PALS
"Ah! now for a good talk," said Chris. "We have got at least half an
hour. Are you tired, Bertie, or only bored?"
But he was neither, he assured her. He had enjoyed his evening greatly.
No, he had not danced. He had found it enough diverting to look on
tranquilly in a corner. _Mais oui_, everybody had been most kind,
including his hostess, to whom he paid a special tribute of appreciation.
He had found her as gracious as she was beautiful.
"Did she try to pump you?" asked Chris.
He raised his brows in humorous bewilderment. But to pump--what was it?
To ask questions? Ah yes, she had asked him several questions. He had not
answered all of them. He feared she had found him a little stupid. But
she had been very patient with him, ah! so patient--he spread out his
hands, with the old, quick smile, and Chris's peal of laughter echoed far
and wide.
"Bertie, you're too heavenly for words! Then she didn't find out about
Valpré? She thinks--I suppose she thinks--that Trevor introduced us to
each other."
"I do not know what she thinks," the Frenchman made answer. "But no, we
did not speak of Valpré! That is a secret, _hein_?"
"Not exactly a secret. I told Max. But Aunt Philippa--oh, she is so
different. She never understands things," said Chris. "I daresay she will
find out from Trevor as it is; but I hope she won't--I do hope she
won't!"
He smiled comprehendingly. "But Mr. Mordaunt--he understands, yes?" he
said.
She hesitated. "I never told even him about that night in the Magic Cave,
Bertie."
"No?" he said, his quick eyes upon her. "But why not?"
She shook her head with vehemence. "I couldn't. Everyone--even Jack--made
such a fuss at the time--as if--as if"--she turned crimson--"I had done
something really wicked. I'm sure I don't know why. I always said so."
There was defiance as well as distress in her voice. Bertrand leaned a
little towards her.
"Mr. Mordaunt would not think like that," he said, with conviction.
She looked at him dubiously. "I'm not so sure. He has extraordinary views
on some things. I never quite know how he will take anything. Other
people are the same. You are the only person I am quite sure of."
He smiled, but not as if greatly elated. "That is because we are pals,"
he said.
"Yes, I know. It's good to have a pal who understands." Chris spoke a
little wistfully, but almost instantly dismissed the matter. "Why, I am
forgetting! You haven't seen Cinders yet, and I told him you were coming.
He is upstairs. Shall we go and find him?"
They went up together. Half-way up she slipped her hand into his, with a
soft little laugh. "It's like old times, Bertie. Don't break the spell,
_preux chevalier_. Let us pretend--just for to-night!"
They found Cinders imprisoned in a little sitting-room at the top of the
house which Chris shared with her cousin. His greeting of Bertrand was
effusive, even rapturous. Like his mistress, he never forgot a friend.
Afterwards they sat and talked of many things, chiefly connected with
Valpré. There was so much to remember--Mademoiselle Gautier and her
queer, conventual prejudices, Manon, the maid-of-all-work, and her funny
stories of the shore.
"She quite believed in the spell," Chris said. "She almost frightened me
with it."
"Without doubt there was a spell," said Bertrand gravely.
"You really think so? I never believed in it after that night."
"No?" he said. "And yet it was there."
Chris peered at him. "You talk as if it were something quite
substantial," she said.
"It was substantial," he made answer, and then with a sudden smile into
her wondering eyes: "As substantial, _chérie_, as my rope of sand that
was to make my work endure like--like the Sphinx and Cleopatra's Needle
and--and--" He broke off with his eloquent shrug, paused a moment,
then--"and--our friendship, if you will," he ended.
"Ah, fancy your remembering that!" she said. "But I believe you remember
everything."
"That is the spell," he said.
"Is it, Bertie? And do you remember the duel, and how you wouldn't tell
me what it was all about? Tell me now!" she begged, as a child pleading
for a story. "I always wanted to know."
But his face darkened instantly. "Not that, _petite_. He was bad. He was
_scélérat_. We will not speak of him."
"But, Bertie, I'm grown-up now. I'm quite old enough to know," she urged,
with a coaxing hand upon his arm.
He took the hand, turned it upwards, stroked the soft palm very
reverently. "I pray that you will never be old enough, Chris," he said,
and in the shaded lamplight she saw that his face had grown suddenly
melancholy, almost haggard. "The knowledge of evil is a poisonous thing.
Those who find it can never be young again."
His manner awed her a little. She did not pursue the point with her
customary persistence. "Well, tell me what happened afterwards," she
said. "He got well again?"
"Yes, _petite_."
"And--you forgave each other?"
"Never!" Bertrand raised his head and shot out the word with emphasis.
"Never, Bertie?" Chris looked at him, slightly startled.
He looked back at her, faintly smiling, but with the melancholy still in
his eyes. "Never," he repeated. "That shocks you, no?"
"Not really," she said loyally. "I'm sure he was horrid. He looked it.
Then--you are enemies still?"
"Enemies?" He shrugged his shoulders. "No, I think he would not consider
me as an enemy now."
"And yet you never forgave him?"
"No, never." Again his denial was emphatic. After a moment, seeing her
bewilderment, he proceeded to explain. "If he had apologized, if he had
retracted the insult, then it is possible that a reconciliation might
have been effected between us."
"But he didn't?" said Chris. "Then what happened? Did he do nothing at
all?"
"For a long time--nothing," said Bertrand.
"And then?"
"Then," very simply he made reply, "he ruined me."
"Bertie!" She gazed at him with tragedy dawning in her eyes. "He ruined
you! He!"
"He supplied the evidence against me," Bertrand said. "But it was clever.
He spread a net--so"--he flung out his hands with an explanatory
gesture--"a net that I see not nor suspect, and then when I am entrapped
he draw it close--close, and--I am a prisoner." He shut his teeth with a
click, and for an instant smiled--the smile of the man who fights with
his back against the wall.
But the tragedy had grown from shadow to reality in the turquoise blue
eyes of the girl beside him. "Oh, Bertie," she said, with a break in her
voice, "then it was all my fault--mine!"
He turned towards her swiftly. "No, no, no! Who has said that? It is not
true!" he declared, with vehemence.
"You said it yourself--almost," she told him. "And it is true, for if you
hadn't fought him it would never have happened. Oh, Bertie! I'm beginning
to think it was a dreadful pity I ever went to Valpré!"
He caught her hands and held them. "You shall not say it!" he declared
passionately. "You shall not think it! _Mignonne_, listen! Those days at
Valpré are to me the most precious, the most sacred, the most dear of my
life. They can never return, it is true. But the memory of them is mine
for ever. Of that can no one deprive me. While I live I shall cherish
them in my heart."
He cheeked himself abruptly; she was gazing at him with a sort of
speculative wonder that had arrested the tragedy in her eyes. At his
sudden pause she began to smile.
"Bertie, dear, forgive me, but I can't help thinking what a funny
Englishman you would have made! So you really don't think it was my
fault? I'm so glad. I should break my heart if it were."
He stooped, catching her hands up to his lips, whispering inarticulately.
She suffered him, half-laughing. "Silly Frenchman!" she said softly.
And at that he looked up and let her go. "You are right," he said,
speaking rather thickly. "I am foolish. I am mad. And you--you have the
patience of an angel to support me thus."
"Oh no," said Chris. "I'm not a bit like an angel. In fact, I'm rather
wicked sometimes--not very, you know, Bertie, only rather. Now let me
show you my presents. I brought them up here on purpose."
So gaily she diverted the conversation, mainly because she had caught a
gleam of tears in her friend's eyes and was aware that they had not been
far from her own. It would never do for them to sit crying together on
her birthday night. Besides, it was too ridiculous, for what was there to
cry about? Bertrand was in a better position now than he had been for
years. And she--and she--well, it was her birthday, and surely that was
reason enough for being glad.
It was Bertrand who at length gently drew her attention to the time. They
had been talking for the best part of an hour.
"Will not the supper dances be nearly finished?" he suggested.
"Oh, goodness!" exclaimed Chris. "Yes, long ago. We must fly. Say
good-bye to Cinders. You will come and see him again soon, won't you?
Come just as often as you can."
At the door she paused a moment, slipped a warm hand into his, and for
the first time shyly broke her silence upon the subject of her
approaching marriage.
"I'm so glad you are coming to live with us when we are married," she
said. "I shall never feel lonely with you there."
"You would not be lonely without me," he made quick response. "You will
have always your husband."
She caught her breath, and then laughed. "To be sure. I hadn't thought of
that. But Trevor is always busy, and he is going to write a book too."
She looked at him with sudden mischief in her eyes. "Yes, I am very glad
you are coming," she said again. "When he doesn't want you with him you
can come and play with me. And when it's summer"--her eyes fairly
danced--"we'll go for picnics, Bertie, lots of picnics. You'll like that,
_preux chevalier_?"
He smiled back upon her; who could have helped it? But he stifled a sigh
as he smiled. Would life be always a picnic to her, he asked himself? He
could not imagine it otherwise, and yet he knew that even upon this child
of mirth and innocence the reality of life must dawn some day. Would it
be a gracious dawning of pearly tints and roselit radiance, gradually
filling that eager young soul to the brim with the greater joys of life?
Or would it be fiery and terrible, a blinding, relentless burst of light,
from which she would shrink appalled, discerning the wrath of the gods
before ever she had realized their bounty?
Could it be thus with her, his little comrade, his bird of Paradise, his
darling? He thought not. He believed not. And yet deep in the heart of
him he feared.
And because of that lurking fear he vowed silently over the little
friendly hand that lay so confidingly in his that never while breath
remained in his body would he leave her until he knew her happiness--the
ultimate happiness of her womanhood--to be assured.
It seemed to him that it was for this alone that he had been introduced
once more into her book of life. All his hopes and dreams had passed; he
was an old man before his time; but this one thing, it seemed, was left
to him. For a while longer his name would figure with hers across the
page. Only when the page turned his part would be done. She would not
need him then. She would be a woman; and--_eh bien_, it was only the
child Chris who could ever be expected to need him now. When she ceased
to be a child the need--if such, indeed, existed--would be for ever past;
and he would be no more to her than a memory--the memory of one who had
played with her a while in the happy land of her childhood and had shared
with her the picnics of those summer days.
This was the sole remaining aspiration of Bertrand de Montville--the man
who in the arrogance of his youth had diced with the gods, and had lost
the cast.