Through all, it will have been noticed, Mademoiselle had not spoken to
me, nor said one word, good or bad. She had played her part grimly,
had taken defeat in silence if with tears, had tried neither prayer nor
defence nor apology. And the fact that the fight was now over, and the
scene left behind, made no difference in her conduct. She kept her face
studiously turned from me, and affected to ignore my presence. I caught
my horse feeding by the roadside, a furlong forward, and mounted and
fell into place behind the two, as in the morning. And just as we had
plodded on then in silence we plodded on now; almost as if nothing
had happened; while I wondered at the unfathomable ways of women,
and marvelled that she could take part in such an incident and remain
unchanged.
Yet, though she strove to hide it, it had made a change in her. Though
her mask served her well it could not entirely hide her emotions; and
by-and-by I marked that her head drooped, that she rode listlessly, that
the lines of her figure were altered. I noticed that she had flung away,
or furtively dropped, her riding-whip; and I began to understand that,
far from the fight having set me in my former place, to the old hatred
of me were now added shame and vexation on her own account; shame that
she had so lowered herself, even to save her brother, vexation that
defeat had been her only reward.
Of this I saw a sign at Lectoure, where the inn had but one common room
and we must all dine in company. I secured for them a table by the fire,
and leaving them standing by it, retired myself to a smaller one near
the door. There were no other guests; which made the separation between
us more marked. M. de Cocheforet seemed to feel this. He shrugged his
shoulders and looked across the room at me with a smile half sad half
comical. But Mademoiselle was implacable. She had taken off her mask,
and her face was like stone. Once, only once during the meal, I saw a
change come over her. She coloured, I suppose at her thoughts, until her
face flamed from brow to chin. I watched the blush spread and spread;
and then she slowly and proudly turned her shoulder to me and looked
through the window at the shabby street.
I suppose that she and her brother had both built on this attempt, which
must have been arranged at Auch. For when we went on in the afternoon,
I marked a change in them. They rode like people resigned to the worst.
The grey realities of the position, the dreary future began to hang like
a mist before their eyes, began to tinge the landscape with sadness,
robbed even the sunset of its colours. With each hour Monsieur’s spirits
flagged and his speech became less frequent; until presently when the
light was nearly gone and the dusk was round us the brother and sister
rode hand in hand, silent, gloomy, one at least of them weeping. The
cold shadow of the Cardinal, of Paris, of the scaffold fell on them, and
chilled them. As the mountains which they had known all their lives
sank and faded behind us, and we entered on the wide, low valley of
the Garonne, their hopes sank and faded also--sank to the dead level of
despair. Surrounded by guards, a mark for curious glances, with pride
for a companion, M. de Cocheforet could have borne himself bravely;
doubtless would bear himself bravely still when the end came. But almost
alone, moving forward through the grey evening to a prison, with so many
measured days before him, and nothing to exhilarate or anger--in this
condition it was little wonder if he felt, and betrayed that he felt,
the blood run slow in his veins; if he thought more of the weeping wife
and ruined home which he had left behind him than of the cause in which
he had spent himself.
But God knows, they had no monopoly of gloom. I felt almost as sad
myself. Long before sunset the flush of triumph, the heat of battle,
which had warmed my heart at noon, were gone, giving place to a chill
dissatisfaction, a nausea, a despondency such as I have known follow
a long night at the tables. Hitherto there had been difficulties to be
overcome, risks to be run, doubts about the end. Now the end was certain
and very near; so near that it filled all the prospect. One hour of
triumph I might have, and would have, and I hugged the thought of it as
a gambler hugs his last stake, planning the place and time and mode, and
trying to occupy myself wholly with it. But the price? Alas! that too
would intrude itself, and more frequently as the evening waned; so that
as I marked this or that thing by the road, which I could recall passing
on my journey south with thoughts so different, with plans that now
seemed so very, very old, I asked myself grimly if this were really I;
if this were Gil de Berault, known at Zaton’s, PREMIER JOUEUR, or some
Don Quichotte from Castille, tilting at windmills and taking barbers’
bowls for gold.
We reached Agen very late that evening, after groping our way through
a by-road near the river, set with holes and willow-stools and
frog-spawn--a place no better than a slough; so that after it the great
fires and lights at the Blue Maid seemed like a glimpse of a new world,
and in a twinkling put something of life and spirits into two at least
of us. There was queer talk round the hearth here, of doings in Paris,
of a stir against the Cardinal with the Queen-mother at bottom, and of
grounded expectations that something might this time come of it. But the
landlord pooh-poohed the idea; and I more than agreed with him. Even M.
de Cocheforet, who was at first inclined to build on it, gave up hope
when he heard that it came only by way of Montauban; whence--since its
reduction the year before--all sort of CANARDS against the Cardinal were
always on the wing.
‘They kill him about once a month,’ our host said with a grin.
‘Sometimes it is MONSIEUR is to prove a match for him, sometimes
CESAR MONSIEUR--the Duke of Vendome, you understand--and sometimes the
Queen-mother. But since M. de Chalais and the Marshal made a mess of it
and paid forfeit, I pin my faith to his Eminence--that is his new title,
they tell me.’
‘Things are quiet round here?’ I asked.
‘Perfectly. Since the Languedoc business came to an end, all goes well,’
he answered.
Mademoiselle had retired on our arrival, so that her brother and I were
for an hour or two this evening thrown together. I left him at liberty
to separate himself from me if he pleased, but he did not use the
opportunity. A kind of comradeship, rendered piquant by our peculiar
relations, had begun to spring up between us. He seemed to take an odd
pleasure in my company, more than once rallied me on my post of jailor,
would ask humorously if he might do this or that; and once even inquired
what I should do if he broke his parole.
‘Or take it this way,’ he continued flippantly, ‘Suppose I had struck
you in the back this evening in that cursed swamp by the river, M. de
Berault? What then! PARDIEU, I am astonished at myself that I did not do
it. I could have been in Montauban within twenty-four hours, and found
fifty hiding-places and no one the wiser.’
‘Except your sister,’ I said quietly.
He made a wry face. ‘Yes,’ he said, ‘I am afraid that I must have
stabbed her too, to preserve my self-respect. You are right.’ And he
fell into a reverie which held him for a few minutes. Then I found him
looking at me with a kind of frank perplexity that invited question.
‘What is it?’ I said.
‘You have fought a great many duels?’
‘Yes,’ I said.
‘Did you ever strike a foul blow in one?’
‘Never,’ I answered. ‘Why do you ask?’
‘Well, because I--wanted to confirm an impression. To be frank, M. de
Berault, I seem to see in you two men.
‘Two men?’
‘Yes, two men. One, the man who captured me; the other, the man who let
my friend go free to-day.’
‘It surprised you that I let him go? That was prudence, M. de
Cocheforet,’ I replied. ‘I am an old gambler. I know when the stakes are
too high for me. The man who caught a lion in his wolf-pit had no great
catch.’
‘No, that is true,’ he answered smiling, ‘And yet--I find two men in
your skin.’
‘I daresay that there are two in most men’s skins,’ I answered with a
sigh. ‘But not always together. Sometimes one is there, and sometimes
the other.’
‘How does the one like taking up the other’s work?’ he asked keenly.
I shrugged my shoulders. ‘That is as may be,’ I said. ‘You do not take
an estate without the debts.’
He did not answer for a moment, and I fancied that his thoughts had
reverted to his own case. But on a sudden he looked at me again. ‘Will
you answer a question, M. de Berault?’ he said winningly.
‘Perhaps,’ I replied.
‘Then tell me--it is a tale I am sure worth the telling. What was it
that, in a very evil hour for me, sent you in search of me?’
‘My Lord Cardinal,’ I answered
‘I did not ask who,’ he replied drily. ‘I asked, what. You had no grudge
against me?’
‘No.’
‘No knowledge of me?’
‘No.’
‘Then what on earth induced you to do it? Heavens! man,’ he continued
bluntly, and speaking with greater freedom than he had before used,
‘Nature never intended you for a tipstaff. What was it then?’
I rose. It was very late, and the room was empty, the fire low.
‘I will tell you--to-morrow,’ I said. ‘I shall have something to say to
you then, of which that will be part.’
He looked at me in great astonishment, and with a little suspicion.
But I called for a light, and by going at once to bed, cut short his
questions. In the morning we did not meet until it was time to start.
Those who know the south road to Agen, and how the vineyards rise in
terraces north of the town, one level of red earth above another, green
in summer, but in late autumn bare and stony, may remember a particular
place where the road, two leagues from the town, runs up a steep hill.
At the top of the hill four roads meet; and there, plain to be seen
against the sky, is a finger-post indicating which way leads to
Bordeaux, and which to old tiled Montauban, and which to Perigueux.
This hill had impressed me greatly on my journey south; perhaps because
I had enjoyed from it my first extended view of the Garonne Valley, and
had there felt myself on the verge of the south country where my mission
lay. It had taken root in my memory, so that I had come to look upon its
bare rounded head, with the guide-post and the four roads, as the first
outpost of Paris, as the first sign of return to the old life.
Now for two days I had been looking forward to seeing it again, That
long stretch of road would do admirably for something I had in my
mind. That sign-post, with the roads pointing north, south, east, and
west--could there be a better place for meetings and partings?
We came to the bottom of the ascent about an hour before noon, M. de
Cocheforet, Mademoiselle, and I. We had reversed the order of yesterday,
and I rode ahead; they came after at their leisure. Now, at the foot
of the hill I stopped, and letting Mademoiselle pass on, detained M. de
Cocheforet by a gesture.
‘Pardon me, one moment,’ I said. ‘I want to ask a favour.’
He looked at me somewhat fretfully; with a gleam of wildness in his eyes
that betrayed how the iron was, little by little, eating into his heart.
He had started after breakfast as gaily as a bridegroom, but gradually
he had sunk below himself; and now he had much ado to curb his
impatience.
‘Of me?’ he said bitterly. ‘What is it?’
‘I wish to have a few words with Mademoiselle--alone,’ I said.
‘Alone?’ he exclaimed in astonishment.
‘Yes,’ I replied, without blenching, though his face grew dark. ‘For the
matter of that, you can be within call all the time, if you please. But
I have a reason for wishing to ride a little way with her.’
‘To tell her something?’
‘Yes.’
‘Then you can tell it to me,’ he retorted suspiciously. ‘Mademoiselle, I
will answer for it, has no desire to--’
‘See me or speak to me? No,’ I said. ‘I can understand that. Yet I want
to speak to her.’
‘Very well, you can speak in my presence,’ he answered rudely. ‘If that
be all, let us ride on and join her.’ And he made a movement as if to do
so.
‘That will not do, M. de Cocheforet,’ I said firmly, stopping him with
my hand. ‘Let me beg you to be more complaisant. It is a small thing I
ask, a very small thing; but I swear to you that if Mademoiselle does
not grant it, she will repent it all her life.’
He looked at me, his face growing darker and darker.
‘Fine words,’ he said, with a sneer. ‘Yet I fancy I understand them.’
And then with a passionate oath he broke out. ‘But I will not have it!
I have not been blind, M. de Berault, and I understand. But I will not
have it. I will have no such Judas bargain made. PARDIEU! do you think I
could suffer it and show my face again?’
‘I don’t know what you mean,’ I said, restraining myself with
difficulty. I could have struck the fool.
‘But I know what you mean,’ he replied, in a tone of suppressed rage.
‘You would have her sell herself; sell herself to you to save me. And
you would have me stand by and see the thing done. No, sir, never;
never, though I go to the wheel. I will die a gentleman, if I have lived
a fool.’
‘I think that you will do the one as certainly as you have done the
other,’ I retorted in my exasperation. And yet I admired him.
‘Oh, I am not quite a fool!’ he cried, scowling at me. ‘I have used my
eyes.’
‘Then be good enough to favour me with your ears!’ I answered drily.
‘For just a moment. And listen when I say that no such bargain has ever
crossed my mind. You were kind enough to think well of me last night, M.
de Cocheforet. Why should the mention of Mademoiselle in a moment change
your opinion? I wish simply to speak to her. I have nothing to ask from
her, nothing to expect from her, either favour or anything else. What I
say she will doubtless tell you. CIEL man! what harm can I do to her, in
the road in your sight?’
He looked at me sullenly, his face still flushed, his eyes suspicious.
‘What do you want to say to her?’ he asked jealously. He was quite
unlike himself. His airy nonchalance, his careless gaiety were gone.
‘You know what I do not want to say to her, M. de Cocheforet,’ I
answered. ‘That should be enough.’
He glowered at me a moment, still ill content. Then, without a word, he
made me a gesture to go to her.
She had halted a score of paces away; wondering, doubtless, what was
on foot. I rode towards her. She wore her mask, so that I missed the
expression of her face as I approached; but the manner in which she
turned her horse’s head uncompromisingly towards her brother and looked
past me was full of meaning. I felt the ground suddenly cut from under
me. I saluted her, trembling.
‘Mademoiselle,’ I said, ‘will you grant me the privilege of your company
for a few minutes as we ride?’
‘To what purpose?’ she answered; surely, in the coldest voice in which a
woman ever spoke to a man.
‘That I may explain to you a great many things you do not understand,’ I
murmured.
‘I prefer to be in the dark,’ she replied. And her manner was more cruel
than her words.
‘But, Mademoiselle,’ I pleaded--I would not be discouraged--‘you told me
one day, not so long ago, that you would never judge me hastily again.’
‘Facts judge you, not I,’ she answered icily. ‘I am not sufficiently on
a level with you to be able to judge you--I thank God.’
I shivered though the sun was on me, and the hollow where we stood was
warm.
‘Still, once before you thought the same,’ I exclaimed after a pause,
‘and afterwards you found that you had been wrong. It may be so again,
Mademoiselle.’
‘Impossible,’ she said.
That stung me.
‘No,’ I cried. ‘It is not impossible. It is you who are impossible. It
is you who are heartless, Mademoiselle. I have done much in the last
three days to make things lighter for you, much to make things more
easy; now I ask you to do something in return which can cost you
nothing.’
‘Nothing?’ she answered slowly--and she looked at me; and her eyes and
her voice cut me as if they had been knives. ‘Nothing? Do you think,
Monsieur, it costs me nothing to lose my self-respect, as I do with
every word I speak to you? Do you think it costs me nothing to be here
when I feel every look you cast upon me an insult, every breath I take
in your presence a contamination? Nothing, Monsieur?’ she continued with
bitter irony. ‘Nay, something! But something which I could not hope to
make clear to you.’
I sat for a moment confounded, quivering with pain. It had been one
thing to feel that she hated and scorned me, to know that the trust
and confidence which she had begun to place in me were transformed
to loathing. It was another to listen to her hard, pitiless words, to
change colour under the lash of her gibing tongue. For a moment I could
not find voice to answer her. Then I pointed to M. de Cocheforet.
‘Do you love him?’ I said hoarsely, roughly. The gibing tone had passed
from her voice to mine.
She did not answer.
‘Because if you do you will let me tell my tale. Say no, but once more,
Mademoiselle--I am only human--and I go. And you will repent it all your
life.’
I had done better had I taken that tone from the beginning. She winced,
her head dropped, she seemed to grow smaller. All in a moment, as it
were, her pride collapsed.
‘I will hear you,’ she murmured.
‘Then we will ride on, if you please,’ I said keeping the advantage I
had gained. ‘You need not fear. Your brother will follow.’
I caught hold of her rein and turned her horse, and she suffered it
without demur; and in a moment we were pacing side by side, with the
long straight road before us. At the end where it topped the hill, I
could see the finger-post, two faint black lines against the sky. When
we reached that--involuntarily I checked my horse and made it move more
slowly.
‘Well, sir?’ she said impatiently. And her figure shook as with cold.
‘It is a tale I desire to tell you, Mademoiselle,’ I answered. ‘Perhaps
I may seem to begin a long way off, but before I end I promise to
interest you. Two months ago there was living in Paris a man--perhaps a
bad man--at any rate, by common report a hard man; a man with a peculiar
reputation.’
She turned on me suddenly, her eyes gleaming through her mask.
‘Oh, Monsieur, spare me this!’ she said, quietly scornful. ‘I will take
it for granted.’
‘Very well,’ I replied steadfastly. ‘Good or bad, he one day, in
defiance of the Cardinal’s edict against duelling, fought with a young
Englishman behind St Jacques’ Church. The Englishman had influence,
the person of whom I speak had none, and an indifferent name; he was
arrested, thrown into the Chatelet, cast for death, left for days to
face death. At last an offer was made to him. If he would seek out and
deliver up another man, an outlaw with a price upon his head, he should
himself go free.’
I paused and drew a deep breath. Then I continued, looking not at her,
but into the distance, and speaking slowly.
‘Mademoiselle, it seems easy now to say what course he should have
chosen. It seems hard now to find excuses for him. But there was one
thing which I plead for him. The task he was asked to undertake was
a dangerous one. He risked, he knew that he must risk, and the event
proved him to be right, his life against the life of this unknown man.
And one thing more; time was before him. The outlaw might be taken by
another, might be killed, might die, might--But there, Mademoiselle, we
know what answer this person made. He took the baser course, and on his
honour, on his parole, with money supplied to him, he went free; free on
the condition that he delivered up this other man.’
I paused again, but I did not dare to look at her; and after a moment of
silence I resumed.
‘Some portion of the second half of the story you know, Mademoiselle;
but not all. Suffice it that this man came down to a remote village, and
there at risk, but, Heaven knows, basely enough, found his way into his
victim’s home. Once there, however, his heart began to fail him. Had he
found the house garrisoned by men, he might have pressed to his end with
little remorse. But he found there only two helpless loyal women; and
I say again that from the first hour of his entrance he sickened at the
work which he had in hand, the work which ill-fortune had laid upon
him. Still he pursued it. He had given his word; and if there was one
tradition of his race which this man had never broken, it was that of
fidelity to his side--to the man who paid him. But he pursued it with
only half his mind, in great misery, if you will believe me; sometimes
in agonies of shame. Gradually, however, almost against his will, the
drama worked itself out before him, until he needed only one thing.
I looked at Mademoiselle, trembling. But her head was averted: I could
gather nothing from the outlines of her form; and I went on.
‘Do not misunderstand me,’ I said in a lower voice. ‘Do not
misunderstand what I am going to say next. This is no love-story; and
can have no ending such as romancers love to set to their tales. But I
am bound to mention, Mademoiselle, that this man who had lived almost
all his life about inns and eating-houses and at the gaming-tables met
here for the first time for years a good woman, and learned by the light
of her loyalty and devotion to see what his life had been, and what
was the real nature of the work he was doing. I think--nay, I know,’
I continued, ‘that it added a hundredfold to his misery that when he
learned at last the secret he had come to surprise, he learned it from
her lips, and in such a way that, had he felt no shame, Hell could have
been no place for him. But in one thing I hope she misjudged him. She
thought, and had reason to think, that the moment he knew her secret he
went out, not even closing the door, and used it. But the truth was that
while her words were still in his ears news came to him that others had
the secret; and had he not gone out on the instant and done what he did,
and forestalled them, M. de Cocheforet would have been taken, but by
others.’
Mademoiselle broke her long silence so suddenly that her horse sprang
forward.
‘Would to Heaven he had!’ she wailed.
‘Been taken by others?’ I exclaimed, startled out of my false composure.
‘Oh, yes, yes!’ she answered with a passionate gesture. ‘Why did you not
tell me? Why did you not confess to me, sir, even at the last moment?
But, no more! No more!’ she continued in a piteous voice; and she tried
to urge her horse forward. ‘I have heard enough. You are racking my
heart, M. de Berault. Some day I will ask God to give me strength to
forgive you.’
‘But you have not heard me out,’ I said.
‘I will hear no more,’ she answered in a voice she vainly strove to
render steady. ‘To what end? Can I say more than I have said? Or did
you think that I could forgive you now--with him behind us going to his
death? Oh, no, no!’ she continued. ‘Leave me! I implore you to leave me,
sir. I am not well.’
She drooped over her horse’s neck as she spoke, and began to weep so
passionately that the tears ran down her cheeks under her mask, and fell
and sparkled like dew on the mane; while her sobs shook her so that I
thought she must fall. I stretched out my hand instinctively to give her
help, but she shrank from me. ‘No!’ she gasped, between her sobs. ‘Do
not touch me. There is too much between us.’
‘Yet there must be one thing more between us,’ I answered firmly. ‘You
must listen to me a little longer whether you will or no, Mademoiselle:
for the love you bear to your brother. There is one course still open to
me by which I may redeem my honour; and it has been in my mind for some
time back to take that course. ‘To-day, I am thankful to say, I can
take it cheerfully, if not without regret; with a steadfast heart, if
no light one. Mademoiselle,’ I continued earnestly, feeling none of the
triumph, none of the vanity, none of the elation I had foreseen, but
only simple joy in the joy I could give her, ‘I thank God that it IS
still in my power to undo what I have done: that it is still in my power
to go back to him who sent me, and telling him that I have changed my
mind, and will bear my own burdens, to pay the penalty.’
We were within a hundred paces of the top and the finger-post. She cried
out wildly that she did not understand. ‘What is it you--you--have just
said?’ she murmured. ‘I cannot hear.’ And she began to fumble with the
ribbon of her mask.
‘Only this, Mademoiselle,’ I answered gently. ‘I give your brother
back his word, his parole. From this moment he is free to go whither he
pleases. Here, where we stand, four roads meet. That to the right goes
to Montauban, where you have doubtless friends, and can lie hid for a
time. Or that to the left leads to Bordeaux, where you can take ship if
you please. And in a word, Mademoiselle,’ I continued, ending a little
feebly, ‘I hope that your troubles are now over.’
She turned her face to me--we had both come to a standstill--and plucked
at the fastenings of her mask. But her trembling fingers had knotted the
string, and in a moment she dropped her hand with a cry of despair. ‘But
you? You?’ she wailed in a voice so changed that I should not have known
it for hers. ‘What will you do? I do not understand, Monsieur.’
‘There is a third road,’ I answered. ‘It leads to Paris. That is my
road, Mademoiselle. We part here.’
‘But why?’ she cried wildly.
‘Because from to-day I would fain begin to be honourable,’ I answered in
a low voice. ‘Because I dare not be generous at another’s cost. I must
go back whence I came.’
‘To the Chatelet?’ she muttered.
‘Yes, Mademoiselle, to the Chatelet.’
She tried feverishly to raise her mask with her hand.
‘I am not well,’ she stammered. ‘I cannot breathe.’
And she began to sway so violently in her saddle that I sprang down,
and, running round her horse’s head, was just in time to catch her as
she fell. She was not quite unconscious then, for as I supported her,
she cried out,--
‘Do not touch me! Do not touch me! You kill me with shame!’
But as she spoke she clung to me; and I made no mistake. Those words
made me happy. I carried her to the bank, my heart on fire, and laid her
against it just as M. de Cocheforet rode up. He sprang from his horse,
his eyes blazing, ‘What is this?’ he cried. ‘What have you been saying
to her, man?’
‘She will tell you,’ I answered drily, my composure returning under his
eye. ‘Amongst other things, that you are free. From this moment, M.
de Cocheforet, I give you back your parole, and I take my own honour.
Farewell.’
He cried out something as I mounted, but I did not stay to heed or
answer. I dashed the spurs into my horse, and rode away past the
cross-roads, past the finger-post; away with the level upland stretching
before me, dry, bare, almost treeless; and behind me, all I loved. Once,
when I had gone a hundred yards, I looked back and saw him standing
upright against the sky, staring after me across her body. And again a
minute later I looked back. This time saw only the slender wooden cross,
and below it a dark blurred mass.