One path there is, one only door
Of refuge from the blank Before,
And urge with reasons not a few
Regret and Gratitude thereto.
The Castle of Salvières, with its gorgeous “presence flag” fluttering
in the salt sea-breeze, basked in the brilliant sun of a hot afternoon.
On the south terrace Piotr was rushing after a huge pink-and-green ball
that Marguerite was untiringly throwing for him. Below, on the to-day
unwrinkled surface of the little harbor, the _Sarcelle_, one of the
finest steam-yachts afloat, was being spruced and polished and scraped
and rubbed--like a steeple-chaser before a race--for her straight
flight across the ocean. Even from that height the cheery lilt of
a bo’s’n’s silver pipe could be distinctly heard as it blew its
shrill commands, and the almond-white decks shone bravely after their
last holystoning.
“Where’s she going?” Master Piotr asked, running up with the gaily
painted globe in his arms. “Garrassime and I were down there this
morning, little darling Malou, and the steward said that Uncle Jean
had ordered her to be ready by to-morrow. Is she going to England?”
“I don’t know,” Marguerite quite truthfully answered, for ever since
the wreck she had asked no questions, dreading to probe into a
situation which she realized was quite beyond her.
“Ho, ho!” cried Piotr, spying a tall, black-robed figure emerging from
the Louis XI. wing by a postern-door all overrun with creepers. “Where
have you been, Uncle Pierre? You’re always fussing on that side of the
quadrangle. Have you a surprise hidden there for me?”
The Abbé de Kerdren received the flushed, laughing boy full against his
long legs without a reproof; then bending, he lifted him to his left
arm.
“You are always so unexpected, Piotr,” he remarked. “Your rubber ball
would be no worse as far as bounce is concerned, but decidedly lighter.”
“You haven’t answered my question, Uncle Pierre?” grumbled Piotr,
snatching at the abbé’s long sash as if it had been a bell-rope.
“Answer me, please!”
“Indeed, Majesty! Well, as you have condescended to say ‘please,’ I
will confide to you that there is not the least bit of a surprise in
store for you, neither in the _Louis-Onze_ wing nor anywhere else.”
“_Tfou!_” came from Piotr in an admirable imitation of the _mujik’s_
favorite expression of disapproval. “_Tfou!_ I don’t think you’re
telling the truth, Uncle Pierre, because I know there’s going to be a
surprise pretty soon.”
“You’re not very polite, my Muscovite friend. And, by the way, what
makes you think that there will be a surprise, after all? You seem
pretty sure about it!”
Marguerite had drawn near and had swung herself to the parapet of the
terrace, from which she dangled her little feet half a yard from the
ground. She was barely listening, but still she heard, and Piotr’s
next remark caused her to suddenly catch hold of the stonework on both
sides as if in need of steadying herself.
“Papa is the surprise,” piped the boy, glancing triumphantly up in the
abbé’s face. “He is coming here--right here--to Salvières in a day
or two.”
The priest’s expectant smile was wiped out as with a cloth, and it was
in a tone of strangely disproportionate reproof that he replied, “What
silly yarn is this, and who told you such a fib, to begin with?”
Piotr, greatly offended, drew up his sturdy little body. “I don’t
know,” he replied, in his peculiarly precocious fashion, “why everybody
tells me I’m a liar. Garrassime is just like you; he said that I
wasn’t saying the truth.”
“Garrassime is a man of great sense, then, that’s all,” the abbé
said, with some heat, stealing a glance in the direction of Marguerite,
who, bent forward, her lips a little unclosed, her blue eyes wide, was
as motionless as the broad balustrade on which she sat.
“If your father were coming here, assuredly Garrassime would know about
it. So you see that you are dreaming, or have been misinformed, my dear
child,” the abbé resumed.
“Mis-in-formed!” sulked Piotr. “What does that mean? Is it that I’ve
been lied to?”
“Dear me,” said the exasperated Abbé de Kerdren, “can’t you remember,
Piotr, that the words ‘lie’ and ‘liar’ are not parliamentary--no, I
don’t express myself right--not polite or well-bred, d’you understand?”
“Oh, I don’t mind that, but if one’s got to be polite now, even
during play-hours, it’s beastly!”
“Piotr!” threatened the abbé.
But Piotr was not listening, and, following his own idea, burst out, “I
know Papa is coming and so does Aunt Tatiana; so there!”
“Is it Aunt Tatiana who has told you so?”
“No, Uncle Pierre, she did not tell it to me; she was talking to Uncle
Jean after he kissed her.”
“Where?”
“Where? Why, behind the ear, just on that little soft, white place one
has above the neck.”
“But, _sapristi_! I am not asking you where your uncle Jean kissed her.
I ask where they both were when you heard what you pretend they said.”
“That’s different,” condescended Piotr, with immense dignity. “They
were in Aunt Tatiana’s dressing-room. I was under the dressing-table
that’s got petticoats of gauze and an underskirt of pink satin. They
say it’s a Duchess table, so I think that’s why Aunt Tatiana’s got
one.”
“But in the name of all the Saints of Paradise what were you doing under
the dressing-table, and what did you hear, or rather mis-hear?”
“I was hiding a mouse from the stable to frighten Marie when she found
it.” And, seeing the abbé’s eyes seek Heaven in silent protest, Piotr
continued: “You’re going to say it was not chivalrous like Bayard or
the old Du Guesclin little darling Malou’s so fond of, but Marie’s
such a coward and I wanted to hear her cry: ‘_Oh! M’ame la
Duchesse--une souris! L’affreuse bête! Elle va me mordre!_’”
“Now look here, Piotr,” the abbé said with enforced resignation, “let
Marie and the mouse be for a minute, and admit that you did not hear a
word of what you think you heard.”
“But I did hear, Uncle Pierre, I did! I did! I did! Aunt Tatiana had
been crying--at least I think she must have been, because her eyes
looked bright as my blue marbles, and Uncle Jean said to her in Russian,
‘Don’t be silly, _doushka_,’ and then he kissed her; and she
rubbed her nose on his coat and said, ‘It’s dreadful, Jeannot. If
Basil arrives now, what shall we do?’ and then Uncle Jean said, ‘He
can’t arrive before forty-eight hours, and by that time the _Sarcelle_
will be far out to sea!’ and then he dragged her to the balcony to
make her look down at the yacht, and I ran away on all-fours so they
couldn’t see me, and I went quick to Garrassime, who was awful angry
with me for telling him. Now give me a ride on your shoulder, Uncle
Pierre, all around the quadrangle, to reward me for telling you.”
“I’ll be hanged if I do!” was on the abbé’s lips, but Piotr was to
be conciliated just then, and so he said instead: “I will give you a
ride, but on condition that you promise to forget all this nonsense.
Promise, Piotr, solemnly, that you will not say another word about it to
any one. You misunderstood the whole thing, I assure you.”
Piotr shook his head twice from side to side. He was beginning to think
that perhaps, after all, he had been mistaken, and yet not quite; but a
ride on his uncle’s broad shoulder was tempting, so he suddenly held
out his square little paw. “_Tope-là!_” he gravely proposed. “I’ll
not speak to anybody about Papa’s coming, Uncle Pierre; but I can’t
help knowing that he’s coming.”
“Good Lord!” murmured the abbé under his breath, “there’s
stubbornness for you!” and, picking up the delighted child, he started
on his equine course at a brisk amble, his soutane blown by the wind
against his splendid form, his sash flying behind him in the gayest way
possible, although his heart felt sore indeed.
Marguerite descended from her high perch, not at a jump as she was wont
to do, but very wearily. She felt tired--something new to her--and very
sad; but her brave eyes were clouded by no tears, and her lips were
absolutely steady. Her lesson in self-repression had been learned long
ago; besides, not one thought of her own future, after the tragedy that
had changed everything, had as yet entered her head, which she held just
as straight as ever.
Tatiana had marveled at the “Gamin’s” tact and courage--this
motherless little creature, whose high-bred self-respect and extreme
delicacy of feeling were sufficient to make her avoid the slightest
_faux-pas_ in speech or look under crushing difficulties. Even to
Tatiana she had not said a word that could betray the least curiosity.
She had not alluded to the extraordinary presence of Preston Wynne on
Laurence’s yacht, and had indeed hardly alluded to the catastrophe at
all. But now, as she walked slowly along the parapet, she wondered
within herself whether it was really true that Basil was on his way to
Salvières. Something told her that Piotr had spoken sooth, and the
abbé’s evident desire to nip the story, so to speak, in the bud, gave
her much food for reflection, in spite of her ignorance of what had
happened before.
In a few minutes Piotr came back to her, leaving the abbé to return to
his affairs, and the game of ball was resumed. The boy was dressed in
white without any trace of mourning, and (by Tatiana’s express advice)
so was Marguerite herself, for word had been passed that Piotr was not
to be told about his loss, and the servants at Salvières were far too
loyal to let a sign escape them that might betray the truth.
The predicament of Tatiana and her husband was really a trying one, for
until Preston’s departure they dreaded the possible arrival of Basil,
which might occur at any moment. She had continued to look after Preston
Wynne devotedly, and her unremitting care touched him to the heart.
“You will be absolutely comfortable on the _Sarcelle_,” she said to him
that evening. “Jean has had the main saloon arranged so that it will be,
at one and the same time, a sleeping and living apartment for you--a
library it always is, more or less, well provided with bewilderingly
mixed-up literature: funny, serious, instructive, scientific, beatific,
and sportive, _un peu pour tous les gouts_. And, by the way, how do you
like your two attendants, the orderly and the _carabin_?”
Preston, lying motionless upon his bed, turned toward her eyes brimming
over with gratitude.
“Your kindness to me, Madame de Salvières, has been something well-nigh
incredible. A lifetime of real long length would hardly be enough to
prove to you how profoundly touched I am by it--but,” he murmured
beneath his breath, “there will be no long life to do it in.”
“Don’t talk nonsense,” she said, quickly. “It does not look like you
to despair.”
“I know,” he replied, smiling dubiously, “but what I just said is no
sign of despair. Indeed, to linger for years as a totally useless lump,
a burden to everybody, would require much more courage than to take a
polite and immediate leave of this world. Besides, there is another
bitterness added to the rest--I hardly like to speak of that, but you
have spoiled me to the extent of making me look upon you as a confessor
of all my thoughts.”
“Oh, go on then. What is it?”
“Well,” he hesitated, “I have been turning over facts in my mind pretty
assiduously, believe me, during the last few days, and one of them is
that I am a cripple unable to repair in any way the harm I have done.
No, please don’t say anything! I thoroughly realize that the memory
of--of Madame Palitzin--will be for ever shadowed by the manner of--in
short, by what preceded the accident. Too many know that I was on board
the _Wild Rose_; it will leak out sooner or later that ‘Mr.
Harrington,’ the private secretary, was Preston Wynne, and now that it
has become a physical impossibility for me to give satisfaction to
Prince Palitzin, the stain is and will remain indelible.”
“My dear, good boy,” Tatiana recriminated, “this is sheer morbidity.
First of all, who are the many who, according to you, know that ‘Mr.
Harrington’ was not ‘Mr. Harrington’? Jean and myself and the
Abbé de Kerdren, Régis, old Garrassime, and possibly Marguerite de
Plenhöel, although she has not mentioned your name or your presence to
a living soul; but, of course, she saw you as you were being carried
ashore. None will speak, rest assured; so think no more about it and
remember that while there is life there is hope; that you are young,
intelligent, gifted, and, moreover, extremely wealthy, since you have
inherited during the past four years not only your father’s colossal
fortune, but also your grandmother’s. This gives you immense
opportunities to do good; to create interests of many sorts for yourself
that will occupy your mind. I am not trying to overdose you with
rose-colored views of a painful situation, but still--” She paused and
finished her discourse by a very convincing little gesture.
“Yes; I dare say you are right,” Preston admitted; “but my money without
me would do just as much good, provided I managed to pass it on to
somebody who would take the trouble off my hands. Personally I am not a
philanthrope, I am afraid.”
“Neither am I,” she retorted. “Organized charities are a horror to me.
Don’t misunderstand what I say. I certainly admit that money left to
hospitals, orphan-asylums, _crèches_, etc., etc., is well employed; but
it has always seemed to me that one gold piece given to the truly
deserving, from hand to hand, as by one human bring to another, so to
speak, is far better than inscribing one’s name--almost invariably
with the hope of its being published abroad--upon a list of so-called
philanthropies.”
“I am entirely of your opinion, excepting that in order to discover the
truly deserving it is needful to be up, about, and doing.”
“Not with a fitting and faithful agent.”
“A faithful and fitting representative? Yes ... perhaps!”
“How many millions have you got?” she asked, laughingly, to cheer him
up.
“Oh,” he said, immediately catching the spirit of her mood, “let me
see--about fifty--that is in dollars, you understand.”
“Two hundred and fifty millions of francs! Good Lord! That’s a
pleasing sum!”
“It might have been,” he argued. “But now....”
“I beg your pardon, it’s just exactly now that they’ll come in
handy. Think of it! First of all, a big steam-yacht, ... they’re not
cheap toys. A special private car....”
“But I have those already,” he mourned. “I became heir to my father’s
whole outfit, lock, stock, and barrel. There’s not a thing to look
forward to any more!”
“Dear, dear! What it is to be pampered.” She rose and, bending over him,
smoothed his hard little apology for a pillow. “I must go and dress for
dinner,” she explained. “I wish I didn’t have to leave you here
alone.”
He pressed his lips to her hand as it flitted beside his head. “You have
been so good to me, so very, very good,” he said, with emotion, “I hate
to think I am leaving you to-morrow, never to see you again.”
“And why that, pray?” she demanded.
“Because,” he said--“because there seems to me no possibility, even with
‘my big yacht,’ to come once more and darken your doors with the
memories I would unavoidably suggest.”
“I don’t agree with you at all,” she asserted; “but we will come back
to this to-morrow morning. Now go to sleep as soon as you can, like a
good child. _Buènas noches!_”
“_Felices sueños!_” he murmured, raising his eyes wistfully. “You,” he
added, “seem determined to heap coals of scriptural fire upon
undeserving heads. Do you always return good for evil?”
“Evil!” she mused aloud. “Good for evil? Granting that this be my habit,
it would merely be a selfish one, for if one returns evil for evil and
bite for bite, one is cheated. There is nothing more then for Almighty
God to do; it is much better to remain His creditor.”
“That’s a new view of the case,” he pondered, and then, in an altered
tone, suddenly added: “Madame de Salvières, you have always done so
much for me, will you--will you kiss me good night?”
“Why, yes, of course I will,” she assented, and, bending once more over
him, she kissed him on the forehead. “_Voilà, mon enfant_,” she said,
pushing back his hair; and he watched her white dress disappear in the
penumbra of the immense room.
Left alone, he gave a long, shuddering sigh, and for a moment closed his
eyes very tight. When he opened them again he let them wander about the
room, with its splendid tapestries, its admirably preserved antique
furniture, its deep window embayments filled by transparent shadows,
that revealed here the dull gold of a frame, there the bevel of a
looking-glass, the pale gleam of ivory, the deeper darkness of bronze,
and the groups of flowering plants Tatiana had caused to be brought
there for the pleasure of his gaze. Close beside him on a very low
table, which he could easily reach without moving more than his arm,
stood a great bunch of violets in a bowl of Venetian glass; there was
also there a block-note provided with paper and envelopes, a
fountain-pen, a silver tray upon which rested a decanter of Muscat de
Frontignan, a box of cigarettes, a match-safe, and a glass, and on the
other edge two or three little medicine-bottles and a crystal spoon.
He could hear the _carabin_--as the Duchess had designated him--walking
softly up and down in the adjoining salon, waiting to be summoned, but
he did not do this. Instead he noiselessly drew paper and pen toward
him, and a little awkwardly began to write, holding the pad almost
upright before his eyes, for to be quite flat on one’s back is
inconvenient for such business. Sheet after sheet he covered with shaky
but very legible writing, quite aware that twice the medical student,
and twice the orderly, had peeped in at the door to see how he was
doing. A little smile raised the corners of his lips, but he took no
further notice and went on writing quietly. At last he had done, and,
folding the scattered pages, he slipped them into an envelope together
with a few violets from the fragrant cluster Tatiana herself had brought
to him an hour or so before; gummed the flap down, wrote the address,
“_Madame la Duchesse de Salvières, Personnelle_,” and slid the packet
into the breast pocket of his pajama jacket. Then he called the budding
doctor.
“_Mon cher ami_,” he said, “before braving again the perils of the
sea--which will be to-morrow if all goes well--I wish to make some
temporary disposal of my property, or properties, rather, for, alas!
they are numerous. I suppose that according to French law a brief
document of the kind I am thinking of, witnessed by you and, for
instance, your assistant, would be quite valid?”
“Why, yes, monsieur, certainly. It is what they call a holograph will,
but I am very sorry to see that you are feeling anxious. There is no
danger, I assure you, in crossing the ocean in such a ship as Monsieur
le Duc de Salvières’s yacht; and as to your health, why, there is no
doubt that you will improve with every day.”
Preston laughed. “I am not in the least anxious, I swear to you,” he
said, lightly. “Of course my general health will be improved by the sea
trip before us--though it will have, as you know, no effect whatever
upon the lesion that has--shall we say preoccupied us all?”
The youthful doctor looked embarrassed and felt himself color, much to
his disgust. “Oh, that naturally is another question, monsieur. Still,
you have great strength, great energy; the vital organs are all in
wonderful condition.”
“Don’t be professional! Please! Please!” smiled Preston. “Be legal,
however, if you don’t mind, for a few moments, and satisfy my mind
before I seek oblivion in sleep. Here, give me that block-note and the
pen; I’ll just scribble what I want.”
With a tolerant little glance at his patient’s face the young man
complied, and accepted a cigarette, which he smoked with exceeding
relish while the work was in progress.
“There we are!” Preston said, triumphantly, after a while. “Bravo! the
_magistrature_, as you call it here--or is it the _barreau_?--has lost a
great luminary in my humble person. Read my _chef-d’œuvre_, my friend,
and tell me what you think of it. You observe that I have made it out
both in French and in English. Hum! Wasn’t that smart of me?”
“It’s always best to humor patients,” the other reflected, remembering
the teachings of more than one grim instructor, and he took the
wide-open page, over which he scarcely glanced. What did it matter to
him?
“It seems very legal,” he smiled, good-naturedly. “Do you really wish my
signature and Olivier’s to this?” (Olivier was the orderly’s
gracious cognomen.)
“Course I do; otherwise why should I have given myself such elaborate
pains? The caligraphy may leave a little to be desired, but what will
you? _À la guerre comme à la guerre!_”
The deed accomplished with no solemnity at all, Preston closed the
second envelope and joined it to the first in his pocket.
“If you don’t mind,” he said, pleasantly, “I should like to read for
half an hour or so before composing myself to slumber. Will you be so
good as to hand me that most interesting volume of short stories there
on the chair?”
The interne readily complied. He wanted to write a few words to his
mother before retiring, and so he quickly returned to the salon.
Slowly, and with some difficulty, Preston drew the upper part of his
body inch by inch to the very edge of the bed, made a long arm, and
managed noiselessly to reach a bottle adorned with a crimson label.
Steadily, deliberately, laboriously, he took the tumbler from the tray,
half-filled it with wine from the decanter, poured in the whole contents
of the medicine-bottle--slanting the glass so as to avoid any
sound--replaced everything in order, and swallowed the dose in two deep
draughts. Then he lay back on his pillow, and, strange to say, this
non-Catholic made the sign of the cross.
* * * * *
“Madame la Duchesse! Madame la Duchesse!”
The strangled tones of the medical student made Tatiana, who was leaning
over the balcony of her room looking at the crescent moon, start with a
sudden uncontrollable dread.
“What is it?” she cried in a shaking voice.
“Come down, come down, quick!”
Her hair already unbound for the night and falling below her knees, her
peignoir fluttering like wings behind her, Tatiana joined him on the
terrace.
“My God,” she whispered, “you look like a ghost!”
The young man tried to speak, gulped, tried again, and failed. He was
shaking like a leaf as he pointed to the lighted windows of Preston’s
room.
She needed now no explanation, and her little feet in their velvet mules
covered the ground from one entrance to the other as fast as
Marguerite’s could have done.
In the room all was as still and orderly as when she had last left it;
on the bed lay Preston ... asleep? No! One look was enough, and, rushing
forward, she pushed out of her way the Salvières doctor, who stood
white-faced and helpless between her and the quiet form.
“Have you tried everything?” she asked, tremulously, her hand on the
still heart, her lips twitching.
“Yes, everything--so heavy a dose of chloral paralyzes the heart
quickly--and when the doctor there called me it was already all over.”
Tatiana swayed a little. “Chloral!” she said, dully. “Chloral--left near
him! And I never thought of that, miserable fool that I am!”
“Who could have thought of it, Madame la Duchesse, cheerful as he was?”
“We should have thought!” She stooped over Preston and hopelessly
put her ear to his heart, her fingers on his pulse. A rustle of
paper made her straighten herself abruptly, and then she sat down
all of a piece on the edge of the bed close to him and tore open the
envelope addressed to her.
Her fingers were shaking so, her eyes were so hazy, that at first
she could not see, and with the gesture of a sorrowing child she
passed the back of her hand across her face. “I must! I must!” she
murmured, and slowly she unfolded the little leaves.
“Another burden yet will I impose upon you,” she read, “that of
keeping me near you in consecrated ground--for you will see to that,
will you not? since from you I have learned so much.”
She paused; two large tears glided down her cheeks; then she went on
bravely to the end. “I leave all I have to leave to the Abbé de
Kerdren for the poor; all excepting a sum sufficient to make him
whom you called my _carabin_ independent for life. He has, I
understand, a mother to support. You will approve, I know. Also you
will think gently of me and pray for me--I do not doubt that. God
bless and reward you.”
The three men in the room, with heads lowered, hardly dared to breathe.
“Olivier,” the Duchess said at last, very low, “go and fetch the
Duke.” And she knelt down beside Preston.