SURGERY: THE PROBE
“Your silence, full and near,
Folded my agony;
Till it seemed the ruined way to clear
Luminously.
“Words are all harsh to hear,
A look too much may see,
But your silence, beautiful, austere,
Was God to me.” —LILIAN STREET.
That the Marquis’ missive ever reached Le Fougerais was no small
wonder, for his messenger rode thither like a madman. It happened
that the priest met him in the hall when he returned next morning,
spattered from head to foot with the plentiful mud of the bad roads,
haggard and unsmiling—he who always had a smile for his good friend.
“Where is Gilbert?” he enquired abruptly, without greeting of any
kind. “In the library? Thank you.”
He went in, leaving the door ajar, and M. des Graves heard him say in
a voice quite unknown to him: “I have done your errand. I am ready to
do any others with which you think you can trust me.”
“Thank you,” said Gilbert; “I am much obliged to you. There will no
doubt be others.”
Louis came straight out and went up to his room, and his face, as he
passed the priest, was the face of a man in hell.
What did it mean? Surely only one thing. Gilbert had discovered the
truth—had perhaps imagined more than the truth. That explosion which
the priest had dreaded in November, and whose non-occurrence had so
bewildered him, was come at last. But now he was better prepared to
meet it.
The Curé went, not to the library, but to his own room, and there,
unlocking a drawer, he took out and re-read a long letter with an
English postmark. Even as he touched it he experienced again the
overwhelming feeling of relief which had enveloped him when first he
read it, a week ago. Things were bad enough, but Louis was not, thank
God, what he had been almost forced into believing him. As for
Lucienne. . . . “Poor child! poor child!” he said once or twice. Then
he put the letter away, and sat a long time thinking. His face was
very stern.
At supper that evening both the young men made pitiable and unconcerted
attempts to behave as though nothing had happened. Gilbert’s were
crowned with a certain success. Neither of them said a word to the
other.
And next morning after his Mass, in the privacy of his own room, M.
des Graves again took out Lucienne’s letter. His coffee and rolls lay
almost untouched at his elbow. Again he put the letter away, and fell
to pacing up and down on the track which he was beginning to wear on
the Marquise’s carpet. As he walked, he reflected on the girl whose
pitiful confession he was beginning to know by heart, and on the
mysterious ways of that providence which had set her in a position
which she was not strong enough to fill. She was sweet, she was good,
but she was not strong. And now he saw that Lucienne, not in herself
remarkable, had come to be a kind of symbol in the lives of the two
men who loved her; that the idea of her stood for more than she in her
own person could ever be. Stranger still, it was the man who had
trespassed in loving her at all who was the better for it; of the
other he could not say that. For that Louis had gained nothing of
ennoblement by his renunciation, necessary and just though it had
been, the priest did not believe. But Gilbert—on what unrighteous path
was his righteous claim impelling him? He thought of the bitter,
determined line of his mouth last night; of the haunting anger and
despair in the Vicomte’s eyes. Something must be done. But since he
must proceed with the utmost caution, and since he was still in the
dark as to the amount of Gilbert’s knowledge, he resolved on a course
for him very unusual, and not a little repugnant.
He rang. “Ask Monsieur le Vicomte, if he is up, whether he will be so
good as to come and speak to me.”
Louis was up; indeed, he looked as if he had had but little sleep.
“You sent for me?” he asked, with an obvious surprise, as he came in.
“Yes; I want to have a talk with you. Sit down there, if you will.”
The priest waited until Louis had taken a chair and then sat down
himself. “I want to ask you,” he said without preamble, “what is wrong
between you and Gilbert?”
A spasm passed over Louis’ face. “I can’t tell you that,” he answered
hoarsely.
“My son,” said the priest impressively, “it will really be best for
all of us if you tell me the exact truth. Most of it I know already.
Since the beginning of last November I have known that you loved
Lucienne; for the last week I have known that Lucienne loves you. I
know of your fatal acknowledgment of your passion; I know, too, thank
God, how you have tried to undo the wrong you have done. I want to
know now how far Gilbert is cognisant of all this.”
Louis got up from his chair. “Ask him then,” he said, with dilated
nostrils. Then he laughed, not pleasantly. “And better, ask him _how_
he knows it. He is able to inform you more graphically than I. Shall I
tell him to come up?”
“No,” replied the priest, without moving—unmoved, too, by his most
unwonted rudeness. “No, I am asking you. My son, you must know that I
am aware you have quarrelled.”
“Quarrelled!” exclaimed the Vicomte with another little laugh. “Oh no,
Father—Gilbert is too magnanimous to quarrel! He has not quarrelled
with me. He has merely said things to me . . . intolerable, not to be
borne from any man alive . . . and refused to answer for them. That is
not quarrelling, is it?”
And M. des Graves saw that Louis, that hater of emotion and of scenes,
was quivering with passion. He began to have a pretty clear impression
of what had taken place at the river. He got up and approached him.
“Louis, this situation cannot go on.”
The Vicomte looked him full in the face. “Gilbert could end it—if he
would.”
“How?”
“By a very simple means, involving nothing more than a couple of
swords. But he refuses to fight me.”
“Ah!” said the older man quietly. And, despite his sympathy, he let
the gleam of steel be seen in his own hand. “And so you think, Louis,
that _you_ are the aggrieved party?”
The unexpected attack for an instant staggered the furious young man.
He swallowed down something that might have been an oath ere he
answered curtly “I do. I have every right to think so. But I will not
trouble you with my reasons. They are not worth your attention.” And
he turned to go.
“Louis . . . Louis!” said M. des Graves in a voice of such pain and
tenderness that the Vicomte stopped.
“It is no use, Father,” he replied wildly. “Nothing is any use; it is
no use my having tried to behave with some show of honour—Gilbert says
that I have none . . . perhaps he is right . . . if you say so, too
. . . I had better go. . . .” But instead of going he sank slowly down
on the nearest chair, and his head went down on his arms along the
back of it.
The priest stood there and looked sorrowfully down at the bowed head.
For a long moment there was intense silence, into which only the clock
on the mantelpiece intruded. At last he spoke. “I want to help you,
Louis; I think you know that.”
Louis lifted a pale, dangerous face. “I don’t know anything,” he said
with extraordinary intensity. “I have no feelings about anybody in the
world—except Gilbert. And I hate him. . . . Let me go!”
The priest stood aside. “You can go, Louis. . . . Twenty years of
comradeship and two days hatred. . . . Perhaps you can see better than
I how it will end. God have mercy on all of us!”
The Vicomte flashed out. “But he hates me, too! He must have hated me
for months. All the time he knew, curse him . . . all the time that I
thought I had hidden it . . . all the time that he was away in
Brittany. . . .” And the stream broke its bounds at last, and all that
he had suffered, all that he had foregone, his love, his struggle, his
victory won for Gilbert’s sake, came pouring out, tinged with the
passionate resentment which made Gilbert’s very name difficult to
utter.
The priest made no effort to stem an outburst for which indeed he was
thankful, and which left Louis spent and shaken, so that he threw
himself down at last on the window-seat and looked out of the window.
M. des Graves, who had stood without moving during the storm, began to
pace slowly up and down in his accustomed fashion, to give the young
man time to recover himself. At last he came and sat down beside him.
“Do you want me to say anything to you, Louis?”
Slowly, very slowly, the set profile turned towards him. A gleam of
humour flickered for a moment in the angry grey eyes. “I have said a
good deal to you,” was all Saint-Ermay’s answer, but he leaned his
head back against the window-frame as though he were waiting.