AT THE SIGN OF THE GOOD SAMARITAN
“How could you bear it? Would you not cry out,
Among those eyes grown blind to you, those ears
That hear no more your voice you hear the same,
God! what is left but hell for company,
But hell, hell, hell—until the name so breathed
Whirled with hot wind and sucked you down in fire.”
—D. G. ROSSETTI, _A Last Confession_.
Madame Veuve Geffroi possessed to a singular degree the faculty of
knowing her own mind, and also, commonly, that of expressing with
accuracy and point the resolutions at which, from time to time, she
arrived by the assistance of this quality. When, therefore, she took
her way between seven and eight that evening to her hay-loft, with the
intent of presenting an ultimatum to its temporary inhabitants, the
clearness of her mental vision was momentarily obscured by the sight
of one of them seated on her chopping-log in the shed, near the foot
of the ladder, with his head buried in his hands. In the failing light
this figure startled and almost disconcerted her, and she gave vent to
a little exclamation. The Marquis raised a ghastly face and looked at
her dizzily.
“Bon Dieu! what is the matter with you?” ejaculated Madame Geffroi.
Gilbert rose mechanically.
“Are you ill too?” queried his visitor, peering at him. The Marquis
shook his head, murmuring he knew not what, and turned away to
escape her eyes. Madame Geffroi scanned what she could see of him
sceptically; then she shrugged her shoulders. “Very well then, listen
to me. How is the other up there?”
“I don’t know,” said Gilbert rather wildly. “I have been down here
. . . my God . . . how long!”
“You don’t know!” repeated Madame Geffroi with some scorn. “But he
must be either better or worse. Which is it?”
“Worse, then,” replied Château-Foix almost inaudibly.
“He has more fever?” pursued the inquisitrix. “He is perhaps
light-headed—he talks nonsense?”
“That is it,” said the Marquis, and broke—to his own infinite
surprise—into unmirthful laughter.
The note of hysteria did not escape his shrewd companion, though she
assigned it to a wrong cause. “Come,” she said, more kindly, patting
him on the arm; “you have a good heart, you suffer because your friend
is ill—or is he your brother? Never mind, but listen to me! I have
come to tell you something that will ease your anxiety. I have made up
my mind to take your brother into my house until he is better. What
have you to say to that, my young man?”
“I—but how can you?” stammered the Marquis. The twilight interview
with this insistent female was like a nightmare, from which he more
and more earnestly desired to escape, that he might be alone.
“How can I?” demanded the woman of resolution. “But as easily as
walking. You, my fine fellow, if you got him up this ladder you can
get him down again—isn’t it so?—and you can carry him to the house, a
strong man like you! I shall put him in the room I keep for my niece—a
small room, but comfortable. Then there will be no more fever—or at
least he will have some one not quite ignorant to look after him, and
he will be as snug there as a bird in its nest.”
“But, Madame,” began Gilbert, “the danger to yourself——”
“Bah!” said Madame Geffroi, “I snap my fingers at it! Besides, where
would it come from? Do you imagine that any one from there”—she
indicated Pézé over her shoulder—“would venture to come poking into my
house? Holy Virgin of virgins, no! But what would inconvenience me
would be a corpse in my loft; _that_ would compromise me! No, the
young man must be brought in. Come, up with you, my good man!” And,
feeling that he was in the hands of some higher intelligence, Gilbert
suffered himself to be waved in front of her up the ladder.
In the loft it was dimmer still. Gilbert stood like a statue when he
got there, deprived of all volition; he only felt stupidly that he
could never go near that prone, silent figure again. And yet he knew
that he was there for the express purpose of doing so. Behind him
Madame Geffroi scrambled on to the floor; he never turned his head nor
offered to help her. She walked past him, and he saw her bend over
Louis. But his own eyes were fixed on the little circular window, and
his thoughts followed them, racing round and round its circumference
like a squirrel in a cage. Then he perceived his hostess beckoning to
him. His feet carried him over to her.
“He is quite quiet now,” she said in a whisper. “See, I will help you
carry him to the top of the ladder. But you will have to take him down
it alone, only I will stand at the bottom.”
It was a real surprise to Gilbert to find that not very long
afterwards he was standing in the midst of a little, very tidy
room with a diamond paned casement, where a small white bed, ready
prepared, lay along the wall.
“That’s right,” said Madame Geffroi approvingly, as Château-Foix
deposited his unconscious kinsman upon it. She set down the candle,
with which she had lighted him up the stairs, upon a table bearing a
neat pile of bandages, a basin, a sponge, and other appliances. “Now I
shall manage better alone. I am sorry that I have not a bed for you
too.”
Gilbert, with relief, murmured something about the comfort of his
former quarters. Not to be under the same roof would be something.
Madame Geffroi nodded. “You will find some food put out downstairs;
take what you want. I will come to you in the morning.”
“You are very kind indeed, Madame,” said Château-Foix. “I do not know
why you should do this.”
The lifeless tone of his thanks appeared to reawaken his hostess’s
suspicions. She caught up the candle and held it to the level of his
face. “You are sure that you are not ill, you?” she asked sharply. The
fancy crossed Gilbert’s mind that she was more apprehensive than
solicitous about his state of health, and he answered with a grim
feeling approaching amusement that he was perfectly well, and turned
to go. But at the doorway he stopped and bent a long look on the
candle-lit bed, drawn by the very attraction of what his survey cost
him. Then he went down the stairs and out of the farmhouse, to carry
his agony back to the place where it had its birth.
* * * * * *
Very early next morning Madame Geffroi’s voice floated up the ladder.
Gilbert raised himself from where he lay face downwards in the hay and
descended into the shed below.
“Your brother is better,” said the lady. “He is sleeping quietly. But
no—you shall not see him yet. Later in the day, perhaps. And see that
you do not show yourself to-day; it is possible that they may search
for you.”
“Then, Madame,” broke in the Marquis hastily, “we must go. I cannot
think of exposing you——”
“Bah!” returned his hostess with infinite scorn. “Do you think I shall
let that young man out of his bed? He could not stand if I did. And I
should like to see those gentry try to search my house! But they may
come prowling round, so be careful. If they should come here you can
hide in the hay—or, wait a moment, there is a place up in the rafters
where no one will ever think of looking. Here is plenty of food—you
did not take any last night.”
With this somewhat casual recital of precautions she tendered him a
basket and made off. The inadequacy of the former scarcely struck the
Marquis, so little did the idea of being taken seen to matter. He
climbed back to the loft and threw himself down in his former
position.
As hour succeeded hour, the stupor which, in spite of the most active
suffering, had held his brain all through the sleepless night began to
dissolve. “He trusts us! he trusts us!” Yes, he had trusted them
indeed, and with a trust so profound as to be unconscious of its
own existence. “He trusts us!” Which of them had said that to the
other? It was round these words that the stupor, losing its hold,
crystallised into a fierce and absorbing resolution. By no word or
deed of his should Louis know that he was aware of his treachery—until
the day that he chose. Louis, too, in his turn, should be tricked,
gulled, befooled. It should be a part—a small part—of his revenge;
though indeed there was in his resolve less of the lust of vengeance
than of the instinctive self-defence of his own unspeakably lacerated
pride.
And Lucienne . . . O God, Lucienne! image of all that was pure and
untouched! . . . Yet even now he blamed her little. She was so young.
She did not know. Hers was innocency wronged, lured into an attachment
which was surely no more than a young girl’s fancy, a passing light
entanglement from which he must protect her, which he must make her
forget. Had she not written in her distress, pleading to be shielded
from it—for so, in memory, he read her letter now. She would
forget. . . . But Louis! That was different. It might be that it was
with him, too, a passing affair, like so many others. The supposition
seemed rather to aggravate than to lessen his guilt. And there was
much to support the idea. How, if he really cared for her, could he
have been so light-hearted these last few days since he parted from
her? Damn him! he was equally a scoundrel either way!
The Marquis raised himself and sat up, brushing the hair off his
forehead with a sudden gesture. He had at that moment a very distinct
vision of a certain copse at Chantemerle where there was a clearing,
convenient and remote. There, among the saplings his father had
planted, he saw himself and Louis facing each other, sword in
hand. . . .
But the solacing dream of steel was gone as quickly as it had come,
and Gilbert flung himself down again, engulfed once more in the full
tide of his anguish—an anguish all the bitterer, though he did not
know it, for the self-condemnation which he had recently been meting
out to himself.
* * * * * *
Between five and six in the afternoon he again heard the voice of his
hostess and went down.
“You can see your cousin,” said Madame Geffroi, with the air of one
acceding to a pressing request, “since it appears that that is his
relationship. He has been asking for you. And since they have been
to search the house”—Gilbert gave an exclamation—“and gone away
satisfied, it is quite safe. Come.”
“Searched the house!” said Gilbert, stupefied. “But they have not been
near me.”
“I did not say they searched the house,” corrected the lady tartly. “I
said they came to do so. They did not remain.”
“Oh!” was all Château-Foix found to say, wondering how the
representatives of the nation had been routed, but not in the least
doubting the fact.
“Don’t talk too much!” Madame Geffroi warned him, as she opened the
bedroom door and pushed Gilbert in alone.
The late afternoon sun was striking through the closed shutters in
thin shafts full of dancing motes, yet the room seemed dark, and the
Marquis stood a moment dazzled by the contrast.
“Come here,” said Louis in a weak little voice from the bed. “Mon
Dieu, how glad I am to see you!”
Grown accustomed to the atmospheric effects, Gilbert stood looking
down on this new Louis as he lay flat on his back—for in the short
time since his mishap he seemed unaccountably altered.
“Sit down,” went on the Vicomte, “and tell me what you have been doing
while I have been in the hands of this tyrannical lady.”
The Marquis complied. After all, it was quite easy to talk to him. “I
have been doing . . . absolutely nothing, but staying in the loft
awaiting developments. And, by the way, the good woman tells me that
she has had a domiciliary visit.”
Louis went off into a fit of rather feeble laughter. “It is quite
true. . . . But she routed them with great slaughter. It must have
been extraordinarily funny.”
“They did not come into the house, then?”
“No, I believe not. But she had made preparations to receive them.
Conceive what she thought of passing me off for?” He began to laugh
again. “Do you remember, Gilbert, my joking the other night about you
and this dame, and saying that she would probably hide you in her
bedroom? My utterances must have had a spice of prophecy about them.
It was about three o’clock, I believe, when these individuals came; I
was still dozing, when the tyrant entered hastily, and said with great
directness, ‘They are coming to look for you, my fine young man. I do
not fancy that they will set foot inside the house, but, if they do,
remember that you are my niece Annette, ill of a fever.’ I protested
against the libel on Mademoiselle Annette, whose chin, I am sure, does
not stand in need of a razor, but what could I do?”
“And what happened?” asked Château-Foix.
“Nothing, fortunately—or unfortunately,” said Louis, sighing rather
regretfully. “I was not called upon to play this beau rôle to an
audience. But the good lady took some pains with the staging. She
arranged the bedclothes over me in some way that nearly suffocated
me, and took away my clothes, which were hanging upon a chair,
substituting, I believe, some of her own. I was too modest to look
at them. I fancy that they are gone now, and, moreover, that my own
have not come back, so that I can’t get up.”
“I should imagine,” observed the Marquis drily, “that you could not do
that in any case.”
“Well, perhaps not,” conceded the invalid. “But, Gilbert, we must be
getting on. Couldn’t you—couldn’t you leave me to follow?”
“That is not very likely, is it?” asked his cousin. “I thought we
settled that before. You had better not talk any more and exhaust
yourself. To-morrow will be time enough to talk of getting up, and as
this visit is over I presume we are the safer for it. How is your
shoulder, by the way?”
Louis made a little grimace by way of reply. “You do not look over
flourishing yourself, my good Gilbert,” he said, scanning him from the
pillow. “I should say that you did not sleep well last night.”
“No, I did not,” answered the Marquis in a fairly natural tone.
Louis murmured that he was sorry, and there was a pause, Gilbert
feeling that he had nothing more to say. Glancing at his cousin he saw
that he was lying with his eyes shut, and also that he looked rather
spent. He got up, and Louis immediately opened his eyes.
“Are you going? . . . There is one thing that I wanted to ask you—did
I talk any nonsense when I was off my head up in that place?”
Gilbert felt a second’s spasm at his heart. It had not occurred to him
that Louis would ask such a question. . . . His answer should be the
first step along the road which he had mapped out for immediate
travelling.
“I don’t know what you mean by nonsense,” he said, fidgeting with a
spoon on the table. “You were a trifle delirious, of course. Ah, I see
what you mean. No, you were much too rambling for me to learn any
secrets.” He felt that to carry off his part with conviction he must
look his cousin in the face at this point, and did so. Was it fancy
that Louis had turned whiter than he already was? He could not pause
to consider, but went on with a geniality which astonished and
disgusted himself: “My dear boy, you can be easy on that score. You
did not tell me anything . . . which I did not know before.”
“That’s a relief,” said Louis in a jocular tone, but so faintly that
Château-Foix was aware in an instant of the strain that he had been
through, and saw, indeed, the next moment, that he had fainted in good
earnest.
The Marquis looked down at him for a minute with a smile which was not
very pleasant, then he went to the door and called for Madame Geffroi.
Amid the torrent of reproaches and lamentations which ensued he made
his escape.
And as he went back an abhorrent thought leapt suddenly into his mind,
out of nowhere—not so much a thought as a picture—of the inn-kitchen
at Pézé, and of Louis throwing himself between him and the man who
“had a knife.” It had vivid colouring, and was only a little blurred
in outline. If it were a true image he owed his life to the kinsman
who had betrayed him. It was the last intolerable drop in the cup.
* * * * * *
“Dear Madame,” said Louis politely but firmly, “if you do not cause my
cousin to come here, I shall have to go out to find him!”
He was sitting, partially dressed, in an armchair by the open window,
with a flowered shawl over his shoulders. Not far from him his hostess
and nurse, her hands on her hips, stood regarding him.
“That is easy to say,” she remarked. “But there is a key to the door.”
“And a vine, I observe, outside the window,” retorted her captive,
craning his neck to make sure. “Directly your back is turned I shall
go down it. And since you have deprived me of the use of one arm I
shall most probably break the other.”
“What use is it to bring your cousin? tell me that,” demanded Madame
Geffroi stubbornly. “And what happened the last time that he was here?
tell me that also!”
“That was two days ago,” returned the Vicomte, “and I was tired. It
shall not happen again, I promise you. . . . Madame, do not be so
stony-hearted!”
“What do you want to see him for?”
Louis looked at her for a moment quizzically. “I don’t want to see him
at all,” he said. “It will merely mean making arrangements for leaving
you, and you cannot think that I desire to make those, can you,
Madame? But consider, this cousin of mine has an adoring mother who is
anxiously awaiting him at this very moment—not to speak of a whole
tenantry to whom he is a sort of deity. You would not have me set my
own poor happiness, which undoubtedly consists in remaining where I
am, against maternal affection and feudal feeling!”
Madame Geffroi sniffed. “Huh! And is there no one who expects _you_
back with anxiety, my young man?”
Two patches of colour flared for an instant in Saint-Ermay’s pale
cheeks as he responded: “Alas, no, Madame, nobody.—I am wrong; there
is an old man who will be very glad to see me. But come now——”
“As if you were fit to think of going away,” grumbled his jailor.
“You shall see your cousin to-morrow.”
Louis shook his head. “Like all your sex, you must be convinced, I
see, by ocular demonstration. How can you say that I am not fit for
anything?” He got up suddenly from the chair, and the shawl which
adorned his shoulders slipped to the ground, revealing the fact that
his left arm was not only supported in a sling but was bound to his
side, a precaution of his nurse’s to prevent his using his shoulder.
He advanced laughing on her, a slim boyish figure in shirt and
breeches. “I swear I’ll kiss you if you don’t fetch my cousin!” said
he.
Madame Geffroi put up her hands with a squeal, and backed rapidly from
the reach of the one effective arm. “You are a graceless young scamp!”
she said from the door, but she was laughing too. “You shall have your
cousin, then!”
Louis sauntered back to his chair and flung himself down in it,
smiling, but the look of amusement faded rapidly off his face. Madame
Geffroi’s question had set his heart aching. More than once in the
past, when he had gone down to Chantemerle, Lucienne had been there
awaiting him with the rest on the terrace—a child, it is true, much
younger, scarcely noticed, and yet the same Lucienne. Those had been
happy days; all the happier that they were not poisoned by a passion
which had no right to existence, when he was a thoughtless boy and she
a child playmate, nothing more. Now she would never wait for him
anywhere, for if ever the Fates sent her back to live in security at
Chantemerle, the old house could never see him there again. . . . Why
had he not gone with her to England as Gilbert had suggested? Why had
he acted the virtuous friend at his parting with her the other day?
Why, in God’s name, had he of all people taken up that always
ridiculous rôle? . . . Since that farewell he had known that she loved
him distractedly, but the knowledge, with all that it contained of
solace, only served to make his own conduct the more bitter in the
mouth. With such a proof of her love as she had then given him, what
might their life have been had their lots fallen otherwise—yes, even
if he had but plucked his hour when it blossomed to his hand! . . . It
was the most sickening folly. He had wrecked his happiness and hers,
forsooth, for Gilbert’s—for the cold-blooded Gilbert, who regarded
her, most probably, as honoured by her betrothal, and him as a
worthless trifler. And he had taken this senseless, unnatural path, in
the first place, because Gilbert trusted him. “I wish to the devil he
did not!” he muttered fiercely—and knew not that his wish was already
granted. “The whole thing is too damnable!” He was kicking angrily at
the fallen shawl when Gilbert came in, and could not, or did not try,
to conceal his mood, but merely looked up and nodded at his cousin.
“So you are out of bed?” remarked the latter.
“Yes,” said Louis shortly. “I sent for you that we might make plans
for to-morrow.”
“For to-morrow! Do you think that you——”
“Confound you!” broke out Louis irritably. “You are as bad as the old
lady. I don’t say that I could walk far, but I can certainly ride. It
is merely a question of getting horses.”
The Marquis shrugged his shoulders. “I perceive that you are really
convalescent,” he observed. “Very well. But we shall have to obtain
Madame Geffroi’s assistance; I don’t think it would be wise for one of
us to go about them.”
“No, of course not,” agreed Louis. And going to the door he called for
his hostess.
Madame Geffroi thought that horses of some kind could be procured,
though they would probably not be good ones. But then the travellers
would not want to make long stages at first, she added, looking
warningly on Louis and almost threateningly on the Marquis. Resigning
herself with her accustomed decision to the inevitable, she presumed
that if they really meant to start early next morning, she had better
take steps about the horses at once, upon which Louis called her an
angel, and she left the room shaking her head.
“I hope this good woman will not pay for her kindness,” said Gilbert.
“I trust not,” returned Louis rather absently. “But I can scarcely
imagine any one bold enough to call her to account.”
Château-Foix, who was gazing out of the window, turned round and
took a good look at him. The bandages visible through his thin and
now much-mended shirt, the sling above it, and indeed his whole
appearance, thrust again on Gilbert that possibility which he so
profoundly wished had never occurred to him.
“How much do you remember of what happened at the Gerbe d’Or?” he
asked suddenly.
Louis, who was apparently lost in contemplation of an exceedingly
well-shaped leg, looked up in surprise. “What is the Gerbe d’Or? Oh, I
recollect. Why, I suppose I remember as much as you do.”
“Then that is not very much,” said his cousin. “Which was the man that
stabbed you?”
“Are you vowing vengeance?” asked Louis lazily. “Why, the tall one, of
course. The other had no chance; you were taking up too much of his
time. My friend had the knife in his waistbelt, I suppose; I never
saw him draw it. But, if it is any satisfaction to you, I think you
knocked him down yourself afterwards. In fact you must have done, for
I certainly didn’t; I was lying on top of their horrible dirty
plates.”
“He was behind me, was he not?”
“I don’t know,” said the Vicomte. “Are you going to write an account
of this dastardly outrage for the newspapers? because, as an
aristocrat, you will not get any sympathy.”
“I am sure he was behind me,” pursued Gilbert. “He was behind me, but
you called out to me to turn, and then he stabbed you.”
“Did I? Very likely. After all, you do seem to remember more than I.
I am sorry to be such a bad witness, but I really know nothing more
about that particular episode.”
Evidently Louis had not the faintest idea that he had any claim on
Gilbert’s gratitude, or else, for some reason, he had chosen to
forget it. At any rate, there was no more to be got out of him, and
Château-Foix abandoned the attempt.
“I shall not stay with you any longer,” said he. “You had better lie
down and rest, had you not, if we are to start early to-morrow?”
Louis assented, and bent to pick up the shawl. “I am sorry,” he
remarked in a casual tone, “that I was so uncivil just now. It is you
who have a better right to be annoyed. You must have been horribly
bored these last few days.”
“Oh no,” said the Marquis, “not bored!”