted unforgiving lady and, finding the gate open, rode through the grounds up to the terrace. Seeing no one, he sat in his saddle looking over the golden country to the Rhone and the castle of the good King René, where the autumn mists were like banners floating from the towers.

There was a solitary beauty around the lovely place that spoke to the young officer with a sweet melancholy. He fancied that Miss Redmond must often have looked out from one of the windows, and he wondered which one. The terrace was deserted and leaves from the vines strewed it with red and golden specters. Pitchouné raced after them, for the wind started them flying, and he rolled his tawny little body over and over in the rustling leaves. Then a rabbit, which before the arrival of Sabron had been sitting comfortably on the terrace stones, scuttled away like mad, and Pitchouné, somewhat hindered by his limp, tore after it.

The deserted château, the fact that there was nothing in his military life beyond the routine to interest him now in Tarascon, made Sabron eagerly look forward to a change, and he waited for letters from the minister of war which would send him to a new post.

The following day after his visit to the château he took a walk, Pitchouné at his heels, and stood aside in the highroad to let a yellow motor pass him, but the yellow motor at that moment drew up to the side of the road while the chauffeur got out to adjust some portion of the mechanism. Some one leaned from the yellow motor window and Sabron came forward to speak to the Marquise d'Esclignac and another lady by her side.

"How do you do, Monsieur? Do you remember us?"

(Had he ever forgotten them?) He regretted so very much not having been able to dine with them in the spring.

"And your sick friend?" asked Madame d'Esclignac keenly, "did he recover?"

"Yes," said Sabron, and Miss Redmond, who leaned forward, smiled at him and extended her pretty hand. Sabron opened the motor door.

"What a darling dog!" Miss Redmond cried. "What a bewitching face he has! He's an Irish terrier, isn't he?"

Sabron called Pitchouné, who diverted his attention from the chauffeur to come and be hauled up by the collar and presented. Sabron shook off his reticence.

"Let me make a confession," he said with a courteous bow. "This is my 'very sick friend.' Pitchouné was at the point of death the night of your dinner and I was just leaving the house when I realized that the helpless little chap could not weather the breeze without me. He had been run over by a bicycle and he needed some very special care."

Miss Redmond's hand was on Pitchouné's head, between his pointed ears. She looked sympathetic. She looked amused. She smiled.

"It was a question of 'life and death,' wasn't it?" she said eagerly to Sabron.

"Really, it was just that," answered the young officer, not knowing how significant the words were to the two ladies.

Then Madame d'Esclignac knew that she was beaten and that she owed something and was ready to pay. The chauffeur got up on his seat and she asked suavely:

"Won't you let us take you home, Monsieur Sabron?"

He thanked them. He was walking and had not finished his exercise.

"At all events," she pursued, "now that your excuse is no longer a good one, you will come this week to dinner, will you not?"

He would, of course, and watched the yellow motor drive away in the autumn sunlight, wishing rather less for the order from the minister of war to change his quarters than he had before.